History of international relations and foreign policy. Features of modern international relations Key changes in the system of international relations

Currently, modern international relations are characterized by dynamic development, a variety of different relationships and unpredictability. The Cold War and, accordingly, bipolar confrontation are a thing of the past. The transition period from the bipolar system to the formation of a modern system of international relations begins in the 1980s, just during the policy of M.S. Gorbachev, namely during “perestroika” and “new thinking”.

At the moment, in the era of the post-bipolar world, the status of the only superpower, the United States, is in the “challenge phase,” which suggests that today the number of powers ready to challenge the United States is growing at a rapid pace. Already at the moment, at least two superpowers are obvious leaders in the international arena and are ready to challenge America - these are Russia and China. And if we consider the views of E.M. Primakov in his book “A World without Russia? What political myopia leads to,” then, according to his prognostic assessments, the role of the hegemon of the United States will be shared with the European Union, India, China, South Korea and Japan.

In this context, it is worth noting important events in international relations that demonstrate the emergence of Russia as a country independent from the West. In 1999, during the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO troops, Russia came out in defense of Serbia, which confirmed the independence of Russia’s policy from the West.

It is also necessary to mention Vladimir Putin’s speech to the ambassadors in 2006. It is worth noting that the meeting of Russian ambassadors is held annually, but it was in 2006 that Putin first stated that Russia should play the role of a great power, guided by its national interests. A year later, on February 10, 2007, Putin’s famous Munich speech was made, which, in fact, is the first frank conversation with the West. Putin conducted a tough but very deep analysis of Western policies, which led to a crisis in the global security system. In addition, the president spoke about the unacceptability of a unipolar world, and now, 10 years later, it has become obvious that today the United States is not coping with the role of the world gendarme.

Thus, modern international relations are now in transit, and Russia, since the twentieth century, has shown its independent policy, led by a worthy leader.

Also, a trend in modern international relations is globalization, which contradicts the Westphalian system, built on the idea of ​​relatively isolated and self-sufficient states and on the principle of a “balance of power” between them. It is worth noting that globalization is uneven in nature, since the modern world is quite asymmetrical, therefore globalization is considered a contradictory phenomenon of modern international relations. It is necessary to mention that it was the collapse of the Soviet Union that was a powerful surge in globalization, at least in the economic sphere, since at the same time transnational corporations with economic interests began to operate actively.

In addition, it should be emphasized that the trend in modern international relations is the active integration of countries. Globalization differs from integration between countries in the absence of interstate treaties. However, it is globalization that influences the stimulation of the integration process, as it makes interstate borders transparent. The development of close cooperation within regional organizations, which actively began at the end of the twentieth century, is clear evidence of this. Usually, at the regional level, active integration of countries takes place precisely in the economic sphere, which has a positive effect on the global political process. At the same time, the process of globalization negatively affects the domestic economy of countries because it limits the ability of national states to control their internal economic processes.

Considering the process of globalization, I would like to mention the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which he said at the “Territory of Meanings” forum: “Now this very model of globalization, including its economic and financial aspects, which this club of the elite has built for itself - the so-called Liberal globalization, in my opinion, is now failing.” That is, it is obvious that the West wants to maintain its dominance in the international arena, however, as noted by Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov in his book “A World without Russia? What political myopia leads to”: “The United States is no longer the sole leader” and this speaks of a new phase in the development of international relations. Thus, it is most objective to consider the future of international relations as the formation of not a multipolar, but rather a polycentric world, since the trend of regional associations leads to the formation of centers of power rather than poles.

Interstate organizations, as well as non-governmental international organizations and transnational corporations (TNCs), play an active role in the development of international relations; in addition, the emergence of international financial organizations and global trade networks has a great influence on the development of international relations, which is also a consequence of the shift in Westphalian principles, where the only actor in international relations was the state. It is worth noting that TNCs may be interested in regional associations, since they are focused on optimizing costs and creating unified production networks, and therefore put pressure on the government to develop a free regional investment and trade regime.

In the context of globalization and post-bipolarity, interstate organizations are increasingly in need of reform in order to make their work more effective. For example, the activities of the UN obviously need to be reformed, since, in fact, its actions do not bring significant results to stabilize crisis situations. In 2014, Vladimir Putin proposed two conditions for reforming the organization: consistency in decision-making on UN reform, as well as the preservation of all fundamental principles of activity. Once again, participants in the Valdai Discussion Club spoke about the need to reform the UN at a meeting with V.V. Putin. It is also worth mentioning that E.M. Primakov said that the UN should strive to strengthen its influence when considering issues that threaten national security. Namely, not to grant the right of veto to a large number of countries; the right should belong only to permanent members of the UN Security Council. Primakov also spoke about the need to develop other crisis management structures, not just the UN Security Council, and considered the benefits of the idea of ​​developing a charter for anti-terrorist actions.

That is why one of the important factors in the development of modern international relations is an effective international security system. One of the most serious problems in the international arena is the danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction. That is why it is worth noting that in the transition period of the modern system of international relations it is necessary to promote strengthening of arms control. After all, such important agreements as the ABM Treaty and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) have ceased to be in effect, and the conclusion of new ones remains in doubt.

In addition, within the framework of the development of modern international relations, not only the problem of terrorism is relevant, but also the problem of migration. The migration process has a detrimental effect on the development of states, because not only the country of origin, but also the recipient country suffers from this international problem, since migrants do nothing positive for the development of the country, mainly spreading an even wider range of problems, such as drug trafficking , terrorism and crime. To solve a situation of this nature, a collective security system is used, which, like the UN, needs to be reformed, because, observing their activities, we can conclude that regional collective security organizations do not have consistency not only among themselves, but also with the Council UN Security.

It is also worth noting the significant influence of soft power on the development of modern international relations. Joseph Nye's concept of soft power implies the ability to achieve desired goals in the international arena, not using violent methods (hard power), but using political ideology, the culture of society and the state, as well as foreign policy (diplomacy). In Russia, the concept of “soft power” appeared in 2010 in Vladimir Putin’s pre-election article “Russia and the Changing World,” where the president clearly formulated the definition of this concept: “Soft power” is a set of tools and methods for achieving foreign policy goals without the use of weapons, but account of information and other levers of influence.”

At the moment, the most obvious examples of the development of “soft power” are the holding of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in Russia in 2014, as well as the holding of the World Cup in 2018 in many Russian cities.

It is worth noting that the Foreign Policy Concepts of the Russian Federation of 2013 and 2016 mention “soft power”, the use of which tools is recognized as an integral component of foreign policy. However, the difference between the concepts lies in the role of public diplomacy. The 2013 Concept of Russian Foreign Policy pays great attention to public diplomacy, as it creates a favorable image of the country abroad. A striking example of public diplomacy in Russia is the creation in 2008 of the A. M. Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Support Fund, the main mission of which is “to encourage the development of the field of public diplomacy, as well as to promote the formation of a favorable social, political and business climate for Russia abroad.” But, despite the positive impact of public diplomacy on Russia, the 2016 Concept of Russian Foreign Policy disappears from the perspective of public diplomacy, which seems rather inappropriate, since public diplomacy is the institutional and instrumental basis for the implementation of “soft power”. However, it is worth noting that in the Russian public diplomacy system, areas related to international information policy are actively and successfully developing, which is already a good springboard for increasing the efficiency of foreign policy work.

Thus, if Russia develops its concept of soft power, based on the principles of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation 2016, namely the rule of law in international relations, a fair and sustainable world order, then Russia will be perceived positively in the international arena.

It is obvious that modern international relations, being in transit and developing in a rather unstable world, will remain unpredictable, however, the prospects for the development of international relations, taking into account the strengthening of regional integration and the influence of centers of power, provide quite positive vectors for the development of global politics.

Links to sources:

1. Primakov E.M. A world without Russia? What political myopia leads to. - M.: IIC “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” S-239.
2. NATO operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. - URL: https://ria.ru/spravka/20140324/1000550703.html
3. Speech at a meeting with ambassadors and permanent representatives of the Russian Federation. - URL: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/23669
4. Speech and discussion at the Munich Security Policy Conference. - URL: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034
5. The modern model of globalization is a failure, Lavrov said. - URL: https://ria.ru/world/20170811/1500200468.html
6. Primakov E.M. A world without Russia? What does political myopia lead to? - M.: IIC “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” 2009. P-239.
7. Putin: The UN needs reform. - URL: https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1929681
8. Look beyond the horizon. Vladimir Putin met with participants of the Valdai Club meeting // Valdai International Discussion Club. - URL: http://ru.valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/zaglyanut-za-gorizont-putin-valday/
9. Primakov E.M. A world without Russia? What does political myopia lead to? - M.: IIC “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” 2009. P-239.
10. Vladimir Putin. Russia and the changing world // “Moscow News”. - URL: http://www.mn.ru/politics/78738
11. Concept of foreign policy of the Russian Federation (2013). - URL: http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/41d447a0ce9f5a96bdc3.pdf
12. Concept of foreign policy of the Russian Federation (2016). - URL:
13. Gorchakov Foundation // Mission and objectives. - URL: http://gorchakovfund.ru/about/mission/

Gulyants Victoria

The global scale and radicality of the changes taking place today in the political, economic, spiritual spheres of life of the world community, in the sphere of military security allow us to put forward the assumption of the formation of a new system of international relations, different from those that have functioned throughout the last century, and in many ways since from the classical Westphalian system.

In the world and domestic literature, a more or less stable approach to the systematization of international relations has developed, depending on their content, the composition of participants, driving forces and patterns. It is believed that international (interstate) relations proper arose during the formation of national states in the relatively amorphous space of the Roman Empire. The starting point is the end of the “Thirty Years' War” in Europe and the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Since then, the entire 350-year period of international interaction up to the present day is considered by many, especially Western researchers, as the history of a single Westphalian system of international relations. The dominant subjects of this system are sovereign states. There is no supreme arbiter in the system, so states are independent in pursuing domestic policies within their national borders and, in principle, have equal rights. Sovereignty presupposes non-interference in each other's affairs. Over time, states developed a set of rules governing international relations based on these principles - international law.

Most scholars agree that the main driving force of the Westphalian system of international relations was rivalry between states: some sought to increase their influence, while others sought to prevent this. Conflicts between states were determined by the fact that national interests, perceived as vitally important by some states, came into conflict with the national interests of other states. The outcome of this rivalry, as a rule, was determined by the balance of power between states or alliances into which they entered to realize their foreign policy goals. The establishment of equilibrium, or balance, meant a period of stable peaceful relations; a violation of the balance of power ultimately led to war and its restoration in a new configuration, reflecting the strengthening of the influence of some states at the expense of others. For clarity and, naturally, with a great deal of simplification, this system is compared with the movement of billiard balls. States collide with each other, forming changing configurations, and then move again in an endless struggle for influence or security. The main principle in this case is one’s own benefit. The main criterion is strength.

The Westphalian era (or system) of international relations is divided into several stages (or subsystems), united by the general patterns indicated above, but differing from each other in features characteristic of a specific period of relations between states. Usually, historians identify several subsystems of the Westphalian system, which are often considered as independent: the system of predominantly Anglo-French rivalry in Europe and the struggle for colonies in the 17th - 18th centuries; the system of the “European Concert of Nations” or the Congress of Vienna in the 19th century; the more geographically global Versailles-Washington system between the two world wars; finally, the Cold War system, or, as some scientists define it, the Yalta-Potsdam system. It is obvious that in the second half of the 80s - early 90s of the XX century. There have been fundamental changes in international relations that allow us to talk about the end of the Cold War and the formation of new system-forming patterns. The main question today is what these patterns are, what are the specifics of the new stage in comparison with the previous ones, how does it fit into the general Westphalian system or differ from it, how can a new system of international relations be defined.

Most foreign and domestic international experts take the wave of political changes in the countries of Central Europe in the fall of 1989 as the watershed between the Cold War and the current stage of international relations, and consider the fall of the Berlin Wall to be its clear symbol. In the titles of most monographs, articles, conferences, and training courses devoted to today's processes, the emerging system of international relations or world politics is designated as belonging to the post-cold war period. This definition focuses attention on what is missing in the current period compared to the previous one. The obvious distinctive features of the system emerging today in comparison with the previous one are the removal of the political-ideological confrontation between “anti-communism” and “communism” due to the rapid and almost complete disappearance of the latter, as well as the winding down of the military confrontation of the blocs grouped during the Cold War around two poles - Washington and Moscow. Such a definition does not adequately reflect the new essence of world politics, just as in its time the formula “after the Second World War” did not reveal the new quality of the emerging patterns of the Cold War. Therefore, when analyzing today's international relations and trying to forecast their development, one should pay attention to qualitatively new processes emerging under the influence of changed conditions of international life.

Recently, one can increasingly hear pessimistic complaints about the fact that the new international situation is less stable, predictable and even more dangerous than in previous decades. Indeed, the clear contrasts of the Cold War are clearer than the variety of undertones of the new international relations. In addition, the Cold War is already a thing of the past, an era that has become the object of leisurely study by historians, and the new system is just emerging, and its development can only be predicted on the basis of a still small amount of information. This task becomes even more complicated if, when analyzing the future, we proceed from the patterns that characterized the past system. This is partly confirmed by the fact that

It is a fact that, essentially, the entire science of international relations, operating with the methodology of explaining the Westphalian system, was unable to foresee the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the change of systems does not occur instantly, but gradually, in the struggle between the new and the old. Apparently, the feeling of increased instability and danger is caused by this variability of the new, as yet incomprehensible world.

New political map of the world

When approaching the analysis of the new system of international relations, apparently, one should proceed from the fact that the end of the Cold War, in principle, completed the process of forming a single world community. The path traveled by humanity from the isolation of continents, regions, civilizations and peoples through the colonial gathering of the world, the expansion of the geography of trade, through the cataclysms of two world wars, the massive entry onto the world stage of states liberated from colonialism, the mobilization of resources from all corners of the world by opposing camps in the confrontation of the Cold War, The increase in the compactness of the planet as a result of the scientific and technological revolution finally ended with the collapse of the “Iron Curtain” between East and West and the transformation of the world into a single organism with a certain general set of principles and patterns of development of its individual parts. The world community is increasingly becoming like this in reality. Therefore, recently increased attention has been paid to the problems of interdependence and globalization of the world, the common denominator of the national components of world politics. Apparently, the analysis of these transcendental universal trends can make it possible to more reliably present the direction of change in world politics and international relations.

