Vestnik RUDN International Relations最新文献

{"title":"Challenge of “Decolonisation” and Need for a Comprehensive Redefinition of Neocolonialism","authors":"Aleksandr L. Bovdunov","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-4-645-658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-4-645-658","url":null,"abstract":"The need for “decolonisation” of the Second world and semi-periphery countries (in the terminology of world-systems analysis) is increasingly raised in practical policy as well as in academic publications. However, the very question of decolonisation as applied to countries that were the targets of European colonial expansion is fraught with both negative consequences in political practice and theoretical confusion. On the one hand, the discourse of “decolonisation” encourages separatist tendencies and leads to new conflicts. On the other hand, the notion of “colonialism” is becoming less rigorous: in this perspective, any territorial expansion by any state at any time in history can be described as colonialism. The notion of “colonialism” loses its specific historical meaning and hence turns from a scientific term into a propaganda cliché. Thus, the possibility to correctly comprehend the phenomenon of European colonialism as a concrete historical reality that determined the fate of the peoples of both Europe itself and other parts of the world in Modern times, the only “colonialism” that the peoples of the world have really faced for the last 500 years, disappears. Theoretical and practical, scientific and political aspects of the problem are closely linked. Within an expansive interpretation of “colonialism”, former colonial powers, moreover, states still possessing unequal dependencies, such as the USA, are able to accuse their geopolitical opponents of “colonialism” as they are multi-ethnic powers, formed as a result of long historical processes, where various practices of ethnic interaction have taken place. The very possibility of interpreting the practices of non-European powers (Russia, China, Iran, Ethiopia) as colonial is linked to the popular paradigm of “internal colonialism.” It has emerged as part of the post-colonial theory of international relations in European and American academic centres and by its very nature is an example of a deliberately biased approach that focuses on the most marginalised groups of “subalterns” but ignores major civilisational entities. The author points out the biases and shortcomings of this approach with concrete examples, reveals its philosophical premises and suggests using the findings of fundamental geopolitics, world-systems theory, philosophy of space and philosophy of culture to clarify the concept of “colonialism.”","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82315682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Soviet Structural Aid to the Republic of Mali in 1960-1968","authors":"Anna S. Davidchuk, D. Degterev, Evgenii N. Korendyasov","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-4-714-727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-4-714-727","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyzes the phenomenon of the Soviet Union’s structural aid to African countries - technical and economic cooperation covering major sectors of the economy to ensure the self-sufficient development of recipient countries and weaken the neocolonial impact of the West. The case of bilateral relations between the USSR and Mali in 1960-1968 was chosen for a number of reasons - the strategic location of this African country, its place in the structure of French interests, the formats and volumes of Soviet aid, and, finally, rather weak coverage of the issue in Russian and foreign historiography. The authors preface the analysis of Soviet aid with an overview of the country’s economic situation in the 1960s and the difficulties faced by the Malian government in establishing an independent economic system through the introduction of its own currency, the Malian franc, and the nationalization of former French enterprises. The research is mostly based on the archival funds of the State Committee on Foreign Economic Relations of the Russian State Archive of Economy. The analysis of Soviet assistance is conducted in a wide range of areas, from industry and agriculture to health care and education. The final section examines the transport issue and the Soviet role in removal of the transport blockade imposed by Senegal. Both successful projects of Soviet-Malian cooperation, as the gold and bauxite exploration, the construction of a cement plant, and a sports stadium, and unrealized ideas are described. Among the most obvious problems that hindered cooperation between the USSR and Mali were the lack of financial resources, excessive caution, and Mali’s rather active cooperation with its neighbors and capitalist countries. Soviet aid to Mali allows us to trace the Soviet Union’s role in the real decolonization of African countries and the strengthening of their sovereignty. Unlike many other donors, who mostly limited their aid to certain projects, the USSR provided support within the framework of a full cycle of work in all sectors of the economy (resource extraction - construction of enterprises for processing resources - training of personnel to service enterprises - export of finished goods). Obviously, such a comprehensive approach had a truly favorable effect on the sovereignization of the Malian economy.","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78835955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Kayashima, N., Kuroda, K., & Kitamura, Y. (2022). Japan’s International Cooperation in Education: History and Prospects. Springer Singapore, 365 p.","authors":"Lusine A. Melkonyan","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-4-815-819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-4-815-819","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>-</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83531723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Fenenko, A. V. (2022). History of International Relations in the Pre-Westphalian Era: Textbook for Higher Education Institutions. Moscow: Aspekt Press publ., 752 p. (In Russian)","authors":"D. Malyshev","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-635-638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-635-638","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>-</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75253377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Acharya, A., Deciancio, M., & Tussie, D. (Eds.). (2021). Latin America in Global International Relations. New York, London: Routledge, 267 p.","authors":"M. Kodzoev","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-629-631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-629-631","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>-</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"213 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79488275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Rouvinski, V., & Jeifets, V. (Eds.). (2022). Rethinking Post-Cold War - Latin American Relations. New York, London: Routledge, 303 p.","authors":"Ruslan Kostiuk","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-632-634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-632-634","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>-</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86390098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Latin American Integration against the Backdrop of a Conservative Wave: Between Irrelevance and the Search for New Meanings","authors":"V. Jeifets, Kseniya A. Konovalova","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-447-463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-447-463","url":null,"abstract":"The evolution of regionalism in Latin America has historically been greatly influenced by changes in governments and their ideological programs. In this article, looking at the courses of the administrations