The article deals with the evolution of the air power doctrine from the point of view of its role in interstate interaction. In its broadest meaning, this concept implies a type of military strategy in which combat aviation dominates. The authors address the history of aerial device use in the military conflicts of the 19th century, look into the emergence and development of military aviation in the 20th century and analyze the changes which took place in the 21st century in world politics as well as the changes in regional conflict management that air force development was responsible for. In the historical context, the evolution of air war conduct theories is considered starting from the classical works on the air power theory that date back to WWI and WWII and finishing with the modern approaches to what future aviation will be like. One of the issues raised is the possibility to build an effective air defense system capable of neutralizing and completely destroying enemy air force. The analysis completed by the authors leads them to the conclusion that the understanding of the air power doctrine remains at the level of the 1940’s and attributes the most crucial role to strategic aviation combined with nuclear arms and high technologies. Nevertheless the nature of modern conflicts calls for the emergence of a new pool of air power doctrine-related concepts implying either the suppression of sophisticated air defense or establishing a comprehensive air defense capable of protecting a country from enemy air strikes. In addition, the development of new doctrines on the basis of improving technological capabilities allows to radically rethink the approaches to the appearance of future air forces, which may become a serious threat to countries with underdeveloped air defense systems.

The article discusses the main methodological foundations of applied analysis of international political confrontation and cooperation. Their demand is increasing due to the worsening of relations between Russia and the West in connection with the Ukrainian conflict. As a result, questions arise about the prospects of settlement of the conflict concerning the future of Donbass. European states (Germany and France) initiated a process for the pacification of the parties, but it is unclear to what extent they can be useful for the resolution of the conflict. While the process of developing a mutually acceptable compromise has not been successful so far, there is a need to find tools to enable a structured assessment of the level of tension of the political conflict and of the risk it will turn into an armed conflict. Modern politics is characterized not so much by a decline in the use of violence to achieve goals but by a proliferation of new forms for its realization, including sabotage, terrorism, and new unconventional warfare. Moreover, in modern conditions the expansion of hostilities often leads to the opposite side seeking a peaceful resolution of the conflict. In this respect, peace and war are now in a dialectical relationship. As a result, armed violence does not cease to be a necessary element of politics. It is not always possible to achieve peace by trying to shift the balance of power. This is a contradiction. War in this sense is a test of strength, an attempt to secure a satisfactory alternative to the current situation. The dialectics of peace and strength continues to define the specifics of the diplomatic agenda.

What has US policy towards Afghanistan achieved since the US­led coalition launched an invasion of the landlocked Islamic country one decade ago? What might have been done differently if NATO and China had cooperated with each other after the United States troops withdrew from the war­worn land? What does a cooperative security regime between China and NATO offer to other countries like U.S., Russia, India and Pakistan once China agrees to take the norm of R2P in its neighbor? This article explores the underlying reasons why and how good relations between China and NATO might enhance cooperative security and contribute to a peaceful transition in Afghanistan. Taking into account the question raised above, this paper argues that China’s strategic depth  should be secured to include Central Asia, the Middle East, Russia and East­Central Europe. Therefore, it is necessary for China to work closely with the international community in order to assist Afghanistan in the war against all sorts of terrorism and to make regional peace, to preserve its stability and to promote cooperation with all countries involved.

Recent events are characterized by a prompt growth in civil conflicts: from disorder for racial reasons to international collisions and civil wars of a religious, ethnic and territorial character. These circumstances even more often return the academic and expert communities to the history of the formation and development of a policy to ensure internal security. At the same time London and Washington within «humanitarian interventions» of the end of the 20th, the beginning of the 21st centuries make active and regular attempts to move to others soil (Afghanistan and Iraq are the most indicative examples) their own experience of providing internal security. Understanding and forecasting the prospects of this transfer of an alien model of forming a system of internal security demands a deep analysis not only of its main components, but also of its ideological sources. The special role of law enforcement agencies and departments (intelligence, counterintelligence, police, army),  the inconsistent choice between the principles of democracy and safety requirements (including the extrajudicial restrictions of the rights of the foreign and own citizens authorized by the authorities on the territory of Great Britain and the USA) are still valid nowadays, allowing to say that the methods of providing internal security developed in the colonial past of Great Britain are still considered valid by a considerable part of the expert community of the USA (though aren't always effective in practice), and studying them has not only an academic, but also a political value. In the light of the recently declassified documents on the activity of security services of Great Britain and the USA after World War II, in countries of «The third world» and also the modern international contradictions connected with attempts to introduce the model of providing internal security created on the basis of colonial experience of Great Britain to various countries of the modern world, there is a need to study this policy, and the development of structures, forms and methods of providing internal security in Great Britain and the USA as the universal recipe for «counterinsurgency operations» and «operations of stabilization». The present article represents the analysis of this process in the conditions of «Cold war» and «War on terror» at the level of strategic thinking as one of the most characteristic and essential aspects of transition from an era of global colonial empires to an era of nuclear superpowers.

