Against the backdrop of the rapid degradation and destruction of the international security architecture dating back to the Cold War, the problems of arms control in general and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in particular assume new significance. There is an increasing need to search for new multilateral forms of interstate cooperation in this area, which would make it possible to adapt the established models of arms control to the realities of the emerging polycentric world order. In this regard, the history of relations between the members of the military-political blocs during the Cold War could offer some valuable lessons. This article examines three cases related to the deliberations between NATO allies on the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests, the preparation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and negotiations on the mutual reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments in Central Europe. The study shows that though the United States had the final say in developing solutions to arms control problems in all three cases, the positions of its NATO allies significantly affected both the course of the negotiation and the content of the agreements. The author concludes that one of the main lessons to be learnt from the discussions of 1963–1975 is what ignorance of the lessons from the past can lead to. Disregard for the experience of the interwar negotiations did not allow then to unleash the full potential of a multilateral inter-bloc dialogue on arms control. Now this lesson is becoming more relevant than ever before.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, both scholars and experts frequently questioned the political relevance of security alliances, given the declining intensity of armed conflicts and the decreasing probability of major interstate wars. However, the post-bipolar international reality marked by the burgeoning of new alliances and coalitions, with old associations being reformed and/or expanded in membership rendered these questions obsolete. In fact, states not only continue to consider military alliance as an important foreign policy tool but actively develop new forms of alliances and coalitions. The article identifies the key trends in the evolution of military and political alliances over the period from the 1990s till the 2010s. Firstly, the authors highlight the waning interest of the leading powers towards formalized allied relations, since they increasingly perceive the latter as an unnecessary burden. At the same time, the researchers note that the leading powers adhered to different approaches to alliance and coalition building in the post-bipolar period. While the United States strengthened the transatlantic core (NATO) in the U.S.-centered network of alliances, relying on more flexible plurilateral formats in other regions of the world, Russia, India, and China did not seek to expand their respective blocs, providing collective security guarantees selectively. That said, all major powers share interest in promoting and developing asymmetric alliances both as tools to deter potential opponents and leverages over junior partners amidst the struggle for spheres of influence. Secondly, the authors conclude that the key feature of the post-Cold War coalition-building is the so-called ritual alliance, when military and political commitments are included in the agenda of regional integration groupings as an addition to substantive issues of cooperation rather than the reverse. Finally, in the 1990s and 2010s, the range of formats of an alliance expanded: from the traditional priorities of territorial defense, the focus has shifted towards expeditionary operations as a part of coalitions, the latter including not only sovereign states but also non-state patronage networks. In conclusion, the authors note that the major powers will continue to promote combined forms of alliances, as the loyalty of partners becomes of increasing strategic importance against the background of growing interstate rivalry.

A major problem for Russia in formulating and defending its national interests after the Cold War was to fit in the European political order, dominated by the collective West and its institutions. The North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) was not dissolved after completing the mission it had been created for; moreover, it started taking on ever new responsibilities to keep the European allies in the U.S. sphere of influence. In this respect, the ongoing NATO enlargement — primarily by accession of the former Warsaw Treaty allies of the USSR — has become one of the key policy tools for Washington after the breakup of the bipolar system in Europe. This study sets a dual goal, i.e. to identify the changing logic of the NATO’s eastward expansion and assess its consequences for the alliance itself, as well as to trace shifts in Russia’s official position in the light of these developments. The first section of the article highlights the main stages of the NATO enlargement in the post-bipolar period. The author argues that the Western countries, viewing the ’open door’ principle as a next phase of the containment policy under new geopolitical circumstances and reaping tangible security benefits throughout its implementation, realized at a certain point that a swift accession of post-Soviet states to NATO was unattainable, and switched attention to the Nordic countries. The second section analyzes Russia’s response to the alliance’s maneuvering. The study emphasizes that the concern of the Russian leadership about its possible marginalization in the Euro-Atlantic institutions gradually gave way to resolute actions to counter the NATO’s ‘open door’ policy as the alliance was expanding beyond its purview. The author concludes that NATO enlargement has had an ambiguous impact on both the European security architecture, and the alliance itself. On the one hand, it gave the United States new opportunities to project power and consolidate its hegemonic status in Europe. On the other hand, the viability and effectiveness of this policy are being questioned by a number of serious challenges for the West both in Europe and beyond. Given these uncertainties, NATO will gradually give up the ‘open door’ principle in favor of more flexible formats of military and political cooperation with non-member countries.