According to a number of scientists and political figures, the disappearance of the ideological driver of world politics in the form of the confrontation “communism - anti-communism” allows us to return to the traditional structure of relations between nation states, characteristic of the earlier stages of the Westphalian system. In this case, the collapse of bipolarity presupposes the formation of a multipolar world, the poles of which should become the most powerful powers that have thrown off the restrictions of corporate discipline as a result of the disintegration of two blocs, worlds or commonwealths. The famous scientist and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in one of his last monographs “Diplomacy” predicts that the international relations emerging after the Cold War will increasingly resemble European politics of the 19th century, when traditional national interests and the changing balance of forces determined the diplomatic game, education and the collapse of alliances, changes in spheres of influence. A full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, E. M. Primakov paid considerable attention to the phenomenon of the emergence of multipolarity. It should be noted that supporters of the doctrine of multipolarity operate with previous categories, such as “great power”, “spheres of influence”, “balance of power”, etc. The idea of ​​multipolarity has become one of the central ones in the programmatic party and government documents of the PRC, although the emphasis in them is placed, rather, not on an attempt to adequately reflect the essence of the new stage of international relations, but on the task of countering real or imaginary hegemonism, preventing the formation of a unipolar world led by the United States. States. In Western literature, and in some statements by American officials, there is often talk of “sole leadership of the United States,” i.e. about unipolarity.

Indeed, in the early 90s, if we look at the world from a geopolitical point of view, the world map underwent major changes. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance put an end to the dependence of the states of Central and Eastern Europe on Moscow and turned each of them into an independent agent of European and world politics. The collapse of the Soviet Union fundamentally changed the geopolitical situation in the Eurasian space. To a greater or lesser extent and with different speeds, the states formed in the post-Soviet space fill their sovereignty with real content, form their own sets of national interests, foreign policy courses, not only theoretically, but also in essence become independent subjects of international relations. The fragmentation of the post-Soviet space into fifteen sovereign states also changed the geopolitical situation for neighboring countries that previously interacted with the united Soviet Union, for example

China, Turkey, countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia. Not only have the local “balances of power” changed, but the diversity of relations has also sharply increased. Of course, the Russian Federation remains the most powerful state entity in the post-Soviet and Eurasian space. But its new potential, very limited in comparison with the former Soviet Union (if such a comparison is at all appropriate), in terms of territory, population, share of the economy and geopolitical neighborhood, dictates a new model of behavior in international affairs, if viewed from the perspective multipolar “balance of power”.

Geopolitical changes on the European continent as a result of the unification of Germany, the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the obvious pro-Western orientation of most countries of Eastern and Central Europe, including the Baltic states, are superimposed on a certain strengthening of Eurocentrism and independence of Western European integration structures, a more pronounced manifestation of sentiments in a number of European countries, not always coinciding with the US strategic line. The dynamics of China's economic strengthening and the increase in its foreign policy activity, Japan's search for a more independent place in world politics befitting its economic power are causing shifts in the geopolitical situation in the Asia-Pacific region. The objective increase in the share of the United States in world affairs after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union is to a certain extent offset by the increased independence of other “poles” and a certain strengthening of isolationist sentiments in American society.

In the new conditions, with the end of the confrontation between the two “camps” of the Cold War, the coordinates of foreign policy activities and a large group of states that were previously part of the “Third World” have changed. The Non-Aligned Movement has lost its former content, the stratification of the South and the differentiation of the attitude of the resulting groups and individual states towards the North, which is also not monolithic, has accelerated.

Another dimension of multipolarity can be considered regionalism. With all their diversity, unequal rates of development and degree of integration, regional groupings bring additional features to the change in the geopolitical map of the world. Supporters of the “civilizational” school tend to view multipolarity from the angle of interaction or collision of cultural and civilizational blocs. According to the most fashionable representative of this school, the American scientist S. Huntington, the ideological bipolarity of the Cold War will be replaced by a clash of multipolar cultural and civilizational blocs: Western - Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Confucian, Slavic-Orthodox, Hindu, Japanese, Latin American and, possibly, African. Indeed, regional processes are developing against different civilizational backgrounds. But the likelihood of a fundamental division of the world community precisely on this basis at the moment seems very speculative and has not yet been supported by any specific institutional or policy-forming realities. Even the confrontation between Islamic “fundamentalism” and Western civilization loses its severity over time.

More materialized is economic regionalism in the form of a highly integrated European Union, other regional formations of varying degrees of integration - Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Commonwealth of Independent States, ASEAN, the North American Free Trade Area, and similar formations emerging in Latin America and South Asia. Although in a slightly modified form, regional political institutions retain their importance, for example, the Organization of Latin American States, the Organization of African Unity, etc. They are complemented by such interregional multifunctional structures as the North Atlantic Partnership, the US-Japan link, the trilateral structure of North America-Western Europe-Japan in the form of the “seven”, to which the Russian Federation is gradually joining.

In short, since the end of the Cold War, the geopolitical map of the world has undergone obvious changes. But multipolarity explains the form rather than the essence of the new system of international interaction. Does multipolarity mean the full restoration of the traditional driving forces of world politics and the motivations for the behavior of its subjects in the international arena, characteristic to a greater or lesser extent of all stages of the Westphalian system?

The events of recent years do not yet confirm this logic of a multipolar world. First, the United States is behaving much more restrainedly than it could afford under the logic of the balance of power given its current position in the economic, technological and military fields. Secondly, with a certain autonomy of the poles in the Western world, the emergence of new, any radical dividing lines of confrontation between North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region is not visible. With a slight increase in the level of anti-American rhetoric in the Russian and Chinese political elites, the more fundamental interests of both powers are pushing them to further develop relations with the United States. NATO expansion did not strengthen centripetal tendencies in the CIS, which should be expected according to the laws of a multipolar world. An analysis of the interaction between the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8 shows that the area of ​​convergence of their interests is much wider than the area of ​​disagreement, despite all the outward drama of the latter.

Based on this, it can be assumed that the behavior of the world community is beginning to be influenced by new driving forces, different from those that traditionally operated within the framework of the Westphalian system. In order to test this thesis, it would be necessary to consider new factors that are beginning to influence the behavior of the world community.

Global Democratic Wave

At the turn of the 80s - 90s, the global socio-political space changed qualitatively. The refusal of the peoples of the Soviet Union and most other countries of the former “socialist commonwealth” from the one-party system of government and central economic planning in favor of market democracy meant the cessation of the largely global confrontation between antagonistic socio-political systems and a significant increase in the share of open societies in world politics. A unique feature in history of the self-liquidation of communism is the peaceful nature of this process, which was not accompanied, as usually happened with such a radical change in the socio-political system, by any serious military or revolutionary cataclysms. In a significant part of the Eurasian space - in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the territory of the former Soviet Union, in principle, a consensus has developed in favor of a democratic form of socio-political structure. If the process of reforming these states, primarily Russia (due to its potential), is successfully completed, into open societies in most of the northern hemisphere - Europe, North America, Eurasia - a community of peoples will be formed, living according to similar socio-political and economic principles, professing similar values, including in approaches to the processes of global world politics.

A natural consequence of the end of the largely confrontation between the “first” and “second” worlds was the weakening and then the cessation of support for authoritarian regimes - clients of the two camps that fought during the Cold War in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Since one of the main advantages of such regimes for the East and West was, respectively, an “anti-imperialist” or “anti-communist” orientation, with the end of the confrontation between the main antagonists, they lost their value as ideological allies and, as a result, lost material and political support. The fall of individual regimes of this kind in Somalia, Liberia, and Afghanistan was followed by the disintegration of these states and civil war. Most other countries, for example Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Zaire, began to move away from authoritarianism, albeit at different rates. This further reduced the latter's global field.

The 1980s, especially their second half, saw a large-scale process of democratization on all continents not directly related to the end of the Cold War. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile moved from military-authoritarian to civilian parliamentary forms of government. Somewhat later, this trend spread to Central America. It is indicative of the outcome of this process that the 34 leaders who attended the summit of the Americas in December 1994 (Cuba did not receive an invitation) were democratically elected civilian leaders of their countries. Similar processes of democratization, of course, with Asian specifics, were observed at that time in the Asia-Pacific region - in the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand. In 1988, an elected government replaced the military regime in Pakistan. A major breakthrough to democracy not only for the African continent was South Africa's abandonment of the apartheid policy. Elsewhere in Africa, the move away from authoritarianism has been slower. However, the fall of the most odious dictatorial regimes in Ethiopia, Uganda, Zaire, and some progress in democratic reforms in Ghana, Benin, Kenya, and Zimbabwe indicate that the wave of democratization has not bypassed this continent.

It should be noted that democracy has quite different degrees of maturity. This is clearly evident in the evolution of democratic societies from the French and American revolutions to the present day. The primary forms of democracy in the form of regular multi-party elections, for example, in a number of African countries or in some of the newly independent states in the territory of the former USSR, differ significantly from the forms of mature democracies, say, of the Western European type. Even the most advanced democracies are imperfect, based on Lincoln’s definition of democracy: “government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of the people.” But it is also obvious that there is also a demarcation line between types of democracies and authoritarianism, which determines the qualitative difference between the domestic and foreign policies of societies located on both sides of it.

The global process of changing socio-political models took place in the late 80s - early 90s in different countries from different starting positions, had unequal depth, its results in some cases are ambiguous, and there are not always guarantees against relapses of authoritarianism. But the scale of this process, its simultaneous development in a number of countries, the fact that for the first time in history the field of democracy covers more than half of humanity and the territories of the globe, and most importantly, the most powerful states in economic, scientific, technical and military terms - all this makes it possible to do conclusion about a qualitative change in the socio-political field of the world community. The democratic form of organization of societies does not eliminate contradictions and sometimes acute conflict situations between the respective states. For example, the fact that parliamentary forms of government are currently functioning in India and Pakistan, Greece and Turkey does not exclude dangerous tension in their relations. The significant distance Russia has traveled from communism to democracy does not negate disagreements with European states and the United States, say, on issues of NATO expansion or the use of military force against the regimes of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. But the fact is that throughout history, democracies have never fought with each other.

Much, of course, depends on the definition of the concepts “democracy” and “war”. Typically, a state is considered democratic if the executive and legislative branches are formed through competitive elections. This means that such elections involve at least two independent parties, there is voting rights for at least half of the adult population, and there has been at least one peaceful constitutional transfer of power from one party to another. In contrast to incidents, border clashes, crises, and civil wars, international wars are considered military actions between states with combat losses of the armed forces of more than 1000 people.

Research of all hypothetical exceptions to this pattern throughout world history from the war between Syracuse and Athens in the 5th century. BC e. up to the present day, they only confirm the fact that democracies fight with authoritarian regimes and often start such conflicts, but they have never brought contradictions with other democratic states to war. It must be admitted that there are certain grounds for skepticism among those who point out that during the years of the Westphalian system, the field of interaction between democratic states was relatively narrow and their peaceful interaction was influenced by the general confrontation of a superior or equal group of authoritarian states. It is not yet entirely clear how democratic states will behave towards each other in the absence or qualitative reduction of the scale of the threat from authoritarian states.

If, nevertheless, the pattern of peaceful interaction between democratic states is not violated in the 21st century, then the expansion of the field of democracy currently taking place in the world will mean an expansion of the global zone of peace. This, apparently, is the first and main qualitative difference between the new emerging system of international relations and the classical Westphalian system, within which the predominance of authoritarian states predetermined the frequency of wars both between them and with the participation of democratic countries.

The qualitative change in the relationship between democracy and authoritarianism on a global scale gave the American researcher F. Fukuyama grounds to proclaim the final victory of democracy and, in this sense, to declare the “completion of history” as a struggle between historical formations. However, it appears that the large-scale promotion of democracy at the turn of the century does not yet mean its complete victory. Communism as a socio-political system, although with certain changes, survived in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, and Cuba. His legacy is felt in several countries of the former Soviet Union, in Serbia.

With the possible exception of North Korea, all other socialist countries are introducing elements of a market economy and are being drawn into the world economic system in one way or another. The practice of relations of some surviving communist states with other countries is governed by the principles of “peaceful coexistence” rather than “class struggle.” The ideological charge of communism is focused more on domestic consumption; pragmatism is increasingly taking over in foreign policy. Partial economic reform and openness to international economic relations are generating social forces that require a corresponding expansion of political freedoms. But the dominant one-party system works in the opposite direction. As a result, there is a “seesaw” effect moving from liberalism to authoritarianism and back. In China, for example, it was a movement from the pragmatic reforms of Deng Xiaoping to the violent suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square, then from a new wave of liberalization to tightening the screws, and again to pragmatism.

Experience of the 20th century shows that the communist system inevitably reproduces a foreign policy that conflicts with the policies generated by democratic societies. Of course, the fact of radical differences between socio-political systems does not necessarily determine the inevitability of military conflict. But it is equally justified to assume that the presence of this contradiction does not exclude such a conflict and does not allow us to hope for achieving the level of relations that are possible between democratic states.

In the authoritarian sphere, there still remains a significant number of states whose socio-political model is determined either by the inertia of personal dictatorships, as, for example, in Iraq, Libya, Syria, or by the anomaly of the prosperity of medieval forms of eastern rule in combination with technological progress in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states , some Maghreb countries. At the same time, the first group is in a state of irreconcilable confrontation with democracy, and the second is ready to cooperate with it until it seeks to shake the socio-political status quo established in these countries. Authoritarian structures, albeit in modified form, have taken hold in a number of post-Soviet states, for example in Turkmenistan.

A special place among authoritarian regimes is occupied by countries of “Islamic statehood” of an extremist persuasion - Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan. The international movement of Islamic political extremism, known under the not entirely correct name “Islamic fundamentalism,” gives them a unique potential for influencing world politics. This revolutionary ideological movement, which rejects Western democracy as a way of life of society, allowing terror and violence as a means of implementing the doctrine of “Islamic statehood,” has become widespread in recent years among the population in most countries of the Middle East and other states with a high percentage of Muslim populations.

