The diversity of actors in world politics has significantly increased since the end of the Cold War. International terrorist networks, transnational corporations, powerful NGOs, global and regional organizations are competing with nation-states for influence in the international arena. Nation-states have ceased to be unitary actors – various sub-national actors within one state can have diverging interests and positions on major international issues. Such a «polyarchical» society is less stable and the risk of war in it is higher than in a traditional «interstate» anarchical system.
Under polyarchy, the number of threats to American interests is rising and so does the propensity of U.S. Administration to use force in order to prevent these threats from materializing and spilling onto U.S. territory. Advancing technologies of warfare, such as high-precision munitions, positioning, surveillance and communications systems etc. also encourage U.S. leadership to make military force a «normal» instrument of diplomacy. However, war by remote control carries the risk of inadequate coordination in the chain of command. Unilateral conduct of war can strip the United States of political support from its allies and neutral states. It can also complicate post-war reconstruction and return to stability. Generally, the notion that the use of force can be effective in combating terror, stopping regional conflicts or intrastate violence is most likely flawed.
U.S. political leaders should be more prudent when deciding to employ force. Force should only be used to attain clear goals shared by the American people and – preferably – by the international community as well. Application of force, especially in humanitarian interventions, should be proportional and morally justifiable. It is also essential to thoroughly consider other options before resorting to force.

China’s «Peaceful Rise»

        Contemporary global leadership is based on the existence of a dominant state (the U.S.), a number of regional leaders, who support the dominant state, and anti-leaders who take up alternative positions on various international issues, but do not seek to balance the dominant state globally. Under specific circumstances, some of the anti-leaders can attempting to offset U.S. global dominance. Such policy can be reinforced by the growing importance of the counter-leader’s «springboard» region in the world economic and strategic affairs.
Since the beginning of economic reforms in the late 1970s, China has become an anti-leader and one of the most powerful nations in North-East and South-East Asia. It has succeeded in doubling its GDP in just 7 years and has shown a record pace of economic growth over the last 15 years. China’s leaders have combined liberal economic policy with authoritarian political regime and a foreign policy avoiding confrontation with major powers. China seeks to assert its regional leadership by becoming the core of the Asian sub-system of international relations. Such position will allow China to be less concerned with «catching up» with the United States and overcome a number of structural constraints on its economic development and acquisition of military might. Such constraints include an inefficient public sector, a rigid and oppressive political system and an extensive mode of economic growth. However, thanks largely to the analyses undertaken by Western experts, Chinese economists seem to have elaborated a strategy of coping with economic problems that includes an assertive but non-confrontational relationship with the outside world for the coming decades.

«America’s Mission» Revisited

       «Leadership» and «hegemony» are the two forms of behavior a globally dominant state can follow in the international arena. Both forms require vast resources unmatched by any other country. However, «leadership» is based on the acceptance by the international community of the leading role of the dominant state, the attractiveness of its values, foreign policy goals and ways to attain them. A «hegemon» tries to cajole the international community into accepting his conduct and does not heed, in most cases, for criticism of his ends and means.
The two Clinton Administrations in the 1990s sought to position the United States as a «world leader». However, the forceful means employed by President Clinton to achieve his humanitarian foreign policy goals have become a major factor undermining international consensus whereby the U.S. was accepted as the «world leader». The Bush Administration has inflicted further damage on the U.S. «international leadership» prestige. The international community has largely rejected U.S. foreign policy goals of combating terrorism and WMD proliferation by preventive action and the «imposition of democracy» on a number of Third World states. Hence, the Bush Administration tilted towards «hegemonic» methods of international governance invoking more discontent on the part of both U.S. rivals and traditional allies. This Administration mistakenly assumes that the «universal» and «exceptional» nature of American values justifies a «messianic» U.S. foreign strategy that gives little or no place for alternative viewpoints and damages U.S. traditional partnerships and international institutions.

