CHAPTER 1
1.1. GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EMERGING MULTIPOLAR WORLD
The modern world is experiencing an era of global change. The current political reality "is increasingly determined by the global political instability, where the world has moved due to the erosion of the Westphalian system. In the background of its disintegration and chaos in international relations is the formation of a new world order based on the principles of multipolarity." The system of international relations is becoming increasingly anarchic. There is a growing crisis of the idea of a "democratic peace" - the pivotal concept of era of unipolarity.
The rate and the speed of global changes are continuously growing. Western political consultants needed just one year, in order to transform a peaceful and prosperous North Africa, where some countries' (such as Tunisia) standard of living is almost the same as in southern departments of France, into a hotbed of brutal civil war, international terrorism and radical Islam. Now the same fate awaits Syria, along with the entire Middle East, including the chief implacable opponent of the US - Iran.
It seems that today the very foundations of the Westphalian system are eroding, the platforms and mechanisms are being destroyed that for decades served as the maintenance of peace and political stability and kept the balance between different forces and interest groups in global politics. Today, all this rapidly disintegrates into fragments under the onslaught of legal nihilism, double standards and "controlled chaos." Forces that have long advocated ideological opponents of the democratic world with its universal values are seeking to penetrate the vacuum: political extremists and radicals, terrorists, Islamists of all suits, nationalists, and finally, in the case of Ukraine - the neo-fascists.
For many years international organizations that emerged after World War II and designed to prevent its recurrence were in the way these forces; secular regimes in the Middle East andAfrica, which led a relentless struggle against Islamic radicals; and, finally, the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, which supported the global balance. Today, the Soviet Union does not exist anymore, and NATO has shifted to the problem of global governance. Yugoslavia has turned into "a powder keg" of Europe, and perhaps the entire world, as a result of the collapse of the Balkans.
The system of government in the Arab countries established over many decades was destroyed by the color revolutions of the "Arab Spring", plunging the region into an armed chaos, in which the Americans are trying to build new architecture of international relations, close to the ideals of their North American "democratic peace." Technologies of color revolutions, used in Libya and Syria, spread to Ukraine that is on the verge of civil war like the Yugoslavia or the Libyan scenario.
However, even when faced with new global issues and challenges, we continue to remain largely incurable optimists. Despite the chaos in international relations, as some politicians call "manageable," we continue to believe that even though the world is rapidly plunging into the abyss of conflicts and wars, it is still changing for the better. Today, in the minds of many citizens there still exists the myth that with the end of the "Cold War," peace has finally completed its existence within the paradigm of conflict and moved to a new, higher quality and level of development, characterized by reduction of conflict in all the regions of the world.
The global problems of international relations today are associated primarily with three main factors: the increasing chaos in international relations, closely interconnected with the color revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, and most recently in Ukraine; international conflicts that the United Nations is unable to resolve; struggle with web-based forms of international terrorism and theAfghan drug trafficking, being both a source of funds for terrorist organizations and the factor that the US is actively using to weaken its strategic competitor that is the gaining power of the European Union.
One of the most pressing global problems of human civilization in the light of developments in the Middle East and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is the wave of chaos that engulfed the regions, which the United States considers "manageable" and sees it as a new tool for the democratization of the modern world. Other countries, including Russia, consider this process a universal evil and an impending global catastrophe. "Controlled chaos," covering all major areas in the wake of the color revolutions of the "Arab Spring" and Euro Maidan, homogenizes the structure of traditional societies, destroying communal way of life and transforming society into a set of "inserted" individuals deprived of the protection of communities and civil society institutions from any external destructive impact. In the wake of "controlled chaos" comes hacking and destruction of the systems and mechanisms of collective security historically formed in the regions, as well as balance of forces. It is not the democrats and liberals that come to the formed vacuum but nationalists, neo-Nazis (in Ukraine) and the Islamists, including radicals. A global problem is created for the system of international relations, so undermining the fundamentals of the existing world order, that it raises the question of the future of its existence.
The global problem of managing international conflicts is closely related with the "controlled chaos." The task of managing and resolving international conflicts does not lose its relevance, on the contrary in the present conditions. On the contrary, today, we clearly see that as a result of the United States carrying out a conscious dismantling of the Yalta-Potsdam world order, the entire system of international security is collapsing; the world is rapidly sinking into chaos of big and small wars, ethno-political and religious conflicts.
As the war in Libya has shown and as we can see now in the armed conflict in Syria, in the face of increasing struggle for power of the world's leaders, regional conflicts easily outgrow their initial frame and pour into a large-scale clashes, reaching world wars. Activities of the United States and of their partners (NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) in "peace enforcement" and "enforcement of democracy" in different regions of the world does not only eliminate the...