Unlike the surviving communist regimes, which (with the exception of North Korea) are looking for ways of rapprochement with democratic states, at least in the economic field, and whose ideological charge is fading, Islamic political extremism is dynamic, massive and really threatens the stability of the Saudi regimes , Gulf countries, some Maghreb states, Pakistan, Turkey, Central Asia. Of course, when assessing the scale of the challenge of Islamic political extremism, the world community should observe a sense of proportion, take into account the opposition to it in the Muslim world, for example, from secular and military structures in Algeria, Egypt, the dependence of the countries of the new Islamic statehood on the world economy, as well as signs of certain erosion extremism in Iran.

The persistence and possibility of increasing the number of authoritarian regimes does not exclude the possibility of military clashes both between them and with the democratic world. Apparently, it is in the sector of authoritarian regimes and in the zone of contact between the latter and the world of democracy that the most dangerous processes fraught with military conflicts can develop in the future. The “gray” zone of states that have moved away from authoritarianism but have not yet completed democratic transformations also remains conflict-free. However, the general trend, which has clearly emerged recently, still indicates a qualitative change in the global socio-political field in favor of democracy, as well as the fact that authoritarianism is waging rearguard historical battles. Of course, the study of further ways of developing international relations should include a more thorough analysis of the patterns of relations between countries that have reached different stages of democratic maturity, the influence of democratic predominance in the world on the behavior of authoritarian regimes, etc.

Global economic organism

The socio-political changes in the global economic system are also commensurate with these changes. The fundamental refusal of the majority of former socialist countries from centralized economic planning meant the inclusion in the global system of a market economy of the large-scale potential and markets of these countries in the 90s. The talk, however, was about ending the confrontation not between two approximately equal blocs, as was the case in the military-political field. The economic structures of socialism have never presented any serious competition to the Western economic system. At the end of the 80s, the share of CMEA member countries in the gross world product was about 9%, and that of industrialized capitalist countries - 57%. Most of the Third World economy was market oriented. Therefore, the process of including former socialist economies into the world economy had rather a long-term significance and symbolized the completion of the formation or restoration at a new level of a unified global economic system. Qualitative changes were accumulating in the market system even before the end of the Cold War.

In the 80s, there was a broad breakthrough in the world towards the liberalization of the world economy - reducing state guardianship over the economy, providing greater freedoms to private enterprise within countries and abandoning protectionism in relations with foreign partners, which, however, did not exclude assistance from the state in entering world markets. It was these factors that primarily provided the economies of a number of countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, with unprecedentedly high growth rates. The crisis that has recently struck a number of countries in Southeast Asia, according to many economists, was a consequence of the “overheating” of economies as a result of their rapid takeoff while maintaining archaic political structures that distort economic liberalization. Economic reforms in Turkey contributed to the rapid modernization of this country. In the early 90s, the liberalization process spread to Latin American countries - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico. The abandonment of strict state planning, the reduction of the budget deficit, the privatization of large banks and state-owned enterprises, and the reduction of customs tariffs allowed them to sharply increase the rate of economic growth and take second place in this indicator after the countries of East Asia. At the same time, similar reforms, although of a much less radical nature, are beginning to make their way in India. The 1990s saw tangible benefits from China's opening up to the outside world.

The logical consequence of these processes was a significant intensification of international interaction between national economies. The growth rate of international trade exceeds the global rate of domestic economic growth. Today, more than 15% of the world's gross product is sold in foreign markets. Involvement in international trade has become a serious and universal factor in the growth of the welfare of the world community. The completion of the GATT Uruguay Round in 1994, which provided for further significant reductions in tariffs and the extension of trade liberalization to service flows, and the transformation of GATT into the World Trade Organization marked the emergence of international trade to a qualitatively new level and the increased interdependence of the world economic system.

In the last decade, a significantly intensified process of internationalization of financial capital has developed in the same direction. This was especially evident in the intensification of international investment flows, which since 1995 have been growing faster than trade and production. This was the result of a significant change in the investment climate in the world. Democratization, political stabilization and economic liberalization in many regions have made them more attractive to foreign investors. On the other hand, there has been a psychological turning point in many developing countries, which have realized that attracting foreign capital is a springboard for development, facilitating access to international markets and access to the latest technologies. This, of course, required a partial renunciation of absolute economic sovereignty and meant increased competition for a number of domestic industries. But the examples of the Asian Tigers and China have prompted most developing countries and countries with economies in transition to join the competition to attract investment. In the mid-90s, the volume of foreign investment exceeded 2 trillion. dollars and continues to grow rapidly. Organizationally, this trend is consolidated by a noticeable increase in the activity of international banks, investment funds and securities exchanges. Another facet of this process is the significant expansion of the field of activity of transnational corporations, which today control about a third of the assets of all private companies in the world, and the volume of sales of their products is approaching the gross product of the US economy.

Undoubtedly, promoting the interests of domestic companies in the global market still remains one of the main tasks of any state. Despite all the liberalization of international economic relations, interethnic contradictions, as shown by the often violent disputes between the United States and Japan over trade imbalances or with the European Union over their subsidies to agriculture, remain. But it is obvious that with the current degree of interdependence of the world economy, almost no state can oppose its selfish interests to the world community, since it risks finding itself in the role of a global outcast or undermining the existing system with equally disastrous results not only for competitors, but also for its own economy.

The process of internationalization and increasing interdependence of the world economic system occurs in two planes - in the global and in the plane of regional integration. In theory, regional integration could spur interregional rivalry. But today this danger is limited to some new properties of the world economic system. First of all, the openness of new regional formations - they do not erect additional tariff barriers on their periphery, but remove them in relations between participants faster than tariffs are reduced globally within the WTO. This is an incentive for a further, more radical reduction of barriers on a global scale, including between regional economic structures. In addition, some countries are members of several regional groupings. For example, the USA, Canada, and Mexico fully participate in both APEC and NAFTA. And the vast majority of transnational corporations simultaneously operate in the orbits of all existing regional organizations.

New qualities of the world economic system - the rapid expansion of the market economy zone, the liberalization of national economies and their interaction through trade and international investment, the cosmopolitanization of an increasing number of entities in the world economy - TNCs, banks, investment groups - have a serious impact on world politics and international relations. The world economy is becoming so interconnected and interdependent that the interests of all its active participants require maintaining stability not only economically, but also military-politically. Some scientists refer to the fact that the high degree of interaction in the European economy at the beginning of the 20th century. did not prevent unraveling. The First World War ignores a qualitatively new level of interdependence of today's world economy and the cosmopolitanization of its significant segment, a radical change in the ratio of economic and military factors in world politics. But the most significant, including for the formation of a new system of international relations, is the fact that the process of creating a new world economic community interacts with democratic transformations of the socio-political field. In addition, recently the globalization of the world economy has increasingly played the role of a stabilizer of world politics and the security sphere. This influence is especially noticeable in the behavior of a number of authoritarian states and societies moving from authoritarianism to democracy. The large-scale and increasing dependence of the economies of, for example, China and a number of newly independent states on world markets, investments, and technologies forces them to adjust their positions on political and military problems of international life.

Naturally, the global economic horizon is not cloudless. The main problem remains the gap between industrialized countries and a significant number of developing or economically stagnant countries. Globalization processes primarily affect the community of developed countries. In recent years, the trend towards a progressive widening of this gap has intensified. According to many economists, a significant number of African countries and a number of other states, such as Bangladesh, are “forever” behind. For a large group of developing economies, particularly Latin America, their attempts to get closer to world leaders are hampered by huge external debt and the need to service it. A special case is represented by economies making the transition from a centrally planned system to a market model. Their entry into world markets for goods, services, and capital is especially painful.

There are two opposing hypotheses regarding the impact of this gap, conventionally designated as the gap between the new North and South, on world politics. Many international experts see this long-term phenomenon as the main source of future conflicts and even attempts by the South to forcibly redistribute the economic wealth of the world. Indeed, the current serious lag behind the leading powers in such indicators as the share of GDP in the world economy or per capita income will require, say, Russia (which accounts for about 1.5% of the world's gross product), India, Ukraine, several decades of development at rates several times higher than the world average, in order to get closer to the level of the USA, Japan, Germany and not lag behind China. At the same time, we must keep in mind that today's leading countries will not stand still. In the same way, it is difficult to assume that in the foreseeable future any new regional economic grouping - the CIS or, say, emerging in South America - will be able to approach the EU, APEC, NAFTA, each of which accounts for over 20% of the gross world product, world trade and finance.

According to another point of view, the internationalization of the world economy, the weakening charge of economic nationalism, the fact that economic interaction between states ceases to be a zero-sum game, allows us to hope that the economic gap between North and South will not turn into a new source of global confrontation, especially in a situation where, although lagging behind the North in absolute terms, the South will still develop, increasing its well-being. Here, perhaps, an analogy with the modus vivendi between large and medium-sized companies within national economies is appropriate: medium-sized companies do not necessarily face antagonistic relationships with leading corporations and strive to bridge the gap between them by any means. Much depends on the organizational and legal environment in which the business operates, in this case the global one.

The combination of liberalization and globalization of the world economy, along with obvious benefits, also carries hidden threats. The goal of competition among corporations and financial institutions is profit, not the preservation of the stability of a market economy. Liberalization reduces restrictions on competition, and globalization expands its scope. As the latest financial crisis in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Russia, which affected markets around the world, showed, the new state of the world economy means the globalization of not only positive, but also negative trends. Understanding this forces world financial institutions to save the economic systems of South Korea, Hong Kong, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia. But these one-off operations only highlight the ongoing contradiction between the benefits of liberal globalism and the cost of maintaining the sustainability of the world economy. Apparently, the globalization of risks will require the globalization of their management and the improvement of such structures as the WTO, the IMF and the group of seven leading industrial powers. It is also obvious that the growing cosmopolitan sector of the global economy is less accountable to the world community than national economies are to states.

Be that as it may, the new stage of world politics is definitely bringing its economic component to the forefront. Thus, it can be assumed that the unification of greater Europe is ultimately hampered not by clashes of interests in the military-political field, but by a serious economic gap between the EU, on the one hand, and post-communist countries, on the other. Similarly, the main logic of the development of international relations, for example, in the Asia-Pacific region, is dictated not so much by considerations of military security, but by economic challenges and opportunities. Over the past few years, international economic institutions such as the G7, WTO, IMF and World Bank, the governing bodies of the EU, APEC, NAFTA, have clearly been compared in their influence on world politics with the Security Council, the UN General Assembly, regional political organizations, and military alliances. , and often surpass them. Thus, the economization of world politics and the formation of a new quality of the world economy are becoming another main parameter of the system of international relations that is emerging today.

New military security parameters

No matter how paradoxical the assumption about the development of a trend towards demilitarization of the world community in the light of the latest dramatic conflict in the Balkans, tensions in the Persian Gulf region, and the instability of non-proliferation regimes of weapons of mass destruction may seem at first glance, it still has grounds for serious consideration in the long term .

The end of the Cold War coincided with a radical change in the place and role of the military security factor in world politics. In the late 80s - 90s, there was a large-scale reduction in the global potential for military confrontation of the Cold War. Since the second half of the 1980s, global defense spending has been steadily declining. Within the framework of international treaties and through unilateral initiatives, an unprecedented reduction in nuclear missiles, conventional weapons and personnel of the armed forces is being carried out. The reduction in the level of military confrontation was facilitated by the significant redeployment of armed forces to national territories, the development of confidence-building measures and positive interaction in the military field. The process of conversion of a large part of the global military-industrial complex is underway. The parallel intensification of limited conflicts on the periphery of the central military confrontation of the Cold War, with all their drama and “surprise” against the backdrop of the peaceful euphoria characteristic of the late 80s, in scale and consequences cannot be compared with the leading trend of demilitarization of world politics.

The development of this trend has several fundamental reasons. The prevailing democratic monotype of the world community, as well as the internationalization of the world economy, are reducing the nutritious political and economic environment of the global institution of war. An equally important factor is the revolutionary significance of the nature of nuclear weapons, irrefutably proven throughout the course of the Cold War.

The creation of nuclear weapons meant, in broad terms, the disappearance of the possibility of victory for any of the parties, which throughout the entire previous history of mankind was an indispensable condition for waging war. Back in 1946 American scientist B. Brody drew attention to this qualitative characteristic of nuclear weapons and expressed his firm conviction that in the future their only task and function will be to deter war. Some time later, this axiom was confirmed by A.D. Sakharov. Throughout the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union tried to find ways around this revolutionary reality. Both sides made active attempts to break the nuclear stalemate by building up and improving nuclear missile capabilities, developing sophisticated strategies for its use, and, finally, approaches to creating anti-missile systems. Fifty years later, having created about 25 thousand strategic nuclear warheads alone, the nuclear powers came to the inevitable conclusion: the use of nuclear weapons means not only the destruction of the enemy, but also guaranteed suicide. Moreover, the prospect of nuclear escalation has sharply limited the possibility of the opposing sides using conventional weapons. Nuclear weapons made the Cold War a type of “forced peace” between nuclear powers.

The experience of nuclear confrontation during the Cold War, radical reductions in the nuclear missile arsenals of the United States and the Russian Federation in accordance with the START-1, START-2 treaties, the renunciation of nuclear weapons by Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, the agreement in principle between the Russian Federation and the United States on further deeper nuclear reductions charges and means of their delivery, the restraint of Great Britain, France and China in the development of their national nuclear potentials allow us to conclude that the leading powers recognize, in principle, the futility of nuclear weapons as a means of achieving victory or an effective means of influencing world politics. Although today it is difficult to imagine a situation where one of the powers could use nuclear weapons, the possibility of using them as a last resort or as a result of error still remains. In addition, the retention of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, even in the process of radical reductions, increases the “negative significance” of the state that possesses them. For example, concerns (regardless of their validity) regarding the safety of nuclear materials on the territory of the former Soviet Union further increase the attention of the world community to its legal successors, including the Russian Federation.

