The 1973 Arab-Israeli war has been examined many times by both Russian and foreign scholars. However, recently there has been an upsurge of interest in the Soviet policy during this war. Along with this, biased and one-sided interpretations of the Soviet position by Western and, especially, Israeli experts get widespread. This paper, based on a wide range of primary sources, both documents and memoirs, which only recently have become available to the academic community, seeks to revise or refute certain historiographic stereotypes regarding the Soviet policy in the Middle East at that period. In this regard, the author examines the Yom Kippur war in terms of the Soviet regional and global political interests, in particular, in the context of emerging US-Soviet détente. As for the regional context, the author pays special attention to the question of the Soviet government ability to influence its Middle Eastern partners, particularly, Anwar Sadat. The paper also highlights the role of ideology in shaping the Soviet position towards the Arab-Israeli conflict. The author concludes that in reality the Soviet influence on the Arab countries was very limited and, for instance, the Egyptian government gravitated more towards the United States than towards the Soviet Union. This reorientation of the Egypt’s foreign policy towards the US deprived the USSR of an important ally in the region. It also had a direct impact on subsequent peace negotiations from which the Soviet Union was de facto excluded. Finally, the Yom Kippur war also highlighted the negative effects of the overideologization of the Soviet foreign policy which impeded the efficiency of the Soviet leaders’ response to a rapidly changing situation in the region. At the same time this case reveals the true attitude of the Soviet leaders towards the détente in the Soviet-US relations. On the one hand, the Soviet government did not want the regional conflict to affect a newly reached level of the relationship between the superpowers. On the other hand, the October war unequivocally demonstrated that in the crisis situations the Kremlin’s desire to protect the Soviet strategic interests proved to be steadily stronger than its commitment to the spirit of détente.

The situation in Yemen in the 1960s went far beyond an ordinary public upheaval and internal crisis. The turmoil caused by the political regime change affected the interests of numerous foreign stakeholders, in particular, of Great Britain. The response of the British government to a new threat to its strategic interests in the region took form of a mercenary operation. An unofficial use of mercenaries for clandestine operations was not an extraordinary measure in the modern world history. However, the British operation in Yemen stands out in that regard as it was for the first time since the end of the World War II that such mission was carried out by mercenaries alone. It is therefore not surprising that this operation has played a crucial role in the development of corporate mercenarism in general.

The first section examines the causes and triggers of Great Britain’s intervention in the North Yemen Civil War in both global and regional contexts. The second section covers the initial stage of the mercenary operation: its priorities and objectives, funding mechanisms, the main forms and the role of mercenaries’ assistance to the Royalist forces. The author also emphasizes the role of regional actors, involved in the conflict on both sides: that of the Republican government (Egypt) and that of the former royal regime (Saudi Arabia, Israel). Finally, the third section examines the mercenary activities in the final stages of the North Yemen Civil War, particularly difficulties they faced as the British and the Saudi governments began to lose interest in supporting the Royalists. In conclusion the author assesses the influence of this operation on the development of corporate mercenarism.

Feminist studies, first introduced in international relations theory back in the Cold War, established themselves as an independent research field in 1990s. From the onset, feminist studies have been focused on the key concepts and notions of the IR theory, such as ‘state’, ‘power’, ‘security’, and ‘war’. It is exactly the role of gender perspective in the studies of war in the modern context which is the central issue of this paper. The first section examines feminist views on traditional gender roles attributed to women at war: the image of mother, the keeper of the hearth, and the image of victim. The author emphasizes that behind these roles lays a much broader set of issues, which involves legitimization of a particular structure of power relations in society in general. The second section focuses on perceptions of new gender roles of women at war, which include the images of a woman as a soldier and a terrorist, both in the academic discourse and in the media. The author underlines a paradox in this regard: whereas the practice of inter- and intrastate conflicts has already resulted in the entrenchment of the new female gender roles, gender stereotypes continue to dominate both the IR theory and mass consciousness. The author concludes that the issues of war and security will continue to play a crucial role in the development of feminist studies in the IR theory and outlines several promising directions for further research in this area.

At the turn of the millennium, as the Cold War ended and the United States were striving to build a unipolar world order, academic debates about the concept of sovereignty gained new momentum in the USA. This paper examines the views on this issue of representatives of the two major schools of international relations theory at the time — neoliberalism and neorealism. The author emphasizes that at the turn of the 21 st century the US academic discourse was dominated by a desire to revise traditional approaches to sovereignty as they were considered unsuitable for new postbipolar international realities. Discussions revolved around few key issues. Firstly, both neorealists and neoliberals focused on the possible implications of globalization and integration processes for the state sovereignty. Secondly, special attention was given to the search of a proper balance between the principle of sovereignty, on the one hand, and the protection of human rights, on the other. It is against this background that the concept of humanitarian intervention came into focus. The author stresses that at that time there appeared to be a certain convergence on the issues of sovereignty between the representatives of almost all key approaches in the US IR studies. For instance, it was a predominant assumption among the neoliberals and constructivists as well as the most part of the neorealists that a limitation of sovereignty was inevitable. Some experts pointed out that the processes of globalization and integration necessarily led to a ‘dilution’ of state sovereignty. Others suggested to decompose the principle of sovereignty into several parts. Still others stressed the indisputable importance of sovereignty as a basic principle, but admitted a necessity to adapt it to the new IR realities. Moreover, the US academic community almost unanimously accepted the priority of human rights over the principle of sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs of other states. As a result, the promotion of human rights was considered to be an international responsibility rather than an internal affair of a state. This, in turn, led to the emergence of the concept of ‘responsibility to protect’, which conditioned the state sovereignty not by its inherent rights but by its capacity to effectively protect its citizens’ human rights. This review of sovereignty researches published in 1990s and 2000s seems important for understanding the dynamics of the US official stance on a range of key issues of a current IR agenda, including the problem of foreign interference in internal affairs of other states.

