The article is devoted to the Latin American policy of Canada during the premierships of Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney. It should be noted that the foreign policy of the Canadian Prime Ministers was aimed at improving Canada’s geopolitical image in the Latin American region, as well as establishing mutually beneficial economic ties with its member states. It is significant to underline, that, despite their internal party diversities and different party manifestos, both Canadian Conservatives and Liberals were united in their desire to develop foreign policy ties with the Latin American countries in 1968–1993. The article emphasizes that, if in the years of Pierre Trudeau’s premiership the foundation was laid for the future of a sustainable trade, economic and political interaction between Canada and the Latin American countries, then during Brian Mulroney’s tenure Canada joined the Organization of American States. The author believes that the Latin American policy of Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney was significant for strengthening Canada’s cooperation with the Latin American countries. Such a policy contributed to Canada’s further success in this area. The author of the article concludes that Pierre Trudeau’s and Brian Mulroney’s different attitudes towards their country’s foreign policy issues did not prevent them from fruitfully developing the relations with the Latin American countries.

The foreign policy decision-making remains “blank” for researchers. It is impossible to determine exactly what in-put is available to a decision-maker and how the final decision is elaborated. For example, we do not have access to the classified materials provided by intelligence or the US Department of Defense. In other words, the entire foreign policy mechanism is a “black box”. In this regard, think tanks can be considered as a convenient and valid alternative material for studying the decisionmaking process.

American sinology originated in the second half of the 19th century. It was founded by missionaries, merchants and manufacturers. Over the years, they have contributed to the development of Chinese studies. Even during the periods when the United States pursued an isolationist foreign policy, sinology continued to develop. At some point, new directions originated within the discipline. The latter also contributed to the development of sinology into a separate regional studies branch of knowledge.

But the disputes between experts have contributed not only to the emergence of new meanings and notions, but also to a decrease in the resilience of Chinese studies to politicization. Moreover, not only politicians tried to politicize it and use it against their competitors, but also some experts who sought greater involvement in the decision-making process. In other words, “shaping” expertise for domestic and foreign political interests of decisionmakers has become more conspicuous during the neoconservative switch.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the strategic partnership between Germany and Russia from 1994, when an agreement on partnership and co-operation was concluded, up to 2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power in the Russian Federation. The author, using the historical-genetic method, attempts to highlight the evolution of the partnership in the context of the interrelationship of the strategic partnership, as a European phenomenon, and the part of the German national policy. Based on a variety of sources, the paper compares specific approaches to defining the genesis of the phenomenon, its qualitative content and evolution. The differences in approaches are illustrated on the example of various publications and legal frameworks. On the basis of the collected material, the author reconstructs the expectations Germany and the Russian Federation sought to get from the strategic partnership and identifies the obstacles to its full realization. The causal links underlying this format of relations are separately highlighted. For the sake of clarity, they are listed chronologically. Such a presentation made it possible to recreate the dynamics of the partnership development and to provide more information on the expectations of the parties. The author concludes that there were two levels of the strategic partnership: the institutional one (the link: Germany – the EU – Russia) and the interstate partnership (the link: Germany – Russia), where the trend was exactly the transition to the institutional level.

The purpose of this study is to determine Japan’s guidelines in the international arena and the role of the Middle East in Japan’s foreign policy in the postwar period. The relevance of the topic is conditioned by the current trends in Japan’s foreign policy, when its diplomacy in the region becomes more proactive due to the energy and resource importance of the Middle East, which, as a consequence, generates competition among the countries for geopolitical influence. On the one hand, Tokyo positions itself as a promoter of “Western values” in the region, following Washington’s path in the Middle East region, and, on the other, as a country of the East. At the same time, the peculiarities of the decision-making process inside Japan itself make its policy “sluggish”, depriving it of dynamics in a highly conflict-prone region, where the situation is rapidly changing.

The article presents a theoretical foundation of Japan’s foreign policy course, substantiates the choice of its priorities and defines the role of the Middle East in this strategy.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the practical aspects of the U.S. digital diplomacy towards Israel in the period from 2009 to 2016. This extent of time is notable for the beginning of the development of the U.S. digital diplomacy as a government tool for the “soft power” implementation. The article examines the realization of the U.S. digital diplomacy as a mechanism to influence foreign audiences in relation to an allied state – Israel, with which the United States had tense relations during the Presidency of Barack Obama.

