This article examines national patterns in Western European newspaper coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. While the crisis has traditionally been studied through the actions ofthe United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba, its perception in allied but non-participant European states remains less explored. The article addresses this gap by comparing how leading newspapers in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain represented one of the most dangerous episodes of the Cold War to their national audiences. The study is based on a content analysis of 493 publications from six major newspapers: The Guardian and The Telegraph in the United Kingdom, Le Monde and Le Figaro in France, and ABC and La Vanguardia Espa & ntilde;ola in Spain. The chronological scope covers the period from 16 October to 31 December 1962, making it possible to analyze both the peak of the crisis and its post-crisis interpretation.The research examines authorship, genre structure, visual presentation, source base, representation of the positions of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba, and the rhetorical devices used to shape readers' perceptions. The findings show that Western European newspapers largely reproduced the American narrative of the crisis, reflecting the logic of bloc solidarity in the bipolar international system. At the same time, the study reveals significant national differences in editorial strategies. British newspapers adopted a rational-critical approach: while generally supporting Washington, they also provided space for public debate and criticism of the Kennedy administration. French newspapers approached the crisis through an institutional and analytical lens, emphasizing the role of international organizations, especially the United Nations, and the implications of the crisis for European security. Spanish newspapers, operating under Francoist censorship and shaped by the regime's anti-communist orientation, offered the most expressive and ideologically charged coverage, portraying Cuba and Fidel Castro in sharply negative terms. The article argues that Western European press coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis was structured bya"solidarity-sovereignty"dichotomy. European newspapers demonstrated solidarity with the United States as the leading power of the Western bloc, yet their coverage also reflected national political cultures, historical experiences, and foreign policy priorities. This comparative perspective contributes to the study of Cold War media by showing how allied European societies interpreted global nuclear confrontation through their own national frameworks.
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are usually discussed as instruments of payment modernization, monetary sovereignty, or financial innovation. This article shifts the focus to their potential role as instruments of public policy. It examines the socially oriented use cases of China’s digital yuan (e-CNY) and asks how a retail CBDC can be incorporated into mechanisms of social support, regional development, crisis response, and stateled economic stabilization.The article contributes to the literature on CBDCs by showing that the policy significance of digital currency depends not only on its technical design, but also on the institutional environment in which it is deployed. Drawing on regulatory documents, official materials of Chinese authorities and financial regulators, reports of international organizations, and academic studies on digital currencies and digital governance, the analysis combines a case-study approach with a comparative institutional perspective. The Chinese experience is compared with selected international practices, including voucher-based, inclusion-oriented, and crisis-response digital payment mechanisms.The article argues that e-CNY is developing not merely as a new payment instrument, but as part of China’s broader digital governance infrastructure. Its use in targeted transfers, programmable fiscal incentives, consumer-stimulus schemes, financial inclusion initiatives, emergency payments, and regional support programmes demonstrates how digital currency can be connected to administrative registries, identification systems, and smart governance platforms. This integration may improve the targeting of public payments, reduce transaction and administrative costs, and limit risks associated with the misuse of budgetary resources.The study concludes that the Chinese model represents a distinctive trajectory of CBDC development. Its defining feature is the close connection between digital currency design and Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are usually discussed as instruments of payment modernization, monetary sovereignty, or financial innovation. This article shifts the focus to their potential role as instruments of public policy. It examines the socially oriented use cases of China’s digital yuan (e-CNY) and asks how a retail CBDC can be incorporated into mechanisms of social support, regional development, crisis response, and stateled economic stabilization.The article contributes to the literature on CBDCs by showing that the policy significance of digital currency depends not only on its technical design, but also on the institutional environment in which it is deployed. Drawing on regulatory documents, official materials of Chinese authorities and financial regulators, reports of international organizations, and academic studies on digital currencies and digital governance, the analysis combines a case-study approach with a comparative institutional perspective. The Chinese experience is compared with selected international practices, including voucher-based, inclusion-oriented, and crisis-response digital payment mechanisms.The article argues that e-CNY is developing not merely as a new payment instrument, but as part of China’s broader digital governance infrastructure. Its use in targeted transfers, programmable fiscal incentives, consumer-stimulus schemes, financial inclusion initiatives, emergency payments, and regional support programmes demonstrates how digital currency can be connected to administrative registries, identification systems, and smart governance platforms. This integration may improve the targeting of public payments, reduce transaction and administrative costs, and limit risks associated with the misuse of budgetary resources.The study concludes that the Chinese model represents a distinctive trajectory of CBDC development. Its defining feature is the close connection between digital currency design and state administrative capacity. The case of e-CNY therefore shows that the effectiveness of CBDCs as public policy instruments depends less on technological launch as such than on their integration into broader systems of public administration, social policy, and economic governance.