There are several fundamental obstacles to general nuclear disarmament. The complete renunciation of nuclear weapons also means the disappearance of their main function - deterring war, including conventional war. In addition, a number of powers, such as Russia or China, may view the presence of nuclear weapons as a temporary compensation for the relative weakness of their conventional weapons capabilities, and, together with Great Britain and France, as a political symbol of great power. Finally, the fact that even minimal nuclear weapons can serve as an effective means of deterring war has also been learned by other countries, especially those in a state of local cold wars with their neighbors, for example, Israel, India, and Pakistan.

The testing of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan in the spring of 1998 cements the stalemate in the confrontation between these countries. It can be assumed that the legalization of nuclear status by long-time rivals will force them to more energetically seek ways to fundamentally resolve the long-standing conflict. On the other hand, the not entirely adequate reaction of the world community to such a blow to the nonproliferation regime may create a temptation for other “threshold” states to follow the example of Delhi and Islamabad. This would lead to a domino effect, whereby the likelihood of unauthorized or irrational deployment of nuclear weapons could outweigh their deterrent capabilities.

Some dictatorial regimes, taking into account the results of the wars for the Falklands, in the Persian Gulf, and in the Balkans, not only realized the futility of confrontation with leading powers possessing qualitative superiority in the field of conventional weapons, but also came to understand that the possession of weapons of mass destruction. Thus, in the nuclear sphere, two medium-term tasks really come to the fore - strengthening the system of non-proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and at the same time determining the functional parameters and the minimum sufficient size of the nuclear potentials of the powers that possess them.

Tasks in the field of preserving and strengthening non-proliferation regimes are today pushing aside in terms of priority the classic problem of reducing strategic arms of the Russian Federation and the United States. The long-term task remains to continue to clarify the feasibility and search for ways to move towards a nuclear-free world in the context of a new world policy.

The dialectical link connecting the non-proliferation regimes of weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems, on the one hand, with control over the strategic arms of “traditional” nuclear powers, on the other, is the problem of missile defense and the fate of the ABM Treaty. The prospect of creating nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapons, as well as medium-range missiles, and in the near future intercontinental missiles by a number of states, brings the problem of protection against such a danger to the center of strategic thinking. The United States has already outlined its preferred solution - the creation of a “thin” missile defense system for the country, as well as regional missile defense systems for theaters of military operations, in particular in the Asia-Pacific region - against North Korean missiles, and in the Middle East - against Iranian missiles. Such anti-missile potentials, deployed unilaterally, would devalue the nuclear missile deterrence potentials of the Russian Federation and China, which could lead to the desire of the latter to compensate for the change in the strategic balance by building up their own nuclear missile weapons with the inevitable destabilization of the global strategic situation.

Another pressing problem is the phenomenon of local conflicts. The end of the Cold War was accompanied by a noticeable intensification of local conflicts. Most of them were, rather, domestic than international, in the sense that the contradictions that caused them were associated with separatism, the struggle for power or territory within one state. Most of the conflicts were the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and the aggravation of national-ethnic contradictions, the manifestation of which had previously been restrained by authoritarian systems or the bloc discipline of the Cold War. Other conflicts, for example in Africa, were the result of weakened statehood and economic devastation. The third category is long-term “traditional” conflicts in the Middle East, in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, around Kashmir, which survived the end of the Cold War, or flared up again, as happened in Cambodia.

With all the drama of local conflicts at the turn of the 80s - 90s, over time, the severity of most of them subsided somewhat, as, for example, in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Chechnya, Abkhazia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, and finally in Tajikistan . This is partly explained by the gradual awareness by the conflicting parties of the high cost and futility of a military solution to problems, and in many cases this trend was reinforced by peace enforcement (as was the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Transnistria), and other peacekeeping efforts with the participation of international organizations - the UN, OSCE, CIS. True, in several cases, for example in Somalia and Afghanistan, such efforts did not produce the desired results. This trend is reinforced by serious progress towards a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as between Pretoria and the front-line states. The corresponding conflicts served as a breeding ground for instability in the Middle East and southern Africa.

The overall global picture of local armed conflicts is also changing. In 1989, there were 36 major conflicts in 32 districts, and in 1995, 30 such conflicts were reported in 25 districts. Some of them, for example, the mutual extermination of the Tutsi and Hutu peoples in East Africa, take on the character of genocide. A real assessment of the scale and dynamics of “new” conflicts is hampered by their emotional perception. They broke out in those regions that were considered (without sufficient grounds) traditionally stable. In addition, they arose at a time when the world community believed in the absence of conflict in world politics after the end of the Cold War. An impartial comparison of the “new” conflicts with the “old” ones that raged during the Cold War in Asia, Africa, Central America, the Near and Middle East, despite the scale of the latest conflict in the Balkans, allows us to draw a more balanced conclusion regarding the long-term trend.

More relevant today are armed operations undertaken under the leadership of leading Western countries, primarily the United States, against countries that are believed to violate international law, democratic or humanitarian norms. The most obvious examples are operations against Iraq to stop aggression against Kuwait, enforcement of peace at the final stage of the internal conflict in Bosnia, restoration of the rule of law in Haiti and Somalia. These operations were carried out with the approval of the UN Security Council. A special place is occupied by the large-scale military operation undertaken by NATO unilaterally without coordination with the UN against Yugoslavia in connection with the situation in which the Albanian population found itself in Kosovo. The significance of the latter lies in the fact that it calls into question the principles of the global political and legal regime, as it was enshrined in the UN Charter.

The global reduction of military arsenals has more clearly outlined the qualitative gap in armaments between the leading military powers and the rest of the world. The Falklands conflict at the end of the Cold War, followed by the Gulf War and operations in Bosnia and Serbia, clearly demonstrated this gap. Progress in miniaturization and increasing the destruction capability of conventional warheads, improvement of guidance, control, command and control and reconnaissance systems, electronic warfare systems, and increased mobility are rightfully considered decisive factors in modern warfare. In Cold War terms, the balance of military power between North and South shifted further in favor of the former.

Undoubtedly, against this background, there is an increase in the material capabilities of the United States to influence the development of the situation in the field of military security in most regions of the world. Abstracting from the nuclear factor, we can say: financial capabilities, high quality weapons, the ability to quickly transport large contingents of troops and arsenals of weapons over long distances, a powerful presence in the World Ocean, the preservation of the basic infrastructure of bases and military alliances - all this has turned the United States into a the only global power militarily. The fragmentation of the military potential of the USSR during its collapse, a deep and long-term economic crisis that painfully affected the army and the military-industrial complex, the slow pace of reform of the weapons forces, and the virtual absence of reliable allies limited the military capabilities of the Russian Federation to the Eurasian space. The systematic, long-term modernization of China's armed forces suggests a significant increase in its ability to project military power in the Asia-Pacific region in the future. Despite attempts by some Western European countries to play a more active military role outside the NATO area of ​​responsibility, as was the case during the Gulf War or peacekeeping operations in Africa and the Balkans, and as proclaimed for the future in the new NATO strategic doctrine, the parameters The military potential of Western Europe itself, without American participation, remains largely regional. All other countries of the world, for various reasons, can only count on the fact that the military potential of each of them will be one of the regional factors.

The new situation in the field of global military security is generally determined by the tendency to limit the use of war in the classical sense. But at the same time, new forms of the use of force are emerging, for example “operations for humanitarian reasons.” Combined with changes in the socio-political and economic fields, such processes in the military sphere have a serious impact on the formation of a new system of international relations.

Cosmopolitanization of world politics

The change in the traditional Westphalian system of international relations today affects not only the content of world politics, but also the circle of its subjects. If for three and a half centuries states were the dominant participants in international relations, and world politics was mainly interstate politics, then in recent years they have been crowded out by transnational companies, international private financial institutions, non-governmental public organizations that do not have a specific nationality, and are largely cosmopolitan.

Economic giants, which previously could easily be attributed to the economic structures of a particular country, have lost this link, since their financial capital is transnational, managers are representatives of different nationalities, enterprises, headquarters and marketing systems are often located on different continents. Many of them can raise not the national flag on the flagpole, but only their own corporation flag. To a greater or lesser extent, the process of cosmopolitanization, or “offshorization,” has affected all major corporations in the world. Accordingly, their patriotism in relation to a particular state has decreased. The behavior of the transnational community of world financial centers often turns out to be as influential as the decisions of the IMF and the G7.

Today, the international non-governmental organization Greenpeace effectively plays the role of a “global environmental policeman” and often sets priorities in this area that most states are forced to accept. The public organization Amnesty International has significantly more influence than the interstate UN Center for Human Rights. The television company CNN refused to use the term “foreign” in its programs, since most countries in the world are “domestic” for it. The authority of world churches and religious associations is significantly expanding and growing. An increasing number of people were born in one country, have citizenship in another, and live and work in a third. It is often easier for a person to communicate via the Internet with people living on other continents than with neighbors at home. Cosmopolitanization has also affected the worst part of the human community - organizations of international terrorism, crime, and drug mafias do not know their homeland, and their influence on world affairs remains at an all-time high.

All this undermines one of the most important foundations of the Westphalian system - sovereignty, the right of the state to act as the supreme judge within national borders and the sole representative of the nation in international affairs. The voluntary transfer of part of sovereignty to interstate institutions in the process of regional integration or within the framework of international organizations such as the OSCE, the Council of Europe, etc., has been complemented in recent years by the spontaneous process of its “diffusion” on a global scale.

There is a point of view according to which the international community is moving to a higher level of world politics, with the long-term prospect of forming the United States of the World. Or, to put it in modern language, it is moving towards a system similar in its spontaneous and democratic principles of construction and functioning to the Internet. Obviously, this is too fantastic a forecast. The European Union should probably be considered as a prototype of the future system of world politics. Be that as it may, we can say with full confidence that the globalization of world politics and the growing share of the cosmopolitan component in it will in the near future require states to seriously reconsider their place and role in the activities of the world community.

Increasing transparency of borders, increasing the intensification of transnational communication, and the technological capabilities of the information revolution lead to the globalization of processes in the spiritual sphere of life of the world community. Globalization in other areas has led to a certain erasure of national characteristics of everyday lifestyle, tastes, and fashion. The new quality of international political and economic processes and the situation in the field of military security opens up additional opportunities and stimulates the search for a new quality of life in the spiritual field. Already today, with rare exceptions, the doctrine of the priority of human rights over national sovereignty can be considered universal. The completion of the global ideological struggle between capitalism and communism allowed us to take a fresh look at the spiritual values ​​dominating the world, the relationship between the rights of an individual and the well-being of society, national and global ideas. Recently, criticism of the negative features of consumer society and the culture of hedonism has been growing in the West, and a search is underway for ways to combine individualism and a new model of moral revival. The direction of the search for a new morality of the world community is evidenced, for example, by the call of the President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel to revive “the natural, unique and inimitable sense of the world, the elementary sense of justice, the ability to understand things in the same way as others, a sense of increased responsibility, wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion and faith in the importance of simple actions that do not pretend to be the universal key to salvation.”

The tasks of a moral renaissance are among the first on the agenda of the world churches and the policies of a number of leading states. Of great importance is the result of the search for a new national idea that combines specific and universal values, a process that occurs essentially in all post-communist societies. It has been suggested that in the 21st century. the ability of a particular state to ensure the spiritual flourishing of its society will be no less important for determining its place and role in the world community than material well-being and military power.

Globalization and cosmopolitanization of the world community are determined not only by the opportunities associated with new processes in its life, but also by the challenges of recent decades. We are talking primarily about such planetary tasks as protecting the global ecological system, regulating global migration flows, and tensions that periodically arise in connection with population growth and the limited natural resources of the globe. It is obvious - and this has been confirmed by practice - that solving such problems requires a planetary approach adequate to their scale, mobilizing the efforts of not only national governments, but also non-governmental transnational organizations of the world community.

To summarize, we can say that the process of formation of a single world community, a global wave of democratization, a new quality of the world economy, radical demilitarization and a change in the vector of the use of force, the emergence of new, non-state, subjects of world politics, the internationalization of the spiritual sphere of human activity and challenges to the world community give grounds to suggest the formation of a new system of international relations, different not only from that that existed during the Cold War, but in many ways from the traditional Westphalian system. Apparently, the end of the Cold War did not give rise to new trends in world politics - it only strengthened them. Rather, it was the new, transcendental processes in the field of politics, economics, security and the spiritual sphere that emerged during the Cold War that blew up the previous system of international relations and formed its new quality.

In the world science of international relations there is currently no unity regarding the essence and driving forces of the new system of international relations. This is apparently explained by the fact that today world politics is characterized by a clash of traditional and new, hitherto unknown factors. Nationalism fights internationalism, geopolitics fights global universalism. Such fundamental concepts as “power”, “influence”, “national interests” are being transformed. The circle of subjects of international relations is expanding and the motivation for their behavior is changing. The new content of world politics requires new organizational forms. It is still premature to talk about the birth of a new system of international relations as a completed process. It is perhaps more realistic to talk about the main trends in the formation of the future world order, its growth from the previous system of international relations.

As with any analysis, in this case it is important to observe the measure in assessing the relationship between the traditional and the newly emerging. A roll in any direction distorts the perspective. Nevertheless, even a somewhat exaggerated emphasis on new trends in the future that is emerging today is now methodologically more justified than an obsession with attempts to explain emerging unknown phenomena solely with the help of traditional concepts. There is no doubt that the stage of fundamental demarcation between new and old approaches should be followed by a stage of synthesis of the new and the unchanged in modern international life. It is important to correctly determine the relationship between national and global factors, the new place of the state in the world community, and to balance such traditional categories as geopolitics, nationalism, power, national interests with new transnational processes and regimes. States that have correctly identified the long-term perspective of the formation of a new system of international relations can count on greater effectiveness of their efforts, while those that continue to act based on traditional ideas risk finding themselves at the tail end of world progress.

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Soviet-American dialogue in Geneva. Dissolution of the Department of Internal Affairs and CMEA. Conflicts in the Balkans, Middle and Near East. Integration processes in the world. Formation of the Eurasian Economic Community “EurAsEC”. Declaration on the creation of a Common Economic Space. "Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus." Formation of a multipolar model of world civilization. OSCE Summit 2010 in Astana. Main trends of modern international relations.