Over the last twenty years (1995–2015), the Chinese School of International Relations has intensively expanded its work from making “copies” and “rewritings” of Western ideas to developing completely independent concepts, some of which claim are flexible and versatile. Scientists from the PRC have studied Western theories and argued with their postulates, bringing their historical experience, and philosophical understanding of the imperatives of a traditional culture. In addition to Western rationality, they offer “relationship”, “morality” and “family principles” as a basis of a new world political space. The process of borrowing in the Chinese academic community continues but it seems that Chinese researchers have already crossed a dangerous threshold of intellectual self­colonization and have become “a factory for the production of international knowledge”. China has formulated the main concepts of international relations “with Chinese characteristics”, which can be seen as attempts to create its own “big theory”. The article gives a brief periodization of the development of the Chinese IR Theory and examines the main provisions of Zhao Tingyang’s concept of global institute of “Tianxia”, Yan Xuetong's “theory of moral realism”, and Qin Yaqing's “theory of relations”, which today are the main trends of the Chinese IRT which fit into the format of big theories – idealism, realism, and constructivism, enriched with their own scientific language and a rich political practice.

The theory of civil religion has a long history of existence; researchers around the world explored this concept, with different interpretations giving it a varied content. The purpose of this article is to study and analyze the concept of "civil religion" in the current academic discourse. In this study, we used the methods of historical and political systems analysis, comparative, meaningful content analysis and interpretation; systematization and classification method. The main structureforming principle was the problem-chronological method. The article is divided into three sections. Firstly, we present the analysis of the writings of Rousseau and Durkheim that are considered to be milestones of the theory. The study found that the presentation of Rousseau's civil religion has become an important component of the ideology of the United States, necessary for the state and meets the goals and objectives of the State. Secondly, we take into account the most prominent works of current Western and Russian scholars. This allows us to trace back the allocation of the stages of development of the theory of US civil religion in the second half of the XX – XXI centuries. To conclude, the article presents assessments of recent trends in studying the civil religion in the USA. We address the ongoing impact of civil religion on cleavages in American society as well as the usage of CR elements by different types of political actors. Finally, we discuss the prospects for study and what the challenges that researchers face. V.R.Legoida, E.I.Zadorozhniuk elaborated the problems of the American civil religion in their thesis in Russia. In addition, some aspects related to the essence of the American civil religion, its values and ideals are presented in the papers of A.N.Tsarevskii. R.T.Saduov, E.V.Kubyshkina, and others. The researchers mentioned above were able to enrich science by showing the importance of the values of the American civil religion for the American state and testing them in practice.

The article attempts to analyze the configuration of interests within scientific communities, which is characterized by a juxtaposition between researchers disposed towards a global research space and scientists primarily associated with national science systems. This juxtaposition is examined from a viewpoint of “academic capitalism” and “transnational capitalist class” theories, both of which are skeptical towards globalization. The aim of the analysis is to determine the causes of such a positioning of scientists within the community. The main hypothesis of the article is that the key premise of this conflict is divergence of interests between scientists, aiming to improve their situation by increasing the flow of state resources, and researchers prioritizing participation in global science, which is dependent on connections with its infrastructure including world class universities, transnational corporations, and supranational organizations providing financial support of research.  The article offers an overview of the international development of science in the period from the late 1940s till the current decade. It accentuates the following milestones: the emergence of a distinct division between basic and applied science in the decade following World War Two, an explosive growth of higher education in the 1950-60s, reforms of intellectual property regulations and university funding in the 1980s; a realignment in relations between state and university in the 1990s. The article also considers a number of cases, which allow to determine the causes leading to the division of the scientific community into fractions representing diverging interests. Among them are the following: the problem of participation in English-language scientific press for researchers from non-Englishspeaking countries; development of world class universities in countries with strong scientific traditions differing from the American tradition, which dominates the global research space; collision of interests between national and supranational levels of research funding in Europe. The main conclusion made based on these cases is that the emergence of fractions in the scientific community is closely connected to wider social-economic contradictions, first of all those arising between globally and locally oriented social groups.

