MEĐUNARODNI PROBLEMI

Abstract ▼

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, it became obvious that a host of issues are being fought out within Orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless, we lack deep knowledge of the forces driving these events and how we should understand them. That is why in this paper I propose the concept of an “Orthodox Christian Chessboard,” a model that maps the (geo)political interactions among autocephalous Orthodox Churches as strategic actors within a complex political-religious landscape. As such, this paper conceptualises Orthodox Christian Churches as players in a game-theoretical model, a tool well suited for explaining their behaviour in the international arena. Focusing on the case of the Church autocephaly dispute in North Macedonia, which was finally resolved in 2022, this paper shows that all involved actors behaved rationally and strategically.

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This paper examines the papal discourse of Pope Francis as a site of norm entrepreneurship in contemporary world politics. Drawing on constructivist norm theory, Finnemore and Sikkink’s model of the norm life cycle, and Manners’ concept of normative power as a heuristic framework, it argues that Francis systematically translates Catholic social doctrine into universalistic normative frames—centred on fraternity, solidarity, and a post-secular engagement with the international order— thereby seeking to position the Holy See as a distinctive moral authority in global ethical discourse. The analysis proceeds through a qualitative discourse analysis of key papal documents produced between 2013 and 2025, including the encyclicals Laudato Si’ (2015) and Fratelli Tutti (2020), the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013), the Document on Human Fraternity (Abu Dhabi, 2019), and selected addresses to the United Nations General Assembly and other international forums. Two analytical criteria guide the examination: lexical universalisation—the deployment of non-confessional vocabulary and the language of global rights and shared humanity—and secular accessibility, understood as the extent to which religiously grounded arguments are translated into a normative idiom accessible to secular interlocutors. The paper argues that the novelty of Francis’s pontificate lies not in the substance of the norms it promotes, but in the discursive mechanisms through which Catholic ethical commitments are constructed as globally legible claims—a “discursive double address” that retains theological grounding while aspiring to universal normative resonance. The analysis operates at the level of norm emergence, reconstructing the discursive conditions under which post-secular norm entrepreneurship might become possible, rather than assessing its empirical impact on international normative expectations.

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This article examines how the Office of the High Representative (OHR) has justified interventions affecting fiscal sovereignty in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It focuses on fifteen OHR documents issued between June 7, 2022, and May 12, 2026. Drawing on Stephen Krasner’s concept of organised hypocrisy and Maarten Hajer’s theory of story lines and discourse coalitions, it argues that Christian Schmidt’s fiscal interventions mark a cumulative movement from constitutional-political supervision toward external fiscal governance. Four recurring story lines structure this legitimation: institutional dysfunction, electoral integrity, fiscal responsibility and European integration. The analysis shows that OHR discourse under Schmidt supplements the peace implementation language that has traditionally grounded OHR authority. Fiscal intervention is justified less through the Dayton mandate itself than through the language of European values and governance standards. The article concludes that this produces a sovereignty paradox: values associated with democratic accountability and European integration are invoked to justify practices that sit uneasily with the domestic political capacity those values require.

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The paper explores the impact of artificial intelligence on the transformation of the concept of total defense in the contemporary security environment. Starting from the understanding of total defense as a comprehensive system of societal and institutional resilience, the paper analyzes artificial intelligence as a structural factor that reshapes the organization of defense, decision-making processes, and state action. Through a comparative analysis of the experiences of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, key models for integrating algorithmic systems into national mechanisms of deterrence, crisis management and warfare are identified. The inclusion of artificial intelligence as a structural factor in the concept of total defense transforms its organizational architecture, shifting the focus from the traditional civil–military concept to an integrated system of societal resistance and resistance management of the entire society. Based on these findings, the paper proposals are formulated for a strategic approach to Serbia’s concept of total defense and its transformation into a modern model that integrates political, economic, military, informational and technological capacities into a unique architecture of algorithmic resilience. The aim of the paper is to show how artificial intelligence is becoming the foundation of a new strategic logic of total defense, in which algorithms serves as a catalyst for resilience and deterrence in an era of complex security threats. At the same time, the paper highlights the potential risk of using artificial intelligence in the absence of an adequate legal framework, with emphasizing the need to strengthen social cohesion in terms of trust in institutions, resilience to information warfare and active public engagement in the modern concept of total defense.

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The war in Ukraine is the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. In 2026, it entered its fifth year of large-scale hostilities, characterized by the massive use of long-range fire, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles of all types. These munitions are deployed along the front line and in the immediate rear, creating extensive areas on both sides known as “kill zones” and almost completely blocking mobility. They are also used extensively at the strategic level to undermine the enemy’s will to win. This scenario, at all three levels of combat – strategic, operational, and tactical – results in numerous casualties, but unlike in previous conflicts, the majority of casualties are combatants, with comparatively few civilians. In a war of attrition, both sides are careful to suppress their own casualty figures while inflating those of the enemy their public statements toward promoting their objectives in the conflict. Therefore, it is essential to undertake an analysis and draw appropriate conclusions about this conflict, particularly regarding the impact of casualties on the cognitive domain.