This article examines the construction of the Soviet nuclear threat in Western political cartoons during the early Cold War, from the end of the Second World War to the first Soviet hydrogen bomb test (1945–1953). Although the mass culture of the atomic age has attracted considerable scholarly attention, the visual representation of atomic themes in political cartooning remains insufficiently studied, especially in Russian-language historiography. The article addresses this gap by showing how cartoons not only reflected, but also actively shaped nuclear discourse, politicized scientific achievement, and contributed to public perceptions of atomic energy, nuclear weapons, and international confrontation.The study combines historical imagology, a constructivist approach, and content analysis. Its empirical basis consists of 418 Sunday issues of The New York Times, which regularly published political cartoons by artists from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The analysis identified 209 atomic-themed cartoons produced by 76 artists and drawn from 66 publications. On this basis, an iconographic codebook of recurrent visual motifs and meanings was compiled.The results show that Western cartoonists increasingly framed the atomic question through the categories of “problem,” “threat,” and “confrontation with the USSR.” The most frequent motifs were “problem” (115 visual occurrences), “atomic bomb” (99), “threat” (87), “USSR” (77), “United States” (73), and “confrontation with the USSR” (59). The frequency and symbolic density of atomic cartoons peaked at key moments in the emerging nuclear arms race: 1945–1946, 1949, 1950, and 1953. The visual language of Western satirical graphics was dominated by a militarized and masculinized image of atomic power, above all the bomb. Early hopes for peaceful atomic progress were gradually displaced by representations of existential nuclear danger and by the logic of superpower rivalry.A central finding of the article is that Western political cartoons transformed nuclear weapons from a universal post-war problem into a politically differentiated symbol. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, atomic and hydrogen bombs acquired a national identity: Western nuclear weapons were increasingly represented as defensive and order-preserving, whereas Soviet nuclear weapons were depicted as aggressive, illegitimate, and destabilizing. This dichotomy between “good” Western and “bad” Soviet nuclear power contributed to the visual construction of the USSR as the principal source of nuclear danger. By 1953, the dominant meaning of atomic cartoons had shifted toward nuclear confrontation between the superpowers and, more broadly, antagonism between the Western and Soviet systems. The article concludes that Western political cartoons helped consolidate durable stereotypes of the Soviet nuclear threat, many of which continued to shape the symbolic vocabulary of international relations beyond the early Cold War.
This article examines the Afghan crisis after the Taliban's return to power in August 2021 and its impact on regional security in Central Asia. Afghanistan is closely linked to the Central Asian states geographically, historically, ethnically, politically, and economically; therefore, instability in Afghanistan directly affects the security environment of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Taliban takeover created new risks related to terrorism, religious extremism, drug trafficking, organized crime, illegal migration, and the potential spillover of violence across Afghanistan's northern borders. The study uses a qualitative case-study approach and focuses on the period from 2021 to 2025. It draws on scholarly literature, analytical reports, and policy studies produced by international organizations, regional security bodies, and research institutes. The article first provides a historical overview of the Afghan crisis, tracing its roots from the political upheavals of the 1970s and the Soviet intervention to the rise of the Taliban and the post-2021 security situation. It then analyzes the main channels through which the Afghan crisis affects Central Asia. Special attention is paid to terrorist and extremist groups operating in Afghanistan, including ISIS-K, Al-Qaeda-linked networks, and regional militant organizations, as well as to narcotics production and trafficking along the Northern Route. The article argues that the Afghan crisis has intensified existing vulnerabilities in Central Asia, including weak border management, socio-economic pressures, ethnic tensions, and limited coordination among regional security institutions. The article concludes that Central Asian states cannot address these threats separately. A more resilient regional security architecture requires intelligence-sharing, counter with Afghanistan, and joint counter-radicalization programs.