This article is about a book authored by Thomas Gomart on ten major geopolitical challenges for Europe today, Russia’s return to the club of the most influential world powers being one of them. A natural partner, Russia is being increasingly alienated from Europe and reciprocates to it by taking a diverging path. Is this emerging geostrategic r irreversible? This question is of critical relevance for the future of the both parts of the continent. An analysis of Europeans’ perceptions of the balance of geopolitical interests of Western Europe and Russia provides a key to understanding the reasons behind the growing divergence between them. Thomas Gomart, Director of IFRI (Institut fran ais des relations internationales), the leading international relations think tank of France, is a top French expert in geopolitics who also specializes in Russian politics. His views and recommendations largely echo key foreign policy statements and actions of Emmanuel Macron, which reveals a high degree of their representativeness of French political elite views. Thomas Gomart's forecasts respond to the most urgent needs of European geopolitics from the angle of the interests of France which is committed to acting on behalf of the European Union and aims to position an expanded Western Europe as an independent center of power in the emerging world  hierarchy. For Russian readers such publications are interesting from two points of view: they give an idea of the direction in which this type of research is going and of the methodology used in geostrategic forecasting. In particular, the book demonstrates significant cognitive changes in the analysis of international behavior of Russia. They stem from the new European reality, as represented, in particular, by Europe’s political and intellectual elite which has been molded by the 70 years of NATO’s existence and almost 65 years of the European Homo Atlanticus project.

The overall conclusion is rather disappointing for Russia. Europeans regard its growing power as a challenge, not as an opportunity to join efforts to strengthen the continent's position in the face of the intensifying US-China rivalry. Moscow sees this as a break with the main pillar of French diplomacy — its Gaullist tradition, whereas, in fact, it merely reflects, in the spirit of classical realism, current assessments of the balance of power in Europe and the world. Any motivation for returning to partnership has decrease, firstly, due to Russian leaders’ flat refusal to adopt the Western model of convergence and, secondly, because of the forecasts of the weakening of the country's economic capacity. The growth of Russia’s military might clashes with the interests of Western Europe. If Russia turns to China, driven by the asymmetry of economic opportunities, it risks taking a subordinate role, if not a marginal one, in the global Great Silk Road project. At the same time, Russia, a great continental power spanning China and the European Union, in the absence of any common ground and with its continued estrangement with Western Europe, may find itself outside the main stage where future geopolitical and geoeconomic action involving the West and the Indo-Pacific region will take place.

Since hydrocarbon resources found close to the delimitation line between two or more states require special regulation due to its complex and sensitive nature, the states involved have to consider national legislation and applicable international instruments relating to transboundary exploitation, as well as interests of their oil and gas companies. However, when one state unilaterally explores or exploits the deposit from its side of the delimitation line, it ipso facto violates the rights of the other state, thus leading to a potential international conflict, that would take years to settle. The previously practiced method of seizing such deposits on the “first come – first take” basis is currently considered fraught with interstate conflicts. Moreover, this approach is, economically irrational and, without any doubt, bears a greater negative impact on the environment, thus making an agreed regime of transboundary subsoil use more viable. Often coastal states reach an agreement on transboundary activities, that calls for intergovernmental consultations to be held once a particularly transboundary deposit is discovered. It is usually followed by conclusion of contract between operating companies, that addresses all the technical issues of exploration and exploitation of specific field. The existing political and legal mechanisms of transboundary subsoil regulation prove to be successful, especially in previously disputed maritime areas.
State practice demonstrates the tendency towards universal agreement-based exploration and exploitation of transboundary hydrocarbon resources. Applicable political and legal mechanisms will presumably evolve and differ from one another depending on the individual characteristics of oil and gas fields in question and areas where the deposits are located.