Perestroika in the USSR and international relations. In 1985, M.S. was elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Gorbachev. The policy of perestroika proclaimed by the new Soviet leader was also embodied in international relations. Gorbachev’s foreign policy was reduced to unilateral concessions to the West for the sake of establishing the abstract principles of “new political thinking.” Contrary to real state interests, the new Soviet leader set a course for the USSR to leave the Third World, where by 1991 he had lost almost all allies. The United States quickly began to fill this vacuum.

In 1989, there was a massive collapse of the socialist system. The USSR's strategic positions deteriorated catastrophically. The culmination of this process was the unification of the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany. On this issue, the most important for the security of the USSR, M. S. Gorbachev made a unilateral concession to the West.

Resumption of Soviet-American dialogue. In 1985, Soviet-American summit talks took place in Geneva. In 1986 they were continued in the capital of Iceland

Reykjavik, in 1987 in Washington and in 1988 in Moscow. They discussed issues of reducing nuclear weapons. During the bilateral negotiations, it was possible to achieve positive results. Thus, in December 1987, the Treaty between the USSR and the USA on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles was signed, and in June 1988, it came into force. It was stated that this marked the beginning of the construction of a world without nuclear weapons. In addition, a rapprochement in the positions of the parties was recorded during the preparation of a joint draft agreement on a 50% reduction in strategic offensive weapons of the USSR and the USA while maintaining the ABM Treaty. The world democratic community was pleased with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989, which was regarded as an important step in the political settlement of regional conflicts.

The Soviet public expected retaliatory steps from the United States. Moreover, the West, in exchange for Gorbachev’s concession on the German issue, promised to transform NATO into a political organization and not expand it to the East. However, all this remained promises. Watching the weakening of Gorbachev's power, the American administration began to fear for the outcome of negotiations on a strategic arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. In 1991, another Soviet-American meeting took place, during which the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) was signed. It provided for the reduction of Soviet and American nuclear arsenals over 7 years to 6 thousand units for each side.

After the collapse of the USSR, the problem of reducing strategic offensive weapons was inherited by the Russian Federation. In 1993, the United States and Russia signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II). It prohibited the use of ballistic missiles with multiple warheads. The treaty was ratified by the parliaments of both states, but never came into force. The United States has embarked on the path of deploying a national missile defense system. They explained their position by the increasing danger of missile attacks from “unreliable states.” They included Iraq and the DPRK, which allegedly possessed technologies for the production of missiles of the required class. It became obvious that the United States intended to withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty unilaterally. This dealt a blow to Russia’s strategic positions, since it was unable to deploy symmetrical national missile defense programs. Russia became vulnerable to missile attacks from outside.

On November 12, 2001, President V.V. Putin visited the United States, where the issue of missile defense was raised at a meeting with the new President George W. Bush. It was not possible to reach mutual understanding during the visit of the Russian president. However, the United States agreed to conclude a new arms control treaty with Russia. May 24, 2002 during the official visit of President George W. Bush to Russia

this agreement was signed. It was called the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Potentials (SNP). The agreement provided for a reduction by December 31, 2012 of the total number of strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700-2,200 units. The treaty did not stipulate that disabled missiles should be destroyed. This was beneficial to the United States, since they could stockpile missiles being removed from service with the prospect of their return to service. Russia did not have such an opportunity, since the storage period for its missiles expired in 2012. And therefore, in order to avoid self-explosion, the warheads had to be destroyed. Despite this, the SNP agreement was ratified by the Russian Duma in May 2003 in the expectation that the United States would take a reciprocal step. However, this did not happen. On June 14, 2002, the United States withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty. In response, Russia withdrew from START II.

In subsequent years, the international situation in the world and on the European continent deteriorated significantly. This was caused primarily by the beginning of NATO's expansion to the East.

At the NATO summit in Prague on November 21-22, 2002, it was decided to invite seven countries to the alliance: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Estonia. After this, the gradual implementation of the planned project began, which could not but cause concern in Russia.

Since 2006, the United States has moved from defensive deterrence to active and sometimes coercive dictatorship. And above all, this policy was directed towards the European continent. The United States announced the expansion of the missile defense system to such Eastern European countries as Poland and Czechoslovakia. This caused a negative reaction from Russia. However, all attempts by the Russian authorities to resolve the problem that arose with the George W. Bush administration, as well as to resolve the more global issue of the elimination of nuclear weapons in general, were unsuccessful. Statements by American politicians at various levels in 2007 - 2008. the possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons did not go beyond declarations.

The situation changed for the better after the Democratic Party won the US presidential election. In March 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Russia. One of the key issues at the meeting between the American Secretary of State and the Russian President was the issue of reducing and limiting strategic offensive weapons. The work done by the American and Russian sides led to the signing by the Russian Federation and the United States

The Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START-3), which entered into force on February 5, 2011. The world community assessed the treaty as an important step towards ensuring nuclear security.

Dissolution of the Department of Internal Affairs and CMEA. The course of the Soviet leadership caused a sharp decline in the authority of the ruling parties of the socialist countries, which for a long time oriented their states and peoples towards a close economic and military-political union with the USSR.

However, the processes that engulfed the socialist countries were presented by Soviet propaganda as “the creation of a new situation in Europe.” Official propaganda claimed that there was a constructive dialogue between NATO and the Warsaw Department. On November 19, 1990, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in Paris. It provided for a significant reduction in weapons and troops, established parity between both alliances based on the reasonable sufficiency of the weapons of each side, and eliminated the threat of a surprise attack. At the same time, the heads of state and government of 22 countries - members of the Warsaw Warsaw and NATO - signed a joint declaration proclaiming their intentions to build new relations on the basis of partnership and friendship.

In the spring of 1991, the dissolution of the CMEA and the Department of Internal Affairs was officially formalized. After this, the borders of Eastern European countries were open to the massive penetration of Western European goods and capital.

But the West was not going to limit itself to just this. NATO leaders no longer exclude the possibility of the alliance moving to the East. In addition, the Eastern European countries, freed from Soviet control, began to declare their intention to become members of NATO. The United States and NATO leadership did not exclude the possibility of including not only Eastern European countries in the alliance, but also former Soviet republics, such as the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Georgia. All this did not contribute to improving the international climate in the Eastern European region.

Conflicts in the Balkans, Middle and Near East.

Perestroika in the USSR caused a crisis in socialist countries. It manifested itself most painfully in Yugoslavia, where separatist sentiments began to grow. In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia announced their secession from the federation and declared their sovereignty. Macedonia followed suit in September, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992. Serbia, which was the core of the union state, tried to stop its disintegration by force, which led to the escalation of the political conflict into war.

In December, a UN peacekeeping contingent was sent to the conflict zone. However, he was unable to resolve the conflict. This clash revealed the West's double standards policy. The United States blamed the Serbs and the Yugoslav government and turned a blind eye to the ethnic cleansing of the Serb population by Muslims and Croats in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 1995, the leaders of Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and the Bosnian parties signed the Dayton Accords. They stipulated the conditions for resolving the conflict.

Meanwhile, the interethnic situation in the region of Kosovo has worsened. The United States and NATO intervened in the conflict. The President of the FRY S. Milosevic was given an ultimatum, which provided for the introduction of NATO armed forces into the territory of the region. Since the FRY rejected it, in March 1999, NATO aircraft began bombing Serbian territory. The fighting lasted two and a half months. For the first time in its existence, NATO used military force against a sovereign state, violating the UN Charter. On October 6, 2000, S. Milosevic officially renounced power. He was replaced by V. Kostunica, whose arrival contributed to the normalization of relations with Western countries.

In the late 80s and early 90s, the situation in the Middle and Near East worsened. In 1980, the Iran-Iraq war began. It brought untold disasters, destruction and significant loss of life to both sides. In 1988, through the mediation of the UN Secretary General, an agreement was reached to cease hostilities along the entire Iran-Iraq front.

At the end of 1989, Iraq presented a number of demands to the neighboring state of Kuwait regarding oil supplies and territorial issues. On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi army invaded and occupied Kuwait.

The UN Security Council adopted a number of resolutions demanding that Iraq stop its annexation of Kuwait, but Baghdad ignored these calls. On January 17, 1991, the forces of the anti-Iraqi coalition led by

The United States carried out massive air and missile attacks on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The Persian Gulf region has once again become a zone of destructive war.

In December 1998, the United States, together with England, conducted a military operation against Iraq under the code name “Desert Fox”. The reason for this was the reluctance of the Iraqi government to satisfy a number of demands of UN inspectors who were trying to detect weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

in New York and Washington, when the largest terrorist attacks in history occurred. Using this fact, the United States declared that it now has the right to self-defense in the broadest sense of the word. On March 20, 2003, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime there.

Integration processes in the world. Second half of the twentieth century. characterized by the strengthening of centripetal forces in world politics. There is a trend towards economic and political integration everywhere. The most successful centripetal processes took place in Europe. In 1949, the European Council was formed, which set itself the goal of promoting the protection of human rights, the spread of parliamentary democracy, the establishment of the rule of law and the development of treaty relations between European countries. In 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created, which included France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg). In 1957, these countries concluded the Rome Agreements establishing the ECSC.

The European Economic Community (EEC), within which supranational structures began to form, which implied the integration of the entire economic system of the participating countries.

In 1973, the EEC expanded. It included Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark. Since 1978, members of the association began to hold direct elections to the European Parliament. Later, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Sweden and Finland joined the community. All these processes created the conditions for the transition to a new stage of European integration - the creation of the European Union (EU). In 1992, the Maastricht Agreement was signed in Holland. It provided for agreements in the field of: 1) economics; 2) foreign policy and security; 3) justice and internal affairs. A common unit of account for EU members was introduced, which was initially called the ECU, and then was renamed the euro.

Since 1975, regular meetings of the so-called “Big Seven”, which includes leaders of the leading industrial countries of the world, have been held. In 2002, the G7 became the G8 with the addition of Russia. At the G8 meetings, economic, political and military-strategic issues are discussed.

Integration processes have covered not only Europe, but also other regions. In 1948, 29 Latin American states and the United States formed the Organization of American States (OAS). In 1963, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was created, which subsequently included 53 African countries. In 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created in Southeast Asia. It included Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. In 1989, the Asia-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) was formed.

In 1994, the President of Kazakhstan N.A. Nazarbayev came up with the idea of ​​​​creating the Eurasian Union (EAU) in the post-Soviet space. He emphasized that “the EAC is a form of integration of sovereign states in order to strengthen stability and security, socio-economic modernization in the post-Soviet space.” However, it was not possible to fully implement the project of the Kazakh president then due to the negative attitude of the Russian Federation.

One of the first integration steps in the post-Soviet space was the proposal to create a Customs Union. It came into force on January 20, 1995. The Agreement on the Customs Union was signed by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation. On October 10, 2000, in Astana, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed the Education Agreement

Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). In January 2010, the Law on the Customs Union came into force in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

On December 9, 2010, the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus adopted the Declaration on the formation of the Common Economic Space of the three countries. According to Russian President D. A. Medvedev, the model of integration of the economies of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan should be extended to all EurAsEC states.

In 1996, in Shanghai, at the first meeting of the leaders of Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, the “Shanghai Five” was created - a periodically held meeting of the leaders of five states at the highest level to discuss problems of border cooperation.

In 1998, a meeting of the heads of state of the Shanghai Five took place in Almaty, which resulted in the signing of a Joint Statement by the meeting participants. The document provided for expanded cooperation at the level of heads of government, state and foreign ministers. In 2000, the next meeting of the heads of state of the Shanghai Five took place in Dushanbe. The President of Uzbekistan I. Karimov took part in it for the first time. The meeting participants signed the Dushanbe Declaration, which emphasized the desire of the parties present to transform the Shanghai Five into a regional structure of multilateral cooperation in various fields. The Shanghai Five was renamed the Shanghai Forum.

On June 15, 2001, a meeting of the heads of state of the Shanghai Forum was held in Shanghai with the participation of the presidents of Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, during which the Declaration on the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was signed.

On June 15, 2006, a meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State was held in Shanghai, at which the results of the organization’s five-year activities were summed up. The adopted declaration noted that “the declaration of the creation of the SCO five years ago in Shanghai was an important strategic choice made by all member states in the face of the challenges and threats of the 21st century in order to establish lasting peace and promote continuous development in the region.”

The next meeting of SCO leaders took place in August 2007 in Bishkek. During it, a multilateral agreement on long-term good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation was signed. The President of Turkmenistan G. Berdymukhammedov took part in the Bishkek summit as a guest for the first time. The next meeting of the SCO member countries took place on October 16, 2009 in Beijing. It ended with the signing of documents on issues of culture, education and health care. On June 10 - 11, 2010, the heads of the SCO member countries held their next meeting in Tashkent.

Formation of a new system of international relations. Contours of a multipolar world. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist system had an impact on the entire system of international relations in the world. The Cold War ended and the process of forming a new world order began. The United States tried to create a unipolar world, but it is becoming obvious that they cannot do it. US allies are beginning to pursue an increasingly independent policy. Today, three centers of world politics are already making themselves known: the USA, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Thus, the world in the 21st century. is being formed as a multipolar model of world civilization.

In December 2010, the OSCE summit took place in Astana. The result of his work was the adoption of the Declaration “Towards a Security Community”. Addressing the summit participants, President of Kazakhstan N.A. Nazarbayev noted that the adoption of the declaration opens a new stage in the life of the organization, and expressed hope that the declaration will give a start to the construction of a Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community.

At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century. New phenomena have emerged in international relations and foreign policy of states.

Firstly, globalization has begun to play a significant role in the transformation of international processes.

Globalization (from the French global - universal) is the process of expanding and deepening the interdependence of the modern world, the formation of a unified system of financial, economic, socio-political and cultural relations based on the latest means of computer science and telecommunications.

The process of unfolding globalization reveals that, to a large extent, it presents new, favorable opportunities, primarily for the most powerful countries, consolidates a system of unfair redistribution of the planet's resources in their interests, and contributes to the spread of the attitudes and values ​​of Western civilization to all regions of the globe. In this regard, globalization represents Westernization, or Americanization, which is followed by the implementation of American interests in various regions of the globe. As the modern English researcher J. Gray points out, global capitalism as a movement towards free markets is not a natural process, but rather a political project based on American power. This, in fact, is not hidden by American theorists and politicians. Thus, G. Kissinger, in one of his latest books, states: “Globalization views the world as a single market in which the most efficient and competitive prosper. It accepts - and even welcomes the fact that the free market will ruthlessly separate the efficient from the inefficient, even at the cost of economic and political upheavals." This understanding of globalization and the corresponding behavior of the West gives rise to opposition in many countries of the world, public protests, including in Western countries (the movement of anti-globalists and alter-globalists). The growth of opponents of globalization confirms the growing need to create international norms and institutions that give it a civilized character.

