International Affairs No. 1, 2023 – Table of Contents

Keywords: peacekeeping, peacekeeping operations, UN, UN reform, Foreign Policy Concepts (FPC), Responsibility to Protect

THE FIRST full-scale participation of a Soviet/Russian contingent in a UN peacekeeping operation dates back to 1973, when the USSR sent 36 officers as military observers to assist in Arab-Israeli conflict settlement.¹ The situation changed dramatically in the 1990s. In 1991 alone, Russian contingents took part in the work of UN missions in Kuwait and Iraq, followed by Cambodia in 1992.² In the early 2000s, over 3,000 Russian personnel took part in UN missions in Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Georgia, East Timor, and Kosovo.³ Russia has also stepped up its activities in another area: participation in UN peacekeeping operations. Russian troops were deployed as part of UN missions in the Balkans, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Angola. In 1995, the Russian contingent reached 1,764 troops, most of whom (about 1,500) operated in the former Yugoslavia.⁴…

Keywords: Monroe Doctrine, US foreign policy, national-cultural identity, national psychology, Anglo-Saxon legal system

ON FEBRUARY 24, 2022, international relations entered a whole new stage of development affecting, albeit to varying degrees, practically all states, with no end in sight. On September 7, 2022, speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the world was experiencing “fundamental transformations.” Such transformations generally require several years to be completed. By the middle of the third decade of the 21st century, two highly important signs of a new situation have become absolutely clear: a crisis of the old institutions of global governance and the new rising and developing centers of power. At the same time, the opinion that the new is just the “well-forgotten old” is confirmed. This is especially true of the US and its policies…

THE US considers the Internet a primary tool in waging hybrid, psychological, and proxy wars in various combinations to achieve worldwide dominance in the global information space, given that the digital web reaches more than 60% of the world’s population.

The modern reality is such that aggressive propaganda in the form of malicious disinformation campaigns was identified by Westerners on the state level first as a component of a comprehensive set of measures to contain Russia, then as a decisive element of destroying the country as a subject of international law…

Keywords: international education, migration processes, ethnocultural education, adaptation and integration of migrants, the culture of peace, UNESCO

ACCORDING TO the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the number of international migrants worldwide reached 281 million in 2020, up from 221 million in 2010 and 173 million in 2000. The number of people newly arriving in various countries around the world has exceeded population growth, as the share of international migrants in the global population increased from 2.8% in 2000 to 3.2% in 2010 and 3.6% in 2020 [22, 7]. This trend is not expected to change in the coming decades, since sociopolitical instability in many regions of the world is increasing rather than decreasing…

Keywords: Poland’s foreign policy, the Visegrad Quartet, the Three Seas project, US-Europe relations, Poland’s role in the EU, the Lublin Triangle

A NEW BALANCE of power in the European space is taking shape before our eyes, and the space itself might acquire a new configuration. This new trend is emerging as a consequence of the active and increasingly aggressive foreign policy activities of the Republic of Poland, supported by the US and Great Britain, which are interested, for various reasons, in creating a new alignment of forces in Europe. The transatlantic community is characterized not only by the unity of the participating states, but also by the rivalry between them. In the last 10 to 15 years, the East European region has become the main object of competition between the leading West European countries and the US. Let us take a closer look at the content of this process, where the foreign policy interests of Poland have become the central element…

Keywords: Russia-US confrontation, Joe Biden, Gallup Poll. Republican Party, Democratic Party, political polarization, early voting

THE NOVEMBER 8, 2022 US midterm elections, which elected all members of the House of Representatives of the US Congress (435), a third of the Senate (33 + 2 vacant seats, of which 21 were held by Republicans and 14 by Democrats), as well as the governors of 36 states (with Republicans defending 20 seats and Democrats defending 16), were watched with intense interest around the globe…

ENERGY is the basis of all economies, and its quality and stable supply are key to the organization of production, economic development, and living standards. China is the world’s largest economy¹ and biggest consumer of primary energy. In 2021, it consumed about 5.24 billion [metric] tons of coal equivalent.² But the country still faces considerable risks in terms of energy supply stability and quality.

