The article contains the description of the world political context that influences the evolution of the military-political sphere. The articles of the presented issue are devoted to this analysis. As a methodological framework, it is proposed to use the information introduced into scientific circulation by J. Rosenau in 1990, the concept of turbulence in world politics, which was developed in later literature. For an adequate interpretation of current trends in military policy, it is proposed to take into account the differences between modern conflicts and wars from their previous forms. In particular, it is appropriate to take into account the differences between total and limited wars established in the literature earlier. Another conceptual characteristic of modern wars is the theory of "world war" formulated in the doctrinal documents of the United States, in which military conflicts and their borders become indistinct, while the opposing sides include both military units and irregular formations. It is noted that for Russia, the security problem is historically a key problem, which is determined by the geopolitical location of an extended land state. The influence of this geopolitical circumstance was reflected in the configuration of Russian statehood with its traditional emphasis on a rigid hierarchy of governance, a strictly vertical decision-making algorithm and the centralization of the territorial structure, as a result of which hierarchization was not just an attribute of the historical evolution of Russia, but an archetypal form of organization of the country’s political space. In the modern world, the matrix of social organization is changing: a network appears next to the hierarchy, which problematizes the lack of alternative hierarchical decision-making algorithm and actualizes the updating of security concepts. 

The article analyzes the recruitment of the heads of law enforcement agencies in Russian regions. The authors collected extensive biographical dataset on all the heads of the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Interior in Russian regions in the post-Soviet period, which made it possible to identify the main patterns for the appointments, transfers among the regions and taking positions in the executive and legislative power bodies and the business after their retirement. The research shows that regional law enforcement agencies are characterized by strictly centralized recruitment that minimizes the ties between the heads of law enforcement services in the regions and local elites. At the same time, few regions with strong local elites and privileged relations with the federal center are able to promote their own representatives to top positions. The study also reveals the formation of clienteles associated with natives of certain areas, whose representatives occupy positions in a large number of federal subjects, as well as in the central office. The research shows that the strengthening of centralization in the law enforcement agencies in Russia is interconnected with the creation of such federal-local clienteles with regional roots and their change when federal heads of law enforcement agencies are replaced which the authors interpret as patronage.

The article is devoted to the comparative case-study of the relations between the Nordic and Baltic countries in 1989-2004 and with Ukraine from 2014 to the present day. The aim of the article is to identify change and continuity trends in Nordic states foreign policies and their tasks towards the post-Soviet space. The research is based on the published sources of the Gorbachev Foundation, documents of the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation and the memoirs of Brigadier General Michael H. Klemmesen, who was in charge of the military cooperation between Denmark and the Baltic countries in the 1990s. During the ending stage of the Cold War and in the context of growing contacts between Northern European states and the newly independent Baltic states, the Nordic balance and the constant interaction of the Nordic countries with the EU and NATO remained highly important. In both cases regarding the support for the Baltic countries during the collapse of the USSR and the weakening of Russia, and with the start of a Special military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the countries of Northern Europe despite the fundamentally different security situations took similar steps to abandon previous prudence, to revise foreign policy and defense concepts and expand cooperation with the EU and NATO as pillars of the Euro-Atlantic community. The main driving force behind providing military assistance to the Ukraine and contemporary Baltic-Scandinavian cooperation remains the same as in 1989-2004 that is to counter Russia and limit its sphere of influence.

This article delves into French contemporary defense policy beginning with the President Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 statements about transitioning to a so-called “military economy.” Since then, the French government has indeed put defense at the top of its priorities taking various steps both within the national borders and in the international arena. The research aims to identify the main characteristics of French defense policy at this stage. Relying on strategic documents and statistical data, the author analyzes the extent of the shifts in three dimensions, including doctrinal, industrial, and operational. Specifically, the study has established that neither the 2022 Strategic Review nor the 2024-2030 Military Planning Law demonstrates any intention to abandon the complex armed forces model despite its shortcomings, or to revise the spectrum of allied partnerships. The increase in the defense budget (doubling in annual terms, accounting for the 2019-2025 law also) is mainly explained by preparations for the planned modernization of the nuclear arsenal. At the same time, French conventional forces will not experience a significant increase, either in personnel numbers or in arms and equipment. Finally, since 2022, there has been no fundamental revision of the military presence in various regions of the world. In the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific, the presence of French forces remains at its previous level; in Western Africa, a reassessment of functions for the deployed contingents is underway without any intention to leave the continent at all. On the European theater there is a gradual buildup of capabilities, which is not so substantial in absolute terms and implemented in correspondence with NATO’s general guidelines. As a result, the article concludes that, despite all the slogans about a new «military economy,» there is still a strong continuity in France’s defense policy; some new features do take place, but the model of military development itself has remained unchanged. The most likely prospect is the continuation of this course, including the deepening of Paris’ ties with partners in the framework of NATO and its global partners, at least until the next presidential elections in 2027.

