The article explores the controversial thesis that the United States strategically and consistently maneuvers against the emergence of regional hegemons across the globe. Whether it is Russia in the former Soviet space, China across the South China Sea, the United States works to disallow the expression of regional hegemonic power despite its own continued reliance on its global hegemony being accepted. The author goes to the heart of power positioning and exploitation in the 21st century: is the emergence of regional hegemons disruptive to the global system or benefi cial? Is the United States’ concerns altruistic or selfi shly motivated by its own national security interests and global infl uence? Does it matter who is trying to wield regional infl uence? These and other questions are addressed, providing a new approach to understanding how power is being wielded today and for the foreseeable future.

In the circumstances of growing international tensions, changes in interrelations between Russia and different European states, it is of urgent demand to study concrete strategies that are connected with defence and security of leading European states. These strategies present the following information: self-positioning of a state in the world, defining of key partners, dangers, risks, resources to develop military sphere and ideology of foreign policy activities. The European Union is still one of the most important economic partners of Russia, at the same time our partnership is limited by mutual. Besides that, we witness growth of anti-Russian declarations and actions. This situation makes us develop analysis of interstate relations considering such criteria as military and political resources, coalitions, positioning of a state. Here, of particular importance is the understanding of the national interests of the states, both in the broad context of international relations and in relation to Russia. In addition, it is the analysis of strategic documents that makes it possible to correctly solve the security dilemma by analyzing the choice made by the state between rivalry and cooperation.

Taking into account the traditional historical experience and current events, it can be said that the positions of France and Great Britain lined up the construction of Europe. It is no coincidence that now it is France, and not Germany, which is proposing military-strategic initiatives for the European Union. And the UK is still conducting a selection of initiatives, seeking to preserve the status of a state that ensures European security. It is especially interesting to compare the strategies of these states in the context of Brexit.

In the article, the authors compare documents in the field of security and defense of Great Britain and France, specifically: the tasks, tools and “image of the world” that are advanced in the military-political doctrines and strategies of the countries. These data are necessary for understanding the development of Europe as a whole in the field of security and defense, the directions of projecting the positions indicated in the doctrines on interaction with Russia and other key international players.

The article is devoted to the study of Russian-Chinese relations at the present stage. The relations under consideration are dynamic, which is expressed in regular contacts at the highest level, cooperation in the international arena, including within the framework of international and regional organizations, trade and economic, humanitarian relations, common projects in the fi eld of military cooperation, etc. In this regard, the study and analysis of external and internal factors that contributed to the emergence, development, cooling, resumption and, ultimately, the formation of strategic partnership relations are important for the possible consideration of the Russian Federation in building further foreign policy relations with China and preventing previous mistakes.

The authors studied and analyzed the defi ning directions and features of Russian-Chinese foreign policy relations, both in the historical context and at the present stage of development. In particular, the main periods in the development of bilateral relations are identifi ed; the factors that infl uenced the change of foreign policy strategies of the Russian Federation and the people's Republic of China are analyzed; the author reveals the nature of Russian-Chinese cooperation at the present stage, characterizes its role and importance both for regional policy and in the light of ongoing international processes, including in the fi eld of international security; identifi es possible risks that may adversely affect the nature of foreign policy cooperation between Russia and China.

In conclusion, an attempt was made to formulate a possible forecast for the development of Russian-Chinese foreign policy relations, taking into account the current geopolitical situation in the world, as well as taking into account factors that can lead to contradictions between the two countries.

Active involvement in Middle East affairs has become one of the key trends of the Russian foreign policy in the current decade. Given the highly competitive nature of engagement context of the Middle East, Russia has to constantly look for a balance in relations with the rivaling countries of the region. Iran and Israel are those states with relations fi t well into the Cold War picture. Despite this fact, Russia manages to maintain a fairly high level of relations with both states. However, such maneuvering has its limits. The purpose of the article is to explore the main determinants of the importance of Iran and Israel in Russian foreign policy and key constraints of cooperation of Russia with those states at the present stage. The article uses the ideas of (neo) realism and (neo) liberalism. Methodologically, the study relies on a comparative method and the systems approach that makes it easier to establish correlations between external and internal foreign policy elements when refl ecting on their impact on a state’s foreign policy. The main results of the study include the following. Firstly, it has been established that Iran’s place in contemporary Russian foreign policy is determined primarily by situational factors, while Israel’s similar position is determined also by longer-term determinants based on historical, religious, ethnic, political and economic foundations. In the case of Israel, situational geopolitical and economic determinants are complemented by a relatively long-term human factor ‒ resources and capabilities of the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora. Secondly, it is shown that, despite the high level of Russia's cooperation with Iran and Israel at the present stage, there are a number of factors that limit the formation of strategic cooperation between them. The key constraints in this context in RussianIranian relations are еру problem of unresolved legal status of the Caspian Sea, Russia's “all-azimuth” strategy in the Middle East, Moscow’s concerns about Iran’s growing regional infl uence and its ability to diversify energy supply routes from Central Asia to Europe and the last but not least is the negative impact of rapprochement with Iran on relations with Western states. The key factors hindering the strategic nature of RussianIsraeli relations include not only the allied nature of Israel’s relations with the United States, but also Russia’s position on a Middle East settlement, Moscow’s expanding engagement with the Palestinian National Administration and relations with Iranian backed – labeled terrorist by Tel-Aviv – military groups in the region. And thirdly, based on an analysis of a combination of factors, it is concluded that Russia’s relations with Iran and Israel cannot be strategic, since some determinants of the signifi cance of these states in modern Russian foreign policy at the same time appear to be constraints towards a closer cooperation within this triangle.