The paper examines new challenges that confront the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) after India and Pakistan have joined it as full-fledged members. This enlargement of the SCO implies a considerable increase in its political and economic weight, as well as additional interstate contradictions, which have previously had a peripheral significance for the SCO.

In that regard special attention is drawn to the new political dynamics within the SCO. The author argues that cooperation within the Russia-India-China triangle (RIC) will play a decisive role for the SCO development. In this context, two scenarios are outlined. The first one envisages that the Russo-Chinese and Russo-Indian relations will have a positive dynamics while the Chinese-Indian relations will remain troubled. It is stressed that India’s participation in the SCO is likely to become another factor which will prevent the evolution of the Organization into anti-Western geopolitical alliance. Under favorable conditions, all three powers will be able to formulate a common position with regard to the most crucial international issues or to respond promptly to negative tendencies in the economic and security spheres. The second scenario involves a gradual deepening and extension of cooperation in the RIC format based on a common vision of geopolitical transformations within the Greater Eurasia. In this case, it can be assumed that over time the SCO will become the basis for the formation of the Greater Eurasian Partnership.

Another important topic covered in the paper is a security problem which is a traditional priority of the SCO policy in general and in the Central Asia region in particular. This issue has acquired new dimensions due to the Organization’s enlargement and the growth of its geopolitical role. In 2018–2019 the SCO powers, together and separately, have made a decisive contribution to the settlement of inter-Afghanistan conflict when the US and NATO troops had been withdrawn from Afghanistan. Moreover, it was due to the SCO efforts that the breakthrough of extremist and terrorist groups from Afghanistan to the Central Asia countries was prevented. The author concludes that in the coming years the SCO will play the key role in structuring the Greater Eurasia and strengthening the multipolar world order.

The paper examines different types of modern military unmanned systems — unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground systems and unmanned maritime systems — in terms of related R&D in different countries, changes in world market demand as well as opportunities and prospects for their limitation and control. The authors provide an updated classification of these three types of unmanned systems. Based on the analysis of contemporary R&D projects and procurement data the paper shows that global market of unmanned systems will grow in the near future and that this will become a major impediment for promoting control and limitation of such systems. It is therefore equally difficult to expect expansion and strengthening of effective export control of the unmanned systems. On the contrary, opposite trends are likely to prevail, including, among all, artificial adjustment of the unmanned systems to the categories of export products with relaxed requirements. The authors conclude that it would be equally difficult to overcome other drawbacks of export control regimes, such as possibilities of non-material technology transfer or nonadherence to corresponding restrictive regimes of countries which are the largest producers and exporters of unmanned systems.

Concerning UAVs’ limitation and control, the authors outline two main tracks of debate at the international level — the UN discussions on restriction of use of the unmanned platforms classified as lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) and less institutionalized discussions on prospects for incorporating of unmanned systems in the set of arms control agreements.

The authors identify main barriers to providing effective control over the development of the military UAVs, as well as prospects for advancement in that direction, and, finally, formulate some policy relevant recommendations.

The book under review is a multiauthored book ‘Asymmetries of regional integration projects in the 21st century’ published in 2018. The book assesses both the key contemporary integration projects and their role in a global political system. The review provides a detailed description of the contents of the book. The reviewer emphasizes that the analysis of individual integration projects is preceded by a detailed and informative overview of theoretical basis for studies on integration. The authors examine these issues through the prism of contemporary attempts by the academic community to define the existing world order. Each integration project is considered as a product of specific historical, cultural, political and socio-economic features of a particular state or a group of states. At the same time, fundamental questions of the role of regions in the future global order, as well as of proportion between stabilizing and destabilizing factors and practices within each of them remain open. The review focuses on the authors’ assessments of the current state and prospects for the development of the European Union. In this regard the reviewer examines the authors’ views on the concepts of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘intercultural dialogue’. Finally, the reviewer pays special attention to the authors’ assessments of the Russian projects of Eurasian integration and of the prospects for their interlinking with the European and Chinese initiatives. The reviewer concludes that this book sets out new directions for research of both the regional integration projects and their role in the global world order, and of interaction between individual countries and groups of states.