Secondly, in the modern world the trend of growth in the number and activity of subjects of international relations is becoming increasingly obvious. In addition to the increase in the number of states due to the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, various international organizations are increasingly entering the international arena.

As is known, international organizations are divided into interstate or intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Currently, there are more than 250 intergovernmental organizations operating in the world. A significant role among them belongs to the UN and such organizations as the OSCE, Council of Europe, WTO, IMF, NATO, ASEAN, etc. The United Nations, created in 1945, has become the most important institutional mechanism for the multifaceted interaction of various states in order to maintain peace and security, promoting the economic and social progress of peoples. Today its members are more than 190 states. The main bodies of the UN are the General Assembly, the Security Council and a number of other councils and institutions. The General Assembly consists of UN member states, each of which has one vote. The decisions of this body do not have coercive force, but they have significant moral authority. The Security Council consists of 15 members, five of which - Great Britain, China, Russia, the USA, France - are permanent members, the other 10 are elected by the General Assembly for a period of two years. Security Council decisions are taken by a majority vote, with each permanent member having the right of veto. In the event of a threat to peace, the Security Council has the authority to send a peacekeeping mission to the relevant region or apply sanctions against the aggressor, authorize military operations aimed at stopping the violence.

Since the 1970s The so-called "G7", an informal organization of the leading countries of the world - Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, the USA, France, Japan - began to play an increasingly active role as an instrument for regulating international relations. These countries coordinate their positions and actions on international issues at annual meetings. In 1991, USSR President M. S. Gorbachev was invited to the G7 meeting as a guest, then Russia began to regularly participate in the work of this organization. Since 2002, Russia has become a full participant in the work of this group and the “Group of Seven” began to be called the “Group of Eight”. In recent years, leaders of the 20 most powerful economies in the world (the G20) have begun to gather to discuss, first of all, crisis phenomena in the global economy.

In the conditions of post-bipolarity and globalization, the need to reform many interstate organizations is increasingly emerging. In this regard, the issue of reforming the UN is now being actively discussed in order to give its work greater dynamics, efficiency and legitimacy.

In the modern world there are about 27 thousand non-governmental international organizations. The growth of their numbers and increasing influence on world events became especially noticeable in the second half of the 20th century. Along with such well-known organizations as the International Red Cross, the International Olympic Committee, Doctors Without Borders, etc., in recent decades, with the increase in environmental problems, the environmental organization Greenpeace has gained international authority. However, it should be noted that the international community is increasingly concerned about the growing illegal organizations - terrorist organizations, drug trafficking and pirate groups.

Thirdly, in the second half of the 20th century. International monopolies, or transnational corporations (TNCs), began to acquire enormous influence on the world stage. These include enterprises, institutions and organizations whose goal is to make a profit, and which operate through their branches simultaneously in several states. The largest TICs have enormous economic resources, which give them advantages not only over small, but even over large powers. At the end of the 20th century. there were more than 53 thousand TNCs in the world.

Fourthly, the trend in the development of international relations has been the increase in global threats, and, accordingly, the need to solve them jointly. Global threats facing humanity can be divided into traditional and new. Among the new challenges to the world order are international terrorism and drug trafficking, lack of control over transnational financial communications, etc. Traditional ones include: the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the threat of nuclear war, problems of environmental conservation, the depletion of many natural resources in the near future, and growing social contrasts. Thus, in the context of globalization, many social problems are intensifying and moving to the level of planetary ones. The world order is increasingly threatened by the deepening gap in the living standards of the peoples of developed and developing countries. Approximately 20% of the world's population currently consumes, according to the UN, about 90% of all goods produced in the world, the remaining 80% of the population is content with 10% of the goods produced. Less developed countries regularly face mass diseases and famines, which result in the death of large numbers of people. Recent decades have been marked by an increase in the flow of cardiovascular and cancer diseases, the spread of AIDS, alcoholism, and drug addiction.

Humanity has not yet found reliable ways to solve problems that threaten international stability. It is becoming increasingly obvious that there is a need for decisive progress towards reducing the urgent contrasts in the political and socio-economic development of the peoples of the Earth, otherwise the future of the planet seems rather gloomy.

The modern stage of international relations is characterized by the rapidity of change and new forms of distribution of power. The confrontation between the two superpowers - the USSR and the USA - is a thing of the past. The old system of international relations, which was called bipolar, has collapsed.

In the process of breaking old and building new international relations, a certain development trend can still be identified.

First trend

development of modern international relations - dispersal of power. The process of becoming a multipolar (multipolar) world is underway. Today, new centers are acquiring an increasingly important role in international life. Japan, which is already an economic superpower today, is increasingly entering the world stage. Integration processes are underway in Europe. New post-industrial states have emerged in Southeast Asia - the so-called “Asian Tigers”. There is reason to believe that in the foreseeable future China will assert itself in world politics.

There is still no consensus among political scientists about the future of the system of international relations. Some are inclined to believe that a system of collective leadership in the United States, Western Europe and Japan is currently being formed. Other researchers believe that the United States should be recognized as the sole world leader.

The second trend

The development of modern international relations has become their globalization (Oiobe - globe), which consists in the internationalization of the economy, the development of a unified system of world communications, changes and weakening of the functions of the national state, and the intensification of the activities of transnational non-state entities. On this basis, an increasingly interdependent and holistic world is being formed; interactions in it have taken on a systemic character, when more or less serious changes in one part of the world inevitably have an echo in other parts of it, regardless of the will and intentions of the participants in such processes.

In the international field, this trend is realized in the form of an explosive growth of international cooperation, the influence of international institutions - political, economic, humanitarian - as well as the creation of essentially supranational bodies.

The third trend

development of international relations was the increase in global problems, the desire of the world's states to jointly solve them.

The scientific and technological revolution, which began in the middle of the 20th century, over the course of several decades made such radical changes in the development of productive forces that the thousand-year achievements of our predecessors pale in comparison. It contributed to a sharp increase in labor productivity and led to a huge increase in the products needed by people. But there is another side to this revolution: many extraordinary, so-called global problems have arisen. These problems confronted humanity and showed that our turbulent and full of contradictions world is at the same time an interconnected, interdependent and largely integral world. A world that requires not disunity and confrontation, but the unification of the efforts of all countries and peoples in the name of preserving civilization, its enhancement and the well-being of both the current and future generations of people.

Global problems facing humanity can be divided into four groups: political, economic, environmental, social.

The most important of them, the first to make humanity first feel and then understand the impending threat, is the emergence, rapid accumulation and improvement of weapons of mass destruction, which radically changed the situation in the world. The nature of nuclear weapons does not allow any state to ensure the reliability of its defense by military means. In other words, security in the world can only be achieved through joint efforts. It can either be common to all countries, or it cannot exist at all. Positive changes in relations between the leading countries of the world, which have the greatest scientific, economic and military-technical potential and have taken a significant step towards realizing the danger of the arms race, have relieved former tensions in international relations.

International terrorism is becoming an important problem that worries all of humanity, among the various forms of which state terrorism is the most dangerous.

Another, no less important, but much more difficult to solve group of environmental problems includes problems of environmental conservation. The danger of disturbing the ecological balance did not arise immediately. It was approaching gradually, sometimes as a result of ignorance, and most often because of people’s disregard for the possible harmful and even disastrous consequences of their practical activities.

The problem of environmental conservation is organically connected with a sharp increase in human economic activity, caused by natural trends in social development: an increase in the population, its desire for progress, improvement of material well-being, etc.

Excessive, reckless exploitation of nature by man has led to massive deforestation, deterioration in the quality of fresh water resources, pollution of seas, lakes, rivers, and destruction of the ozone layer, which poses a danger to human life. The proportion of carbon dioxide in the air increases. Emissions of other chemical compounds (nitrogen oxides, sulfur) are increasing, resulting in “acid rain”. The global climate is warming, leading to the so-called “greenhouse effect.” The Chernobyl disaster became a clear indicator of environmental pollution.

Uncontrolled economic activity of people is dangerous because of its consequences, which do not know state borders and do not recognize any barriers. This obliges all countries and peoples to join efforts aimed at protecting and improving the environment.

Environmental problems are closely interrelated with economic ones. This is, first of all, with the problems of growth of social production, and the resulting increase in the need for energy and raw materials. Natural resources are not limitless, and therefore a rational, scientifically based approach to their use is required. However, solving this problem is associated with considerable difficulties. One of them is due to the sharp lag of developing countries in terms of energy consumption per capita from industrialized countries. Another difficulty is caused by the technological imperfection of production in many countries, including Ukraine, as a result of which there is a large overconsumption of raw materials, energy, and fuel per unit of output.

Social problems are also diverse. Recent decades have been marked by growing concern for humanity caused by the flow of dangerous diseases and addictions that have befallen it. Cardiovascular and oncological diseases, AIDS, alcoholism, drug addiction have acquired an international character and have become one of the global problems.

The whole world cannot help but be alarmed by the widening difference in the living standards of the peoples of developed and developing countries. Underdeveloped countries are often visited by famine, which results in the death of large numbers of people. These problems are also aggravated by the discrepancy in the relationship between demographic growth of the population and the dynamics of the productive forces.

People all over the world are concerned about the increase in crime and the growing influence of mafia structures, including the drug mafia.

Global problems have arisen at the intersection of the relationship between man, society and nature. They are interconnected, and therefore their solution requires an integrated approach. The emergence of global problems has affected the entire system of international relations. Efforts aimed at preventing environmental disaster, fighting hunger, disease, and attempts to overcome backwardness cannot yield results if they are decided alone, at the national level, without the participation of the world community. They require a planetary unification of intellectual and material resources.

The fourth trend

modern international relations is the strengthening of the division of the world into two poles. The poles of peace, prosperity and democracy and the poles of war, instability and tyranny. The majority of humanity lives at the pole of instability, where poverty, anarchy and tyranny prevail.

There are 25 countries at the pole of peace, prosperity and democracy: Western European countries, the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. They are home to 15% of the world's population, the so-called “golden

UDC 327(075) G.N.KRAINOV

EVOLUTION OF THE SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND ITS FEATURES AT THE PRESENT STAGE

Speaking at the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club (Sochi, October 24, 2014) with a report “World order: New rules or a game without rules?”, President of Russia V.V. Putin noted that the global system of “checks and balances” that developed during the Cold War has been destroyed with the active participation of the United States, but the dominance of one center of power has only led to growing chaos in international relations. According to him, the United States, faced with the ineffectiveness of a unipolar world, is trying to recreate “some semblance of a quasi-bipolar system”, looking for an “enemy image” in the person of Iran, China or Russia. The Russian leader believes that the international community is at a historical crossroads, where there is a threat of a game without rules in the world order, and that a “reasonable reconstruction” should be carried out in the world order (1).

Leading world politicians and political scientists also point to the inevitability of the formation of a new world order, a new system of international relations (4).

In this regard, a historical and political science analysis of the evolution of the system of international relations and consideration of possible options for the formation of a new world order at the present stage are relevant.

It should be noted that until the middle of the 17th century. international relations were characterized by the disunity of their participants, the unsystematic nature of international interactions, the main manifestation of which were short-term armed conflicts or long wars. At different periods, the historical hegemons in the world were Ancient Egypt, the Persian Empire, the Power of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Empire of Charlemagne, the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, the Ottoman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, etc. All of them were focused on establishing their own individual domination, building a unipolar world. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church, headed by the papal throne, tried to establish its dominance over peoples and states. International relations were anarchic in nature and characterized by great uncertainty. As a result, each participant in international relations was forced to take steps based on the unpredictability of the behavior of other participants, which led to open conflicts.

The modern system of interstate relations dates back to 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia put an end to the Thirty Years' War in Western Europe and sanctioned the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire into independent states. It was from this time that the national state (in Western terminology - “nation state”) was universally established as the main form of political organization of society, and the principle of national (i.e. state) sovereignty became the dominant principle of international relations. The main fundamental provisions of the Westphalian model of the world were:

The world consists of sovereign states (accordingly, there is no single supreme power in the world, and there is no principle of a universalist hierarchy of government);

The system is based on the principle of sovereign equality of states and, consequently, their non-interference in each other's internal affairs;

A sovereign state has unlimited power over its citizens within its territory;

The world is governed by international law, understood as the law of treaties between sovereign states that must be respected; - sovereign states are subjects of international law, only they are internationally recognized subjects;

International law and regular diplomatic practice are integral attributes of relations between states (2, 47-49).

The idea of ​​a national state with sovereignty was based on four main characteristics: the presence of territory; the presence of a population living in a given territory; legitimate management of the population; recognition by other nation states. At

NOMAI DONISHGO* SCIENTIFIC NOTES

In the absence of at least one of these characteristics, the state becomes sharply limited in its capabilities, or ceases to exist. The basis of the state-centric model of the world was “national interests”, for which a search for compromise solutions is possible (and not value guidelines, in particular religious ones, for which compromises are impossible). An important feature of the Westphalian model was the geographical limitation of its scope. It had a distinctly Eurocentric character.

After the Peace of Westphalia, it became customary to keep permanent residents and diplomats at foreign courts. For the first time in historical practice, interstate borders were redrawn and clearly defined. Thanks to this, coalitions and interstate alliances began to emerge, which gradually began to acquire importance. The papacy lost its importance as a supranational power. States in foreign policy began to be guided by their own interests and ambitions.

At this time, the theory of European balance emerged, which was developed in the works of N. Machiavelli. He proposed establishing a balance of power between the five Italian states. The theory of European balance will eventually be accepted by all of Europe, and it will work right up to the present day, being the basis of international unions and coalitions of states.