The article presents a comparative analysis of the stages of the negotiation process between the United States and the Taliban. The different positions of the B. Obama and D. Trump administrations towards the Afghan peace process are also compared. The relevance of this study is determined by necessity to adequately assess the possibilities of Russia's participation in the settlement of the Afghan confl ict, taking into account the increase of its role in Afghan affairs. Demonstrating the evolution of the US approach to contacts with the Taliban, the author draws attention to the unwillingness of the Taliban to seek compromises. At the fi rst stage of the negotiation process, the Taliban, waiting for the US plan for the full withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, were ready to discuss only exchange of prisoners and the delisting of the Taliban from the UN sanctions list. At the second stage, discussions ended with illusory promises of the ceasefi re, the intra-afghan dialogue and the provision of guarantees that terrorists would not use Afghanistan against the United States, but the Taliban’s demand for the speedy withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan remained unchanged. Despite exhortations of the United States, offi cial Afghan authorities had every reason to consider themselves excluded from the negotiation process. Ultimately, Americans declared that the draft of the agreement was ready. However, the US president refused to continue negotiations with the Taliban, as the fi nal version of the agreement indicated that the Taliban were not yet ready to abandon contacts with al-Qaeda and provide all the necessary guarantees regarding the non-use of Afghan territory by foreign terrorists. The author points out errors made by the Trump administration in planning and conducting negotiations with the Taliban. The results of the study can be used by the profi le department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the practical implementation of the foreign policy course of the Russian Federation in the Afghan direction.

Japan – U.S. relations, which are of great importance for the both countries as well as for international relations in North-East Asia and the Indo-Pacifi c, have experienced signifi cant changes in recent years. While continuing to maintain close military-political alliance with the United States and recognize unconditionally its leadership regarding the choice of strategic course and priorities, Japan is increasingly promoting its own regional policy agenda and its vision of national interests. The main task of its government, headed by Shinzo Abe, is a kind of «rebranding» Japan in political terms as a «normal» country void of negative historical heritage with the ability to employ a full set of foreign policy tools and promote its interests on a regional scale. The said task brings about new accents in Japan’s relations with the USA in the sphere of security, in solving regional political problems and regulating mutual trade and investment. At the same time, bilateral relations are viewed by Japan as a complex set where some elements can be used as a tool or traded as parts of a package deal to secure a comprehensive solution.

The United States, for its part, is focusing on maintaining its role as the undisputed leader, trying to neutralize Japan’s attempts to break the framework of the established hierarchical order and change the logic of bilateral relations to that of trading concessions and optimizing complex network balance.

Since the change of presidential administration in the US in 2017 there has been a marked decay of long-established consensus on the desirability of further liberalization of international trade and investment through multilateral agreements and frameworks. Like other countries, Japan faced a persistent drive by Trump administration to withdraw from them in favor of bilateral agreements on managed and balanced trade. Japan’s government had to give in to the US pressure and begin negotiations on a bilateral trade agreement designed to reduce imbalance of trade fl ows between the two countries through policy steps to be taken mainly by the Japanese side.

