The article compares the forecasts concerning trends in world politics of the early 21st century created by Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington and Immanuel Wallerstein. Though none of the forecasts was completely accurate, all of them spoke of the tendencies that could be later observed in world politics. Despite many experts criticized Fukuyama’s concept of the ‘end of history’, Western elites had been making foreign policies of their countries in accordance with the concept until recently.
The article explains how such policies came to contradict contemporary state of affairs. In accordance with Huntington’s expectations, the role of civilizational factor in world politics of the early 21st century signifi cantly grew compared to previous periods. However, the character of civilizational factor’s infl uence on political processes appeared to be different compared to what Huntington expected. The article underlines the accuracy of Wallerstein’s forecast concerning the consequences of mass South-North migration. At the same time, the article concludes, his forecast, likewise the other two, also requires adaptation to contemporary situation in societal development.

The end of the Cold War heralded a new era as Western soft power was at its zenith in Eastern Europe and regional states accepted and institutionalized a new EuroAmerican ethos. In contrast, Russian soft power was at its lowest point as the Soviet Union imploded, leaving fi fteen newly independent states. While Russia was still the most powerful nation in the region, it lacked competence to deploy soft power and was unable to culturally infl uence its neighbors. Russia had to regain its footing and sought to redefi ne its own national identity prior to being able to build and project its soft power. Thus, Russia turned inward to nineteenth century works in philosophy and literature while Western soft power and expansionism continued to draw closer to Russia’s borders. As Moscow regrouped, it created institutions to spread its message both regionally and globally and expanded its communication prowess. Russia realized that while its national identity might be grounded within its Slavic roots and Russian exceptionalism, the only way it could effectively counter Western soft power was to point out the hypocrisy of American and European governmental policies. Rather than generating a positive projection of cultural and political attractiveness, Russia fought the spread Euro-American soft power by directly challenging it and showed that the Western political ethos ultimately was selfcontradictory and also worked to destroy traditional values.

The article focuses on the theoretical and practical explanations of political and economic processes in the “post-Western” international reality. Proceeding from the assumptions of the complex system theory, the authors prove the necessity to use already established analytical approaches in combination with the newly developed ones to be able to understand and forecast the spatial-temporal evolution of the international system as a complex system. International political economy and world regional studies now investigate the empirical aspects of working out the most competitive and simultaneously most stable socio-political and politicaleconomic model of development. These studies also search for the ways national versions of development can become closer to this model and analyze to what extent regional/national models may differ from it without losing their international competitiveness. Exploring the evolution of the international system and political and economic transformations in the world leading states the authors conclude that a polycentric world cannot sustain a growing geopolitical confrontation and struggle for the geopolitical infl uence over the buffer areas. The polycentric international system requires a consensual elaboration of mutually benefi cial regional policies aimed at building transregional links between various regional areas. Reducing the instability in its regional and national segments the international system will move towards its overall greater stability. The authors further support this assumption analyzing transregional projects in Eurasia and the AsiaPacific region.

Regionalism as an international phenomenon dates back to post-WWII decades. It is well studied both in theoretical and practical perspective. It is quite clear to most researchers what the “old” or “new” regionalism is, and what kind of logic stands behind it. However, the classic theory of regionalism does not explain contemporary processes of interregional and transregional integration, which we witness today. A common point of the three approaches (namely, regionalism, interregionalism and transregionalism) is that all of them are related to globalization. Each of these approaches constitutes a response to globalisation’s challenges, which varies from region to region. Nevertheless, their aims and scope differ greatly. Regionalism represents interstate and transnational co-operation within an international region. It is derived from the logic of institutionalized interactions that may take a range of forms—from regular consultations on the ministerial level to creation of supranational bodies and common policies. Interregional co-operation implies institutionalized agreements between states representing two or more regions, which can act either on their own (i.e. quasi-interregionalism, or hybrid interregionalism) or as a part of a regional organization / informal regional group of states. The logic of interregionalism dwells on the wish for widening the geographic scope of economic interaction by opening new regional markets. Transregional cooperation, on the contrary, is promoted primarily by political factors, such as the wish of some states, which share common values, to unite their efforts in order to play a greater role in global governance. It is argued that the study of regionalism, interregionalism and transregionalism can make an essential contribution to the development of the contemporary theory of international relations.

The decision of US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership and the sluggish negotiations on Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have fueled the debate on the future trajectories of American foreign policy in its two traditionally strategic geographic avenues – Asia Pacifi c and North Atlantic. The article analyzes the geo-political and geo-economic interests, which were pursued by the Obama administration and underlie TPP and TTIP initiatives, and suggests the outcomes of President Trump’s decision as well as the possible alternatives.
Given the strategic US interests, its global positioning and the current trends of world politics, Donald Trump’s policy can be regarded as a reconsideration of the above-mentioned projects on the basis of bilateral negotiations and widening network of bilateral economic and trade agreements, rather than the policy of isolationism. In other words, it might be a policy of returning to a hub-and-spoke system of trade zones developed in the second half of the XX century. However, still emerging and competing transregional projects reduce the effectiveness of bilateralism for domestic development of states involved and reduce the international infl uence of outsiders, and that can jeopardize the US leadership.

