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Having consolidated his power in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin long focused on internal affairs: the Five Year Plans, collectivization of agriculture, rapid industrialization, and modernization of the Red Army. Despite his penchant for domestic policy, from the summer of 1936 Stalin's Soviet Union was increasingly drawn into foreign affairs. This article explores Stalin's foreign policy on the eve of the Second World War. The Soviet Union's multiple failures in forging an anti-Fascist alliance with Britain and France, most notably in the Spanish Civil War, will be explored as the prelude to Stalin's eventual decision, in August 1939, to authorize the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Abstract not available. 22 References.

The article discusses China's policies in and towards the Arctic and Africa within a comparative perspective. To what extent is China's policy adaptable to different conditions? What does this adaptability tell us about China's ascendant great-power role in the world in general? What is the message to the Arctic and Africa respectively? The article concludes that China's regional strategies aptly reflect the overall grand strategy of a country that is slowly but surely aiming at taking on the role of leading global superpower. In doing so, Chinese foreign policy has demonstrated flexibility and adaptive tactics, through a careful tailoring of its so-called core interests and foreign policy principles, and even identity politics, to regional conditions. This implies that regions seeking autonomy in the context of great power activism and contestation should develop their own strategies not only for benefiting from Chinese investment but also in terms of managing dependency on China and in relation to China and great power competition.