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House has exposed a growing mismatch between the United States’ “America First” policy and its established role as the principal coordinator of transatlantic sanctions. This article examines how US–EU sanctions coordination changed in 2025 and assesses whether these changes represent temporary policy divergence or a more systemic transformation of the transatlantic coalition. The study combines Robert Putnam’s two-level game model with the concepts of wedging and binding. This analytical framework links domestic political constraints and ideological alignments to the cohesion of international coalitions. Empirically, the article applies process tracing to three episodes: the US decision not to introduce new sanctions against Russia on 24 February 2025; Washington’s refusal to support the EU initiative to lower the price cap on Russian oil in June–July 2025; and the unilateral US sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil in October 2025, including subsequent exemptions and implementation delays.The analysis yields four principal findings. First, the United States retained the sanctions inherited from the previous administration but reduced its proactive and coordinating role in developing new measures. This combination of regime continuity and declining leadership increased the asynchrony of US and EU sanctions policies without producing a complete breakdown of the sanctions coalition. Second, Washington increasingly preferred unilateral and discretionary measures over prior coordination with European partners. Even when these decisions were not explicitly designed to divide the coalition, their repeated use produced a cumulative wedging effect by weakening established expectations of consultation, predictability, and burden sharing. Third, the October sanctions against major Russian oil companies did not signify a restoration of the previous coordination model. They were primarily linked to US bilateral diplomacy with Russia and domestic demands for a tougher policy, while exemptions granted to Hungary and delays in implementation demonstrated the selective and transactional character of the new approach. Fourth, the European Union responded through binding strategies intended to preserve the appearance and institutional framework of transatlantic unity. These strategies included public declarations of solidarity, the rapid incorporation of unilateral US decisions into a collective sanctions narrative, diplomatic engagement with the US Congress and executive agencies, and closer cooperation with the United Kingdom. Their effectiveness, however, was constrained by the EU’s internal fragmentation and unanimity requirements.The article further identifies ideological convergence between the Republican governing elite in the United States and Eurosceptic actors in Europe as an emerging mechanism of coalition fragmentation. Selective exemptions and privileged bilateral arrangements may place individual EU member states in differentiated legal and political positions, thereby undermining common European sanctions discipline. The findings suggest that transatlantic sanctions coordination is shifting from an asymmetrical but relatively predictable US-led model towards a fragmented and situational arrangement. Under this model, collective action depends less on institutionalised American leadership and more on temporary alignments among the United States, EU institutions, individual European governments, the United Kingdom, and domestic political actors. The transformation of sanctions coordination therefore reflects a broader revision of transatlantic commitments: sanctions are becoming less an expression of Western political unity and more an arena in which internal disagreements, ideological affinities, and competing national interests are negotiated.
This article explores the role of identity in shaping and legitimizing the multivector foreign policies of the Central Asian states. Since gaining independence, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have consistently presented multi-vectorism as a core principle of their external action, embedding it in official doctrines, strategic documents, and diverse formats of international cooperation. Yet the actual structure of their political, security, trade, investment, and migration ties reveals the continued predominance of Russia and China as the region’s principal partners. This creates a gap between the declared pluralism of foreign policy and the real hierarchy of external relations.The article uses the concept of identity to explain this discrepancy and assesses whether identity discourse can serve as an instrument for promoting and legitimizing a multi-vector foreign policy course. It argues that Central Asia’s identity landscape is highly complex and multilayered. It includes primordial forms of belonging rooted in family, clan, tribe, locality, and regional solidarities; national identity shaped by post-Soviet nation-building; Islamic identity, whose influence is growing but remains uneven across the region; post-imperial and post-Soviet identity linked to language, memory, and shared historical experience; and pan-identities, especially Eurasian and Turkic, promoted through regional integration projects.The article concludes that this multidimensional identity matrix both enables and constrains multi-vectorism. On the one hand, it provides political elites with symbolic resources for balancing among external partners and avoiding exclusive alignment with any single center of power. On the other hand, the coexistence of partially competing identities limits the state’s ability to construct one dominant identity as the foundation of a stable foreign policy vector. Identity discourse can therefore help justify and reproduce multi-vector foreign policy, but it cannot fully determine or consolidate it.
