Aleksandar Saša Gajić

The Paper studies the origin, development, main representatives, and basic characteristics of the posthumanist movement, its normative positions and goals (including its relation towards technology and nature), as well as the similarities and differences between modern posthumanism and transhumanism. In order to compare the posthumanist movement with humanistic modernism and notice their basic similarities and differences, which are crucial for understanding the relationship of man and technology towards natural conditions, the second part of the Paper points out the basic characteristics of modern humanistic anthropocentrism and its attitude towards technique. The final part of the Paper concerns the critique of posthumanism from the perspective of Christian personalism, which opens up possibilities for us to have a different view of the problems of postmodern living that posthumanism wants to overcome.

Starting from the circumstances in the post-Cold War period, the Paper provides a cross-section through theoretical works that are trying to revive interest in the idea of ​​global supranational integration, ie the idea of ​​the World State, regardless of whether they treat it affirmatively, ambivalently or negatively. Then, among the rare examples of affirmative attitude towards the realization of the idea of ​​the World State, the work is focused on the proposal of the American economist James Junker presented in his books “World Union on the Horizon” (1993) and “The Idea of ​​World Government: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century” (2011). The Paper, using analytical and synthetical methods, analyzes in detail Junker's economic views and institutional proposals for building a “minimal” World State (which he calls the Federal Union of Democracies) as well as his global plan to bridge the gap between the rich North and the poor South, which he sees as main obstacle of supranational integration. The final part of the Paper gives a critical review of Junker's ideas, which takes into account modern economic and political processes at the time of the emergence of a multipolar world. The growth of a multipolar world on the remains of its bipolar and unipolar predecessors shows other economic tendencies than those predicted by Junker. The new regional centers of power are interconnected and have their own interregional initiatives based on mutual benefit, beyond the West and its plans to reduce the economic gap between North and South. Now poor South isn`t waiting for help from the developed North (i.e., the West), but it is getting the basis for independent development from the East, ie. its strengthening centers of power. All in all, although evidently flawed, one-sided, and naive, Junker's moderate proposal for a Federal Union of global reach stands as one of the few original proposals for a “minimum” World State in the post-Cold War era. With all his atypicality, Junker’s proposal maintains the hope of the proponents of the idea of the World state who are still convinced that the risks of embarking on such ventures are not only justified but also necessary, taking into account the potential advantages of global political integrations both in the field of economy, politics, social sphere and ecology.

The Paper examines Huntington's model for understanding conflicts in contemporary international relations, according to which the cultural and religious identities of peoples are the primary causes of their mutual clashes. Starting from the basic elements of his paradigm on the “clash of civilizations”, like the concept of civilizations and their typology, the concept of conflict, their types and causes, to which the first part of the Paper is dedicated, the central part of the Paper presents a cross-section of critical reviews of Huntington's “clash of civilizations” model from the principle criticism to particular ones. After that – and bearing in mind contemporary international events and processes in the times of the “new cold war” – an attempt is made to determine whether to what extent Huntington was right, i.e. how accurate his model for understanding the conflict was, and how much it was not. Final part of the Paper is devoted to the understanding of contemporary intercivilizational relations precisely in relation to Huntington's predictions. The conclusions that arise are clear: in Huntington's model of the “clash of civilizations”, the conflicts are obviously more contentious than the civilizations themselves. The three-decade development of international relations, from the time of the end of the Cold War until today, has significantly pointed to the importance of large-scale civilizational, cultural and value groupings, although not to the degree of monolithicity and determinism as claimed by Huntington. He also quite correctly observed two tendencies: that non-Western civilizations will reject with a leaf almost all universalistic aspirations that are imposed on them against their own value frameworks, and that this will increase mutual antagonisms, but not between all civilizations and their “core states”, religious groups and ethnicities, but between “the West and the rest.” Moreover, the process of multipolarization that has begun leads the way to greater and more continuous inter-civilizational cooperation between non-Western large, medium and small powers. The success of these reconciliations and partnership projects is evidently larger if the increasingly problematic influence of the modern West, as a disruptive factor in the intercivilizational and multipolar world equation, is excluded from them.

