This article examines the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the analysis of foreign policy and international relations, with a particular emphasis on the United States. It identifies four principal fields of AI application: forecasting international events, modeling diplomatic negotiations, evaluating the risks of automated decision-making in the nuclear domain, and analyzing foreign policy decision-making processes. The article offers a comparative assessment of AI systems developed in the United States, China, and Russia, underscoring the growing relevance of specialized and domain-specific AI models as tools for expert analysis. Particular attention is devoted to benchmarking methodologies for evaluating generative models and to the critical role of human expertise in interpreting AI-generated outputs.

The article analyzes the role of John Wesley and the Methodist discourse in the British propaganda during the American Revolution. The study focuses on the relationship between his personal views expressed in the private correspondence and the public pro-government position reflected in the pamphlets. The author examines the key concepts of Wesley’s political theory – the people, freedom, and the republic – and their religious interpretation through the prism of Holy Scripture. Particular attention is paid to the use of the anti-slavery rhetoric as a tool of the anti-American propaganda, as well as the evolution of Wesley’s views as the conflict progressed.
The methodological basis of the article includes a historical-genetic analysis, a discursive analysis of Wesley’s texts and a comparative historical approach. The source base consists of Wesley’s pamphlets, letters, and diaries. The scientific novelty of the research lies in a comprehensive study of Wesley’s religious and political discourse, revealing his role not only as a religious figure, but also as a Tory ideologue. The article contributes to understanding the interaction of religion and politics during the American Revolution, and also demonstrates how the War of Independence influenced the development of Methodism in the United States, despite Wesley’s initial opposition to revolutionary ideas.

The article reveals the features of the Soviet-British cooperation in the field of concession activities during the 1920s, when both sides faced serious difficulties in the process of post-war reconstruction of their economies. The Bolshevik government’s search for the new forms of attracting foreign capital for accelerated industrialization corresponded to the aspirations of British industrialists to obtain the sources of cheap raw materials to expand the markets for technical goods and equipment. Despite the political difficulties, it was the concessions that could become a convenient channel for foreign investment in the USSR. Statistics show that this was facilitated by the New Economic Policy (NEP), which gained the support of the Kremlin leadership and found a positive response from the European public. By the middle of the first postwar decade, the Soviet leadership had received several thousand concession offers from Western companies, including the British ones, which, along with the German manufacturers, still occupied the leading positions in the economy of the Russian Empire. The author refutes the erroneous opinion about a total economic blockade allegedly set up by capitalist countries in order to economically “strangle” the Land of the Soviets. In reality, the share of the certain types of products at enterprises with the participation of foreign capital ranged from 30 to 80% during the heyday of foreign concessions (1925–1927) in the USSR. However, as the article, based on archival documents and published materials, shows, a number of objective and subjective factors could not but lead to the collapse of the Soviet-British concession cooperation in the first half of the 1930s. A typical example was the case of the “Lena Goldfields”, which was analyzed in detail by the author of the publication.

The article examines the World War II representation in the Japanese manga discourse. The author considers manga as culturally significant objects of historical memory, illustrating the attitude, over the last several decades, of the Japanese society to the outcomes of World War II. The chronological framework of the study deals with the Japanese comics released from 2001 to 2024. This period was chosen as a turning point in the history of the relationship between the USA and Japan and in the rethinking in the popular culture of both states of the World War II consequences. The paper employs the method of discourse analysis, through which a repertoire of meanings is derived from the texts on World War II. The study examines several discourses relevant to the contemporary Japanese society. In the end, the author concludes that Japanese manga illustrate the Japanese society’s “journey” from trauma to triumph.

This article analyses European Union-NATO extra-institutional cooperation, how informal mechanisms and practices complement formal structures and procedures, allowing both organisations to respond more flexibly and effectively to security challenges. The main benefits of extra-institutional cooperation are highlighted, including, above all, increased speed, flexibility, reduced costs and confidentiality. The EU and NATO state that they seek a “strategic partnership”. However, there are potential problems that could hinder the relationship between the two. In an international community faced with insurmountable challenges such as war and armed conflict, international terrorism, migration crisis, modern piracy, cybercrime and global acts of God, it is crucial to see how effective inter-organisational cooperation, including at the informal level, is proving to be.