This article examines the role of Chinese diaspora capital in the economic development of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 2023. It focuses on the business activity of overseas Chinese, or huaqiao-huaren, as a source of foreign direct investment, export expansion, employment creation, tax revenues, and technological upgrading. The study aims to assess the scale and significance of overseas Chinese direct investment in the PRC and to compare it with investment flows from foreign and Taiwanese investors. The article reconstructs several stages in the development of overseas Chinese business in China. In 1949-1965, huaqiao capital was channeled mainly into state and state-private enterprises, priority industrial projects, and agriculture, but its potential was constrained by the socialist transformation of private capital. During the Cultural Revolution, investment flows virtually ceased as trust between the PRC and the diaspora collapsed. After the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978, overseas Chinese regained the status of privileged investors and became one of the main sources of FDI, especially in export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing. In 1992-2007, their investment expanded sharply, while in 2008-2023 it shifted increasingly toward capital-intensive and high-technology sectors. Methodologically, the article draws on Chinese and international statistics, legal documents, scholarly literature, and existing methods for estimating overseas Chinese investment. It also proposes an updated approach for assessing direct investment by the Chinese diaspora in the contemporary period, taking into account the changing roles of Hong Kong, Macao, offshore jurisdictions, Southeast Asia, the United States, and other centers of Chinese diaspora capital. According to the author's calculations, the Chinese diaspora invested approximately USD 2.03 trillion in the PRC between 1949 and 2023, accounting for about 68 percent of accumulated FDI. By contrast, overseas Chinese investment in Taiwan over the comparable period amounted to only USD 4.46 billion.The article argues that, in the long term, the PRC became the clear winner in the competition with Taiwan for diaspora capital, although this outcome was not predetermined. In the context of the US-China trade war and the withdrawal of some Western investors, overseas Chinese capital remains a key resource for China's high-technology development and may increasingly replace departing Western capital.
This article examines the role of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) in the reorientation of Russia's foreign trade flows toward the countries of the Global South. In the context of sanctions pressure, geopolitical fragmentation, and the restructuring of traditional logistics chains, the INSTC has acquired strategic importance as an alternative transport artery linking Russia with the Caspian region, Iran, India, Central Asia, and wider Asian and African markets. However, the article argues that there remains a significant gap between the declared potential of the corridor and its actual cargo base. This gap is shaped not only by infrastructure constraints, but also by administrative, legal, tariff, logistical, and trade-structural barriers. The purpose of the study is to systematize the key barriers to the development of the INSTC on the basis of Russia's trade cooperation with countries gravitating toward the corridor's routes. The empirical analysis focuses on the dynamics and commodity structure of Russia's trade in 2019-2024 with Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The article shows that the growth of Russia's trade with these partners is highly asymmetric. Russian exports have expanded much faster than imports, while a significant share of export growth is driven by raw materials, especially mineral fuels, oil, and petroleum products. These goods do not automatically generate stable demand for the corridor's multimodal infrastructure, since large-scale energy exports continue to rely mainly on traditional maritime routes. The study identifies several groups of barriers limiting the corridor's effectiveness. The most important hard infrastructure constraints include the unfinished Rasht-Astara railway section in Iran, limited capacity and ageing fleet on the Caspian route, insufficient port and rail infrastructure, and the shallowing of the Caspian Sea and the Volga-Caspian shipping canal. These are compounded by soft barriers: fragmented legal regulation, complex customs procedures, the absence of a coordinated through tariff, weak logistics management, lack of a single coordination center, and information gaps among business actors. The article concludes that the INSTC cannot be developed only through isolated infrastructure projects. Its potential depends on comprehensive modernization of logistics governance, digital coordination of cargo flows, harmonization of tariff and customs procedures, development of return cargo, and broader diversification of Russia's southern trade. Without these measures, growing trade with the Global South will not necessarily translate into sustainable cargo flows through the corridor.
This article reconstructs the formation and transformation of the image of Korean Emperor Gojong in Russia, from his lifetime to Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. While previous studies have addressed Gojong’s role in Russo-Korean relations mainly through unpublished diplomatic reports, this article is the first to examine how the Korean monarch was represented in Russian public opinion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The source base includes Russian periodicals, travel writings, military and diplomatic observations published at the time, as well as Soviet and Russian historiography. In total, the study draws on more than fifty pre-revolutionary sources and more than fifty Soviet and post-Soviet works. The article demonstrates that Gojong’s early contacts with Russia remained almost unknown to Russian society until his flight to the Russian legation in Seoul in 1896. After this event, the amount and diversity of information about Gojong, his court, and his political orientation steadily increased in the Russian press, especially on the eve of and during