The article discusses the main areas and features of China and Japan participation in the process of financial integration. A comparative analysis of the possibilities of interaction with Asian countries in the credit and securities markets has been carried out. A special place is given to China and Japan activities in regional financial organizations and associations. It is argued that sphere of regional financial integration is one of the areas of economic cooperation between the two countries where along with the trends towards cooperation there is also a process of increasing competition. Improving the quality of bilateral economic ties between China and Japan and the establishment of multilateral cooperation is not accompanied by a general restructuring of competitive relations in the region. A number of areas of economic activity remain in the sphere of competition which continues to increase both at the state and corporations and banks levels. China uses innovative aid technologies to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, eliminate existing bottlenecks, and acquire strategic assets in the region. Japan, despite strained relations with a number of Asian countries, continues to integrate into the regional economy through a network of production and logistics chains and is still a major source of capital for many Asian countries. All this suggests that, despite China's undoubted economic and financial success, it needs time to secure its leadership in the region. At the same time, the further deterioration of trade and economic relations between China and the United States, the consequences of the coronavirus crisis push China to more cooperation with Japan in stock, banking and currency areas, through regional economic organizations, and further expansion of the use of local currencies, primarily yen and renminbi, instead of dollars for investment and expansion of multilateral settlement and payment transactions in the region.

The article is devoted to an overview of state failure conceptualization. One of the most popular concepts was failed state after transformed in fragile state. These two concepts are based on weberian understanding of the state that is irrelevant from historical perspective. Also critics have denoted to political labeling, incorrectness and the lack of formalization of these concepts. Since these indices were built for practical purposes, a full­fledged theoretical foundation for the idea of state weakness was elaborated in great details in a concept of state capacity. This concept tries to surpass the narrow weberian understanding of the state and offers three dimensions of state capacity: fiscal­economic, administrative­bureaucratic and the control over violence. The drawback of this concept is an absence of the threshold to understand whether the state has experienced state failure or not. The most formalized approach to measure state failure is created within a concept of state collapse. This concept has common with the previous concept because bases on the same features (fiscal, administrative and military). Using this concept faces some difficulties because of different cases are the same according to this concept. Sociology offered a concept of state breakdown which has three points: fiscal crisis, elite conflict and mass mobilization. After analyzing both sociological and anthropological literature the author offers to add to these three criteria two additional: deligitimation (or change of self­description in the system) and territorial disintegration.

The article provides information about renminbi internationalization stages, actions taken by Chinese authorities in this field as well as suggests possible ways for further increasing usage of the currency in international operations. The analysis is based on international currency criteria used by IMF and SWIFT and well as suggestions of Russian and foreign researchers. Launching the process of renminbi internationalization China was looking to achieve a number of economic and political goals. Usage on the national currency in international operations increases the country’s prestige in the world, facilitates international transaction for domestic economic actors and allows influencing foreign counterparts. China achieved significant success in internationalizing its national currency in the past decade. Yuan has been part of IMF reserve currencies for more than three years. However, the share of renminbi in global settlements and investments is still moderate and does not correspond to the size of the country’s economy. The USA maintains their dominant role in the world’s financial system and is not interested in allowing China to increase its global influence. China is inviting its key trading partners to create yuan based international transactions system as an alternative to the US dollar. Despite the scale of the economy, volume of foreign investments and size of the internal securities market – international participants show relatively low interest for renminbi usage. Comparison of the anticipated goals and actions taken and with the current outcomes allows suggesting conceding amendments to the strategy of increasing renminbi usage in the world. This can be achieved by removing restrictions for international capital movements and facilitating access to yuan liquidity and instruments for international participants.

The article examines the adoption by the United States of a new policy for ensuring cybersecurity, a strategy of peristent engagement in cyberspace, and how it is related to the strategy of cyber deterrence that remained dominant for a long time. The strategy of persistent engagement implies the constant conduct of cyber operations that do not reach the level of an armed conflict and combining purely defensive activities with offense. Such strategy is designed to prevent US rivals from carrying out malicious actions in cyberspace and to preserve strategic advantages of the United States by imposing additional costs on opponents and creating tactical friction for them. According to experts, persistent engagement perfectly suits the unique characteristics of cyberspace (interconnectedness and the condition of constant contact), unlike a strategy of deterrence that is suitable for traditional areas of military operations. Nevertheless, the US leadership is not ready to abandon the cyber deterrence strategy, and it is looking for ways to conceptually combine the two strategies. The paper presents the key characteristics of persistent engagement, some of which are: 1) cyber operations do not reach the level of an armed conflict; 2) persistent engagement is not an armed conflict; 3) creating "tactical friction" and imposing costs on US opponents; 4) preventive defense. Expert opinions on the prospects of persistent engagement are presented and analyzed. The paper demonstrates the analysis potential advantages and drawbacks of this approach. American specialists expect that persistent engagement will lead to an automatic formation of criteria for acceptable behavior in the process of strategic competition. Among the obvious drawbacks of the analyzed approach, one can single out a possible international escalation due to its application. The author analyzes the transformation of the “conceptual” status of cyberspace and the institutional changes, caused by this new strategic approach. The conclusions regarding the prospects for this strategy are ambiguous. Its effectiveness, safety and risks will become known only with time during the actual application of this strategy and the accumulation of empirical experience. The relevance of the work is due to the current strategic situation between the United States and Russia. Understanding the United States' approaches to cybersecurity and the key strategic changes in them is crucial not only to formulate Russia`s cybersecurity policy, but also to build a constructive dialogue with the United States on cybersecurity issues.