The present article is devoted to the study of the approaches adopted by some American think tanks in the development of recommendations on Iran. Since the information regarding the interaction between the executive branch and the think tanks is often kept confidential for national security reasons, the four most influential think tanks, whose experts most frequently interact with the legislative branch and are invited to testify at the US Congress hearings, have been chosen as the object for analysis. These include the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The methodological basis of the study is a comparative analysis, which made it possible to classify the think tanks according to their approaches to the development of expert recommendations on the policy of Iran, in keeping with the criteria proposed by the author of the article, based on the analysis of public materials, an expert composition, the sources of funding and the think tanks’ participation in the lobbying activities. The study demonstrated that FDD and WINEP function as advocacy centers, with their recommendations on Iran reflecting a predominantly pro-Israeli orientation. In contrast, the Brookings Institution is distinguished by its commitment to objectivity, while AEI’s recommendations are more influenced by ideological attitudes. The article makes a contribution to the understanding of the role of think tanks in the US foreign policy-making by highlighting the influence of their institutional nature on the content of their recommendations.

The article analyzes the changing position of Georgia in the relations with the United States against the background of the crisis of strategic partnership. Based on the multi-factor analysis and forecasting, the research is aimed at understanding the logic of the Georgian leadership’s actions in the context of the present-day international political turbulence. The author considers the US – Georgian relations as an integral system with its own structural and functional links and identifies the two significant and independent variables in them – the stability of the current government in Georgia and the degree of its support by the American administration. Grounded on a combination of those variables, four scenarios for the development of the US – Georgian relations are proposed – the “restoration of the dialogue”, the “collapse of the dream”, the “relations of indifference” and the “authoritarian rollback”; short-term forecasts are also presented.
The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the two provisions. First, Georgia is viewed not as an object of the policy of the major powers, but as a subject with its own interests and the ability to independently choose the path of its political development. Second, due to the relevance of the recent events in Georgia (the constitutional crisis and the 2024 autumn protests), Russian political science has not yet attempted to analyze the suspension of the U.S.-Georgian strategic partnership in correlation with the internal political changes in Georgia itself.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the visual images of Catholicism and the Irish, created by the famous American artist Thomas Nast in the 1860s and 1870s. In this perspective, the problem has not been specifically considered either in American or Russian historiography. Thomas Nast created a negative image of the Roman Catholic Church as conservative, frozen in the Middle Ages, far from progress, striving to establish political dominance in the United States. An attempt by the Catholic Church in the United States to obtain the state funding for its own schools is being discussed separately. The article analyzes T. Nast’s racist discourse, expressed in the creation of a common stereotype of the Irish as degenerate, ape-like creatures belonging to an inferior race compared to the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic race, endowed with a set of negative connotations. Thomas Nast created dozens of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish cartoons that helped shape American public opinion in the spirit of xenophobia and incitement to interethnic and interfaith hostility. At the same time, he defended the secular nature of public schools and protected the principle of the separation of church and state. The article’s methodological database is founded on comparative studies, includes historical-genetic, historical- typological methods, discourse analysis, the achievements of imagology and visual studies.
The sources of the publication include the materials created for the “Harper’s Weekly” for the 1860s and 1870s. The article contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon of widespread Nativism, xenophobia, and intolerance towards Irish Catholics and Catholicism during the Reconstruction period.

The article examines the current state of Canada’s political system from the perspective of the right-wing populism development. Right-wing populism has become a relatively new phenomenon in the Canadian political process, quickly gaining a foothold in the party system as the People’s Party of Canada, as well as the regional social movements and parties. Since the 2021 elections, right-wing populism is still on the Canadian agenda, influencing the Canadian traditional “catch-all” parties, the Liberal Party of Canada and the Conservative Party. Based on the latest development trends in Canada, the internal reasons for the amplifying distrust of the federal authorities and the established status quo, the paper analyzes the correlation with the growth of right-wing populism, the emergence of populist politicians or the politicians using populist rhetoric within the Conservative Party. The points of growth of right-wing populism have been identified and an attempt has been made to forecast its prospects on the eve of the 2025 Parliamentary elections.

The article is devoted to the history of the Black Lives Matter movement and its evolution as an international movement, on the example of the activities of the Black activists in the United States and Canada in 2013– 2020. These issues have not been given much attention in domestic studies. However, examining the international connections of the Black Lives Matter activists helps to better understand the spread around the world of the mass protests against racism in 2020.
The paper analyzes the activities of the Black Lives Matter organizations in two countries and their interaction. The article shows that the Black Lives Matter Global Network from the United States pioneered the Black Lives Matter organization in Canada and provided a direct financial support to the Canadian activists. The Canadian and US activists have jointly participated in the direct actions in both the US and Canada. The Black activists in both countries shared a common ideological platform of anti-racism and an intersectional approach to analyzing the conditions of the Blacks in society; they also expressed a desire to create an international movement. The article is based on the media publications and the materials of the American and Canadian organizations of the “Black Lives Matter” movement; those documents have never been used by Russian researchers.