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Author : O. Karpovich
Head, Center for Comparative Legal Studies, Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, Russian
Academy of Sciences, Professor, Doctor of Science (Political Sciences)
TODAY, the world is living amid global changes in which political
realities "are shaped, to an increasing degree, by global political in-
stability, a product of erosion of the Westphalian system and in-
creasingly chaotic international relations. They provide the
background against which a new multipolar world order is being
shaped." The system of international relations is gradually slipping
toward anarchy amid the mounting crisis of the idea of a "democ-
ratic world," the pivotal concept of the unipolar world.
Global changes are gaining momentum: in twelve months, Western
political technologists pushed Northern Africa, a stable and pros-
perous region, into an abyss of a cruel civil war and made it a seat
of international terrorism and radical Islam. Syria, the Middle East and Iran, America's main ir-
reconcilable foe, will follow suit.
Engaged in "peacekeeping by force" and "democracy enforcement," the United States does noth-
ing to remove the causes of political conflicts; in many cases, it adds tension and scope to conflicts
and pushes them to a higher level.
We remain incorrigible optimists while global problems and global challenges are piling up. We
still believe that the world is becoming better even if plunged into a boundless chaos while sliding
into an abyss of conflicts and wars. Many people remain devoted to the myth that the paradigm
of conflicts ended together with the Cold War and that the world has ascended a higher and better
development level with much lower conflict potential everywhere across the world.
The Libyan war demonstrated and the Syrian armed conflict confirmed that in the context of
the rapidly intensified power struggle among the world leading powers regional conflicts promptly
spill over their initial limits to evolve into large-scale clashes up to and including global wars.
"Soft power" more and more frequently discussed by the Russian political community has come
to the fore in the leading powers' foreign policy. There is an increasingly clear understanding that
soft power is the most efficient instrument in the world living amid mounting political turmoil
and gradually sinking into a "manageable chaos." Soft power is an instrument of recognized world
leaders and an indicator of whether a state is or pretends to be a world leader.
In these conditions, Russia should acquire not merely a modernized foreign policy adjusted to
the specific circumstances of global development.
This is extremely important: Russia has found itself absolutely alone when insisting on a peace
settlement in Ukraine; Russia's only ally in its opposition to the West is China.
Global Problems in the Emerging Multipolar World