Contemporary specialist in development studies use a variety of similar terms often incoherently. In particular, this observation applies to the concept of ‘security’. While the term ‘sustainable development’ is now firmly established in theory and policy, the ‘security’ concept remains essentially contested. In the relevant literature ‘sustainable development’ may be linked to ‘environmental security’, ‘human security’ or ‘sustainable security’. Acknowledging the existence of an inextricable ‘security — development nexus’, the author traces the modifications of its first element. Examination of the concepts used in an academic discourse over the last three decades — since the emergence of ‘sustainable development’ paradigm allows to reconstruct the genesis of ‘sustainable security’, one of the most recent entries to international development lexicon. This paper demonstrates that initially, when ‘sustainable development’ concept had just emerged, the nexus was seen as a dyad ‘sustainable development — environmental safety’. At the very end of the 20^th century, scholars came up with a new modification of the nexus — ‘human security — sustainable development’. However, the process of its conceptualization was disrupted by the so-called ‘securitization of
development’. The international development community’s responded to this disruption with a ‘sustainable security’ concept. Describing the key parameters of ‘sustainable security’, the author emphasizes that a unified and holistic approach to its conceptualization is yet to be formed in the Western development community.

Since World War II U.S.–UK relations, despite occasional ups and downs, have been characterized by an unprecedented level of mutual trust and cooperation. The official and academic discourse adopted the phrase ‘the special relationship’ to describe this phenomenon. In the post-Cold War period, Tony Blair’s foreign policy apparently gave it a new impetus. Nevertheless, its controversial results along with certain developments in the 2010s have called for a reassessment of the alliance. Moreover, skepticism has been growing about the future of the Anglo-American Special Relationship (AASR) since the start of the Brexit talks after the 2016 EU membership referendum and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, given his determination to review the principles underpinning U.S. cooperation with its European allies. The paper examines the current state and the future of the AASR. Based on a large body of academic literature, the first section focuses on the main approaches to defining the special relationship and determining the reasons behind its emergence as well as its role and importance for both countries. The author aligns herself with those researchers who attribute the durability of Anglo-American cooperation to the high level of institutionalization in the defense, intelligence and nuclear spheres. The second section examines the expert and political discourse on the current state and the future of the AASR in the 2010s as well as its media coverage. Particular attention is paid to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s reports on UK–U.S. relations and the Report of the Iraq Inquiry (Chilcot report). As for the current state of the special relationship, the author stresses that the potential decrease in British military capabilities, Britain’s joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Brexit have caused concern in the U.S., but this unique and enduring alliance will remain important for both countries in the coming years. Despite some speculations on the UK’s diminishing power, the United States needs its military and intelligence capabilities as well as diplomacy to project power in the key regions of the world.

In the context of increasingly tense Russian-British relations the UKRussia Year of Science and Education 2017 offered a window of opportunity to re-establish a constructive dialogue on a number of areas of scientific and technological cooperation, as well as to promote track II diplomacy. Joint activities, held during this year, demonstrated a considerable potential of science diplomacy but revealed substantial differences in the Russian and British views of its objectives and functions. This makes it appropriate to examine the United Kingdom’s experience in science diplomacy and its role in British foreign policy. The first section examines the most common working definition of science diplomacy which differentiates between three categories: ‘science in diplomacy’, ‘science for diplomacy’, and ‘diplomacy for science’. Directly linked to national interests, science diplomacy, can be viewed as a source of ‘soft power’, as an effective conflict prevention and resolution mechanism or as an element of the global governance system. Such multidimensionality of science diplomacy is generally typical of the UK as well. The second section thoroughly examines the development of the discourse on science diplomacy in the British official documents and national science and technology development strategies. The author identifies a fundamental continuity in defining objectives and functions of science diplomacy in the policies of all the Cabinets over the last two decades. Finally, this paper examines organizational and institutional features of science diplomacy in the UK and the activities of the key governmental and non-governmental institutions, societies and organizations engaged in science diplomacy. The conclusion is drawn that British science diplomacy is closely connected with the Kingdom’s key foreign policy objectives and priorities and organically complements more conventional instruments. Moreover, science diplomacy has become all the more important in the light of Brexit..