The Paper examines the contemporary geopolitical position of the Republic of Serbia after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, with the aim of confirming the hypothesis that even in the new, difficult geopolitical conditions, it is possible to maintain the current policy of military neutrality and increase its own capacities for strategic deterrence. Starting with the geopolitical position of Ukraine in the Eurasian space, the strategies and goals of “Great Powers” in this conflict and the importance that Russia's current military confrontation with the "collective West" is taking in it, the first part of the Paper examines the influence of crisis in East Europe and on Serbia's foreign policy strategy (which, before the beginning of conflict, was moving between neutrality and the "hedging strategy”). Therefore, first part of the Paper gives brief theoretical overlook on foreign policy strategies of small states and their conditioning by geopolitical factor, primarily geopolitical position. With all that taken into consideration, it is easier to have clear overview of Serbia`s current geopolitical position and dilemmas. The second part of the Paper is dedicated to the description of Serbia's contemporary difficult position in the new geopolitical circumstances ("lonely and in the encirclement"), in order to better understand both the numerous challenges to which Serbia is exposed and its foreign policy moves aimed at preserving its military neutrality and the ability for strategic deterrence. On the one hand, Serbia wants to keep up its processes of accession to the EU and to continue to develop the best possible relations with the West and not to confront it and be isolated. On the other hand, Serbia wants to maintain existing relations with the Russian Federation which are of vital interest to Serbia because, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia is able to prevent the accession of Kosovo and Metohija, the breakaway southern Serbian province, to the United Nations as an independent state. Serbia also wants to preserve the current supply of cheap energy resources for its internal needs from the Russian Federation, because it has no real alternative for them. While remaining military neutral, Serbia also needs to increase its deterrence capabilites: the tightening of relations with certain neighbors increases not only the conflict potential, that is, the possible threat of the use of force, but also requires approaches of using "extended deterrence" with a necessary increase in independent forms of hard, military power, that is, additional investment in increasing one's own combat capacities, which would achieve the maximum achievable deterrence effect. The final considerations in the Paper refer to the geopolitical perspectives of persistence in neutrality, that is, to the confirmation of the basic hypothesis of the Paper on the sustainability of this policy in difficult circumstances.

Contemporary study of the possibilities of small states to resist security threats has come a long way from the understanding that it comes down to the classical policy of balancing and developing their own military potentials. This was contributed by the "expansion of the field of security", a detailed observation of security (as a state, organization and function). A positive contemporary definition of security means freedom from fear and freedom from poverty; in the objective sense, it is defined as the absence of threats to adopted values, and in the subjective sense as the absence of fear that these values will be attacked, as well as "freedom from harmful threats". Introductory part of the Paper studies the nature of states which, due to common features and ways of acting in international relations, are divided into two groups: small and great states (small and great powers). The first part of the Paper deals with the topics of defining small states according to standard criteria (quantitative, qualitative and relational). Quantitative criteria include the number of state`s citiziens, the area of ​​the state territory, economic strength and military power. Qualitative criteria determine whether a state is small or not, primarily dealing with the possibilities, behavior and perception that the state has about itself. Qualitative criteria include the moral condition of the population, its educational structure, economic and technological development, etc. Relational criteria relate the behavior of small states with the nature of the international system and the relative position of the state in it. According to this approach, the criterion of whether a state is small or not is the (in) ability to project the influence of a state in the international system. In its second part of the Paper, the main strategies used by small states in dealing with security threats are explained. Those are: balancing through association against a potential threat, joining a great power (bandwagoning), declaring neutrality or resorting to a “hedging strategy”. Joining forces to balance against a threatening force more often occurs in cases where this threat is immediate, usually due to geographical proximity and the direct execution of offensive activities or the emphasis on such intentions. In the second case - that of bandwagoning - small states choose to associate with the dominant great power instead of opposing it through balancing because they estimate that, overall, it is less harmful to submit (and gain, in return, some benefits) than to suffer significant damage due to opposition to it. The third option facing small countries is to declare a policy of neutrality. This strategic option is provided in case that some small countries are not willing to side with any of the great powers or mutually confronting alliances and have the opportunity to do so due to their specific geopolitical and cultural-historical position. The fourth possible strategy of small states is the so-called "hedging strategy". The essence of this strategy is that it avoids taking a strictly binding policy towards other countries and their alliances, with the aim to develop (with each of them) such relations as it deems useful, while minimizing the risk of confrontation with any of the great powers. In the third part of the Paper, this theoretical knowledge is applied to the case of Serbia, its exposure as a small country to a series of security threats from the end of the Cold War to the present day, all in order to draw conclusions about the security strategic opportunities that are facing Serbia and what they can bring to it.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is an important regional security organization, above all that of a defense-military type, operating in the turbulent post-Soviet space. As such, the CSTO seeks co-operation with other related regional organizations operating in the area. The paper looks at the relationship of the CSTO with NATO and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), their differences, interests, forms of cooperation and/or their absence, as well as the reasons for this. It also provides a summary of these relationships and their possible future perspectives.