In autumn 2021, China experienced an energy crisis. Efforts by regional administrations to implement central government directives to maximize the use of renewable energy and abandon coal had upset the supply-and-demand balance in the coal market. Prices for coal, which accounted for 56% of China’s total energy consumption,³ spiked, causing many thermal power plants to cut their generation volumes. This triggered rolling outages in some provinces and brought some industrial facilities to a halt. Arguably, the crisis could be blamed on regulatory faults, shortages of primary energy, grid defects, and technological vulnerabilities of the use of renewable energy. Given China’s role in international trade, the crisis might have been damaging to the world economy, but the Chinese government was quick to normalize the situation by revising pricing mechanisms and by measures to boost the mining and import of coal…

Keywords: digital sovereignty, China, globalization of digital space, international law and digital space, “digital divide,” China’s digital economy, state regulation of the Internet in China

IN TODAY’S WORLD, the preservation of digital sovereignty is not only a pressing imperative, but also a guarantee of existence for any independent state – a way to avoid potential conflicts in the information environment…

DECEMBER 10, 2022 marks the 165th anniversary of the establishment of Russian-Uruguayan relations. Their long history has had its ups and downs, pauses and breakthroughs, but the feelings of goodwill and sympathy between our peoples have always been evident. Bilateral cooperation has always rested on the strong foundation of strictly observed principles of equality, mutual respect, and noninterference in each other’s domestic affairs.

Latin America started attracting Russia’s particular attention by the late 1840s. In 1856, an instruction to Dmitry Glinka, the Russian envoy to Brazil, asked him “to report on the situation in South America, which in every respect deserves our close attention.”¹ The impetus for the formalization of Russian-Uruguayan relations came from a note addressed to Emperor Alexander II from President Gabriel Antonio Pereira of Uruguay. This message, transmitted in September 1857 through the Russian Embassy in Paris, informed the tsar of Uruguayan intentions to establish friendly relations with Russia. On December 10, 1857, Alexander II answered and expressed his readiness “to assist in everything that might strengthen the goodwill between our subjects and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.”² Thus, official bilateral relations were established,…

I WOULD LIKE to thank the attendees of our conference. Despite objective challenges related to logistics and busy, jam-packed work schedules, you found the opportunity to come here to this blessed land, Crimea. Thank you very much!

Not long ago, I read an interview with a well-known Russian expert that took me by surprise. I quote: “Generally, the American rule book on which the world is based does not include our ‘red line.’ So the only thing that can stop the US in this situation is fear – its own fear of the next step. That is all. There is nothing else.” What gave me pause was the idea that there is in fact an American rule book on which the world is based. And our esteemed expert states this in all seriousness…

ON OCTOBER 13-14, 2022, Sochi hosted the Kuban CyberSecurity Conference 2022 (Kuban CSC 2022) – this year’s iteration of an international forum that, under a directive by the Russian president, is organized annually by the administration of Krasnodar Territory and the territory’s Association for Digital Development with support from Russia’s Security Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Justice Ministry, the Internal Affairs Ministry, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Russian Investigative Committee.

The more than 500 attendees of the 2022 conference included government figures, diplomats, scholars, academics, and employees of 20 large information and communications technology (ICT) companies from Russia, Belarus, Brazil, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Madagascar, Syria, Tanzania, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan…

Keywords: Tambov, Karaul estate, Georgy Chicherin, Boris Chicherin, People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID), the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of Rapallo, Mozart

ON ONE OF THE central streets of the historical center of Tambov stands an inconspicuous wooden mansion with a mezzanine, slightly lost among the modern multi-story buildings. It stands wall to wall with low, auxiliary buildings converted into residential space. Together with the mansion, they once formed a single vast estate. Today, a fence separates the mansion with a small plot of land from the other buildings…

EVERY WAR has winners, losers, and beneficiaries – and the latter two are rarely or practically never one and the same, especially in large, drawn-out conflicts. The victor, having won at a high price by investing a lot of resources and, frequently, every ounce of strength, emerges from the war exhausted. The beneficiary, on the other hand, avoids direct involvement, spends a minimal amount of resources, skillfully distributes the burden of losses among the warring sides, and bets on the victor at just the right moment to reap maximal political and economic benefit from its limited involvement. Winning the war waged by others without making it their own has been the ultimate strategic pursuit of all political actors of all ages – as cliche and cynical as that may sound.

The US sought to do precisely that during both world wars. World War I opened the world to America to pursue its business interests, albeit to a limited extent: Great Britain and France, the two largest colonial powers at the time, were still too strong. But the situation was different in 1944, when World War II was drawing to close…