The article seeks to utilize potential of International Relations Theory (IRT) for revealing and promoting national values and national interests. As demonstrated by the example of the United States, IRT develops in a particular social context and expresses national and historical characteristics. Critical dialogue among American realist, liberal, and constructivist theories is based on ideological beliefs in progressive nature of US values, understanding of global security, world order, economic development and human rights. Russia also possesses a rich experience of images of a desired future. Three traditions of Russian international theory – Westernism, Statism, and Civilizationism – have emerged from the country’s historical experience and may serve as foundations for formulating a vital image of a future. At the same time, progress of Russian IRT in the direction of development and empirical justification of such image meets with two serious obstacles. The first one has to do with lacking empirical research and new expert analyses of realities that must underpin a realistic national image of a future. The second obstacle results from weaknesses of Russian contemporary IRT. What is required for developing Russian IRT is a dual critical dialogue at both national and global levels. An idea of desired future formed on the basis of such dialogue will have strong national roots and will be protected from possible foreign interferences. Today, the image of a desired future must integrate an idea of strong Russia capable of defending its interests and values from outside interferences. In a longer run, such image must also include an idea of internal development in coordination with global trends and conditions. Russia must solve tasks of internal development under conditions of global instability and Western pressures. It should also continue the practice of limited cooperation with those who do not share its interests and values. Finally, such image should assume Russia that is both culturally autonomous and open to the outside world.

The issue of developing counter-air capabilities, though extremely important in modern global politics, has been paid yet little attention in the literature. “Counter-air” includes not only air and missile defense. This technical problem was successfully solved during World War I and since then has been constantly improved. The main problem is to design such an air-defence system that could efficiently resist massive hostile air-action. In other words, the aim is not just to cause irreversible damage to the enemy, but to nullify its effectiveness. It is also important either to completely avoid or, at least, suffer no great losses. To achieve this effect, there should be both defensive and offensive anti hostile air-action. The development of such a system would revolutionize the military arts because it would automatically nullify counter-air power and revive the key role of land and naval forces. We must distinguish between air power and counterair capabilities due to their different political implications. The former aims at demoralizing the enemy, suppression of its morale, thus leading to accepting the imposed conditions. The political implications of the latter include two main goals. First, it is counter containment, which helps to minimalise the potential damage. Second, it is securing the national sovereignty in the aerial dimension. In today's world, counterair power can become not only the guarantee of aerial dimension safety, but also that of the state as a whole.

The revision of the approaches to the concept of empire coupling with the obvious new quality of the European integration process in 2000s are provoking the attempts to interpret the logic of the European Union evolution in the terms of imperial transition. This article is dedicated to the verification of such a hypothesis through the particularization of the imperial design and, then, its comparison with the reality of the integration process. The imperial pattern of the polity is determined using some basic parameters – systemic, structural, institutional, economic, narrative, genetic. The analysis allows to conclude that there is no sufficiently solid soil under the “imperial” hypothesis of the European integration process now. Thus, there are some traces indicating the option for the EU to be developed in such a direction. Besides the hypothesis of J. Zielonka on the EU as a neo­medieval imperial project is examined. We are admitting some resemblance of Holy Roman Empire and nowadays EU phenomena. Nevertheless, the disputable “imperial” nature of the former doesn’t allow to consider such a resemblance as an argument in favor of the “imperial” nature of the latter. Meanwhile this resemblance can be interpreted as one of the signs of the nowadays transit of the global world order to his “neo­medieval” design which is based on the decline of the Nation­State territorial sovereignty, the rise of the non­Westphalian IR actors and tools as well as the reincarnation of the civilizational/confessional motivation of the foreign policy.

The article explores the correlation between Russia’s formal alliance obligations and the patterns of its actual military and political cooperation. Using a number of quantitative indicators of cooperation between Russia and other countries of the world the research tests the hypothesis of whether Russia’s formal obligations are associated with the scope and stability of its actual cooperation with the partners. Four indicators are used to measure the levels of the actual military and political cooperation: the share of the Russian armaments in the total amount of the country’s arms imports, the number of joint military exercises with Russia, the deployment of Russia’s military bases on the country’s territory and the UN General Assembly affinity scores. The level of formal alliance obligations is measured based on the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions project data. The multiple regression analysis shows no significant association between the level of formal alliance commitments and the actual military cooperation, but demonstrated that the level of formal obligations does significantly correlate with the UN General Assembly affinity scores. Based on the results of the analysis, the article further hypothesizes that Russia uses formal alliances as tools to enforce bargains in which its close partners are expected to provide Russia with international political support in exchange for its military resources. Moreover, the article presents an attempt to divide all the countries in the world into four groups based on the levels of their formal and actual affinity to Russia, showing that the majority of Russia’s formal allies does not actively cooperate with it in terms of military cooperation or political support.