With an institutional approach and a document research method, the author explores the institutions implementing the U.S. digital diplomacy, as well as the initiatives and programs of the United States in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The article pays special attention to the U.S. twiplomacy towards Israel. Trough the content analysis, the paper reviews the Tweet accounts of the U.S. President and the U.S. Secretaries of State, the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Israel, as well as of the Israeli Prime Minister.

The strategic vacuum after the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to some alternative initiatives to maintain stability and peace in the Black Sea region. The article examines the unique “Blackseafor” cooperation model established by the agreement on the foundation of the Black Sea Naval Task Force; the paper also discusses the Black Sea Harmony Operation, aimed at deterring terrorism and asymmetric threats in the region. First of all, the emphasis is placed on the history of the cooperation model, its purpose, objectives and the role played by the “Blackseafor” in the system of regional security and inter-ethnic interaction. An attempt is made to explain the practical mechanisms of the naval cooperation, as well as of the reasons for curtailing the initiative and the role of the Republic of Turkey. It is concluded that the model was an exceptional example of how the navies of the same region countries with different geopolitical positions and foreign policy orientations can be brought together to create an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation. However, after the NATO’s fifth enlargement, the development of the “Blackseafor” was not supported by Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia, which were interested in the presence of the Alliance’s naval forces in the Black Sea, though the Russian Federation and Turkey continued obstructing that involvement.

The article examines the specifics of the impact of the global food crisis on the Middle East region using the examples of the three Middle Eastern states: Jordan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. The author considers the general situation in the region in terms of food availability since the beginning of the food crisis (in 2022), as well as the situation in the countries that are the subject of this research. Special attention is paid to the study of the dynamics and the certain features of the emergence and development of the food crisis in the countries under consideration up to the presenttime. The article analyzesthe key challengesfacing Jordan, Yemen and the UAE in the field of food security in a case study format and proposes potentialsolutionsto those problems.The author also attemptsto make a forecast of the further development of the situation in the countriesin question on the basis of the solutions already adopted and implemented by the Middle Eastern countries (not only those considered in the article, but also the neighboring ones). There is a conclusion about the degree of impact of the global food crisis on Jordan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, as well as about the short-term prospects that await the states in the context of the discussed issue.

The current state of world affairs is characterized by a new round of confrontation between the great Powers, which resulted from the desire of a number of countries to build a multipolar world that would take their interests into account on a broader basis. Naturally, such a course of events does not meet the interests of the United States, which seeks to retain its status as the sole superpower.

Economic development and the access to the latest information and technological innovations allowed Russia, China and Iran to create competitive warfare technologies and initiate the process of redistributing power and might across the Eurasian continent. In this regard, the U.S. armed forces in general, and the Special Operations Forces (SOF), in particular, started reorienting themselves from the operations to combat terrorists to the measures of countering the competing powers. The US SOF is playing an increasingly important role in the global competition with China, Russia and Iran, especially in the field of irregular warfare. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to analyze the possible ways for the United States to use the SOF units to deter its competitors.

The article explores the relationship between the fascist policy and the growing process of society consumerization in the period between the two wars in Italy. The paper examines the conflict between the aims of the regime that focused on masculinity, militancy and self-sacrifice, and the consumer world concentrated on comfort, pleasure and the feminization of advertising. The state actively contributed to the development of modernization, where the delay in granting suffrage led to a civil war, dictatorship and foreign occupation, and where there was an attempt on the part of the regime, that had proclaimed its commitment to transform the consciousness, values and character of the country’s citizens, to raise a new Italian. There also was a sacralization of some political institutions, and that sacralization started being intertwined with the cult of consumption. Besides, there emerged the trend towards the commercialization of the socio-political religion. During the elitist consumerism of the interwar period, the foundations of the advertising industry were laid and the new consumer practices and values were formed, which later became an integral part of the Italian way of life. Advertising images are evidence that fascism and the industry interests often, but not always, coincided. As part of the analysis of communication, image innovation and lifestyle in Fascist Italy, the data in the article provide insight into the extra-temporal value and the not-always-obvious unrelatedness of advertising and the dictatorial regime.

