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In the 21st century, the world at large and Africa in particular have encountered the rise of separatism, which has become one of the major challenges to stability. In Africa, over 20 countries face separatist movements, some of which demand full secession, while the rest - greater autonomy within the existing state. Most of Africas secessionist projects remain insignificant in scope and ineffectual, largely due to the absence or weakness of external support for separatists and to the commitment of the international community to preserve, with rare exceptions, the territorial integrity of states. The paper analyzes the reasons for the revival of the movement for the secession of Biafra decades after the end of the civil war between the central government of Nigeria and the separatists and looks into the international aspects that could fuel the conflict and exacerbate the military-political situation in West Africa, which is already turbulent due to the activities of Boko Haram terrorist group, other Islamist groupings in the Sahel, Cameroonian separatists of Ambazonia, etc. The present paper attempts to fill the gap in Russian Africanist literature on the current situation in Biafra, which is especially urgent due to the growing threat of separatism in Africa. Employing the historical approach, the authors analyze the nature of external involvement in the 1967-1970 Nigerian conflict, as well as methods of contemporary Biafran separatists, who seek international support. The paper concludes that due to various internal circumstances, as well as the practical lack of external material assistance, the establishment of a new Republic of Biafra will remain a utopian project for at least a decade, although separatist sentiments is likely to spread and hinder the achievement of internal political stability in West Africa, which is ridden with an increasing number of hot spots.

This article focuses on the phenomenon of global rivalry between China and the United States in terms of power transition theory, which is scientifically new and relevant due to the increased attention to the so-called Thucydides trap, in which, as some experts claim, both states have fallen. This paper presents a different vision of the global rivalry for leadership in the shaping of a new world order, which has already taken the form of overt non-violent confrontation and manifests itself in technological and trade wars as well as scientific and cultural rivalries. Nevertheless, despite the non-violent nature of the rivalry, this process is followed by an increase in the military capabilities of states, mainly projected in the basins of the Pacific and Indian Oceans (Indo-Pacific region). The methodological basis of the paper is power transition theory, which has been developed over the past 60 years by A.F. Organsky, J. Kugler, D. Lemke, R. Tammen and other researchers, united in the TransResearch Consortium. The authors argue that the analytical prism of this theory is more relevant to the analysis of current global rivalry than the classical neorealist balance of power approach. Through the prism of the theory the issues of rebalancing the global system of economic governance are analyzed. Also, a comparative analysis of the US-Japanese and US-Chinese trade and technological wars is carried out. Both the military and aggregate capabilities of two countries on a global scale and in the Indo-Pacific region are examined. The conclusion contains findings and comments on the impact of U.S. - China rivalry on the system of international relations.

The article justifies that the Mediterranean Basin in the broad sense (Mediterranean, Black, Azov and Marmara Seas) is a single ecosystem. The state of this ecosystem is affected by the rivers of this water intake basin, among them - the Nile, Tiber, Po, Rhone, Ebro, Danube, Don and others. The interconnection of the individual elements of the ecosystem is ensured through active water exchange and a sufficiently branched system of currents that turn the inland seas of the Mediterranean basin into communicating vessels. The paper analyzes the main anthropogenic factors, as well as the influence of climate changes on the ecological condition of the Mediterranean ecosystem. Within the framework of anthropogenic impact, special attention is paid to the negative impact of urbanization, the oil industry (production, transportation and oil refining), industrial and agricultural waste, as well as runoff waters. The problem of plastic, as well as contamination with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is discussed in detail. Analysis of DDT accumulations in the bottom sediments of the Mediterranean basin makes it possible to study the synchronization of anthropogenic processes and their long-term nature. Aridization (intensification of droughts) in the Mediterranean is shown as an important problem for the regional ecology, not directly related to the anthropogenic factor. The article reveals the disastrous effects of increasing droughts and climate change on Mediterranean basin countries. International cooperation to regulate transboundary environmental problems in the region is associated with a number of problems. Among them is the delimitation of sea zones between countries, first of all - the territorial claims of Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean. The problem of the shelf around the Serpents Island in the Black Sea is also considered, as well as territorial disputes in the Western Mediterranean (France/Spain). The paper widely presents successful cases of cross-boundary cooperation: the 1976 RAMOGE Agreement, the 1975 Mediterranean Action Plan and the 1995 Barcelona Convention, as well as its seven protocols. The cases of PEGASO and 4GreenInn projects, as well as the BSEC environmental projects, are considered as successful examples of cross-border academic cooperation. Promising areas of cooperation are outlined and the conclusion is made about the importance of transboundary environmental risk management, despite the political differences between the Mediterranean countries and the EU sanctions restrictions on Russia after 2014.

