After short slowdown of the US offensive liberal world order formation strategy during the Trump administration, President Biden declared that democrats would pursue offensive strategy of establishing liberal world order. J. Biden’s declarations and recommendations prepared by most prestigious think tanks testify to the fact that the United States are ready to start a new decisive great power competition to achieve and consolidate predominance and omnipower status, to stake everything to achieve irreversible results and overplay China and Russia. To fulfill this ambitious task, democrats suggest policy that combines military and diplomatic instruments. The hypothesis is the following: great power competition is not a new phenomenon in world politics, however contemporary stage of international development can be defined as “new multilevel governable competition” when the United States will try to determine/program world development, development and policies of various countries and organizations. One of the important characteristics of contemporary period is not only new quality and greater scale of competition between three great powers. It is also new quality and density of international milieu: medium range and small countries have got more important status and use new conditions for getting privileges maneuvering among US, China, Russia and some other influential players. The primary aim of the American programming strategy is to restrict as much as possible maneuvering space for China and Russia, preventing formation of “Eurasian center”, to influence the choice of other countries in favor of the West/US. The international situation seems to be rather favorable for the United States, but the danger of overexertion and overextension in fulfilling ambitious task of global offensive and programming governance remains. The “nerve” of the present situation is whether Russia and China can stand against American policy, neutralize its effect. It is not quite clear how other growing powers and medium range countries will act. Coming decades will be decisive for the formation of contemporary world order.

The self-proclaimed Kurdish autonomy in the Northeastern Syria has already being estimated as one-third of the country, and, despite its unrecognized status, appears to become one of the key players in the Syrian peace settlement and, at the same time, a political hostage to the situation that has developed in Syria as a result of the civil war. The article explores the formation of the self-proclaimed autonomy in the Northeastern Syria (aka Rojava, Syrian Kurdistan, Federation of Northeastern Syria, Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria (AANES)) and puts forward the thesis of Rojava’s emergence as an insurgent state. The first part of the study analyzes it’s political system by implementation of the concept of proto-state actors for the Kurdish Self-Defense Forces (YPG) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Due to the inclusiveness of the Kurdish Self-Defense Forces the Kurdish non-state actors (PYD-YPG) have acquired the proto-state features, going beyond the definition of the “Syrian wing” of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). The article focuses on the complex and diversified ethnic composition of the local population within the boundaries of the de facto autonomy. It is manifested by the presence of various political actors and movements, including those based on ethnic particularism. It is concluded that such a political structure is a fragile one due to the interethnic contradictions between the Kurds and the Arabs in the region.

This article is the part of the recent emotional turn when the scholars of social science are paying more attention to the study of collective emotions in international affairs. The former dominance of the biological and essentialist paradigms in this field were replaced by a number of culture-centered approaches based on social constructivism, which were elaborated within two pioneering disciplines – anthropology of emotions and history of emotions. The influence of such a scientific revolution included the key axis of the common – unique with an emphasis on the latter. The IR has been also affected by an emotional turn when the field of constructivist emotional studies had been established in the early 2000s. The object of this work is the transnational structural common – collective emotional patterns that have recurrent nature and emerge beyond state borders. This part of reality has not been conceptualized by scholars. Therefore, the aim of the article is to fill an epistemological vacuum and outline the ways for conceptualization of transnational structural common. It is IR that seem to be the most suitable field to do this. The empirical case of the crisis response after terrorist attacks are analyzed as the example of the transnational structural common. This case is explored by the author through the framework of "emotion culture" by S. Koschut in combination with the concept of "emotives" by W. Reddy. Speeches by the leaders of Israel, the United States, Russia, India and France after six terrorist attacks from 1972 to 2015 allow to identify an integrated tripartite emotional structure, which is observed in each of the cases. This structure includes an emotive of pity; compensatory structure with the emotives of fighting fear through reciprocal determination; finally, an emotive of solidarity. This discursive structure functions in a stable way because the emotional code connects the type of event (terrorist attack) with the cultural script (tripartite structure). Finally, some approaches in sociological institutionalism would enrich future studies of emotion culture.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the process of transformation of NATO in the post-bipolar period and forecasting the prospects of the alliance. In the context of the bloc’s evolution, as well as taking into account the different approaches to US foreign policy on the part of the two leading parties and the most influential political and ideological groups, the authors investigate the reasons for the deterioration of transatlantic relations, including how Washington used the potential of the alliance to solve its strategic tasks in the past and present. It is noted that after the end of the Cold War, all US presidents to some extent used unilateral approaches to achieve the national interests of the United States at the expense of NATO, which contributed to the accumulation of discontent in Europe with American dominance in the alliance and the desire for a certain autonomy in the field of defense and security. In fact, President D. Trump continued the traditional conservative policy of B. Obama towards NATO, which was supposed to ensure the implementation of the strategy of “Pivot to Asia”. The Republicans’ use of harsh rhetoric and threats has seriously undermined transatlantic solidarity. Although conservative political and ideological groups in the United States actively supported Trump’s approach as “effective”, nevertheless, the majority of groups in both parties (liberals, realists and neoconservatives) for various reasons believed that such a policy does not meet American interests and it is necessary to consider the possibility of granting the EU greater independence in the field of defense and security. Since after Biden’s victory, the initiative on the issue of NATO policy passed into the hands of representatives of liberal groups, the President will have to look for ways to synthesize the points of view of progressives, “restorationists” and “reformists” within the framework of internal party competition. It is concluded that in the context of the new balance of power in the world the Biden administration will most likely be forced to abandon the traditional vision of the role of NATO in favor of the “reformist” concept of “strategic autonomy” of Europe.