Ukrainian Crisis of 2014 is crucial for Russian pivot to the East which is considered to be a tool for tackling economic challenges and avoiding diplomatic isolation. Economically, this pivot implies cooperation with AsiaPacific region in trade and energy. Politically, it means closer ties with the states of that region. At the same time, the success of the strategy hinges on the state of affairs in energy and on promoting to Asian markets specifi c goods that turns out to be a constraint for diversifi cation of the Russian economy. Moreover, culturally and social Russia is much closer to Europe than Asia, and that is one more obstacle to “Pivot to the East” strategy realization. However, transregional projects of the recent years, including Chinese initiative “One Belt – One Road” and Russian “Pivot to the East” might be key to enhance the strategic potential of Russia-China cooperation which meets Chinese national interests.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established at the beginning of the XXI century as a new regional intergovernmental organization that embraces such crucial spheres of international relations as security, politics and humanitarian ties. The members-states are economies with transition and developing countries of Central Eurasia.
Being the drivers of the organization, China and Russia have signifi cant infl uence on the SCO. From this perspective, comparing Chinese and Russian strategies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization remains an issue of interest both theoretically and practically

In international relations integration processes and mechanisms are closely related to multilateral order of interactions among actors. Observations over integration activity of non-regional actors in former Soviet area reveals the battle of geopolitical interests being held during already several centuries.
The author believes that EU and US integration activities in Eurasia as well as activities of multilateral institutions under their control are run in quite competitive conditions seen through not only the quantity and volume of investments but also via autonomous ways of their implementation.

Paper presents the data from the study of psychological status of Russian society. As the study has shown a number of psychological parameters (concepts of justice, some political values, the level of infl uence of President Putin in public mentality) preserves rather consistent for a long time. Other indicators are transformed substantially under the infl uence of some factors including elections. Inertial character of the last elections gave tactical victory for authorities but caused political demobilization of Russian society. Respodents’ images of Prime Minister, Presidential Administration, State Duma, governors, municipal power, courts, procurators and political parties substantially declined after 2016 elections. At the same time one could see the increase of the infl uence of the Council of Federation, security agencies and intelligence service. It also should be noticed that a radical views substantially declined as the conservative trend increased. It means that success of the United Russia was proved. At the same time one can speak about a clear growth of the left moods as the growth of the socialist and communist ideas was fi xed in this study. Elections improved the image of authorities: respondents evaluate them more positively now. There is a new trend of decline of traditionally personifi ed images of authority and the growth of the infl uence of political parties and groups though all the parties have lost their infl uence. One can suggest that citizens got used to this party system. The demand to have a formal party representation proves that values of formal democracy have been rooted in mass mentality.

The article analyzes the essence, location, status, and role of the informal BRICS grouping. The authors examine and compare the different points of view on this phenomenon and believe that the comparative and economical approaches that dominate in the contemporary studies of the BRICS are unproductive. While member countries of the Association are experiencing economic slowdown or recession, BRICS is gradually becoming a political phenomenon of the global world.
BRICS is considered the center of an impact of the regional leaders on three continents. A specifi c model of communication of the member countries of the BRICS and their partners is polylogue as one of the methods to solve the problem of equitable participation of all countries of the global world in the process of global governance. In the geopolitical framework of the BRICS and their partners, it is the formation of an extra-American zone of interaction, which will gradually evolve into a Global nonWestern project..

In 1989/1990, major systemic changes have taken place in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe. These changes – as part of the fundamental changes in the world order – have also modifi ed the international relations of most countries in the region: after having been part of the Soviet block for more than four decades, they turned towards the West, and tied themselves to different elements – integrations and organisations – of the Euro-Atlantic structure. In this article, we observe this process through the case of Hungary, presenting an overview of the country’s historical and present international relations and objectives. The analysis leads us to the conclusion that the complexity of the relations justifi es a transregionalist approach..

Nowadays the EAEU seeks to integrate itself into the global economy as one of its regional economic centers. Developing ties with other regional integration groups corresponds the EAEU’s interests and facilitates the polycentric structure of the emerging world order. In this respect, in 2016 on the sidelines of the third Russia-ASEAN Summit Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to develop stronger relations between the EAEU and ASEAN as well as to form a greater Eurasian partnership encompassing the EAEU, the SCO and ASEAN. While geographically vast, these projects lack conceptual underpinning. It is deemed that transregionalism – an international phenomenon which is insuffi ciently explored by both Western and Russian scholars, can provide a crucial theoretical foundation for these initiatives. The author compares the mechanisms which ASEAN employs to promote transregional cooperation with the EU, MERCOSUR and the GCC as well as within the frameworks of such dialogue platforms as ASEM and FEALAC. The author suggests that EAEU-ASEAN relations should be analyzed from the viewpoint of a classic transregionalism, while a greater Eurasian partnership seen as an example of a broader one. The results of the analysis are instrumental in laying out practical recommendations for the EAEU in carrying out its transregional agenda.

This article examines the widely held presumption that in the light of the recent uptick in tension between Russia and the West, a Russian-Chinese alliance has emerged to challenge the United States and its allies. The essay will inquire whether Beijing can truly be regarded as a Russian ally or whether China’s rise rather represents a threat to vested Russian interests. Analysis of Sino-Russian policy on a global level will be followed by an examination of their interplay on a more regional level, particularly in Central Asia.

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