Democratic cosmopolitanism is a contemporary political theory of transferring the model of representative democracy from the national to the global level in order to transform the fundamental institutional framework of the international community. It is a new, minimal approach that revitalizes the formation of a global rule, that is, a world state in a modern democratic framework. The model advocated by cosmopolitan democrats is decentralized global rule without a global government, without a world state in the full sense of the term as conceived by the original world federalists. The main proponents of contemporary theory of cosmopolitan democracy аre polititical thinkers like David Held, Daniel Archibugi, Mary Kaldor and Richard Falk. The Paper provides basic conceptual frameworks for the theory of democratic cosmopolitanism through the work of one of its most prominent proponents, Professor Danielе Archibugi of the University of London. It discusses in detail its normative frameworks as well as institutional proposals for reforms of the contemporary international community. In the historical evolution of democratic ideas about supranational association, Archibugi identifies three major contemporary forms, the "ideal - types" of these endeavors. The first form that Archibugi sees was "confederation", "intergovernmental democratic multilateralism"; second form is “world federation” and the third one is “global governance” or “democratic policentrism”. Archibugi is zelous advocate of third concept. He identifies goals and areas of action that, according to him, is necessary to prioritize and direct activities in line with the ideas of cosmopolitan democracy. These are: 1) control over the use of force (reducing political violence to a minimum within and outside nation states, while force is used as the last resort); 2) convergence of methods of government and even lifestyles not by force, but by free choice 3) strengthening people's self-determination (which should encompass the internal dimension of effective participation and the external dimension that is, in fact, reflected in the absence of domination) 4) oversight of internal affairs (absence of authoritarian behavior within political communities towards individuals and sub-communities) 5) participatory management of global problems (strengthening political equality in global affairs by expanding it from the state level to the global level). Then, Archibugi turns his concept of cosmopolitan democracy to concrete, detailed proposals for reforms of individual institutions within the United Nations system. The Paper concludes with a principle critique of both cosmopolitan democracy theory and its Archibugi’s version, and points to the connections of his proposals with the earlier pre-modern and modern proponents of the world state, which Arkibugi, in a new outfit and with several original additions, seeks to revitalize.

Negative perceptions of Russia as “the Other” in societies belonging to the Western political tradition have been shaped in a long historical perspective and have their own cultural and geopolitical matrix. These stereotypes mostly perceive Russia and its population through collectivism, authoritarianism and impulsiveness. Media and information policies play an indispensable role in shaping stereotypes in the modern and postmodern era. Therefore, the aim of this research is to point at the role of media discourse in supporting and forming negative stereotypes about contemporary Russia. In the introductory part of the Paper, the problem of stereotyping the notions of Russia and the Russians in the Western political space is contextualized, and then the case study on the empirical basis describes the role of the so-called Western media in supporting the established stereotypes in modern times. The main narratives of the information war between the European Union and the Russian Federation were used for media mediation and interpretation of events on the international scene in which the Russian Federation was the main actor during the year of sanctions (2014) and immediately afterwards (2015). We conclude that in the observed period there was a mutual deterioration of the images among the citizens of the EU and RF, while the leading media sacrificed the principle of impartiality of reporting.

The EU is a major trading power in the world and formally the largest economy. Yet, its security and foreign policy have minor weight in global affairs. The EU is trying to accommodate its economic interests, partnership with the USA and the promotion of the global political and economic policies aimed at the promotion and application of good governance, respect of human rights and democratisation. Although its documents contain popular proclamations and articulated aims towards a more assertive presence in world security, it has achieved modest results in the Middle East and North Africa, where it failed to provide unified action of its member states. Instead, NATO and the Franco-British entante frugale are indirectly taking over the functionality and efficiency of EU Common Security and Defense Policy in this region.