Vol 23, No 1 (2023): International Security: Global and Regional Trends

Despite the upsurge in conflicts at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries and the increase in peacekeeping activities, women’s participation in peacekeeping operations has been the exception to the rule rather than the standard practice. However, the UN has focused on the negative and disproportional impact of internal armed conflicts on women and children. For the past two decades, the UN has been working to incorporate a gender perspective into the peacekeeping architecture. The starting point was UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, which fully recognized the importance of the gender perspective in peace and security. The UN’s further systematic actions in this direction have changed the simplistic view of women as victims of internal armed conflicts and have recognized them as active contributors to peace and security. The purpose of the article is to comprehensively examine the current state of the international community’s commitment to women, peace and security in order to fill the existing theoretical gaps and find further ways to enhance the role of women in peace and security activities. The study is based on interdisciplinary, historical and structural-functional approaches, and uses content analysis of official UN documents and data, analytical reports of international organizations, relevant scientific materials and publications. The authors conclude that UNSCR 1325 (2000) initiated a major shift in UN peacekeeping in the context of a large-scale “Women, Peace and Security” agenda and has led to new approaches to women’s participation in all stages of peace processes. Women’s active and equal participation in peace negotiations and the implementation of political decisions has become an important factor in strengthening peace and security. Moreover, the UN’s current activities are not limited to women’s participation in peacekeeping. In addition to changes in the planning and staffing of peacekeeping operations, the UN has also taken steps to address less visible behavioral issues, including the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, as well as the professional skills of peacekeeping personnel. At the same time, the increase in the number of women in the military and police components of UN missions has raised some international concerns about the potential masculinization of female peacekeepers.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been in a state of constant political instability since June 30, 1960, i.e., throughout the entire period of its independent development. The country has experienced a series of civil wars and local conflicts, the causes of which, as in other African countries, have been inter-ethnic and inter-confessional tensions, struggle for power and access to natural resources, inability of governments to control the situation in the periphery, etc. The peculiarity of the Congolese conflicts and DRC politics in general is the interference of external actors, primarily neighboring countries. Rwanda has played the greatest role in maintaining permanent instability in the DRC. This has been argued in numerous books and articles by Russian and foreign researchers, but Africanists have not yet carried out a comprehensive analysis of the historical background and contemporary factors of Rwanda’s influence on the situation in the DRC, and the present paper aims at filling this gap. The purpose of the study is to identify the political and economic motives for the presence of the Rwandan army on the Congolese territory, to examine the role of national leaders of the two states - P. Kagame, L.-D. Kabila, J. Kabila, and F. Tshisekedi - in the political development of the DRC, as well as the reasons for the conflict that broke out in 2022 between the DRC and Rwanda. The paper applies a comprehensive approach to the processes and phenomena under consideration, using the principles of comparative data analysis and critical assessment of information. The relevance of the topic of research is due to both the increase in political instability in Africa and in the world as a whole, and the noticeable increase in the influence of African countries on international political and economic processes.

The geographic area of the Sahel is of particular interest when examining regional security issues that have negatively affected political, economic and social interaction on the African continent for decades. The region has seen a massive upsurge in lethal violence, and militant groups continue to expand their activities southward, now threatening coastal West Africa. The paper examines the links between the growing dynamics of the Sahel and the security of Liptako-Gourma, composed of groups of contiguous states rooted in historical and geographical environments. The paper empirically applies the Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver’s “Regional Security Complex Theory” (RSCT) as a framework for studying the discourse of security threats and the dynamics of security challenges in the region. The application of RSCT theory makes a significant contribution to understanding these regional security issues in the Liptako-Gourma region. The complex links between threats demonstrate the likely impossibility of addressing these threats in isolation, and the need for a broader approach. The study interprets the current relationship between France and Mali in relation to Mali’s withdrawal from the G5 Sahel Force as hostile. The authors argue that the regional nature of the security threats strongly supports the claim that geographic proximity is a major contributor to security interactions. The paper also reveals that the individual security of each state cannot be separated from that of its neighbors. Therefore, it is suggested that mutual interests could contribute to a stronger regional security initiative that integrates the fight against a common threat such as terrorism.

The relevance of this research is due to the unabated interest of the international community in the struggle for regional leadership between Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which has unfolded in the Middle East for a number of years. The growing concerns of the KSA and its geopolitical allies, the United States and the small Arabian monarchies, related to the increasing influence of Iran on the military-political situation in Syria and Iraq, have raised in international discourse the question of the reality or impossibility of creating the so-called “Shiʻa crescent” under the auspices of Tehran. The idea is to unite the states of the Middle East, in which Shiʻa Muslims constitute the vast majority or a significant minority of the population, which would ensure Iran’s decisive victory in the race for dominance in the region. However, until now, the question of a quantitative assessment of the real resources of the states included in the “Shiʻa crescent” has so far remained out of researchers’ sight. In this regard, the aim of this article is to prove the absence of economic and military-political prerequisites for the formation of the “Shiʻa crescent” by using the method of quantitative indicators from databases, rankings and indices and a network analysis of conventional arms supplies within the “Sunni” and “Shiʻa” blocs. The databases of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Doing Business, Human Capital, Global Firepower, Global Terrorism, and Global Peace rankings, as well as World Bank statistical reports served as an empirical basis for the research. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study was constructive realism, which takes into account both quantitative indicators and the ideological and value attitudes of the state in the analysis of international relations. The study showed that the “Shiʻa crescent” is a purely propaganda construct, and cannot become a real interstate association.