The paper investigates trade and investment relations between India and its two major trading partners, viz. the U.S. and China in the 2000-2010s. On the basis of mixed method research with equal use of quantitative and qualitative, as well as historical and statistical methods, the authors estimate the possibilities for expanding interstate interactions and the difficulties the countries might face. By comparing the scale and particulars of the product structure of Indo-American and Indo-Chinese trade, the authors reveal that intra-industry trade between India and the United States is at a fairly high level, which, in turn, is not typical for the trade between India and China, which is mostly inter-industry due to the sluggish cooperation of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. The authors assess the intensity of the Indo-American and Indo-Chinese bilateral trade between 2000-2018 by means of indices of intensity of Indias exports and imports to / from the USA and China, as well as indices of intensity of exports and imports of its partners to / from India. The obtained results outline the upward trend of the share of Indian exports to the U.S. relative to other countries, which indicates that India is successfully conquering the U.S. market, and Indian goods are becoming increasingly competitive. Meanwhile, the volume of Indian-Chinese trade remains on a much lower level than it could be expected with the current share of India in the world trade. In the meantime, neither for the United States nor for China, India is a dominant partner. The article also investigates major obstacles hindering the development of both Indo-American and Indo-Chinese bilateral relations. The obtained results enable the authors to predict that in the short- and mid-term economic cooperation between India and its leading partners is likely to strengthen, with India keeping striving for standing neuter while building the two most crucial vectors of its foreign economic policy.

This paper uses the method of applied analysis of regional complexes developed at the Centre for Comprehensive Chinese Studies and Regional Projects, MGIMO University (Moscow, Russia). Its scientific relevance is defined by the importance of understanding the international and political situation in and around Myanmar. The aim of this study is a scientific exploration of the Rohingya crisis by means of applied methods of regional analysis, designed by the author. This methodology aims to trace scenarios of the development of international and political situations in the region based on the types of interactions within the Southeast Asian regional complex. The article offers the authors own definition of regional complex that builds on the works of Alexei D. Voskressenski, introduces an algorithm of scenario analysis, outlines six ideal types of regional complexes, and defines stable and unstable types of regional complexes. The first part of the article is devoted to current approaches in the study of regional problems in International Relations and World Regional Studies; the second part describes the authors conception of applied international political analysis of regional complexes; and the third part contains an example of the application of scenario analysis to specific regional and domestic affairs - in this case, the contemporary situation in Myanmars Rakhine State. The research yields the following results: 1) by using a combination of the methods of news monitoring and event analysis, the author collected information on political processes in Rakhine over the last five years; 2) this information was arranged according to the matrix compiled by the author, which characterized the situation development according to the negative (-5-1) and positive (+1+5) scenarios; 3) based on the results of the aforesaid analysis, the author comes to a conclusion on the character and intensity of the Rohingya crisis and describes possible ways of its settlement.

The Eastern Mediterranean in recent years has become an arena of growing activity of regional states causing tensions among them. The importance of this region from political and military point of view combined with its strategic value in the world energy markets underpins the growing involvement of the UAE, a non-regional actor that lately has become deeply engaged in the regional agenda. Due to the fact that the UAE has taken up a quite active foreign policy course outside of its traditional Gulf circle only recently - with the Eastern Mediterranean becoming a new area of Emirati activities - the volume and scope of Russian and foreign research on this topic is rather limited. The existing works that in some way cover issues of the UAE foreign policy do not reflect the increasing influence of this small Gulf state in the Middle East and North Africa and beyond. For this reason, there is a need for complex research on the matter. This paper is based on analysis of existing works on topics related to some aspects of Emirati foreign policy and tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as analytical articles and statistics. The dramatically increased interest of the UAE in the Eastern Mediterranean is part of significant transformations in the monarchys foreign policy that have been taking place since early 2010s. These transformations manifest themselves in new goals and purposes of Emirati foreign policy, its expanding scale and new instruments for its implementation. Not only is the UAE policy in the Eastern Mediterranean consistent with its general goal of containing Turkey and fighting the threat of Islamism, but it is also a part of realizing Emirati global ambitions of becoming a leader in energy and logistics and ensuring its international status as an influential actor.

The article deals with the present-day causes of the reproduction of Islamist terrorism. The concepts of desecularization, hybrid wars, and a system-functional approach form the methodological basis of the research. Recognizing the failure of liberal explanations of the causes of Islamist terrorism, the author criticizes the liberal methodology, which is based on an essentialist explanation of Islam and Muslim civilization and attributes a fixed set of qualities to Islam as an ontological evil, a barbarism hostile to Western civilization. The paper presents a viewpoint based on the approaches proposed by representatives of left-wing radical thought, postmodernism and neo-Marxism. It is concluded that the politicization of Islam, including its radical interpretations, is due not to the militant unchanging nature of Islam, but to the crisis of a number of Muslim societies. The Muslim worlds reaction to Western globalism is also an attempt to implement its own global political projects as a response of Islamic fundamentalism to the challenge of Western democratic fundamentalism. The author analyzes the phenomenon of hybrid wars as a form of armed violence that the Western world uses to restore order in its global empire. The connection between hybrid wars and the concept of a just war is shown, as well as the relevance of Islamist terrorism as an element of the system of hybrid wars. Islamist terrorism and counterterrorism are present in all hybrid wars waged in the Muslim world. This is manifested both in military actions on the ground, and in information warfare, as well as in virtual space. The market for terrorist and counterterrorist services inherent in hybrid wars and the place of Islamist terrorism in it are examined. Financial relations bind the participants in terrorist activities, including the customer, sponsor, mediator, organizer, informant, and performer. It is concluded that Islamist terrorism is not the activity of individual fanatics or a manifestation of the militant nature of Islam, but is produced by the conflict system of contemporary international relations.