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In the digital age, images have pervaded almost all spheres of public life and politics. International relations are no exception. The visual dimension of world politics attracts increasing attention which resulted in the emergence of the so-called visual turn in the theory of international relations. It gained particular prominence within the framework of constructivism and particularly within one of the central and most widespread constructivist theories, i.e. the securitization theory. The first section of the paper examines the concept of 'visual turn'. The second section considers the current state of art of the securitization theory. The third section outlines key features and possible implications of 'visual securitization' to the study of international relations. To this end, the authors refer to a resonant case of a Syrian migrant boy Aylan Kurdi, who died in 2015 while trying to immigrate to Europe. The fourth section examines some limitations of the 'visual securitization' theory. The authors conclude that the 'visual turn' has led to a certain democratization of securitization practices by opening up new opportunities for the 'bottom-up securitization', or 'people's securitization'. Thus, it questions the traditional monopoly of political elites on the molding of a security narrative. At the same time, the 'visual turn' extends the list of possible reference objects of securitization, which comes to include not only domestic audiences, but also other communities. As a result, 'visual securitization' raises a number of new issues. In contrast to a traditional 'speech act', an image can be open to various interpretations and as such would make the process of interaction with the audience too complicated and inconsistent. The possibility of incorrect interpretation places increased demands on the communicative context and hinders the use of an image as an independent securitization tool. The authors argue that the key to addressing these issues lies in a more active use of artificial intelligence technologies and social networks.

Abstract: The article discusses the trend of securitization of the political elite as a reaction to strengthening of coercive influence upon these elites in terms of consolidation and strengthening of confrontation between different civilizations. The authors argue that the main object of the coercive influence in world politics, which ensures stable control of regime change and a managed transit is the political elite rather than civil society. The assumption then is that the main object of the security and the securitization in world politics is to be political elite. Securitization of the political elite can be seen as a necessary condition for ensuring the sovereignty at the level of local human civilization. The conclusion of this paper is, first, the assessment of the political elite as the main object of securitization in a clash of civilizations. Secondly, the removal of contradictions between the securitization of political elites and democracy at the scale of human civilizations; third, underlining the need to take into account the vital importance of the political elite in the strategic planning and development of long-term forecasting of international relations development.

The article is devoted to analyzing the interactions of local civilization in the world and in Eurasia. The authors pays close attention to the theoretical issues of the subject matter. They choose for their analysis the nonessential conception of civilization. It allows societies with in a single civilization with radically different views on the civilizational reference framework. This conception explains why there are more clashes within a civilization, then among them. Then the author dwell sont he issue of civilizational conflict in Eurasia. The focal point of the conflict is the clash between Russian and American local civilizations. The authors develop the most probable scenario of civilizational interaction, which is their arm conflict. Then they develop three variations of this scenario: optimistic, realistic and pessimistic. The authors believ et hatby2020 Western local civilization will lose its political monopoly. It means that Russia should be ready with successes with its integration projects in Eurasia. Other wise it can fall preyto China.

This paper proposes an approach to long-term scenario building in international relations, based on the analysis of changes in the dialectics of war and peace. Long-term trends in the development of forms and manifestations of violence in international relations, as well as the methods and approaches to its control and management determines the development of international relations. In solving the methodological problem of long-term forecasting, it must be as-sumed that the mere mechanical extrapolation even in the medium term has no meaning. The key current trend in terms of political violence is a blurring of the distinction between war and peace. This trend can be described as networking of war. Network war theory is a model of military strategy in the context of postmodernism. As a model of the new economy based on information and high technologies demonstrates its superiority over traditional capitalist and socialist models of the industrial age, and network war claims qualitative superiority over previous strategic concept of the industrial era. In modern political networks violent and non-violent instruments of influence co-exist in undifferentiated form. Network politics becomes total. Victory in the network war is the fact that the opponent should become part of the network. Since the network is formed around shared values, the network war can be reduced to a war of values. The clash between the networks will most likely wear un-compromising nature, so that in the end there will be only one network. Uncompromising network war is like the uncompromising religious wars and clashes of civilizations.

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The article discusses the relevance of political realism in the times when a total planet catastrophe is possible. According to Ye.Uchaev and M.Kharkevich's hypothesis, modern political realism is a post-apocalyptic direction of thought, which is based on the belief that a final state of the world has arrived. Therefore, now that human survival is under threat, realism could be rejected due to the denial of the postapocalyptic worldview, which historically made realism possible, rather than external reasons. The article defines political realism as an approach towards international relations that assumes the inevitability of conflicts between multiple political actors. The authors claim that such an approach requires interpretation of time as infinite. Based on the works of Bruno Latour and Eric Voegelin, Uchaev and Kharkevich show that such a perception of time was formed at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age through the self-positioning of Modernity as a post-apocalyptic era, and the state within the Modern era — as a post-apocalyptic subject. The study of the texts of modern political realism confirms the hypothesis about its post-apocalyptic nature. A consistent realist position is found only after the post-apocalyptic self-perception took root in Europe (roughly in the middle of the 17th century) as a result of the triumph of a sovereign state. The realist position is most clearly revealed in the concept of the balance of power of the late 17th—18th centuries. The authors who wrote before or on the eve of this turning point (Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes) in their works turn to the apocalyptic-utopian horizon, where disunity is transformed into political unity. In turn, the threat of the total nuclear war that emerged in the middle of the 20th century becomes an incentive for Hans Morgenthau, John Hertz and Reinhold Niebuhr to overcome realism and develop projects for global political reform. However, according to Uchaev and Kharkevich's conclusion, overcoming realism will remain incomplete until the problem of the political subject of global reform is resolved.

Soft power is analyzed in the article as a resource of integration in the post-soviet area. The author shows that soft power today is an indispensable resource of any integration policy. The amount of soft power defines the depth of integration. Integration in Eurasia is a natural process and eventually it will be of interest for all the states in the region. Soft power will reduce the transaction costs of integration and increase the attractiveness of the project for other states over the long run. A resource of the Russian soft power which will foster the integration processes in the post-soviet region might and ought to be higher education and science. The development of national science may be not only an integration tool, but also a nation idea and a goal for modernization. The author argues that science and higher education will indeed help Russia deepen the Eurasian integration, overcome the lack of trust among its regional neighbors and channel the positive experience of economic integration in adjacent spheres of interstate relations in the post-soviet area.

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