Suchergebnisse

The article analyzes the consequences of the sanctions introduced by the West as well as by Russia (counter-sanctions) for Russian agri-food complex. The aftereffects are analyzed in three dimensions - foreign trade, production and market-consuming. The author concludes that sanctions have a negative impact on the availability of food for low-income population groups and on the qualityof some products and yet have not had explicitly positive effect on national producers. To achieve a positive effect for agri-food complex and well-being of the bulk of the population, additional political steps to improve the state supporting and functioning of the institutes of agri-food complex are needed.

Translated and condensed from the Russian from Fragen der Wirtschaft, no. 2, 1975.

The article analyzes the reasons, nature and prospects for strengthening, especially in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, the attention of the leading world forces – the West, China and Russia – to the "Global South". The authors put forward and substantiate the concept of "turn to the South" in world politics. The thesis is put forward that the dynamics along the "North-South" axis, as well as the policy of sovereign states of the "global South" will have a significant impact on the reformatting of the world order along the "West-East" axis. The interaction of Russia and its partners in the EAEU with the states of Africa and the Middle East to solve global problems, primarily food and military-political security, is considered in detail.

The article discusses the method of situation analysis of international relations, developed in the 1960s in the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations by Academician Evgeniy Primakov. It has incorporated many elements of existing problem-solving methods such as "brain storm", "Delphi", and others. Its key innovation is understanding the international political situations under analysis as integral dynamic subsystems of international system. It proceeds in three stages: first, building a scenario of a situation development; second, getting a large number of expert assessments representing various fields of social sciences; third, producing a final document with critical summary of the assessments. Primakov encouraged organizers of situation analysis to have experts focused on the issues of practical importance, and then prepare the results of the situation analysis in a concise, understandable form to make them useful in the decisionmaking process. He viewed the method as an effective means of communicating expert knowledge to decision makers. The article reviews the method as it has been practiced in the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations. It gives the intellectual roots of its development, which include "grounded theory" by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss; systems theory by Talcott Parsons and a variant of its application to international relations by Thierry de Montbrial. The more direct roots of the method are various problem-solving techniques practiced in world's leading international relations think-tanks such as RAND Corporation. The article also overviews the major principles of situation analysis: 1) participants must have high level of expertise; 2) situational analysis is multidisciplinary; 3) situational analysis allows focusing on key aspects of a problem when there is no clear, unambiguous understanding of it and when the views of experts vary widely; 4) to obtain significant analytical results, it is necessary to move above the situation under analysis in search of wider generalizations; 5) situational analysis is opposite to propaganda, it must be averted to conformism and partisanship; 6) situation analysis should be aimed at realizing national interests; 7) situation analysis is directed towards future. In addition to the general principles of situation analysis, the article gives two specific examples of its application. The first example is the phenomenon of the extreme-right political movements in the European Union. In this case the situation analysis gives a balanced assessment of what is happening in Russia's neighbourhood. The second is Russia's adoption of trade restrictive measures in response to the "sanctions" from Western countries because of the Ukrainian crisis. The situation analysis shows contradictory effects of the sanctions for the Russian economic development. These cases are small but important illustrations of global changes in both the internal life of sovereign states and the relations between them. The post-bipolar world obviously goes through a transformation, which many assess in terms of a multipolar or polycentric world order. The configuration of future polycentricity is not defined in advance and will depend on decisions of leading global players. Situation analysis can contribute to understanding and forecasting them.

The article is based on the hypothesis about the transition of the development of international processes from the stage of uncertainty to the stage of the negative certainty – the increase and synergy of the impact of negative factors in the environmental, climatic, epidemiological, socio-economic, technological, and security spheres against the background of worsening geopolitical contradictions and confirmed by the crisis caused by the COVID19 pandemic. The article examines the dynamics of socio-economic and political development and the changing role of the Central-Eastern European region. Having strengthened their positions in the European Union through adaptation to EU policies and norms, by the mid-2010s the CEE countries began to pursue an increasingly independent course. By 2020 their policy became one of the factors hindering the further deepening of the EU integration, primarily in the foreign policy sphere, and the process of federalization of the Union. The analysis of the state of public opinion conducted in the article testifies to the dualism of the perception of citizens of the CEE countries of the EU membership. High support for the EU is combined with frustration at the partial loss of national sovereignty, which is actively used by nationalist political forces in the region. During the early months of COVID-19 pandemics the countries of the region performed better than the EU as a whole, which created prerequisites for reformatting the position of the CEE countries in the EU. The enormous resources provided by the EU to Central-Eastern Europe to overcome the crisis and move towards sustainable development serve as a tool for even deeper economic and political integration of the CEE into the EU. Conditionality of support for the implementation of the EU strategies could have an impact on the CEE countries that is very similar to the period of their accession to the integration grouping and lead to the next stage of desovereignization. Meanwhile, for the European Union closer binding of the CEE countries allows not only to take another step towards federalization, but also to strengthen its actorness in world politics and the global economy.

This forecast examines the major trends in Russia's relations with the world and in the Russian view of the world in 2016. The forecast looks firstly at Russia's role in the world in the context of the extant and emergent state of geopolitics. In a confused international environment, caught between the multiple, discordant and disorderly games of checkers of the present and the emerging design of a new grand chessboard for international relations, Russia and the West have been forced into cooperation. While far from easy and far from guaranteed to work – or last – this situation does offer the possibility of overcoming divides to pursue mutual interests. These interests become particularly apparent in the context of increased shared threats and the need to act jointly against them, the uncertainties created by rising powers, and the difficulties that Russia finds itself in. The key role of new mega-regional trade agreements in this emerging great game is also emphasised in the subsequent sections of the forecast, which deal, respectively, with foreign policy and political economy. The foreign policy analysis sees the US in flux in a presidential election year, and the EU caught at the crossroads of its own failure to capitalise on integration and a migration crisis of unprecedented proportions. Meanwhile, foreign policy in the post-Soviet space is characterised more by stasis than by substantial change, with frozen conflicts and stagnant reforms in Ukraine and limited room for manoeuvre for other players the order of the day. The Russian involvement in the Middle East, however, is anything but stagnant, with the military operations in Syria having dramatic effects in both the situation in Syria and global and regional geopolitics. The sustainability of this quest for influence, however, is questioned by the attitude of other players, but also by Russia's own internal weaknesses, notably its serious and deepening economic crisis.