the Russo-Japanese War, the Hague Incident, and his forced abdication in 1907. The study shows that Russian public opinion was not uniform: part of the liberal press portrayed Gojong as a reactionary and ineffective ruler. Overall, however, Russian public discourse was dominated by sympathy for the tragic fate of the emperor and Korea, positive assessments of Gojong’s education and personal qualities, and recognition of his long-term orientation toward an alliance with Russia as a means of preserving Korean independence.The article further establishes that Gojong’s post-1907 activities remained largely outside public discussion for a long time. His attempts to support a Korean anti-Japanese resistance base in the Russian Far East, his plans to move to Vladivostok, and his contacts with Russian military and civil administrators became fully visible only in modern historical research. The study also traces the changing place of Gojong in Soviet historiography. Because of his direct connection with the Korean independence movement and the March First Movement of 1919, Soviet historians could not ignore him; nevertheless, until the 1950s they tended to minimize the role of monarchists and the Yi dynasty in the Korean national liberation movement. From the 1960s onward, Russian historiography increasingly recognized Gojong’s active role in anti-Japanese resistance and in attempts to build a Russo-Korean political alliance. Although some historians continued to criticize his indecision and political weakness, the dominant trend in recent scholarship has been toward a more positive reassessment of Gojong as a symbol of Korean sovereignty and one of the key figures in the history of Russo-Korean relations.This article reconstructs the formation and transformation of the image of Korean Emperor Gojong in Russia, from his lifetime to Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. While previous studies have addressed Gojong’s role in Russo-Korean relations mainly through unpublished diplomatic reports, this article is the first to examine how the Korean monarch was represented in Russian public opinion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The source base includes Russian periodicals, travel writings, military and diplomatic observations published at the time, as well as Soviet and Russian historiography. In total, the study draws on more than fifty pre-revolutionary sources and more than fifty Soviet and post-Soviet works. The article demonstrates that Gojong’s early contacts with Russia remained almost unknown to Russian society until his flight to the Russian legation in Seoul in 1896. After this event, the amount and diversity of information about Gojong, his court, and his political orientation steadily increased in the Russian press, especially on the eve of and during the Russo-Japanese War, the Hague Incident, and his forced abdication in 1907. The study shows that Russian public opinion was not uniform: part of the liberal press portrayed Gojong as a reactionary and ineffective ruler. Overall, however, Russian public discourse was dominated by sympathy for the tragic fate of the emperor and Korea, positive assessments of Gojong’s education and personal qualities, and recognition of his long-term orientation toward an alliance with Russia as a means of preserving Korean independence.The article further establishes that Gojong’s post-1907 activities remained largely outside public discussion for a long time. His attempts to support a Korean anti-Japanese resistance base in the Russian Far East, his plans to move to Vladivostok, and his contacts with Russian military and civil administrators became fully visible only in modern historical research. The study also traces the changing place of Gojong in Soviet historiography. Because of his direct connection with the Korean independence movement and the March First Movement of 1919, Soviet historians could not ignore him; nevertheless, until the 1950s they tended to minimize the role of monarchists and the Yi dynasty in the Korean national liberation movement. From the 1960s onward, Russian historiography increasingly recognized Gojong’s active role in anti-Japanese resistance and in attempts to build a Russo-Korean political alliance. Although some historians continued to criticize his indecision and political weakness, the dominant trend in recent scholarship has been toward a more positive reassessment of Gojong as a symbol of Korean sovereignty and one of the key figures in the history of Russo-Korean relations.
The article examines the strategic role of the Arctic in ensuring global energy and transport security. The Arctic is of growing importance for the global economy and the energy sector, as it contains substantial oil and gas reserves and provides access to the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a shorter transport corridor between Europe and Asia. The route along Russia’s Arctic coast reduces the distance between European and Asian ports by 30–40% compared with the traditional route through the Suez Canal. Against the backdrop of geopolitical instability, the importance of such an alternative corridor is increasing.The paper focuses on three key aspects: the competitive advantages of the Northern Sea Route over southern maritime routes; the scale of natural-resource reserves in the Arctic region; and the military and strategic significance of the Arctic in the current geopolitical environment.The analysis shows that the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in 2026, which clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of traditional trade routes, underscored the relevance of Russia’s longterm strategy for developing its Arctic vector. This strategy includes both the expansion of the resource base and production capacity, including through projects such as Vostok Oil, and the development of national infrastructure, including shipbuilding capacities such as the Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex. Taken together, these measures strengthen the resilience of export flows and reduce dependence on global trade chokepoints.The findings are relevant for policy adjustments by states seeking to reduce the risks of trade isolation and disruption, which become particularly acute in periods of geopolitical instability.