Within the framework of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the so-called Jewish issue is acute both throughout the world and in Russia. The term “Zionist” is often used in a negative context. In addition, people do not distinguish between Jews and Zionists, believing that these are identical words. However, there are differences and nuances in addressing the Jewish topic, and in particular – Jewish culture and traditions. In this regard, the work is intended to clarify a number of issues on the subject and expand its historiography. When preparing the publication, historical-genetic and historicalsystemic research methods were used. The novelty of the matter lies in the fact that there are very few research papers devoted to the cultural work in the Zionist movement, and the introduction into scientific circulation of the documents devoted to this issue will expand the historiography of the Zionist movement. A distinctive feature of the cultural work of the Zionists as part of the education of the participants in the movement was that it was carried out not only among young people, but also among the adult supporters of the movement. Studying the trends in the cultural work aimed at educating the builders of the future state of Israel will allow us to identify the main directions of this activity and draw parallels between a traditional Jewish upbringing and education and the upbringing and education in the Zionist environment. The article was prepared on the basis of Russian and foreign archival documents, whose introduction into scientific circulation will replenish the source base on the history of the Zionist movement in Soviet Russia.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the modern phenomenon of the growing popularity of the right-wing forces in European countries using the example of the Austrian party system. The purpose of the article is to identify the discursive mechanisms that ensure the implementation of a right turn in the political life of Austria in 2021–2023. The methodological basis of the analysis is Ruth Wodak’s concept of discourse, which allowed her to create a unique typology of discursive political strategies. Some of them were used in this study: control of the current agenda and information, control of messages, authoritarian pressure, “rude politeness”, “shameless normalization”. The focus is on the cognitive strategies for constructing a “new normal” – the strategies that legalize the right-wing radical rhetoric. The factors that ensured the right turn are considered, and a special attention is paid to the factor of the incorrectly structured communication of the ruling Austrian People’s Party, which ensured the legalization of the right-wing populists’ rhetoric as an element of the “new normal”. The discursive strategies used by Herbert Kickl in the election campaign are described. The prospects for the impact of the discourse strategies of the Austrian Freedom Party on public opinion are analyzed. An assessment is made of their effectiveness and contribution to the growth of the right-wing rating as a harbinger of victory in the 2024 parliamentary elections in Austria.

The research deals with the current problems and prospects for consolidating the political and legal positions of ASEAN and Russia regarding the territorial dispute in the South China Sea. The analysis of the political statements by the representatives of the parties to the dispute, of the international treaties and media materials reveals that the representatives of Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam advocate for a speedy development of a legally binding Code of Conduct, and these states are unanimous as to the necessity to resolve the dispute in accordance with the International Maritime Law. China’s position remains politically ambiguous regarding the potential negotiated settlement.

The situation is complicated by the U.S. military build-up in the maritime spaces of the Asia-Pacific and by an active involvement of the countries of the region in the dispute so as to implement the “China containment” policy. For Russia, the most preferable strategy seems to be a commitment to an active non-interference policy, while remaining open to the advisory and mediating role, considering the possibilities of applying the tools of Science Diplomacy. Confidential and honest discussion of the risks posed by the instability in the South China Sea should contribute to the settlement of the dispute based on the rule of international law.

The article analyzes the modern English-language historiography of the policy of the Communist International regarding the Latin American region. The choice of the English-speaking countries is due to the fact that a significant number of studies on the tactics of the Comintern in relation to Latin America and the activities of its sections have been published there. Historians are mainly interested in what influence the Comintern exerted on the tactics of the Latin American Communist Parties and what the nature of that influence was. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that, despite the relevance of studying the policies of the Third International, there have never been any publications to analyze the views of contemporary foreign historians on the activities of that international organization in Latin America. It is stated that the traditionalist approach to the analysis of the activities of the Comintern, which took shape before and during the Cold War, is still significantly represented in English-language historiography. However, with the new approach (the “revisionist” one) finally gaining ground, it contributed to a certain revision of the existing trends: the article contains the assessments of both the negative and the positive influence of the Comintern on the separately taken Communist parties, on the political situation in a country or region.