Despite the fact that NATO is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, there is an ongoing debate on the essence and nature of the alliance, its role in international relations in general and the architecture of European security in particular. These discussions are especially relevant now as the system of international relations has entered a period of global transformation. The fact that the alliance has undergone numerous organizational and identity changes throughout its long history makes the problem of understanding the phenomenon of NATO all the more difficult. In order to address this challenge, the article focuses on the key features of NATO’s partnership policy in the post-bipolar world. The author concludes that in the wake of the Cold War, NATO faced a profound identity crisis and set a course for a radical functional expansion, in particular within the framework of partnership policy, by including the issues of post-conflict reconstruction, human and gender security, public diplomacy, climate change, etc. into its agenda. All this seemed to indicate a radical shift of NATO from a traditional military-political association towards a genuine ‘security community’. However, the conflict in Ukraine and the deep impasse between Russia and the West, largely provoked by the NATO’s partnership and enlargement policy, has again brought to the forefront of the bloc’s collective identity-building the traditional binary ‘friend-and-foe’ logic and, especially, self-representation as a military alliance.

By the early 2020s, the NATO representatives have adopted an increasingly alarmist rhetoric regarding China’s strengthening positions in the international relations. In 2022, the PRC was officially qualified as a ‘systemic challenge’ to the countries of the alliance. These attempts to securitize the Chinese factor in the NATO’s discourse are particularly noteworthy since they can hardly be rationalized by traditional military-political, economic or ideological reasons. The author argues that these reasons stem from the NATO’s search for a new, global identity. In order to test this hypothesis, the article traces the evolution of the alliance’s collective self-representations from the Cold War period up to the present day. The author shows that during the Cold War, when NATO positioned itself as a military-political alliance aimed at deterring the ‘Soviet threat’, the alliance’s relations with China developed steadily and constructively despite political and ideological differences. In the post-bipolar period, the Chinese factor has lost its importance even more, as NATO was actively considering the idea of repositioning itself as a ‘security community’. Attention to the PRC in the NATO discourse increased significantly in the 2010s, when the alliance set a course towards a radical expansion of its mandate in international relations and self-representation as a global security actor. However, as the author emphasizes, during this period there still have been no attempts to securitize China, and relations between the PRC and NATO were marked by positive dynamics. The shift in the perception of the PRC in the NATO’s official discourse took place in the second half of the 2010s — early 2020s and stemmed from the apparent difficulties in asserting the global identity of the alliance and the growing great-power rivalry in the international arena. From this perspective, increasing efforts to securitize the PRC could be ascribed to the continuous evolution of the alliance’s collective identity and the desire of its leaders to close ranks in the face of new strategic challenges. However, the author shows that the deterioration of relations between NATO member states and Russia, a traditional ‘significant other’ for the alliance, renders meaningless any further attempts to securitize China, which continue still more by inertia.

Contemporary international relations are characterized by increasing interstate rivalry, which is especially pronounced at the level of regional subsystems. Latin Caribbean America (LCA) serves a vivid example, becoming the arena of competition (including in ideological terms) between the United States, which has traditionally considered the region its sphere of influence, and China, which is actively forging cooperation with the LCA countries in various fields. The purpose of this article is to identify and assess the role of the ideological component in the policy of the J. Biden administration towards the LCA countries against the background of the growing U.S.-Chinese rivalry in the region. The first section of the article defines the place of LCA in the foreign policy strategy of the current administration in the context of the Democrats’ rhetoric about the struggle over the ‘free world’ challenged by the authoritarian regimes, in particular by the PRC. The second section analyzes the main forms and directions of the PRC’s policy aimed at strengthening its presence in LCA. The author notes that the American authorities assess these PRC activities extremely negatively, as undermining the foundations of the U.S. leadership in the region. As a result, a new bipartisan consensus is emerging on the need to take urgent measures to counter the growing influence of China. The third section examines the key initiatives of the J. Biden administration aimed at strengthening the U.S. positions in the LCA countries. The author concludes that the steps taken by the 46th President of the United States in the Latin American direction have strong ideological overtones. They actually force the LCA countries to take sides in the U.S.-Chinese confrontation, which in turn leads to further polarization of the region in the spirit of a new Cold War.

The book under review is a new monograph by O.M. Aleksandriya and A.G. Savel’ev ‘Nuclear arms control in Russian-American strategic relations (2010 — early 2020s)’ published in 2024. The reviewer notes the academic novelty of the study as the authors examine issues of nuclear arms control in the relations between the United States and the Russian Federation within a broader historical, international and military-technological framework. The reviewer considers the content of the book’s three chapters and the authors’ key findings regarding such controversial issues, as the ongoing impasse in the strategic dialogue and the possible role of both third countries and new types of weapons in the negotiations on nuclear arms control, whenever they resume. The reviewer agrees with the authors that in a current situation a limited modernization of the New START provisions with their limits and verification measures is the most viable option, given the lack of feasible opportunities for qualitative development and deepening of the dialogue on nuclear arms control and its adaptation to new strategic realities. At the same time, the reviewer notes that the book lacks a detailed analysis of changes in the Russian-American strategic nuclear balance over the last fifteen years. Meanwhile, this balance has changed significantly, which will be crucial for the Russian-American strategic dialogue when (if) it resumes. This remark, however, by no means downplays the merits of the presented research and only indicates the prospects for its further development. As such, this monograph is a timely and insightful research that would be of interest to both specialists and anyone concerned with the issues of international security, arms control and Russian-American relations.