This article examines European Union science diplomacy as an instrument of external action aimed at strengthening the EU’s international actorness, strategic autonomy, and technological sovereignty. It argues that EU science diplomacy is undergoing a significant transformation: from a liberal-normative model centered on international scientific cooperation, soft power, and global public goods toward a more strategic and geopolitical model shaped by technological competition, security concerns, and the fragmentation of the international order.The article identifies the conceptual and institutional foundations of EU science diplomacy and assesses their role in the broader evolution of EU foreign policy. Methodologically, the study is grounded in institutionalism, which allows science diplomacy to be analyzed as a developing system of norms, strategic documents, organizational structures, expert networks, and practices formed under the auspices of the European Commission. The empirical basis includes European Commission documents, reports of EU working groups on science diplomacy, materials related to Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, initiatives of the EU Science Diplomacy Alliance, and relevant academic literature.The article examines two contrasting cases: the SESAME synchrotron project in Jordan and scientific cooperation in the Arctic. SESAME illustrates the liberal logic of “science for diplomacy,” where research infrastructure is expected to promote dialogue and confidence-building in a conflict-prone region. The Arctic case, by contrast, shows science diplomacy as a tool of strategic positioning in a region where scientific knowledge is closely linked to climate governance, natural resources, security, sanctions, and geopolitical rivalry.The article concludes that EU science diplomacy can no longer be understood solely as a form of soft power or international cooperation. It is increasingly becoming a mechanism for consolidating the EU’s geopolitical subjectivity, technological sovereignty, and strategic autonomy in a fragmented world order.
This review examines Vladimir Padrino López’s book Multipolar Geopolitics: 20 Years After April 13 as a political and strategic reflection on the transition from a unipolar world order to an emerging multipolar, or more precisely tripolar, configuration of global power. The book is interpreted not as an academic treatise, but as a geopolitical diagnosis written from the perspective of a state located at the intersection of resource competition, external pressure, and the struggle for sovereignty. The review shows that Padrino López places Venezuela’s experience within a broader transformation of international relations, where sovereignty is no longer merely a legal principle but a condition of survival and strategic autonomy.Particular attention is paid to several key themes of the book: the erosion of the unipolar order, the return of territory and strategic geography to global politics, the growing significance of artificial intelligence as a factor of power, and the author’s concept of four “umbrellas” of state power — nuclear capability, economic and financial capacity, energy resources, and technological superiority. The review also analyzes Padrino López’s idea of tripolarity, centered on the United States, Russia, and China, as a more accurate description of the current international system than the broader and less specific notion of multipolarity.The authors emphasize the relevance of the book for understanding Latin American geopolitical thought, which differs from Western traditions of power projection. In this perspective, strength is understood not primarily as the capacity to dominate others, but as the ability to avoid becoming an object of external will. The review concludes that Padrino López’s work should be read as a warning about the costs of preserving global dominance in a changing world and as a contribution to the intellectual tradition of Latin American resistance, sovereignty, and regional autonomy.
This article examines how emotions are conceptualized and mobilized in the foreign policy of the European Union. Starting from the affective turn in the social sciences, the author reviews scholarship that treats the EU as both a normative actor and a potential "emotional actor."The focus is not emotions as individual states, but emotional norms: socially expected affective responses to violations of political, legal, or moral norms. The article asks which areas of EU foreign policy have been studied through this lens, what methods and theories researchers use, and whether collective emotions can anticipate EU decisions. The analysis covers studies of genocide recognition, security, armed conflicts, migration, European identity, climate policy, and sanctions, and compares their conclusions with opinion surveys in EU member states in 2022-2025. Special attention is paid to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Israel's military operation in Gaza, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The article shows that EU institutions seek to create a supranational emotional community, or emotional regime, in which member states share a common understanding of norms, their violation, and the need for collective action. The findings are ambivalent. In the case of Ukraine, fear, insecurity, anger, sympathy, and solidarity have helped legitimize sanctions, humanitarian assistance, support for refugees, and stronger defense cooperation, although public support varies across countries and declines when the costs of solidarity increase, especially regarding arms deliveries and EU accession. The Gaza case demonstrates that bottom-up emotional mobilization does not necessarily produce an equally coherent EU response. The Nagorno-Karabakh case reveals weaker emotional resonance and highlights pragmatic constraints, including energy dependence and geopolitical interests. The article concludes that emotions matter because they participate in the construction, interpretation, hierarchy, and enforcement of norms. Yet the EU lacks a unified emotional regime: collective reactions remain uneven and politically selective. Fear and insecurity increasingly push the Union from the identity ofa peaceful normative project toward that of a geopolitical actor with a military component. Monitoring public opinion is therefore useful for predicting shifts in EU foreign policy, but only when national differences, norm hierarchies, and the costs of solidarity are taken into account.