Governance is so commonly used in academic literature and policy papers in the field of international environmental politics and as such has overtaken the words “policy”, “diplomacy” and “cooperation”. This phenomenon has empirical support – environmental policy is one of the most internalized areas of regulation, and states were no longer the sole subject of international rulemaking. The current state of the art in studying global environmental politics is quite paradoxical. Notwithstanding the increased recognition of the importance of non-state, transnational actors and mechanisms to solve global environmental problems, little attention is been paid to the study of the relationship between interstate and non-state forms of interaction. That raises the question of how multilateral environmental diplomacy and global environmental governance are connected with each other in the academic peer-reviewed journals. What kind of international interactions do they study and what links them? To answer these questions, the peer-reviewed articles from SCOPUS and Web of Science databases on multilateral environmental diplomacy and global environmental governance analyzed through a systematic literature review. To understand the nature of the two approaches in studying global environmental politics, I summarize the differences and then identify the links between them. In each of the research areas, sub-directions and the related content were identified, while the typology of the articles allowed to identify the relationships between them. In each of the research areas, sub-directions and the related content were identified, while the typology of the articles helped to highlight the relationships between them. The main finding includes the confirmation that environmental diplomacy and environmental governance studying mostly in isolation from each other. The main finding includes the confirmation that environmental diplomacy and environmental governance studying mostly in isolation especially regarding the interplay between interstate or non-state forms of cooperation as well as assessments of their significance. Two dimensions of the politics – formal negotiations on collective actions and weakly institutionalized public space that involves various stakeholders, movements and initiatives – exists in parallel to each other. At the same time, the study demonstrated the need to develop more responsive notions of international environmental diplomacy, since it is no longer specific only to the study of negotiations and other forms of interstate interaction.

Expansion of nodal global corridors has become a remarkable phenomenon in the field of maritime transport communications in our time. In July 2015, the second line of the Suez Canal, built in 1869, was put into operation. A year later, in June 2016, the second line of the Panama Canal, built in 1920, was put into operation. The turn of the Bosphorus has come. In parallel to this strait, the Turkish government intends to build the Istanbul Canal, which should receive the first ships in 2023 – to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. The Istanbul Canal, if built, can radically change the international legal situation in the Black Sea region. The latter directly affects the interests of Russia, which made it necessary for it to determine its position in relation to the Istanbul Canal. In this regard, this article provides an analysis of the main Russian and Turkish publications on the main Turkish megaproject in 2011­2020 in order to find out the degree of knowledge of this problem, as well as to assess the adequacy of the forecasts. It seems to the author that clarification of the degree of study of the problem will help to limit the number of "repetitive" articles and outline new prospects for research. This is especially true now that Russia has officially renounced opposition to the Istanbul Canal. In the author's opinion, unlike Turkish experts, in Russian publications the external aspect clearly prevails over other aspects of the issue, which often leads to unfounded conclusions regarding the geopolitical consequences of the Istanbul channel. In this regard, it seems more promising to study the economic component of the Istanbul project, since the financial side of the issue determines the fate of any project. This is especially important now, when the exhaustion of the ideological concept (the postponement of the commissioning of the Istanbul Canal from the anniversary year of 2023 to a later date) has led to the fact that the project of the President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become one of the most noticeable factors in the country's internal political life.