Russia’s idea of the multipolar world order: origins and main dimensions

Contemporary international relations are rife with the ideological struggle over the potential nature of the rapidly changing world order. Two distinct paradigmatic positions have surfaced. One champions economic, cultural, and political globalization conducted under the leadership of the Western world. The other advocates a more particularistic approach that fends for a balance of interests, multiplicity of politico-cultural forms and multiple centers of international influence. The latter doctrine, often referred to as the multipolar world theory, is the subject of this paper. The discussion argues that the idea of a multipolar world order has emerged as Russia’s main ethical and ideological position advanced in the international arena. Its philosophical tenets buttress Russian society intellectually at home, providing the expedients to pursue the country’s foreign policy goals abroad. The paper examines a substantial value package with roots in both Russian and Western philosophy that sustains the multipolar world order theory

Russia and its shared neighbourhoods: a comparative analysis of Russia-EU and Russia-China relations in the EU's Eastern neighbourhood and Central Asia

This article examines the conditions under which great powers succeed or fail to shape a cooperative security agenda in their shared neighbourhoods. It compares Russia's interactions with the EU and with China in their respective shared neighbourhoods: the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood region and Central Asia. The article applies a synthetic framework. It analyses how the interplay between three factors–ideas, capabilities and circumstantial factors such, as the personalities of leading politicians,–shape the process of interaction between great powers. It starts from a comparison of the images of the two regions in Russia's mind-set because such images provide cognitive lenses through which powers make sense of political developments in shared neighbourhoods. The article then moves to show how change in the balance of power (soft and hard) created enabling conditions for competition/collaboration. Finally, the article shows how specific circumstantial factors led to or shaped the Russian-European conflict. At the same time, similar factors prevented Russian-Chinese conflict in Central Asia. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group