Qasem Soleimani's assassination in January 2020 removed a central broker from Iran's regional security network at a time of intensifying economic, military, and diplomatic pressure. This article asks why Iran's regional policy has operated under increasingly severe strategic constraints in the post-Soleimani period. Drawing on Sprout and Sprout's distinction between perceptual and operational environments, it treats Soleimani not as the sole architect of Iranian regional influence, but as a mediating variable linking elite threat perceptions, institutional resources, and the management of Iran-aligned armed groups. The analysis reconstructs the evolution of Iran's regional policy before and during Soleimani's command and then examines developments after his death, including the US maximum-pressure campaign, the Abraham Accords, declining public legitimacy of the Axis of Resistance in Iraq and Lebanon, the growing leverage of China and Russia, and the regional conflict that followed 7 October 2023. The article advances four findings. First, the principal systemic pressures on Iran pre-dated the assassination. Second, Soleimani's personal authority, cross-institutional networks, and operational experience enabled Tehran to mobilise resources, coordinate allied groups, and deter adversaries more effectively than after his death. Third, his successor was unable to reproduce this personalised mode of command, contributing to greater autonomy and centrifugal behaviour among Iran-aligned groups. Fourth, the postSoleimani constraints are visible in Iran's declining capacity to protect senior partners, preserve political influence in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and translate military presence into diplomatic leverage. The assassination was therefore not the original cause of Iran's regional difficulties; it acted as a catalyst that magnified existing vulnerabilities and accelerated Tehran's shift from assertive forward defence towards selective de-escalation and strategic patience.
Book review: Ackrén M. 2025. Foreign Policy in Greenland: 20 Years of Development. London: Routledge. 112 p. ISBN: 9781003387657. DOI: 10.4324/9781003387657
This article examines the deepening of strategic alignment between Russia and China through the lens of comprehensive energy cooperation. It provides a systematic analysis of the current state, structural foundations, and long-term prospects of Russian-Chinese interaction in the energy sector, situating this partnership within the broader transformation of the international political and economic order. The study identifies a combination of internal and external drivers that account for the growing intensity and institutionalization of bilateral cooperation. Internal factors include the complementary structure of the two economies: Russia's substantial resource base, technological competencies in conventional and nuclear energy, and expanding transport infrastructure, alongside China's industrial scale, investment capacity, and rising energy demand. External conditions-most notably the fragmentation of global markets, the politicization of economic interdependence, sanctions pressure, and heightened geopolitical competition-have accelerated the reconfiguration of trade, financial, and logistical flows, reinforcing the strategic logic of closer bilateral coordination. The article argues that the deepening of strategic alignment between Russia and China constitutes a structural response to the geopolitical, economic, and energy challenges of the twenty-first century. Energy cooperation functions not merely as a sectoral dimension of bilateral relations but as a systemic pillar underpinning economic resilience, energy security, and technological development in both countries. Large-scale infrastructure projects, diversification of export routes, settlement mechanisms in national currencies, and collaboration in nuclear and renewable energy illustrate the institutional consolidation of this alignment. The study concludes that the progressive development of Russian-Chinese energy cooperation will significantly influence the evolution of the emerging multipolar international system. By enhancing mutual interdependence on a pragmatic and mutually beneficial basis, the partnership contributes to greater stability amid global uncertainty while enabling both states to strengthen their sovereign positions within a transforming world order.
Scientific and technological interaction between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s constituted a complex and strategically significant dimension of the final stage of the Cold War. This article examines the transformation of U.S.-Soviet scientific exchanges during the first presidential term of Ronald Reagan (1981-1985), situating them within the broaderframeworkof renewed geopolitical confrontation and technological rivalry.The study is based on digitized materials from the U.S. Department of State, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, CIA records, and unpublished documents from the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. Special attention is devoted to contacts between the USSR Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which functioned as a semi-autonomous channel of dialogue even at the height of political tensions. The article demonstrates that, contrary to later triumphalist interpretations, the Reagan administration initially lacked a coherent long-term strategy toward the Soviet Union. While prioritizing military modernization and technological superiority as key instruments of containment, it did not fully sever scientific ties. Instead, a selective approach emerged: several intergovernmental agreements were suspended, yet cooperation in medicine and environmental protection was preserved, and informal academic exchanges continued. A central argument of the article is that American scientific institutions played an independent and influential role in resisting attempts by conservative officials to impose sweeping secrecy restrictions and curtail academic freedom.The debates over national security versus openness revealed structural tensions within U.S. policy. Ultimately, by the mid-1980s, the administration acknowledged the strategic value of maintaining limited scientific dialogue as both a source of technological insight and a political "window of opportunity" in relations with Moscow. The article concludes that scientific exchanges did not determine the outcome of the Cold War but formed an important arena in which technological competition, diplomacy, and academic autonomy intersected.