The study presents an analysis of American influence in Iran after the World War II. The author describes how American foreign policy concepts worked in Iran, and opened a window into the country for American oil industries. The importance and relevance of the article lie in the fact that the players have not changed significantly, nor have the rules of the game and the actions they evoke changed much. Although the foreign policy toolkit of the US has been modernized, very often old methods are still practiced in the region, thus the study and analysis of those are very valuable today. The author tries to identify the problems of Iran in the second half of the 20th century, to study them in parallel with American foreign policy concepts, to present and analyze how American concepts paved the way for the expansionist policy of the United States. The key finding of the research shows that every American foreign policy concept was basically implemented only in case of the continuity of the power of the same party. Thus, Republican D. Eisenhower promoted the concept of supporting American oil tycoons. After him, Democrat J.F. Kennedy did not continue this approach in full, but only retained some elements. J.F. Kennedy believed that if the Iranian government was headed by a skilled prime minister, an adherent of Western values, who could properly manage the Iranian economy, then Iran would become a regional ally for the United States rather than a dependent country. After J.F. Kennedy, L. Johnson continued the foreign policy approach regarding Iran by promoting the country’s reformation through the White revolution. However, as history proved, the White Revolution failed to solve all the socioeconomic problems of Iran in the short term. Instead, the monarchy faced new and already fatal problems. The sources for this paper were the archives of the US presidents, the archives of the US State Department, the memoirs of a number of politicians, the correspondence between the US presidents and the Shah, as well as the Iranian press of that time. The author has applied the historical-comparative method, using the principles of content analysis.

The digital revolution has a significant impact on world politics, including the practice of international negotiations and diplomacy, which, being extremely conservative areas of human activity, still have to adapt to the new digital reality conditions. The practice of digital diplomacy, which involves using social networks to interact with a wide international audience, is becoming widespread. New diplomacy formats are emerging that focused on working with big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. This study explores the impact of the digital revolution on the practice of international negotiations. Methodologically, the analysis is based on the structural-functional approach, according to which international negotiations act as a structural element of diplomacy and foreign policy. At the same time, the authors single out the invariants of negotiations, which include the stages of international negotiations - preparation phase, discussions and implementation of the results of negotiations. The digital revolution is changing the nature of international negotiations, creating new opportunities for negotiation tactics, as well as new challenges, primarily related to information security and confidentiality. In addition, the development of digital technologies produces new subject areas of international negotiations that focus on Internet regulation, information security and other digital society problems, and contributes to the emergence and development of new international negotiations formats - multistakeholder negotiations and online remote negotiations. The authors conclude that the main negotiation invariants remain the same. However, digital technologies are transforming the available negotiating tools and tactics. Under these conditions, new knowledge and competencies are in demand among diplomats, in particular, in the field of data management and information security.

The global economy continues to suffer the consequences of the 2020 global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the dramatic shifts in international relations in 2022 triggered by severe sanctions imposed by Western nations against Russia. Many countries have been affected by the restrictions. African economies were no exception, experiencing a strong negative impact of these sanctions because of rising global prices on cereal crops, oil, natural gas, and mineral fertilizers, which caused a decrease in their imports felt primarily by the most vulnerable population groups. In addition, the region has seen a retreat from basic gains in living standards and social problems. This situation has once again made it clear to African countries that they should pool efforts in order to minimize damage and facilitate economic recovery. In this regard, the issues of developing economic integration, such as the transition from the subregional to regional (continental) level of economic integration, which is the subject of this paper, have become more relevant. The African Continental Free Trade Area, launched on January 1, 2021, is the largest in the world in terms of the number of participating countries with a total population of 1.3 billion USD and GDP of 3.4 trillion USD, and is expected to more than double by 2050. An important achievement of economic integration in Africa is the creation in 2018 of the African Single Market for Air Transport and plans for the introduction of a single passport, which are designed to ensure the free movement of Africans across the continent. Thus, continental integration is an extremely important and necessary tool for Africa to strengthen intra-regional ties, increase labor productivity and enhance the competitiveness of African goods. In addition, the promotion of integration helps to strengthen Africa’s economic and political positions in the world, which objectively contributes to the movement towards a multipolar world.

The study explores the Turkish-British partnership. The author verifies the thesis, which gained popularity after the beginning of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war in the Russian expert and journalistic community, that the United Kingdom had a significant impact on Türkiye’s foreign policy in order to destabilize the South Caucasus and oust Russia from the region. Some experts hypothesize that London is trying to implement the “Great Turan” project in the post-Soviet space through the hands of Ankara to the detriment of Russian interests. One of the main arguments that Türkiye’s foreign policy is managed from London is the appointment of former ambassador R. Moore, who has close contacts with Turkish President R.T. Erdogan, to the post of head of British Foreign Intelligence, MI6. To test this hypothesis, the author of the article analyzes the trade, financial, political relations between Great Britain and Türkiye, as well as the degree of similarity in their positions regarding the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. The author comes to the conclusion that Great Britain and Türkiye are indeed close allies. This is confirmed by the fact that the British government lobbied Türkiye to join the EU, refrained from interfering in internal affairs, supported R.T. Erdogan during the coup attempt in 2016, and did not criticize Ankara’s pro-Azerbaijani position during the Karabakh conflict. At the same time, the lack of a high level of financial and economic interdependence, Türkiye’s desire to play an independent role in the Middle East and Transcaucasia bypassing NATO, Ankara’s close cooperation with London’s geopolitical adversary Moscow, as well as differences in approaches to the Syrian conflict allow the author to refute the thesis that that Türkiye acts as a “conduit for the interests of Great Britain.”

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