In 1965–1966 Indonesia experienced mass killings of communists and Leftists, as well as ethnic Chinese, who were thought to be members of pro-communist organizations. These bloody events opened the most active phase of change of power in Indonesia, marked the beginning of the ‘new order’ period, and paved the way to the 1968 ouster of the President Sukarno, whom the United States had long been displeased with, and the ascension to power of the General Suharto, who would rule the country for the next three decades. Despite the fact that Indonesia faced a severe domestic political conflict, involment of external actors, primarily the United States, has never been questioned by the historians. However, due to a lack of primary sources, it has been difficult to determine the extent of this involvement. This paper is based on a close examination of recently declassified (and published in the U.S.) materials, mainly the reports of American diplomats from Jakarta and other Indonesian regions. The authors characterize U.S. position towards the aforementioned events in Indonesia and explain the Johnson administration’s choice of the intensity level and particular tools of involvement in the conflict. The conclusion is drawn that the U.S. government maintained close ties with the leadership of the Indonesian military, initially welcomed the General Suharto’s efforts aimed at ousting President Sukarno, encouraged the repressions and led a broad information-psychological campaign using the CIA playbooks. The intensity of these actions was much lower than in Indochina or the Dominican Republic but in specific local conditions in Indonesia characterized by high level of political violence, the tactics chosen by the U.S. sufficed to deliver a devastating blow to the Leftist movement and to oust the Predisent Sukarno.

The United States and Turkey have been bound by strong ties of strategic partnership for decades since the dawn of the Cold War. However, the relationship between two NATO allies have become quite strained over the recent years. The root causes of the current contradictions between Ankara and Washington manifested themselves clearly at the beginning of the Obama presidency. This paper examines the reasons behind and the nature of the difficulties that the U.S. and Turkey would confront in 2009–2010 while trying to implement the concept of ‘model partnership’ introduced by the Democratic administration. In particular, it assesses the extent to which the transformation of the Turkish foreign policy strategy modified the logic of its interaction with Washington and reinforced Ankara’s desire to have its national interests recognized and respected by the United States. The differences between the U.S. and Turkish positions are illustrated with the examples of their contradictions about interaction with Israel and Iran. The author demonstrates that various methods of persuasion and coercion practiced by the Obama administration were not necessarily effective and their use led to a deterioration of situation on several occasions. The author also provides a detailed overview of the debates on the prospects of the bilateral cooperation and the foreign policy identity of modern Turkey that took place in the U.S. political and academic circles at that time. The paper also determines the main factors behind a rapprochement of two countries following a temporary estrangement. The conclusion is drawn that a further escalation of tensions was prevented mainly because security factor played a predominant role. The U.S.-Turkish military-strategic cooperation within NATO remained — regardless of divergences on several regional issues and political scandals — the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship. The U.S.-Turkish partnership, though not a model one, passed an endurance test only to face even more complex challenges related to a destabilization of a broader region in the wake of the Arab Awakening.

The last decades have seen a proliferation of internationalized internal disputes and a steady growth in scholarly interest in interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. This bibliographic review summarizes the approaches of those scholars (predominantly from the Anglo-Saxon countries) — who focused on conceptual dimensions of the intervention problematique. The review consists of three sections. The first section examines the semantic nuances of the key terms in Russian and English languages describing interventionist behaviour and the particularities of their usage in international legal documents. The second and third sections reveal the essence of two ‘great debates’ in the literature on intervention. The first debate centers on desirability and possibility of working out a definition of intervention. The second debate focuses on delimiting semantic boundaries of the ‘intervention’ concept. The first debate is presented as a polemic between scholars who take intervention for granted, the proponents of treating it as a scientific concept and those who refuse to search for a common definition as such. The conclusion contains a critique of argumentation of those scholars — predominantly constructivists and poststructuralists — who question the possibility of obtaining a purely scientific knowledge about intervention and call for studying discourse instead, including the discourse of actors conducting interventionist actions. The author of the review justifies the need to formulate the working definition of intervention which would allow to get out of a trap conflicting perceptions in the times of an increasing interstate confrontation, revival of an ideological competition and widening divergences in conceptualisation of sovereignty, its boundaries and conditions of their violation. He also advocates for the utilization of the broadest interpretation of intervention which, on the one hand, would include both military and non-military tools (such as foreign aid, sanctions, information influence etc.), and, on the other hand, would be applicable to studying interventionist practices of different historical epochs, including the pre-Westphalian era. The review concludes with a reminder that the use of any extant definition or a development of a new one is only the first step towards a typology of interventionist actions which should be based on the study of empirical data and not on the a priori chosen parameters.

Political risk analysis emerged as a distinctive field within applied international studies at the height of the Cold War but recently it has received a new impetus. It was preconditioned by an increasing uncertainty in many segments of world politics after a series of powerful ‘strategic shocks’ (‘Arab Awakening’, ‘Ukrainian crisis’, Brexit etc.) which brought about substantial and often completely unforeseen, direct and indirect consequences for the international business activities all over the world. This paper examines both classical approaches to defining political risk, which were elaborated by the leading experts in this field in the 1970–1980s, and its contemporary interpretations proposed in academic literature, and reports of think tanks and consultancies over the last decade.
The author outlines a new classification of the main definitions of political risks, based on the factors that affect a company, be it the host government’s actions, sanctions or a general destabilization of the business environment as a result of certain political events. The paper identifies the key drivers behind the development of contemporary approaches to defining political risks, including an increasing influence of non-governmental actors, destabilizing processes in certain developed countries, etc. The author shows that these factors have broadened the concept by reinterpreting what generates political risks, in what circumstances and what impact they have on a risk bearer (a foreign company).

The book under review is a new seminal work by Andrey A. Kokoshin, the 6^th Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The monograph explores a wide range of applied and theoretical aspects of war and peace problematique. The reviewer emphasizes a profundity of Kokoshin’s analysis — based on a careful examination of classical works on the art of war as well as contemporary studies by the leading military theorists — and his interdisciplinary approach. In particular, the reviewer stresses that the author considers both objective and subjective factors when addressing such issues as the impact of technological parameters on modern warfare, hybrid wars and deterrence. The reviewer also commends the author’s observations on new trends in modern warfare, including an increase in number and geographical scope of local military conflicts, a worldwide growth in military expenditures, and an explosive progress in advanced military technologies. Andrey A. Kokoshin emphasizes that studying classics of military sciences can help understand these trends and develop optimum responses to the correspondent national security challenges. The reviewer concludes that the book under review represents an important contribution to the theoretical studies of war as a specific political and social phenomenon and expresses the hope that its publication will provide a new impetus to the advancement of Russian military thought.