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Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
»
Author : K. Gadjiev
Chief research associate, Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy
of Sciences, Professor, Doctor of Science (History)
AT ALL TIMES, the best minds were talking about a world free
from wars, conflicts and bloodshed. In modern history, market econ-
omy and political democracy made this ideal even more tempting.
The demolition of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 bred hopes
that Europe and the rest of the world were entering a period of uni-
versal harmony and order based on a firm and gradually strength-
ening conviction that stronger democracy in the steadily increasing
number of state and regions would finally change the nature of do-
mestic and foreign policies on the global scale.
Much have been written about the future without interstate and
other conflicts and wars that would retire into history as the Western
model of political democracy would be spreading across the world.1 Some of the false prophets
hastened to announce the final victory of the Western liberal values on the worldwide scale and,
hence, the end of history of sorts.
Globalization was expected to consolidate the world on the principles of liberalism, market econ-
omy, freedom of trade, and the Washington Consensus; to push national sovereignty out of
sight or even eliminate it altogether; to denationalize nations and make national identity a relic
of the past. The European Union started talking in earnest about European citizenship and Eu-
ropean identity as an alternative to national citizenship and national identity.
In real life, however, globalization and information technologies expected to spread political
democracy on a global scale, intensify cultural interactions and also cultural fragmentation and
diversification as the reverse side of globalization.
Today, there is an illusion that there are no reasons to resolve interstate and international dis-
agreements, to protect national interests and ensure national and state security through conflicts
and wars since the main actors of world politics are no longer locked in a frontal systemic, ide-
ological and military-political confrontation.
Any war can be described as a result of political decisions taken to achieve certain political aims.
Hybrid wars differ from the traditional type of wars: they rely on the entire range of military
and non-military forms, means, methods, and technologies of ideological, information, cultural,
economic, geoeconomic, political, geopolitical, etc. confrontation. Scandalous cartoons are part
of hybrid warfare; they are products of the unlimited freedom of speech and are, in fact, one
of the outcrops of propaganda of racism, xenophobia and other forms of political and ideo-
logical fundamentalism that differs but little from radical Islamism.
In this context, soft power has become one of the key elements of the state's potentials and
might.
Conflicts and Wars: Shifts at the Edge of the 21st Century