Nowadays the world economic and political center is shifting to the Asia-Pacific region. Regional countries are gaining in financial, resources, industrial and human importance. At times of the rise of the Asia-Pacific region, China is perceived as a key player. The rise of China has launched a set of divergent trends (escalation of territorial conflicts, arms race, development of multilateral integration organizations), leading to the transformation of the regional security system. Being an inherent part of Asia-Pacific security system for the last decades, Washington is facing the necessity to establish constructive and productive relations with Beijing, taking into consideration its obvious and hidden interests, as well as the new military and political reality, and the growing attention allies pay to the region. Striving to prevent the revision of the American-centered established security order in the region, the US is implementing the combination of “convergence”/”balancing” strategy and the strategy of Beijing “engagement” into multilateral systems at Asia-Pacific and global levels. The main problem is for it to maintain a delicate balance in its policy and a strategy that could conform to the following conditions: to meet the expectations of its Asian/European allies in terms of providing security guarantees and not to raise the concerns of China by using the “congagement” policy. Asian countries remain the cornerstone of American security system in the Asia-Pacific region, while Europeans have a less measurable but also important role. European countries support at the regional and global levels both in terms of cooperating with China or tackling other issues of the international agenda, remains important and necessary for Washington. US also needs to take into consideration the expectations of its allies related to the establishment of a well-balanced and constructive long-term dialogue with Beijing and a deeper engagement of European countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The article examines the impact of economic sanctions limiting the access of foreign enterprises to the Russian economy (introduced both by other states and Moscow itself) on the performance of foreign direct investment in Russia, including changes in their structure. While most of the previous studies on this matter focus on national level, the current article is devoted to the changes across different regions of the country. In the foreign direct investment structure by country the reduction in the share of "pure" offshore is identified, in the territorial structure – the increasing role of regions in the South of European Russia and the Far East. Meanwhile, some traditional recipients of FDI witness a decrease in new investments from abroad. Although, much of the foreign direct investments are still concentrated in the national capital, there is an ongoing trend towards allocating investments to neighboring regions to offset high production costs in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Such changes are positive and are strengthened by the effects of other factors, including the federal regional policy measures. Special attention is paid to the analysis of Turkish investments in Russian regions, patterns and factors of their allocation. It is shown that there is a low volume of Turkish investments and a small number of well­known enterprises of the real sector of the economy. The problems of Russian statistics of foreign direct investment and the importance of studying the geography of raw materials and components suppliers to enterprises with foreign capital participation are raised.

Credit Rating agencies (CRAs) have become a target for criticism from governments and market participants for their inability to correctly assess the risks related to the circulation of certain financial instruments or their often pro-cyclical impact on the economy of rated sovereigns. The credit rating industry has been largely deregulated both on the global and European levels. The mortgage crisis in the USA and then the global financial and economic crisis as well as the sovereign debt crisis in the Euro area forced governments to investigate the role of the CRAs in generating those crises and search for approaches to enhance the credibility of agencies and improve the quality of their ratings. The article details the specific features of the credit rating industry which are the oligopolistic structure of the industry, occurrence of potential conflicts of interests between agencies and their clients as well as inadequate transparency and disclosure of information. Then the author analyzes American and European initiatives addressing those highly controversial issues. The first steps towards regulation of CRAs were taken in the USA in 2006, while the EU didn’t have any regulation of CRA prior to 2008. The EU didn’t manage to change or even challenge the current state of affairs where around 97% of the market belongs to the “big three”: Moody’s, Standard & Poors and Fitch. The European initiatives were in line with the US congress regulations and didn’t contain any new proposals. Regardless of the fact that the EU prepared a number of reports on CRA and initiated the creation of a European Credit Rating foundation, it didn’t start to play an active role in the global governance of CRAs.

Interview with Sergey Ryazantsev.

The article focuses on the key aspects of Russia-NATO interaction in the realm of Euro-Atlantic security against the backdrop of a current tense international situation. As the author argues, recent events, notably the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation and the situation in and around Ukraine have further deteriorated the relations of both sides, which sometimes resemble that of the Cold War era. The European region witnesses growing military tensions, further poisoned by the new deployments in Central and Eastern Europe on both sides. This leads to a military standoff and the rupture of almost all bilateral ties between NATO and Russia. The Alliance regained a new purpose for its operations, related to the territorial defense of its members. Meanwhile, the rhetoric of both parties and their mutual perception evolved into outright hostility. This does not mean, however, that Moscow and the West should refrain from efforts to improve the situation and normalize relations. Moreover, the parties, already, demonstrate some signals of interest in restoring dialogue. In this context, the author proposes a set of preliminary constructive steps which, hopefully, could alleviate the current tensions and lead to a renewed substantive dialogue of Russia and NATO partners over the issues of regional stability and security. The opportunities for progress are seen primarily within the realm of increasing transparency as well as in establishing additional avenues for institutionalized dialogue between Russia and the West. Apart from the bilateral Russia-NATO formats, OSCE and its various mechanisms could play an important role of facilitator.

A book review: Cha V. D. Powerplay: the Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016. 352 p.

A book review: Ripsman N.M., Taliaferro J.F., Lobell S.E. Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Relations. Oxford University Press, 2016. 196 p.