The Balkans remain a zone of strategic vulnerability. The aggravation of the latter has been defi ned by the struggle of the leading actors of world politics for the southern European country which has been for the time being relatively neutral in political and military senses, i.e. Serbia. Despite serious upheavals of the turn of the twenty-fi rst century (the destruction of Yugoslavia, NATO bombings, the “divorce” with Montenegro and the creation of the “Republic of Kosovo”) Belgrade has been managing to balance between two major poles of attraction – EU-NATO and Russia, which fi ts into the concept of multivectorness. Given all geographic, historical, cultural and economic predetermination of European integration its fi nal choice by Serbia is burdened by two essentially important moments – the need to recognize the “Republic of Kosovo” and the inclusion in the military and political framework of the NATO. Moreover, the fi rst issue brings substantial political and civilizational risks both for the Western Balkans and the whole of the European Union, let alone a serious internal split of the Serbian society in relation to the possibility of recognizing the Albanian new formation. A natural counterweight to the Euro-Atlanticist pressure on Belgrade is Russia which has unique image possibilities and unlike the EU does not pretend to play the role of an “empire by invitation”. The situation becomes more complicated by the fact that the existing historical dualism of multivectorness is being disrupted by the emergence in the Balkans of a new player – China. By solely economic levers Beijing has been solving strategic problems of penetration to European markets and simultaneously smoothly, but sequentially has been superseding Russia as Serbia’s main alternative of the West. Analyzing the tactics of the economic measures of Chinese companies the article concludes that there has been growing a concealed competition between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation for the place of the main nonEuropean actor not only in Serbia, but in the Balkans as a whole. In such circumstances the preservation of the policy of multivectorness (despite all criticism of the concept) can serve Serbia as the way out of the impasse of strategic vulnerability, i.e. to preserve in the short-term the prospect of the status quo of political, military and strategic neutrality.

The EU and Russia – as exponents of the developed world – both encounter challenges, opportunities and threats which come with one of the most important global phenomena at the turn of the millennium: migration. There are some common challenges as well as some differences regarding the migration issue. This paper elaborates on the different approaches and needs, differences in types of migrants, and contrasts the experience of the EU with Russia’s historical and cultural background in order to achieve a better understanding of today’s migration dilemma. The author concludes by highlighting the common threats to national security as a possible way of establishing a better partnership. The comparative method was used as well as the statistical and logical method of research. As a conditional limitation of the comparison between the EU and Russia it must be noted that it is not completely appropriate to compare a single country with an integrative union of several countries. Moreover, migration, globally is multidimensional. The main conclusion of the article is that there are three major differences: different migration challenges and needs (1), different types of migrants (2), and different migration histories and patterns embedded in different political constellations (3). Yet, they have some challenges in common, such as the security challenge, which asks for a worldwide cooperative approach.

There is no conceptual analysis of the Russia’s pivot to East while a lot of discussion about nature and consequences of this geopolitical maneuver among both Russian and foreign analysts. The article based on the analysis of Russian official program documents explores the key aspects of the Russia`s reorientation to Asia policy. Authors view the policy in the context of three global processes: 1) participation of Russia in global competition towards reconfiguration of global order; 2) Russian strategy for reintegration of post-Soviet space and its interaction with alternatives projects for post-Soviet integration; 3) diversification of political and economic ties of Russia with its West/East partners. According to the authors’ conclusions, the ‘pivot to East’ process is unfolding in several dimensions simultaneously. Current geopolitical reconfiguration is the result of long-term processes which closely related with main geopolitical and internal priorities of Moscow, and this gives the reasons for vision of the pivot to East as sustainable rising tendency, which will independent from current and short-run processes in the international affairs. The factors, which directly led Russia to this policy, were rapprochement with China, building of cooperation and integration infrastructure with Asia-Pacific and post-Soviet Central Asia countries, diversification of energy resources trade with the purposes of avoid dependency from monopsonic European market.

This paper seeks to find out how the European Union operates from an administrative point of view and what set of tools has become necessary to implement the policy objectives of the European Union. The first part of the paper presents the specific features of the European Union in relation to the Member State administrative systems, and what the common organizing principles are that ensure the functioning. In the two-tier administrative system, the Commission should provide for the proper application and implementation of the Treaties and other measures. However, the actual implementers thereof are mostly the Member States, therefore, the administrative bodies are of special importance in actually enforcing EU law at local and member state level. The EU needs different tools in order to operate this huge mechanism. The first part of our study intends to present this set of tools, in this context, the infringement procedure, the complaint procedures and petition cases that can be initiated by EU citizens and businesses, and the so-called other problem-solving tools such as SOLVIT or the European Consumer Centres Network will also be analysed. The second part of the study deals with the way of EU implementation, i.e. the EU administrative procedure: the complex EU administrative system currently operates under heterogeneous procedural rules and there is no uniform procedural law. Given the a priori complex EU administrative structure and the diverse regulatory environment, it is not surprising that the demand for changes and unification has emerged in this area in recent years. The second part of the study presents the objectives and challenges of this task. The third part of the study summarizes the area covered within the framework of the compilation and makes proposals on the relevant issues of the Member States’ administrative systems affecting the European Union.

