Политология. Политика. Общество

The year 2017 has been a challenge for the world powers, including the U.S., Canada and Russia. The continuing rearrangement of the U.S. administration and the ensuing problems, Trump’s confrontation with the Congress and his bold statements about possible trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada and a possibility of a military conflict with North Korea, a crisis in U.S. – Russian relations spiraling further down and growing tensions between U.S. and China, the spread of new technologies like AI and big data analysis with ambiguous consequences are among them. At the same time 2017 marked two anniversaries very important for our institute and for North America watchers in general – 150th anniversary of the Canadian statehood and 50 years since the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies was founded. Our researchers’ collective and individual efforts for the year resulted in several monographs and research papers aimed at informing the readers about current trends in political, military and economic sphere of U.S. and Canada, better understanding their economic and government systems, as well as providing thoughtful ideas with regard to how the experience of the two developed North American countries could be used to improve specific aspects of Russian politics and policies.

The book talks about the U.S. military policy in different regions of the world. In the Middle East its main goals include the defeat of ISIS and the Taliban. But broadly speaking due to continuing polarization of the region, according to the authors, Washington will try to promote peace in the regional hot spots on the conditions favorable to the U.S. In the Pacific the U.S. finds itself under pressure of growing Chinese military potential, which puts in question America’s unrivaled military supremacy in the region. Potential threats emanating from North Korea and Russia are also considered by the U.S. military. In the Arctic the U.S. military presence has recently increased in no small part because of the continuing military competition with Russia.

During the first two years of the Trump administration the American society came to understand that the Trump phenomenon is real and it is here to stay, at least for one presidential term. Meanwhile the policies of the new president’s team, aimed at economic and social sphere began to make an impact on the state of domestic affairs in the country, including not only well-being of its citizens and the economy in general, but the very political culture and identity of the American people. To provide an analytical assessment of the situation one needs not only to be able to describe it in detail, but also to place various elements of the “Trump model” into historical context to trace the roots and the possible consequences of the current trends. This task was the focal point for the ISKRAN research monographs in 2018, although some of them dealt with purely historical matters.

The year 2017 has been a challenge for the world powers, including the U.S., Canada and Russia. The continuing rearrangement of the U.S. administration and the ensuing problems, Trump’s confrontation with the Congress and his bold statements about possible trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada and a possibility of a military conflict with North Korea, a crisis in U.S. – Russian relations spiraling further down and growing tensions between U.S. and China, the spread of new technologies like AI and big data analysis with ambiguous consequences are among them. At the same time 2017 marked two anniversaries very important for our institute and for North America watchers in general – 150th anniversary of the Canadian statehood and 50 years since the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies was founded. Our researchers’ collective and individual efforts for the year resulted in several monographs and research papers aimed at informing the readers about current trends in political, military and economic sphere of U.S. and Canada, better understanding their economic and government systems, as well as providing thoughtful ideas with regard to how the experience of the two developed North American countries could be used to improve specific aspects of Russian politics and policies.

The vast, proverbially windswept plazas built under «really existing socialism» from the 1920s to the 1980s are widely considered to be useless spaces, designed to intimidate or at least impress. Yet if they are only of use to those in power, why is it they have been used so successfully in protest? From Petrograd in 1917 to Independence Square in Kiev during the Orange Revolution, these spaces have become focuses for mass protest. Beginning in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, and taking in Warsaw, Ljubljana, Kharkov and Moscow, Owen Hatherley heads in search of revolt, architectural glory and horror. Along the way he encounters the more civic squares that replaced their authoritarian predecessors and finds that, paradoxically, the old centres of power are more conducive to dissent than these new, ostensibly democratic plazas.