This article examines the preparation, course, and consequences of the official visit of Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Aleksei N. Kosygin to Canada in October 1971. Drawing on published materials and previously unpublished documents from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of the Economy, the study reconstructs both the public and the substantive political dimensions of the visit and situates it within the broader context of early d & eacute;tente. The article demonstrates that the visit represented a culmination of the gradual normalization and intensification of Soviet-Canadian relations in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It analyzes the strategic calculations of both sides, showing that while Moscow and Ottawa shared an interest in expanding political dialogue and economic cooperation, they pursued different priorities. The Trudeau government sought to diversify Canada's foreign policy in accordance with the "Third Option,"enhance the country's international visibility, and secure reliable export markets for Canadian grain. The Soviet leadership, in turn, viewed closer ties with Canada primarily as an instrument of broader geopolitical strategy: promoting European security initiatives, supporting arms control efforts, advancing its position on the German question, and contributing to the gradual erosion of Western bloc cohesion. Economic considerations-particularly grain imports and selective access to Western technology-played an important but secondary role. Special attention is devoted to the confidential discussions between Kosygin and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the negotiation of bilateral agreements, and the symbolic and domestic dimensions of the visit, including public reactions and protest activity. The study argues that the 1971 visit marked a high point in Soviet-Canadian relations and became one of the significant diplomatic episodes of the d & eacute;tente era. The momentum generated by this exchange shaped bilateral contacts throughout the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, even as relations remained influenced by the broader dynamics of Soviet-American interaction.
This article examines previously unpublished typescripts by Alexander A.Troyanovs-ky, the first Soviet Ambassador to the United States (1933-1938), preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). The corpus, comprising 661 manuscript pages, is devoted to the biography and political course of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and constitutes an important yet understudied source for the history of Soviet-American relations and Soviet interpretations of U.S. politics during and immediately after the Second World War. The first group of documents includes the article President Franklin Roosevelt, initially drafted by Troyanovsky in late 1942 for the literary journal Znamya. Subsequent revisions involved Konstantin A. Umansky, Troyanovsky's successor as head of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Washington and an official of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID). Umansky's handwritten comments and editorial interventions provide valuable insight into the interaction between the author's personal interpretation and the official Soviet line in wartime assessments of Roosevelt's political leadership. They also help clarify the likely reasons for the journal's refusal to publish the article. The second group of materials consists of three archival files documenting the preparation of a book on Roosevelt for the biographical series The Lives of Remarkable People (ZhZL) in 1947-1948.These sources illuminate the editorial process and reveal divergences between the author's perspective and the ideological expectations of the late Stalinist period. The study situates these materials within the broader framework of Soviet historical policy and editorial control. It also reconstructs the probable chronological sequence of the six surviving versions of the Znamya typescript, as the archival pagination does not correspond to the actual stages of revision.
This article analyzes the prospects for establishing an Arctic gas trading hub as the foundation of a new, sovereign system for the export and pricing of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG). The study is conducted against the backdrop of two interrelated processes: the structural transformation of global gas markets and the intensification of sanctions pressure on Russia’s energy sector.The global gas trading system has evolved from rigid long-term oil-indexed contracts toward a more flexible architecture characterized by spot transactions, short-term contracts, financial derivatives, and hub-based competitive “gas-to-gas” pricing. Gas hubs have emerged as key institutional nodes linking physical and futures markets and generating price benchmarks that increasingly determine international trade flows. In this context, Russia’s traditional export model—heavily reliant on long-term contracts and external pricing benchmarks—has become less adaptive to market volatility and more vulnerable to geopolitical disruptions.The article argues that the Russian Arctic, particularly the Murmansk area, possesses the logistical, infrastructural, and institutional preconditions necessary for the formation of a benchmark-oriented gas hub. The concentration of Arctic LNG production, the development of transshipment infrastructure, the availability of an ice-free deep-water port, and integration with the Northern Sea Route create the potential to accumulate significant primary liquidity. A Murmansk-based hub operating on an FOB basis could facilitate spot trading, enhance price flexibility, and reduce dependence on Western trading platforms. The introduction of a deliverable LNG futures contract—on SPIMEX or within a future BRICS Unified Energy Exchange—is proposed as a mechanism to integrate spot and derivatives markets and establish a regional price benchmark.The study concludes that the creation of an Arctic gas hub would strengthen the resilience, transparency, and competitiveness of Russian LNG exports, contribute to greater pricing sovereignty, and support the long-term development of Arctic mineral resource centers under conditions of global market restructuring and geopolitical fragmentation.