At the beginning of the 18th century. with the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht (1713), which put an end to the struggle for the Spanish inheritance between France and Spain, on the one hand, and a coalition of states led by Great Britain, on the other, the concept of “balance of power” appears in international documents, which complemented the Westphalian model and became widespread in the political vocabulary of the second half of the 20th century. The balance of power is the distribution of world influence between individual centers of power - poles and can take on various configurations: bipolar, tripolar, multipolar (or multipolar)

it. d. The main goal of the balance of power is to prevent dominance in the international system by one or a group of states and to ensure the maintenance of international order.

Based on the views of N. Machiavelli, T. Hobbes, as well as A. Smith, J.-J. Rousseau and others, the first theoretical schemes of political realism and liberalism were formed.

From a political science point of view, the system of the Peace of Westphalia (sovereign states) still exists, but from a historical point of view, it collapsed at the beginning of the 19th century.

The system of international relations that emerged after the Napoleonic wars was normatively consolidated by the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815. The victorious powers saw the meaning of their collective international activity in creating reliable barriers against the spread of revolutions. Hence the appeal to the ideas of legitimism. The Vienna system of international relations is characterized by the idea of ​​a European concert - a balance of power between European states. The “European Concert” (English: Concert of Europe) was based on the general consent of large states: Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, Great Britain. The elements of the Vienna system were not only states, but also coalitions of states. The “Concert of Europe,” while remaining a form of hegemony for large states and coalitions, for the first time effectively limited their freedom of action in the international arena.

The Vienna international system affirmed the balance of power established as a result of the Napoleonic wars and consolidated the borders of nation states. Russia secured Finland, Bessarabia and expanded its western borders at the expense of Poland, dividing it between itself, Austria and Prussia.

The Vienna system recorded a new geographical map of Europe, a new balance of geopolitical forces. This geopolitical system was based on the imperial principle of control of geographical space within the colonial empires. During the Vienna system, empires were formed: British (1876), German (1871), French (1852). In 1877, the Turkish Sultan took the title “Emperor of the Ottomans”, and Russia became an empire earlier - in 1721.

Within the framework of this system, the concept of great powers was formulated for the first time (at that time, primarily Russia, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia), and multilateral diplomacy and diplomatic protocol took shape. Many researchers call the Vienna system of international relations the first example of collective security.

At the beginning of the 20th century, new states entered the world stage. This is primarily the USA, Japan, Germany, Italy. From this moment on, Europe ceases to be the only continent where new world leading states are being formed.

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The world is gradually ceasing to be Eurocentric, the international system is beginning to transform into a global one.

The Versailles-Washington system of international relations is a multipolar world order, the foundations of which were laid at the end of the First World War of 1914-1918. The Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, treaties with Germany's allies and agreements concluded at the Washington Conference of 1921-1922.

The European (Versailles) part of this system was formed under the influence of geopolitical and military-strategic considerations of the victorious countries in the First World War (mainly Great Britain, France, USA, Japan) while ignoring the interests of the defeated and newly formed countries

(Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia),

which made this structure vulnerable to demands for its transformation and did not contribute to long-term stability in world affairs. Its characteristic feature was its anti-Soviet orientation. The greatest beneficiaries of the Versailles system were Great Britain, France and the United States. At this time, there was a civil war in Russia, the victory of which remained with the Bolsheviks.

The US refusal to participate in the functioning of the Versailles system, the isolation of Soviet Russia and its anti-German orientation turned it into an unbalanced and contradictory system, thereby increasing the potential for a future world conflict.

It should be noted that an integral part of the Versailles Peace Treaty was the Charter of the League of Nations, an intergovernmental organization, which defined as the main goals the development of cooperation between peoples, guarantees of their peace and security. It was initially signed by 44 states. The United States did not ratify this treaty and did not become a member of the League of Nations. Then the USSR and Germany were not included in it.

One of the key ideas in the creation of the League of Nations was the idea of ​​collective security. It was assumed that states have the legal right to resist an aggressor. In practice, as we know, this failed to be done, and in 1939 the world was plunged into a new world war. The League of Nations also effectively ceased to exist in 1939, although it was formally dissolved in 1946. However, many elements of the structure and procedure, as well as the main goals of the League of Nations, were inherited by the United Nations (UN).

The Washington system, which extended to the Asia-Pacific region, was somewhat more balanced, but was also not universal. Its instability was determined by the uncertainty of the political development of China, the militaristic foreign policy of Japan, the then isolationism of the United States, etc. Starting with the Monroe Doctrine, the policy of isolationism gave rise to one of the most important features of American foreign policy - a tendency to unilateral actions (unilateralism).

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations is a system of international relations enshrined in treaties and agreements at the Yalta (4-11 February 1945) and Potsdam (17 July - 2 August 1945) conferences of heads of state of the Anti-Hitler Coalition.

For the first time, the question of a post-war settlement was raised at the highest level during the Tehran Conference of 1943, where already then the strengthening of the position of two powers - the USSR and the USA - was clearly evident, to which the decisive role in determining the parameters of the post-war world was increasingly being transferred, that is, still in During the course of the war, the prerequisites for the formation of the foundations of a future bipolar world are emerging. This trend was fully manifested at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, when the main role in solving key problems associated with the formation of a new model of international relations was played by two, now superpowers - the USSR and the USA. The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations was characterized by:

The absence (unlike, for example, the Versailles-Washington system) of the necessary legal framework, which made it very vulnerable to criticism and recognition by some states;

Bipolarity based on the military-political superiority of the two superpowers (USSR and USA) over other countries. Blocs were formed around them (Air Forces and NATO). Bipolarity was not limited only to the military and power superiority of the two states, it covered almost all spheres - socio-political, economic, ideological, scientific, technical, cultural, etc.;

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Confrontation, which meant that the parties constantly contrasted their actions with each other. Competition, rivalry and antagonism, rather than cooperation between blocs, were the leading characteristics of relations;

The presence of nuclear weapons, which threatened multiple mutual destruction of the superpowers with their allies, which was a special factor in the confrontation between the parties. Gradually (after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962) the parties began to consider a nuclear clash only as the most extreme means of influencing international relations, and in this sense, nuclear weapons had their deterrent role;

The political and ideological confrontation between the West and the East, capitalism and socialism, which brought additional uncompromisingness in the face of disagreements and conflicts into international relations;

A relatively high degree of controllability of international processes due to the fact that coordination of the positions of actually only two superpowers was required (5, pp. 21-22). Post-war realities, the intransigence of confrontational relations between the USSR and the USA, significantly limited the ability of the UN to realize its statutory functions and goals.

The USA wanted to establish American hegemony in the world under the slogan “Pax Americana”, and the USSR sought to establish socialism on a global scale. Ideological confrontation, the “struggle of ideas,” led to mutual demonization of the opposite side and remained an important feature of the post-war system of international relations. The system of international relations associated with the confrontation between two blocs is called “bipolar”.

During these years, the arms race, and then its limitation, and problems of military security were central issues in international relations. In general, the fierce rivalry between the two blocs, which more than once threatened to result in a new world war, was called the Cold War. The most dangerous moment in the history of the post-war period was the Caribbean (Cuban) crisis of 1962, when the USA and the USSR seriously discussed the possibility of launching a nuclear strike.

Both opposing blocs had military-political alliances - the Organization

the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO (English: North Atlantic Treaty Organization; NATO), formed in 1949, and the Warsaw Pact Organization (WTO) - in 1955. The concept of “balance of power” became one of the key elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations . The world found itself “divided” into zones of influence between two blocs. A fierce struggle was waged for them.

A significant stage in the development of the world's political system was the collapse of colonialism. In the 1960s, almost the entire African continent was freed from colonial dependence. Developing countries have begun to influence the political development of the world. They joined the UN, and in 1955 they formed the Non-Aligned Movement, which, according to the creators, was supposed to oppose two opposing blocs.

The destruction of the colonial system and the formation of regional and subregional subsystems were carried out under the dominant influence of the horizontal spread of systemic bipolar confrontation and the growing trends of economic and political globalization.

The end of the Potsdam era was marked by the collapse of the world socialist camp, which followed the failed attempt of Gorbachev’s perestroika, and was

enshrined in the Belovezhskaya Accords of 1991.

After 1991, a fragile and contradictory Bialowieza system of international relations was established (Western researchers call it the Post Cold-War era), which is characterized by polycentric unipolarity. The essence of this world order was the implementation of the historical project of spreading the standards of Western “neoliberal democracy” to the whole world. Political scientists came up with the “concept of American global leadership” in “soft” and “hard” forms. “Hard hegemony” was based on the idea of ​​the United States as the only power with sufficient economic and military power to implement the idea of ​​global leadership. To consolidate its exclusive status, the United States, according to this concept, should, if possible, widen the gap between itself and other states. “Soft hegemony,” according to this concept, is aimed at creating an image of the United States as a model for the whole world: striving for a leading position in the world, America must gently put pressure on other states and convince them by the power of its own example.

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American hegemony was expressed in presidential doctrines: Truman,

Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Bush - gave the United States during the Cold War almost unlimited rights to ensure security in a particular region of the world; The basis of the Clinton doctrine was the thesis of “expanding democracy” in Eastern Europe with the goal of turning former socialist states into a “strategic reserve” of the West. The United States (as part of NATO operations) twice carried out armed intervention in Yugoslavia - in Bosnia (1995) and in Kosovo (1999). The “expansion of democracy” was also expressed in the fact that former members of the Warsaw Pact - Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - were included in the North Atlantic Alliance for the first time in 1999; George W. Bush's doctrine of "hard" hegemony was a response to the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and was based on three pillars: unmatched military power, the concept of preventive war and unilateralism. The Bush Doctrine included states that support terrorism or develop weapons of mass destruction as potential adversaries—speaking before Congress in 2002, the president used the now well-known expression “axis of evil” in relation to Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The White House categorically refused to engage in dialogue with such regimes and declared its determination by all means (including armed intervention) to contribute to their elimination. The openly hegemonic aspirations of the administration of George W. Bush and then Barack Obama catalyzed the growth of anti-American sentiment around the world, including the intensification of an “asymmetric response” in the form of transnational terrorism (3, pp. 256-257).

Another feature of this project was that the new world order was based on the processes of globalization. It was an attempt to create a global world according to American standards.

Finally, this project upset the balance of power and had no contractual basis at all, which V.V. pointed out in his Valdai speech in Sochi. Putin (1). It was based on a chain of precedents and unilateral doctrines and concepts of the United States, which were mentioned above (2, p. 112).

At first, the events associated with the collapse of the USSR, the end of the Cold War, etc., were received with enthusiasm and even romanticism in many countries, especially Western ones. In 1989, an article by Francis Fukuyama “The End of History?” appeared in the United States. (The End of the History?), and in 1992 his book “The End of History and the Last Man”. In them, the author predicted the triumph, the triumph of Western-style liberal democracy, that this supposedly indicates the end point of the sociocultural evolution of humanity and the formation of the final form of government, the end of the century of ideological confrontations, global revolutions and wars, art and philosophy, and with them - the end history (6, pp. 68-70; 7, pp. 234-237).

The concept of the “end of history” had a great influence on the formation of the foreign policy of US President George W. Bush and actually became the “canonical text” of the neoconservatives, as it was consonant with the main goal of their foreign policy - the active promotion of Western-style liberal democracy and free markets around the world. And after the events of September 11, 2011, the Bush administration came to the conclusion that Fukuyama's historical forecast was passive in nature and history needed conscious organization, leadership and management in an appropriate spirit, including through the change of undesirable regimes as a key component of anti-terrorism policy.

Then, in the early 1990s, there was a surge of conflicts, moreover, in a seemingly calm Europe (which caused particular concern for both Europeans and Americans). This gave rise to directly opposite sentiments. Samuel Huntington (S. Huntington) in 1993, in the article “The Clash of Civilizations,” took a position opposite to F. Fukuyama, predicting conflicts on a civilizational basis (8, pp. 53-54). In his book of the same name, published in 1996, S. Huntington tried to prove the thesis about the inevitability in the near future of a confrontation between the Islamic and Western worlds, which will resemble the Soviet-American confrontation during the Cold War (9, pp. 348-350). These publications also received wide discussion in various countries. Then, when the number of armed conflicts began to decline and a ceasefire emerged in Europe, S. Huntington’s idea of ​​civilizational wars began to be forgotten. However, a surge in brutal and demonstrative terrorist acts in the early 2000s in various parts of the globe (especially the explosion of the Twin Towers in the United States on September 11, 2001), hooligan pogroms in the cities of France, Belgium and other European countries, undertaken by immigrants from Asian countries, Africa and the Middle East, has caused many, especially journalists, to once again

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talk about the conflict of civilizations. Discussions arose regarding the causes and characteristics of modern terrorism, nationalism and extremism, confrontations between the rich “North” and the poor “South”, etc.

Today, the principle of American hegemony is contradicted by the factor of increasing heterogeneity of the world, in which states with different socio-economic, political, cultural and value systems coexist. Unreal

There also appears to be a project for disseminating the Western model of liberal democracy, way of life, and value system as general norms accepted by all, or at least most, states of the world. It is opposed by equally powerful processes of strengthening self-identification along ethnic, national, and religious lines, which is expressed in the growing influence of nationalist, traditionalist and fundamentalist ideas in the world. In addition to sovereign states, transnational and supranational associations are increasingly acting as independent players on the world stage. The modern international system is characterized by a colossal increase in the number of interactions between its various participants at different levels. As a result of this, it becomes not only more interdependent, but also mutually vulnerable, which requires the creation of new and reform of existing institutions and mechanisms for maintaining stability (such as the UN, IMF, WTO, NATO, EU, EAEU, BRICS, SCO, etc.). Therefore, in contrast to the idea of ​​a “unipolar world,” the thesis about the need to develop and strengthen a multipolar model of international relations as a system of “balance of power” is increasingly being put forward. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that any multipolar system in a critical situation tends to transform into a bipolar one. This is clearly demonstrated today by the acute Ukrainian crisis.

Thus, history knows 5 models of the system of international relations. Each of the successively replacing each other models passed through several phases in its development: from the phase of formation to the phase of decay. Up to and including the Second World War, the starting point of the next cycle in the transformation of the system of international relations was major military conflicts. In the course of them, a radical regrouping of forces was carried out, the nature of the state interests of the leading countries changed, and a serious redrawing of borders took place. These advances made it possible to eliminate old pre-war contradictions and clear the way for a new round of development.