The economic crisis in Spain that began in 2008 led to the deep social discontent that later turned into the movement of «Indignant», citizens tiered of economic restrictions, unemployment, corruption scandals. That movement brought new political parties to the traditional bipolar Spanish political system, destroying it and showing to the establishment that the country needs urgent measures to be taken. The non-confi dence motion showed the inability of the mainstream parties to solve the existing problems that collapse the country. That helped a lot to the appearance of a new populist party called Podemos that offered immediately simple solutions to the national economic challenges. Unfortunately and logically becoming the third party in Spain didn’t help to Podemos to solve all the current problems and it was obliged to give way to another young party – Ciudadanos. The party that originally was created to defend the rights of Spanish people in Catalonia soon realized the need to reach the national scale to be heard and for this purpose created a program of social and economic reforms for the whole country. The study sets out to analyze the reasons of the success of new Spanish parties as well as to compare their programs and watch the new vector of political evolution in Spain.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the social meanings of the network communicative activity of the parties of the Spanish-Catalan confl ict in a specific direction – in discussions about tweets of leading EU politicians. The relevance of the presented study is determined, on the one hand, by the increased infl uence of social media on political life, and, on the other hand, by the need to understand political confl icts not only as confl icts of interest, but also as confl icts of social meanings and ideas. The article discusses and interprets the meanings of two social communities ̃ supporters of the independence of Catalonia and supporters of the unity of Spain, implied in the communication carried out using the social network Twitter. The analysis is based on an empirical study of twitter messages by the method of quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The main socio-political attitudes of the parties to the confl ict, expressed in remarks on tweets of representatives of the EU leadership, are examined. The time interval of the study covers two years ̃ from May 2017 to June 2019. Based on an analysis of the level of communication activity of network users, it was revealed that the supporters of the independence of Catalonia act as a more active and cohesive social community, compared with the supporters of the unity of Spain. They have clear ideas about the political situation in the country and the region, as well as expressed ideological principles. This allows us to conclude that there is a narrative of independent Catalonia formed in public opinion. However, the meanings concerning the problems of social relations in the country and the region, arising in the light of the requirements of independence, remain in the shadow of communication. The passive nature of the participation of supporters of the unity of Spain in network communication in this area, as well as the content of their remarks, indicates the absence of a formed social base of supporters of unity, both among the inhabitants of Catalonia and among the rest of the Spanish citizens. This may be due to ideological lag, in which supporters of the country's unity are guided by outdated ideological stereotypes that are not able to unite them into a real social community with a certain political worldview. According to the findings of the study, it is precisely the ideas of the parties to the confl ict about social relations in the country that are their weak link that does not allow reaching a new level of political compromise or consensus.

Taxation in the modern society has become to play role of one of important and efficient instruments of the State in carrying out its social and economic policy. Eminent French scholar Maurice Duverger wrote shortly after the middle of the 20th century in his famous book “Public Finances” that the tax “ceases to be the grain of sand that interferes with the gears in order to become one of the regulators and engines of the machine. The tax levies on prices and incomes do not only aim to cover the expenses of the State apparatus, but to ensure a certain correction and a certain orientation of the mechanisms of the market. The “interventionist” goal is thus added to the “financial” goal; the tax becomes an essential instrument of the economic policy of the State, and also of its social policy (action on the income by the taxation). The conclusions made by M. Duverger do not lose their relevance today. There is neither need nor necessity to prove or explain that charitable activity helps the State, where it unfolds, to resolve social problems. By means of taxation States offer incentives to support tendencies consistent with their preferences in social policy and put constraints in order to impede tendencies, which are considered to be undesirable. Of course, with change of a Government preferences and undesirability may shift, however Governments act on behalf of their States. So, a taxation goal to maintain by collective efforts a State, which seemed to be unique in the times of Adam Smith, who wrote that “the necessary expence of any great and civilized state… must, the greater part of it, be defrayed by taxes of one kind or another” (with his four maxims [principles] “with regard to taxes in general” – equity understanding as proportionality [“the subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities”]; certainty as opposing to arbitrary actions [“the time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person”]; convenience for the contributor [“the tax is levied at the time when it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay; or, when he is most likely to have wherewithal to pay”]; economical approach [“every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state”]), is added by a taxation goal to regulate economic and social State policies. Therefore, it is taken into consideration in the present article that any contemporary State uses taxation as a regulatory tool in the sphere of charitable activity.