The article analyzes the interconnection between the direction of Turkey's struggle against terrorism with modern Islamist and nationalist ideas of Turkey. A majority of Turkish citizens following the Hanafi school of Islam, have historically opposed the purist religious doctrine of the Salafists. The author emphasizes that neither Turkey’s secular tradition nor its predominant, moderate Islamic theology has made Turkish citizens immune to radicalization. Modern Turkish history has produced several violent Islamist organizations advocating Salafi views in line with the Islamic State’s ideology. Turkish jihadists have been found among the ranks of foreign fighters in several recent conflict zones abroad. The article proves that when the uprisings began in Syria in 2011, Turkey threw its full support behind the opposition – harboring and mobilizing dissidents, arming rebels, and allowing free passage along the Syrian-Turkish border. Jihadists began to exploit the security vacuum, including ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra (now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. The article also addresses the problems of Ankara’s indifference at the first stage towards the ISIL’s activities within and across Turkish territory. While the crossings between Turkey and ISIL territory officially were closed in 2014, smuggling through the frontier continued apace and Ankara only later started to engage ISIL militarily. The author concludes that the period of active struggle against al-Qaeda in Turkey (2003-2011) gave way after 2012 to a reduction in counterterrorism operations and now supporters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham thank Turkey for protecting them against Syrian government forces, Russia and Iran.

The Eastern Mediterranean has become an arena of fierce competition for an access to sea spaces and their resources, including hydrocarbons. Coastal states and a number of non-regional players are deeply involved in this rivalry. Currently the region is witnessing a confrontation between Turkey and a "balancing coalition", which consists of Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt. The article deals with the problem of maritime spaces delimitation in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. It also studies the policies of the main actors. The primary goal is to make an assessment of the risks and to analyze possible ways to reduce tension by balancing the interests of major players. The analysis shows that Turkey intends to consistently defend its claims on the continental shelf based on the so-called "principle of justice", thus challenging the Greek claims. Ankara managed to prevent the construction of the EastMed gas pipeline, thus hurting the interests of other countries of the region. In turn, Greece appeals to the norms of international maritime law. Itis actively looking now for allies that could help it contain Turkey. There is a potential “anti-Turkey” coalition comprising France, Israel and Egypt. The authors conclude that, despite the extreme complexity of the situation, especially from the legal point of view, tension in the Eastern Mediterranean can be reducedbecause tthe countries of the region are reluctant to engage in a military confrontation with Turkey and alternative routes for energy transportation exist. In addition, there are signs that Greece might be open to a reasonable compromise with Turkey.

The article deals with the 2015 territorial reform in France which reduced the number of regions and changed jurisdiction of the center and regions. In the paper the authors try to learn whether and how this reform affected electoral behavior in the regions during the first round of 2012 and 2017 presidential elections, whether there is a difference between them, and what are the voting patterns in French regions. The author used Moran’s index of spatial autocorrelation in order to answer the questions and analyze “neighborhood effect”. Besides the researcher employed multivariate explanatory data analysis to uncover the electoral patterns. Among the variables underlying the patterns the author selected socio-economic and demographic ones, as well as the number of criminal acts against Muslim-migrants in the context of the 2015 migrant crisis in Europe. The scholar concludes that territorial reform mitigated the neighborhood effect in regional electoral behavior which indicates the process of decentralization. As for electoral patterns, it is in the Eastern regions where the citizens vote for Marin Le Pen given high levels of migration and unemployment there. In the West where migration and unemployment are low people tend to choose a candidate whose agenda is not centered around migrants. The winner usually gets support from the capital region where migration and unemployment are low but many criminal acts against Muslim-migrants were reported. Consequently, the reform itself did not change electoral patterns in the regions which indicates the tendency towards recentralization and leaves the capital region in the center of political process.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an overwhelmingly negative effect on the music industry in Kazakhstan. Music events had to close or cancel their performances, rendered unable to operate as usual. This sector has been struggling to cope with the pandemic because of the lack of the government support, digital skills, and difficulties in accessing software to record concerts or perform online. Given the need in the literature for surveys of music industry representatives on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in different geographic areas, this study utilised the survey approach. During the period of February-June 2021, we approached 102 representatives of the music industry across Kazakhstan. We have collected data on what impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the music industry in Kazakhstan. The results of the survey demonstrate that the music industry stakeholders have lost a significant amount of income due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study has several policy implications that could be considered when developing the recovery strategy for the music industry in Kazakhstan. The policy makers need to consider the development of financial schemes to support artists in the time of the pandemic. It would be helpful to create grants to support the creative artists who are particularly struggling from the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results have demonstrated that it would be necessary to unite academics and musicians in associations that could advise them on the possibilities of obtaining grants and special support from state and independent foundations.