The aim of the article is to study the military security trends on the ‘northern flank’ of the confrontation between Russia and the collective West. The relevance of this work is due to the further expansion of NATO to the East, expressed in the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance and, accordingly, the creation of new threats. In the conditions of continuing high-intensity armed conflict in the middle of Europe, NATO’s actions can be seen as part of the measures to impose costs on the Russian Federation and stretch the perimeter of its deterrence capabilities. The article also considers the problem of materialisation of perceived threats in the form of practical steps in the field of military development leading to an ‘escalation vortex’, and suggests directions of possible negative consequences minimisation for national and international security because of NATO actions. For response measures, it is proposed to take into account the limited (primarily mobilisation and military-technical) resources (currently more crucial to fulfill the tasks of the Special Military Operation), as well as to limit escalation threats under the situation of intensive security dilemma implementation.

This article examines the impact of new formats of nuclear cooperation launched by the United States with its allies on the international nonproliferation regime established by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The two examples of such cooperation outlined in this article are the AUKUS partnership between Australia, United Kingdom and Untitled States that involves transfer to Canberra of a large amount of highly-enriched uranium for use in nuclear-powered submarines, as well as the extended deterrence between the United States and the Republic of Korea. This material presents the analysis of how (if at all) these initiatives are compatible with the NPT and what the most problematic elements are in each case in relation to the Treaty and its regime. It derives from the research that has been conducted that the new formats of United States’ nuclear cooperation are undermining the NPT regime and its international standing. As a result of such cooperation the NPT loses its unique international legal core that for more than half a century has allowed to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons. The norms that lied in the basis of the Treaty are also being eroded. Such tendencies create a completely new environment and inevitably affect security calculus of other States Parties to the NPT. Against this backdrop further decrease of the political weight of the Treaty cannot be excluded, together with its role in upholding international peace and stability. Such transformations may require a brand new look at and approach to the international nonproliferation regime in the future.

The "Zeitenwende" announced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2022 has seriously altered the German domestic political debate. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, German politicians have begun to put the issue of their own country’s defense capability as one of the central topics of internal political discussion. The changes in the public debate provide a new perspective on the current trends in the political landscape, the changing balance of power and the prioritization of various topics in domestic politics. The author therefore aims to determine the place of the domestic German debate on military-political issues. For this purpose, the first objective of the article is to examine the evolution of the German public discourse around military issues, noting its limitations and marginalization. The second task is to study the development after the announced "Zeitenwende" in 2022, focusing on the deliberate politicization of this issue by the leading German parties, which for the first time in recent decades are forced to search for their own niche in military policy. The latest developments since February 2022 are examined through the prism of key party documents and government decrees, as well as public statements of leading politicians. The author assesses the orientation of key actors and the magnitude of their influence on political processes This approach allows to embed the study in the existing body of publications and adds novelty through the analysis of current documents. As a result, the author illustrates how the German military strategy, having become one of the central themes in contemporary German politics, immediately became a “bargaining chip” in the disputes between the parties. 

Despite the multitude of attempts to macrosecuritize nuclear weapons and climate change, none of them has succeeded so far. Existing studies struggle to convincingly explain these failures, which can be attributed both to the general neglect of unsuccessful cases of securitization and to the disparate, ad hoc nature of suggested explanations. Meanwhile, it has been little noticed that, as the discourse of existential threat implies judgements about the potential finitude of objects in time, there is a close link between securitization and temporality. By defining humanity’s time as potentially finite, the attempts to macrosecuritize nuclear weapons and climate change clash with the dominant indefinite temporality of modernity, as well as with the system of sovereign states that depends on indefinite temporality as its ideational condition of possibility. Consequently, macrosecuritizing moves, on the one hand, end up attempting to delegitimize and transform the system of sovereign states. On the other hand, the social structure of this system nudges the actors to ‘eternalize’ nuclear weapons and climate change, that is, to interpret them as compatible with humanity’s indefinite existence in the world. We demonstrate the workings of these ideational mechanisms during the discussions on international control of atomic energy in the 1940s and during the debates on international climate cooperation in 19871992. The cases show how, operating within a state-centric international political structure, policy makers are indeed inclined to ‘eternalize’ global existential threats. 

War as a political and social phenomenon is one of the central subjects in political science and international studies. This is one issue where theory and practice are intertwined most closely and updated most frequently since each new military conflict discovers new facets of war and peace for researchers, military and policy-making circles. This theme nests a number of related disciplines and subtopics some of which have become especially relevant amidst growing interstate rivalry on a global scale and in certain regions of the world. What do “containment” and “escalation” mean today? To what extent is a state’s foreign policy strategy determined by its “strategic culture”? How relevant are the ideas of the great military thinkers of the past to modern and future wars? At the center of all these stories is the issue of the evolution of means of armed struggle: how they are changing and what humanity can come to as a result of the “arrogance of force” of some states. To discuss these and other matters, Comparative Politics Russia sat down with Dr. Kokoshin, one of Russia’s leading experts in the field of military-political, socio-economic and technological aspects of international and national security.