The emergence of nuclear weapons and the achievement of parity in this area between the USSR and the USA restrained direct military conflicts. The confrontation intensified in the economy, ideology, and culture, although there were also local military conflicts. For objective and subjective reasons, the USSR collapsed, followed by the socialist bloc, and the bipolar system ceased to function.

But the attempt to establish unipolar American hegemony is now failing. A new world order can only be born as a result of the joint creativity of members of the world community. One of the optimal forms of global governance could be collective (cooperative) governance, carried out through a flexible network system, the cells of which would be international organizations (updated UN, WTO, EU, EAEU, etc.), trade, economic, information, telecommunications, transport and other systems . Such a world system will be characterized by increased dynamics of change, have several points of growth and change simultaneously in several directions.

The emerging world system, taking into account the balance of power, may be polycentric, and its centers themselves diversified, so that the global structure of power will be multi-level and multi-dimensional (centers of military power will not coincide with centers of economic power, etc.). The centers of the world system will have both common features and political, social, economic, ideological and civilizational features.

Ideas and proposals of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin expressed at the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi on October 24, 2014 in this spirit, will be analyzed by the world community and implemented in international contractual practice. This was confirmed by the agreements between the United States and China signed on November 11, 2014 in Beijing at the APEC summit (Obama and Xi Jinping signed agreements on opening the US domestic market to China, notifying each other of their desire to enter “near-territorial” waters, etc. .). The proposals of the President of the Russian Federation were also taken into account at the G20 summit in Brisbane (Australia) on November 14-16, 2014.

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Today, on the basis of these ideas and values, a contradictory process of transformation of the unipolar world into a new multipolar system of international relations based on the balance of power is taking place.

LITERATURE:

1. Putin, V.V. World order: New rules or a game without rules? / V.V. Putin // Znamya. - 2014. October 24.

2. Kortunov, S.V. The collapse of the Westphalian system and the formation of a new world order / S.V. Kortunov // World Politics. - M.: State University-Higher School of Economics, 2007. - P. 45-63.

3. Kosov, Yu.V. World politics and international relations / Yu.V. Kosov.- M.: 2012. - 456 p.

4. Cedric, Moon (Cedric Moon). The end of a superpower / S. Moon / Russia Today. - 2014. - December 2.

5. Systemic history of international relations: 4 volumes / Ed. Doctor of Philology, Prof. A. D Bogaturova. -T.1.- M.: 2000. - 325 p.-1-t

6. Fukuyama, F. The end of history? / F. Fukuyama // Questions of philosophy. - 1990. - No. 3. - P. 56-74.

7. Fukuyama, Francis. The end of history and the last man / F. Fukuyama; lane from English M.B.

Levina. - M.: ACT, 2007. - 347 p.

8. Huntington, S. Clash of Civilizations / S. Hanginton// Polis. - 1994. - N°1. - P.34-57.

9. Huntington, S. Clash of Civilizations / S. Huntington. - M.: ACT, 2003. - 351 p.

1. Putin, V.V. T he World Order: the new rules or a game without rules? /V.V. Putin // Znamya.- 2014.-October 24.

2. Kortunov, S.V. The collapse of the Westphalian system and the establishment of a new world order / S.V.Kortunov // Mirovaya politika.- M.: GU HSE, 2007. - P. 45-63.

3. Kosov, Yu.V. The World politics and international relations / Yu.V. Kosov.- M.: 2012. - 456 p.

5. The System History of International Relations: 4 v. /Ed. Doctor of Science in Politics, Professor A. A. Bogaturova. -V.1.- M., 2000. - 325p.-1-v.

6. Fukuyama, F. The End of History? / F. Fukuyama // Questions filosofii. - 1990. - # 3. - P. 56-74.

7. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man / F. Fukuyama; translated from English by M.B. Levin. - M.: AST, 2007. - 347s p.

8. Huntington, S. The Clash of Civilizations / S. Huntington // Polis. -1994. - #1.-P.34-57.

9. Huntington, S. The Clash of Civilizations / S. Huntington. - M.: AST, 2003. - 351p.

The evolution of the system of international relations and its features at the present stage

Key words: Evolution; system of international relations; Westphalian system; Vienna system; Versailles-Washington system; Yalta-Potsdam system; Belovezhskaya system.

The article examines from a historical and political science perspective the process of transformation and evolution of systems of international relations that have developed in different periods. Particular attention is paid to the analysis and identification of the features of the Westphalian, Vienna, Versailles-Washington, Yalta-Potsdam systems. What is new in terms of research is the identification in the article since 1991 of the Belovezhskaya system of international relations and its characteristics. The author also concludes that at the present stage a new system of international relations is being formed on the basis of ideas, proposals, and values ​​expressed by the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin at the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi on October 24, 2014.

The article concludes that today there is a contradictory process of transformation of the unipolar world into a new multipolar system of international relations.

The evolution of international relations and its specifics at present period

Keywords: Evolution, international relations system, the Westphalia system, the Vienna system, the Versailles-Washington system, the Yalta-Potsdam system, the Belovezhsk system.

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The paper reviews the process of transformation, evolution happened in different periods, the system of international relations from historical and political views. Particular attention is paid to the analysis and identification of the Westphalia, the Vienna, the Versailles-Washington, the Yalta-Potsdam systems features. The new aspect of the research distinguishes the Belovezhsk system of international relations started in 1991 and its characteristics. The author also makes conclusion about the development of a new system of international relations at the present stage on the basis of ideas, proposals, values ​​expressed by the President of Russian Federation V.V. Putin at the plenary session of the International Discussion Club "Valdai" in Sochi, October 24, 2014. The paper draws a conclusion that today the controversial process of transformation of the unipolar world has changed into a new multipolar system of international relations.

Krainov Grigory Nikandrovich, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Political Science, History, Social Technologies, Moscow State University of Transport, (MIIT), Moscow (Russia - Moscow), E-mail: [email protected]

Information about the

Krainov Grigoriy Nikandrovich, Doctor of History, Political Science, History, Social Technologies, Moscow State University of Communication Means (MSUCM), (Russia, Moscow), E-mail: [email protected]

A new system of international relations began at the end of the twentieth century as a result of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bipolar system of international relations. However, during this period, more fundamental and qualitative systemic transformations took place: along with the Soviet Union, not only the confrontational system of international relations of the Cold War period and the Yalta-Potsdam world order ceased to exist, but the much older system of the Peace of Westphalia and its principles were undermined.

However, throughout the last decade of the twentieth century, there were active discussions in world science about what the new configuration of the world would be in the spirit of Westphalia. The dispute erupted between two main concepts of world order: the concepts of unipolarity and multipolarity.

Naturally, in light of the just-ended Cold War, the first conclusion to be drawn was a unipolar world order, supported by the only remaining superpower - the United States of America. Meanwhile, in reality everything turned out to be not so simple. In particular, as some researchers and politicians point out (for example, E.M. Primakov, R. Haas, etc.), with the end of the bipolar world, the very phenomenon of superpower disappeared from the world economic and geopolitical foreground in its traditional understanding: “During the Cold War, war," as long as there were two systems, there were two superpowers - the Soviet Union and the United States. Today there are no superpowers at all: the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, but the United States, although it has exceptional political influence and is the most powerful state in the world militarily and economically, has lost such status” [Primakov E.M. A world without superpowers [Electronic resource] // Russia in global politics. October 2003 – URL: http://www.globalaffairs.ru/articles/2242.html]. As a result, the role of the United States was not the only one, but one of several pillars of the new world order.

The American idea was being challenged. The main opponents of the US monopoly in the world are United Europe, the increasingly powerful China, Russia, India and Brazil. For example, China, followed by Russia, adopted the concept of a multipolar world in the 21st century as their official foreign policy doctrine. A kind of struggle has unfolded against the threat of unipolarity, for maintaining a multipolar balance of power as the main condition for stability in the world. In addition, it is also obvious that in the years since the liquidation of the USSR, the United States has actually been unable, despite its desire for world leadership, to establish itself in this role. Moreover, they had to experience the bitterness of failure; they got stuck in places where there seemed to be no problems (especially in the absence of a second superpower): in Somalia, Cuba, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq. Thus, the United States at the turn of the century was unable to stabilize the situation in the world.

While there was debate in scientific circles about the structure of the new system of international relations, a number of events that occurred at the turn of the century actually dotted the i’s themselves.

Several stages can be distinguished:

1. 1991 – 2000 – this stage can be defined as a period of crisis of the entire international system and a period of crisis in Russia. At this time, world politics was categorically dominated by the idea of ​​unipolarity led by the United States, and Russia was perceived as a “former superpower”, as a “losing side” in the Cold War, some researchers even write about the possible collapse of the Russian Federation in the near future (for example, Z. Brzezinski ). As a result, during this period there was a certain dictate regarding the actions of the Russian Federation from the world community.

This was largely due to the fact that the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in the early 90s of the twentieth century had a clear “pro-American vector.” Other trends in foreign policy appeared approximately after 1996, thanks to the replacement of the Westerner A. Kozyrev as Minister of Foreign Affairs by the statist E. Primakov. The difference in the positions of these figures has led to not only a change in the vector of Russian policy - it is becoming more independent, but many analysts are talking about transforming the model of Russian foreign policy. Changes introduced by E.M. Primakov, may well be called a consistent “Primakov Doctrine”. “Its essence: to interact with the main world actors, without rigidly siding with anyone.” According to the Russian researcher A. Pushkov, “this is a “third way” that allows one to avoid the extremes of the “Kozyrev doctrine” (“the position of America’s junior partner who agrees to everything or almost everything”) and the nationalist doctrine (“to distance oneself from Europe, the USA and Western institutions - NATO, the IMF, the World Bank"), try to turn into an independent center of gravity for all those who do not have good relations with the West, from the Bosnian Serbs to the Iranians."

After E. Primakov’s resignation from the post of Prime Minister in 1999, the geostrategy he defined was basically continued - in fact, there was no other alternative to it and it met Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. Thus, Russia finally managed to formulate its own geostrategy, which is conceptually well founded and quite practical. It is quite natural that the West did not accept it, since it was ambitious in nature: Russia still intends to play the role of a world power and is not going to agree to a decrease in its global status.

2. 2000-2008 – the beginning of the second stage was undoubtedly marked to a greater extent by the events of September 11, 2001, as a result of which the idea of ​​unipolarity actually collapses in the world. In US political and scientific circles, they are gradually beginning to talk about a departure from hegemonic policies and the need to establish US global leadership, supported by its closest allies from the developed world.

In addition, at the beginning of the 21st century, there is a change of political leaders in almost all leading countries. In Russia, a new president, V. Putin, comes to power and the situation begins to change. Putin finally affirms the idea of ​​a multipolar world as the basic one in Russia's foreign policy strategy. In such a multipolar structure, Russia claims to be one of the main players, along with China, France, Germany, Brazil and India. However, the United States does not want to give up its leadership. As a result, a real geopolitical war is playing out, and the main battles are playing out in the post-Soviet space (for example, “color revolutions”, gas conflicts, the problem of NATO expansion to a number of countries in the post-Soviet space, etc.).

Some researchers define the second stage as “post-American”: “We live in the post-American period of world history. This is actually a multipolar world, based on 8 - 10 pillars. They are not equally strong, but have enough autonomy. These are the USA, Western Europe, China, Russia, Japan, but also Iran and South America, where Brazil plays a leading role. South Africa on the African continent and other pillars are centers of power.” However, this is not a “world after the USA” and especially without the USA. This is a world where, due to the rise of other global “power centers” and their increasing influence, the relative importance of America’s role has been diminishing, as has been the case in global economics and trade over the past decades. A real “global political awakening” is taking place, as Z. Brzezinski writes in his latest book. This “global awakening” is determined by such multidirectional forces as economic success, national dignity, increasing levels of education, information “weapons,” and the historical memory of peoples. This, in particular, is where the rejection of the American version of world history arises.

3. 2008 - present - the third stage, first of all, was marked by the coming to power in Russia of a new president - D.A. Medvedev, and then the election of V.V. Putin to the previous presidential post. In general, the foreign policy of the early 21st century was continued.

In addition, the events in Georgia in August 2008 played a key role at this stage: firstly, the war in Georgia became evidence that the “transitional” period of transformation of the international system had ended; secondly, there was a final balance of power at the interstate level: it became obvious that the new system has completely different foundations and Russia will be able to play a key role here by developing some kind of global concept based on the idea of ​​multipolarity.

“After 2008, Russia moved to a position of consistent criticism of the global activities of the United States, defending the prerogatives of the UN, the inviolability of sovereignty and the need to strengthen the regulatory framework in the security sphere. The United States, on the contrary, shows disdain for the UN, promoting the “interception” of a number of its functions by other organizations – NATO, first of all. American politicians are putting forward the idea of ​​​​creating new international organizations on political and ideological principles - based on the conformity of their future members with democratic ideals. American diplomacy stimulates anti-Russian tendencies in the politics of the countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and is trying to create regional associations in the CIS without the participation of Russia,” writes Russian researcher T. Shakleina.

Russia, together with the United States, is trying to form some kind of adequate model of Russian-American interaction “in the context of weakening overall governance of the world system.” The previously existing model was adapted to take into account the interests of the United States, since Russia had long been busy restoring its own strength and was largely dependent on relations with the United States.

Today, many people accuse Russia of being ambitious and intending to compete with the United States. American researcher A. Cohen writes: “...Russia has noticeably tightened its international policy and is increasingly relying on force rather than international law to achieve its goals... Moscow has intensified its anti-American policies and rhetoric and is ready to challenge US interests where and when possible, including the Far North."

Such statements form the current context of statements about Russia’s participation in world politics. The desire of the Russian leadership to limit the dictates of the United States in all international affairs is obvious, but thanks to this, there is an increase in the competitiveness of the international environment. However, “reducing the intensity of contradictions is possible if all countries, not just Russia, realize the importance of mutually beneficial cooperation and mutual concessions.” It is necessary to develop a new global paradigm for the further development of the world community, based on the idea of ​​multi-vector and polycentricity.