Abstract ▼

The paper deals with the foreign and security policy of the United States of America during the first hundred days of the Biden administration. Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term, the presidential performance at the beginning of the administration has been measured by the first hundred days of a president’s term. The most important intentions about what is to be achieved, the selection of the team, key appointments, and the establishment of the National Security Council System, the most important speeches, and concrete moves towards regional and functional issues, say a lot about what the foreign and security policy of an administration will look like. President Joe Biden is no exception. Moreover, his insistence that the circumstances in which the United States finds itself are a truly “Rooseveltian moment” contributed to the first hundred days of his administration being monitored with special attention. The authors start from the hypothesis that Biden, owing to his experience in government and a good reading of the circumstances in which America and the world find themselves, established a good and functional national security system as well as a clear list of foreign policy priorities. He, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, found the appropriate balance between values and interests, means and goals, pragmatism and principle. The authors conclude that, although the first steps are promising, it remains to be seen whether Biden will reach the highest standards set by his famous predecessor, especially in the face of some unforeseen and unexpected events.

Abstract ▼

By looking into the case of the latest EU health policy reforms, the author analyses whether the European integration theories are equipped for an explanation of integration outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic. The author primarily considers theories that hypothesise crises as a critical factor in integration dynamics, i.e., neofunctionalism and post-functionalism. In the last decade, multiple crises have been hitting the European Union (EU), and there have been many attempts to theorise their impact on European integration. Nevertheless, the answers are far from clear-cut regarding whether crises have been beneficial or detrimental to further integration, either in terms of its scope (widening the EU policy areas and/or membership) or level (increasing the EU institutions\\\' competences and/or capacities). After analysing how the crisis has been handled and the reforms taken in the health policy sector, the author concludes that post-functionalist expectations about the crisis triggering Euroscepticism and identity-driven mass politicisation, thereby precluding further integration, have not materialised so far. On the contrary, the Covid-19 crisis has led to an increase in the EU\\\'s capacities in some essential policy sectors. Health policy is one. So far, this policy has seen reforms that neofunctionalism would call a build-up – a transfer of more authority to supranational institutions without expanding its formal mandate. As neofunctionalism would expect, the coronavirus crisis triggered an elite politicisation that created an environment conducive to further integration rather than disintegrative outcomes.

Abstract ▼

The activities of the United Nations, as the most important international organization, as well as the efforts of certain regional and national organizations, are discussed in this article on the subject of Internet governance. The article pays special attention to the “internet of things,” the increasing use of which causes the emergence of new, dangerous, and serious threats, further complicating the problem of Internet governance. The stated subject of the research is directly related to the aim of the paper, which is to present and analyse the activities of various entities, international, regional and national institutions and organizations, as well as leading states, primarily the United States and Russia, and documents that attempt to regulate activities in cyberspace. The basic hypothesis is that opposing national interests prevent international bodies, particularly the United Nations, from reaching a consensus on the fundamental principles of Internet governance, resulting in insecurity in the face of increasingly frequent, diverse, and serious threats to the Internet and cyberspace in general. Based on the arguments presented in the paper, there have been numerous attempts to regulate Internet governance that have not materialized in concrete decisions implemented in national legislation and practice. Due to the growing dependence on information and communication technologies, the problem of the non-existence of regulations in this area makes the information society even more vulnerable.

Abstract ▼

The paper conducts research on the understanding of war in Russian military thought from 2013 to 2019, during which time General of the Army Valery Gerasimov was (and still is) the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Also, the subject matter of the research study is his personal stimulus to the intensification of the studies of the nature, character, physiognomy and types of contemporary war in the Russian military-scientific community, as well as the theoretical results obtained by Russian authors in that particular field in recent years. Essentially, the research effort made by the author of this paper focuses on the analysis of the formulations used by Russian authors to explain/define the content and scope of the term “war”, as well as the interpretation of the typology of wars devised by some of them. A special reference has been made regarding the understanding of the so-called hybrid war in contemporary Russian military thought. For the purpose of the analysis, studies/monographs or scientific papers published in eminent Russian military scientific or professional journals by the relevant authors (most frequently retired military personnel, primarily those with the rank of colonel or general) from the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were chosen. The research results presented in this paper can be useful to domestic political science, i.e., to the system of military sciences, in the sense of enriching the types of knowledge with respect to the comprehension of war and the potential commencement of the fundamental (according to their essence, partly philosophical) research studies dealing with that topic.

Abstract ▼

The paper points out that there is a way to comprehend the phenomenon of national populism from the perspective of the international relations discipline. Additionally, to provide an interpretation of why national populism occurred in the United States and the European Union after 2014. The emergence of national populism in the United States and the European Union countries has endangered the survival of the liberal-democratic paradox. There are numerous scientific explanations attempting to explain how this phenomenon came about. In this paper, I will reduce these explanations to cultural, economic, and political arguments and arguments about human nature and the long-term logic of modernity. The author argues that these explanations have a research gap since there is no answer to why national populism occurred in 2014 simultaneously in the EU and the United States. As a set of tools in the international relations discipline, the author finds that relationalism provides us with lenses that can open up a space to claim that the simultaneous change, embodied in the emergence of national populism, occurred due to a change in the structure of the everyday. Therefore, the paper consists of an interdisciplinary literature review of relationalism in international relations, everyday nationalism, the influence of algorithmic power and algorithmic politics on the structure of human internet presence, and the existing works that indicate the source of national populism’s emergence. By proving the claims, the author points out the importance of studying processes in order to understand the events and changes in international relations that have occurred since 2014.

Abstract ▼

Following the principles of realist school of international relations we are analysing the shifts in Chinese military budget, military posture and overall modernization of armed forces before and after the American “Pivot” to Asia. These results are later compared to the United Statesʼ foreign policy and military posture in East Asia that had changed in the past decade. Employing Waltʼs theory of balance of threat in the following article we have analyzed the shifts in Chinese military power and how other regional actors’ perceptions had changed during the last two decades of the 21st century. China that began internal balancing at the end of the twentieth century wasnot perceived as a threat to American interests in East Asia, which could potentially alter the regional status quo. The United States along other regional countries didnot perceive Chinese growing military power that was primarily land based, as a factor that should be contained. However, things started to change as Beijing assertiveness in South China Sea alerted other regional actors of Chinese growing naval power and political aspirations. As the research results show, the idea that any kind of balancing can lead to revisionism in the unipolar system is only partially correct concept which can be affected by intensity and nature of balancing politics.