The European Union in World Politics

       With the advance of European integration over the last decade, the European Union has expanded its «soft-power» tool box to become an influential player on the world stage. The EU as a whole is the second largest economy in the world and the first trading bloc. Its impact on the international economy significantly increased after the advent of the euro. To a large extent, the EU’s «soft power» rests on the attractive «European values» of economic prosperity, political stability, social justice, democratic governance, the rule of law, observance of human rights etc. The EU is a strong «institutional player» actively promoting its interests in various international fora and summit meetings with the world’s largest powers.
EU external power is limited by the lack of consensus on its foreign policy priorities among EU member states. Moreover, EU members have differing visions of the necessary scope of the Union’s international activity. For the time being, EU common foreign policy is only modestly funded from the EU budget. The full-scale deployment of EU crisis response force has been delayed until 2007.
However, being dependent on NATO capabilities for the military component of its power, the European Union has been successful in bringing the states on its eastern and southern periphery in its economic and political orbit. «Soft power» exercised by the EU has so far contributed to the resolution of a number of disputes and reduced tensions in the areas of conflict.

Foreign Policy Decision-Making in Russia and the United States

       A sine qua non of an effective foreign policy is a sound inter-agency coordination mechanism that ensures coherence among the positions of different government institutions and bureaucracies. Under the Soviet rule in Russia, there existed well-functioning coordination procedures whereby top-ranking officials from the Communist Party, foreign and defense ministries, KGB and the military-industrial complex decided jointly on a single official Soviet foreign policy course. However, over the last 15 years, foreign policy coordination among the institutions of the Russian government has been remarkably poor leading to a number of miscalculations and setbacks that Russia has suffered in the international arena.
Russia needs a foreign policy coordination unit that could become part of the Administration of the President and could be modeled upon the United States National Security Council. Such a body should also include speakers of both chambers of the Russian Parliament. It would also be responsible for policy planning and resource allocation. At the same time, the propensity of Russian officials for commenting on foreign policy issues should be curtailed. The structure of foreign policymaking process in Russia should be stipulated in a federal law that is to be adopted urgently.

Transnational Terrorist Networks

       The upsurge of international terrorist activity at the beginning of the XXIst century is being explained by a whole variety of factors. They include intolerance to other religions, resistance to the Western models of political transformation or economic reform, discontent of Islamic fundamentalists with U.S. policy in the Middle East etc. Terrorists organize into transnational networks which enjoy considerable freedom of action in the contemporary globalized world. Today nation-states need to be serious about «fighting» with non-state actors, such as networks, which sometimes get hold of assets, infrastructure and formal legal privileges of sovereign yet «failed» states.
Terrorist networks have a decentralized structure without a «core» which could become a primary target of antiterrorist campaigns. The effectiveness of Al Qaeda is enhanced by the network of participants who share the experience of fighting with Soviet troops in Afghanistan and are united around radical religious slogans. Terrorist networks are usually segmented, polycentric and ideologically integrated. They can have a multiple-issue or a single-issue agenda.
Traditional wars by ad hoc coalitions will most likely prove ineffective in combating terrorist networks. It is necessary to isolate terrorist leaders and uproot their sources of finance. This can only be achieved by cooperative international anti-terrorist institutions that are to be set up by nation-states. These institutions are to put pressure on non-governmental actors, such as banks or TNCs, to ensure their cooperation in identifying the assets of terrorist cells and destroying transnational criminal networks.

New Studies in International Governance

The Subject or Subjects of World-Political Studies

The Imperial Way and Its Alternatives

The Factors of Environment and Natural Resources in International Development

Persona grata

Faces and personalities

Strobe Talbott (U.S.A.).
«…I think, one cannot exclude that the son may turn to the
ideas of his father…». Exclusive Interview

What Does America Need Russia for ?

The «Hegemon» Issue

Scripta Manent

Reviews

«Illiberal Democracies» and the Liberal Ideology
Fareed Zakaria. The Future of Freedom. Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003. 286 p.

The Paradox of Nuclear Deterrence
Patrick Morgan. Deterrence Now. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 331 p.

«The Iraq Strategy» as seen by Wesley Clark
General Wesley K. Clark U.S. Army (Retired). Winning Modern Wars. Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire. New York: PublicAffairs, 2003. 218 p.

The Dim World, Full of Dangers …
Grave New World. Security Challenges in the 21st Century / Michael E. Brown (ed.). Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2003. 342 p.

Xinjiang. The Altai School Is Again at the Cutting Edge
Vladimir A. Moiseev. Russia and China in Central Asia (second half of the XIXth century - 1917). Barnaul: Az Buka, 2003. 346 p. (in Russian)

Letter to the Editor

The «American Empire» and the Soviet Union. Unsurprising Parallels

A potentia ad actum

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