During the second half of 2010-s the West faces the full-scale challenges not only outside but within. The sources of the threats became the USA and the United Kingdom, They traditionally played the key role in creation and dynamic development of Euro-Atlantic society but now some of their steps are the challenges for it. Trump`s administration has been trying to transform deeply the Euro-Atlantic community. These plans include the revision of political behavior norms and the limitation of the role of multilateral structures. Germany tries to play the role of the key protector of traditional Western political rules. Since the 1990-s Germany affirmed the regional power. Since the beginning of the XXI century the country tries to achieve the role of global power. The modern processes in the Euro-Atlantic regional system widen the window of opportunity for the strengthening of German leadership at all levels. The goal of the article is to explore the dynamics, interim results and perspectives of the relations between the USA and Germany during Trump`s presidency. The focused field of the relations is the political-military sphere. The key research methods are event-analysis and comparative analysis. The paper tries to compare two crises in US-German relations (2002–2005 and modern) based on the distinguished parameters. The article shows non-linear dynamics and more versatile character of the modern one (first of all in the sphere of security and in NATO in particular). The scientific research distinguishes three key periods in the bilateral relations during Trump`s presidency. The article also explores the features of the usage by Germany its political-military tools during every period as an answer to the ,especially offensive Trump`s diplomacy, including his initiation of the ,,strategic shocks,, for German partner. The research paper investigates the concept of the answer behavior which was formulated by September 2018. In this regard the paper pays attention to Russian opportunities in the deepening dialog with Germany and the USA during the crisis in their relations. The article concludes about opportunities of overcoming of the crisis by Germany and the United States.

Terrorism is one of the most acute security threats for many states, including Russia and Western countries. Many politicians and a significant part of general public see tightened immigration policies, including visa regime and asylum application procedures, as one of the key measures to counter terrorism threat. This study is focused on evaluating the effectiveness of immigration control as a means of combating terrorist threat. The study examines such issues, as influence of mass perceptions of terrorist threat on immigration policies, some fundamentals of immigration control as such, relevance of immigration policies as a way of targeting perpetrators, and conceptual importance of the Russian case. The study uses empirical data covering the period from 1999 to 2017 (the Global Terrorism Database, maintained by National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (University of Maryland, College)). Contributions of various categories of perpetrators according to their immigration statuses (non-residents, residents, and citizens of attacked states) are evaluated. The author concludes that the usual effectiveness of immigration control as a means of combating terrorist threat is relatively low. The bulk of perpetrators is represented by citizens of targeted states while permanent alien residents are usually radicalized after obtaining the resident status. It would be more correct to consider tough immigration policies as a means of preventing further deterioration by reducing terrorist groups’ opportunities to implement large-scale attacks, as it was on September 11, 2001. Yet the Russian case demonstrates that the visa-free regime in condition of large-scale immigration from Central Asia hasn’t led to dramatic exacerbation of terrorist threat. The utility of rigid visa policies for combatting terrorism depends to a large extent on some specific regionwide and countrywide factors.

Interview with Professor John J. Mearsheimer.

The article contains a critical analysis of previously published article in the journal International Trends “Statistics Against History” by Alexey Fenenko with critics of quantitative methods and formal models in International Studies. Discussion with Alexey Fenenko in some way could be compared to 1950s – 1960s Second Great Debate in international relations, but in Russian intellectual environment. The author concludes that this debated showed gradual development of International Studies in Russia . The place of IR in Political Science and History is shown, differences in methodology are discussed, as well as role of ideology in social sciences is emphasized. The author talks about development of quantitative methodology in the American Political and IR Sciences and outlines whether it is possible for other countries, including Russia to successfully adopt quantitative methodology in IR as a part of modern social science. Limits and assumptions of game-theory model within interdisciplinary approach is presented along with prospects of using other mathematic methods such as system dynamics models and agent-based modelling (ABM) as examples of simulations which help to provide forecasts of international relations. International ratings and indexes of national power are discussed highlighting their methodological weaknesses. The author also provides some alternative to A. Fenenko’s article indexes using the same methodology but that more adequately reflect international politics. He compares the methodology of major ‘cold war’ power indexes, soft power indexes (incl. Country Brand Index or Happy Planet Index) of unipolar world and modern complex indicates like Foreign Bilateral Influence Capacity (FBIC) index, elaborated by Denver University. In conclusion, the author supposes that quantitative methods help international studies uncover implicit and counterintuitive patterns.

2019 marks a centenary of the first Department of International Politics. It is a good opportunity to cast a retrospective look at International Relations’ (IR) development as an independent cluster of academic disciplines. This cluster is evaluated in terms of maturity of its subject and its methodology. The authors present their reaction to the article by Alexey Fenenko, which rekindled the timely discussion of applicability of quantitative methods in international politics research. The authors present their view on the issue, contest Feneko’s position, and compare the International Relations development in Russia and abroad. In the article reasons for existing differences between the two are emphasized, the place of the method per se is determined, and epistemological role of quantitative and qualitative analysis in the study of international life is outlined. The Russian school of IR in contrast to the established global one still finds itself at the methodological and, in this sense, pre-scientific stage of development, at which there is no “normal science” agreement on acceptable research methods. It remains considerably fragmented in the nature of the subject of inquiry and in the achievability of objective knowledge. In conclusion, the authors set their normative vision of epistemological and methodological balance, as well as schools of IR adhering to different ontological basis.

A book review: Современная политическая наука. Методология /  Отв. ред. О.В. Гаман-Голутвина, А.И. Никитин. М.: Аспект Пресс, 2019. 776 с. 

A book review: Naumkin V. Failed Partnership. Soviet Diplomacy in Saudi Arabia Between World Wars. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies RAS; Aspect Press, 2018. 456 p.

A book review: Mearsheimer J. The Great Delusion. Liberal Dreams and International Realities. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. 518 p.