of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Ivan Duque in Colombia, Sebastian Piñera (second term, 2018-2022) in Chile, Mario Abdo Benítez in Paraguay, it is proposed to examine transformations in integration against the backdrop of increased influence of right-wing forces in regional alignments in the mid-2010s to the early 2020s. Analyzing foreign policy steps, rhetoric, content of conceptual documents, the authors focus on the peculiarities of the national views of various right forces on integration initiatives. The paper concentrates on the decline of Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), creation of Forum for the Progress and Integration of South America (PROSUR) and Lima Group, activities of the Pacific Alliance and Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) in the context of the demand for flexible and pragmatic integration “without politicization.” The authors come to several conclusions which show ambiguity of the right turn impact on the integration landscape in Latin America. First, although the rise of liberal-conservative forces has reformatted philosophy, key ideas of integration, participation in multilateral groups remains important for governments that seek to solve pressing problems and expand their own reputational and political capital with its help. Second, despite the fluidity of electoral dynamics, which may soon put an end to the dominance of the right, they have raised a number of issues of long-term relevance in the context of the future path of integration associations in the region. The contribution of the work is explained by its appeal to the very factor of ideology in the development of Latin American integration, detailed analysis of specific country experiences and new conclusions based on it.","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"134 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78603028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Brazil’s New Investment Treaty Model: Why Now?","authors":"L. S. Amorim, H. Menezes","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-600-612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-600-612","url":null,"abstract":"The investment treaty regime, unlike other economic regimes, lacks common substantive multilateral rules and depends on countries signing bilateral or plurilateral investment treaties. As the regime presented a pro-developed country bias, developing countries, especially in Latin America, avoided signing investment treaties up to the 1980s. Brazil followed this trend and did not start an investment treaty program until the late 1990s. However, the treaties never entered into force. The country also avoided acceding to the World Bank agency responsible for investment arbitration proceedings - the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). In 2015, Brazil started a new investment treaty program. However, the timing seems counterintuitive. The investment treaty regime had already been criticized, including inefficiency in attracting foreign investment, the potential to encroach on countries’ regulatory sovereignty and the lack of legitimacy of its investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedure. Furthermore, the favorable foreign economic scenario did not force the country to seek an inflow of foreign capital at that time. The new Cooperation and Facilitation Investment Agreement (CFIA) is presented as an investment treaty model for developing countries, since it responds to major criticisms to the investment treaty regime, and at the same time meets the demands of an important domestic interest group, the Brazilian industrial sector, for a legal framework that mitigates the political risk of its increasingly internationalized operations. Brazil’s CFIA may be viewed as a model that other developing countries could emulate in the face of the failure of the traditional paradigm of investment dispute settlement.","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"2019 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75019212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamics and Prospects for China - Latin America Relations from the Perspective of Latin American Scholars","authors":"Raúl Bernal-Meza","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-464-477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-464-477","url":null,"abstract":"The research reveals Latin American academic thought on the relationship between Latin America countries and China. The relevance of the topic is linked to the growing importance and presence of China in the foreign policy of Latin American countries, whose bilateral relations are developing against a backdrop of growing US - China tensions. Today, China is one of the key economic partners of several Latin American countries, as well as implementing a number of infrastructure projects on the continent. This forces Latin America to choose between traditional ties of dependence vis-à-vis Washington and increasing economic and investment cooperation with Beijing. Methodologically the article is based on the study and interpretation of the ideas of Latin American scholars and experts gathered from secondary sources, monographs and academic articles. The author puts forward two hypotheses based on the existence of two conjectures. The first hypothesis is that there is no consensus among Latin American scholars and representatives of research centers about the impact of China’s bilateral relations with the countries of the region in the logic of the core-periphery model on the economic development of Latin America. The second hypothesis is that the views of the local academic community have little or even no influence on the decisions Latin American governments make regarding China. The author concludes that at a time when Latin America is going through a crisis cycle of integration processes the region is unable to take a unified position on the issue of assessing China’s performance.","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77605891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Latin America in/and the AIIB: A Constructivist Analysis","authors":"Mariano Turzi, Á. Mendez","doi":"10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-478-494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2022-22-3-478-494","url":null,"abstract":"This research focuses on the relationship between Latin America and China. The authors try to answer the question of why the countries of the region have been passive in the context of their interaction with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The relevance of the topic stems from the gradual increase in China’s importance and presence in the Latin American region. Today, China is one of the key economic partners of several Latin American countries. To date, however, countries in the region have not been very active in their engagement with the AIIB, despite the existence of specific material incentives. Methodologically, the study is based on a constructivist approach. According to the authors, alternative paradigms of international relations, such as liberalism and realism, fail to explain the paradox of stubborn inaction by the countries of the region. This is due to the fact that the historically rooted and culturally bound procedural nature of international relations allows constructivism to uncover the individual facts that led to this result. The authors conclude that governments in the Latin American region have “constructed” between themselves quite a few customary modes of behaviour which debilitate their demonstrated capacity for agency in international affairs. This has created a vacuum of effective strategy in relations with China in the region. Moreover, this pattern of engagement is not limited to China and is evident in the relations of regional countries with the US and other extra-regional powers.","PeriodicalId":55752,"journal":{"name":"Vestnik RUDN International Relations","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88737339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}