Стр. 26 - V

Электронное приложение к журналу «Международная жизнь»
Author : Sh. Shakhalilov
Professor, Department of Globalistics, Faculty of Global Processes, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State
University, Doctor of Science (History)
THE WEST, shocked by Crimea's voluntary re-unification with
Russia, qualified the latter's actions as an undisguised challenge to
the world order and started talking about it as one of the gravest
threats to international security. There are appeals to the Western
community to close ranks to stop Moscow's aggression against the
East European countries even though nobody in the Baltic states,
none of which is favorably disposed to Russia, believes that this
scenario might be realized.
In fact, the West unfolded its anti-Russian campaign to prevent
Russia from becoming an influential power center with an inde-
pendent foreign policy and to avoid the inevitable crumbling of
the world order followed by chaos and anarchy. Russia, in its turn,
believes that the complicated international situation is a product
of an unfair world order and destroyed political balance, both the doings of the only superpower.
This means that the destroyed balance of power should be restored: the world needs an efficient
system of global security or, to put it differently, a new world order.
In this article, I have discussed the circumstances potentially conducive to such transformations
and identified the obstacles.
For the first time in human history, a state that does not fit all the parameters of world power
center and has not cobbled together a military coalition of its own has announced for everybody
to hear that the domination of a sole superpower is a threat.
THOSE WHO REPRESENT the school of realism doubt the sustainability of the unipolar
world and assert that the multipolar world will take shape sooner or later. These authors empha-
size that, as history shows, when the balance of power is tipped by one power it is inevitably re-
stored later.
The neoliberals, on their side, doubt that the international conditions are conducive to a tradi-
tional response in the form of balance of power. They prefer to think that the already existing
and new centers of power will try to contain the United States and its power yet an anti-American
coalition will be hardly possible because of very different strategic interests of its potential mem-
bers. Indeed, the EU, Russia, China, and Japan will hardly pool forces to contain the United
States.
It is commonly believed that the strategic responses to the unipolar world of the United States
will depend on whether Washington continues to address the world problems single-handedly
or will engage other states and international institutions.
The World Order: Problems of Transformation