The Arab Awakening became a watershed event for the states of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and changing the political landscape of the entire region. The crisis in the Arab world provoked an unprecedented strengthening of the Salafi jihadist groups, in particular, the notorious Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). In 2014 ISIS took over large swathes of territory in war-torn Syria and Iraq, which had gone through a complex and extremely risky process of nation-building after overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime. In June of 2014 ISIS proclaimed a ‘caliphate’ on the territories under its control. In contrast with the Assad government in Syria, the Iraqi authorities received various kinds of support in fighting Islamic State from Western countries and the organizations with their predominant influence, including the World Bank Group. Since then stabilization and reconstruction of liberated areas in Iraq have become a priority for these organizations in their work in the MENA region. This paper examines the determinants of the World Bank’s engagement in Iraq after the establishment of a ‘сaliphate’ and the motives behind choosing particular modalities, channels, instruments and priority sectors in its policies towards Iraq during this period. The paper consists of three sections. The first section sheds light on the World Bank’s priorities in Iraq in the context of evolution of its regional strategy after the Arab Awakening. The second section examines individual World Bank projects launched after June of 2014. The third section focuses on the role of the World Bank in preparing needs assessments and policy papers for the Iraqi government after declaration of victory over ISIS. The conclusion is drawn that the Bank’s activities in Iraq after 2014 represent a remarkable example of securitization of development agenda of this pivotal multilateral institution. The Bank was clearly guided not by economic but by political and strategic motives while developing its strategy of engagement in Iraq after the ISIS offensive. The World Bank projects in Iraq during 2014–2018 period were primarily aimed at strengthening governance and restoring the citizens’ trust in the state institutions in the most vulnerable to radicalization regions of the country.

The concept of ‘normative power’ implies that values should take precedence over narrow political interests and designates the ability of international actors to establish global norms and to encourage other actors to prioritize these values in foreign and domestic policies. The European Union had been traditionally considered one of the main proponents of this concept but the revision of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2015 has changed the cooperation agenda between the EU and Partner Countries by strengthening its pragmatic component. In that regard the case of the South Caucasus is of special interest as it demonstrates how three countries of the region addressed the EU agenda for cooperation and devised different formats of cooperation, despite similar initial conditions. The paper compares narratives of affiliation with Europe in official discourses in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. On the one hand, this approach allows the author to demonstrate how these countries use the normative component of their cooperation with the EU to advance their own foreign policy agenda through, inter alia, unveiling inconsistencies in the EU’s own policy. On the other hand, the author emphasizes the conflict potential inherent to the European Neighborhood Policy which seeks to erase borders between the EU and partner countries, while simultaneously creating new dividing lines and clearly delineating a circle of friendly states. Here arises a normative paradox, since the EU’s self-identification, contrary to declared universalism of its values, leads to an exclusion and deprives the certain countries’ of the right to be considered ‘European’. This paradox limits severely normative influence of the European Union as it challenges the very idea of the EU normative power and brings about an increasing fragmentation rather than a stabilization of the region.

This publication represents a final report of the research seminar ‘Reconstructing Iraq: domestic logic and role of external actors’ organized on June 26, 2018 by the Center for Security and Development Studies of the School of World Politics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University in partnership with the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies of the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of the CSDS team’s systematic monitoring of international activities aimed at strengthening governance in the states of the Middle East affected by the Arab Awakening. The report summarizes the results of the CSDS experts’ examination of domestic and international context and the outcomes of the Kuwait International Conference for Reconstruction of Iraq which was convened with a joint support from the United Nations, the World Bank and the European Union on February 12–14, 2018 and became one of the largest pledging conferences in recent years. The publication contains an assessment of a domestic environment in Iraq on the eve of the Kuwait Conference, analysis of distribution of commitments among different donor groupings, and explains the logic behind the actions of the ‘established’ donors belonging to the OECD DAC (the United States, the European Union, Germany) and non-DAC ‘emerging’ donors (Turkey, Iran and the Gulf monarchies), as well as international organizations. Special attention is paid to comparing the context and the outcomes of the forum in Kuwait and the Madrid Conference of 2003 — the first pledging conference for reconstruction of Iraq held after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein. The conclusion is drawn that smaller than expected commitments made by international donors in Kuwait (mostly in the form of loans and export credits) can be expalined, mainly, by the shift in the perceptions of the ‘established’ donors, and the U.S. in particular, which proved to be unwillling to invest large sums of money in a notoriously corrupt country and at the same time quite confident about the oil-rich Iraq’s ability to meet reconstruction needs from its own funds. Against this background there have been a visible and understandable re-distribution of roles in favor of ‘non-traditional’ donors, mainly regional actors — Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE which act out of totally different logic than the Western donors. This change is noticeable also at the level of multilateral institutions and non-governmental organizations, and reflects both a considerable strentghening of non-Western countries’ donor potential and a growing competition with one another in an increasingly unstable region. Concrete scope of each donor’s engagement in the reconstruction of Iraq will be determined by the its assessment of risks related to political dynamics in the country after the 2018 parliamentary elections. This dynamics, in its turn, will depend also on the Iraqi government’s ability to conduct a dialogue with its external partners.