The research subject is the models of interstate cooperation in the Middle East region. The purpose of the research is to define the models of interstate cooperation in the Middle east and the peculiarities of their formation. The article considers the security issues including energy and economic security of the Middle East states. The authors give special attention to the problem of Israel’s involvement in the mechanisms of interstate cooperation in the Middle East. In order to conduct a detailed analysis of the models of interstate cooperation in the Middle East, the authors use the systems approach. Its application is conditioned by the fact that the formation of the mechanisms of cooperation in the Middle East was influenced by a range of socio-economic, political, religious and ethnic factors. The authors also use empirical and theoretical methods including synthesis and analysis. The research methods include content-analysis aimed at analyzing text content. This method is actively used by the authors for the analysis of the works of foreign and Russian scholars studying the topic under consideration. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the subject and the topic of the research, and consists in the formulation of particular models of interstate cooperation in the Middle East. The authors formulate the directions of cooperation and, based on this information, define the mechanisms of their formation. The consideration of the key models of interstate cooperation in the Middle East allows defining the key obstacles hampering the formation of effective mechanisms of cooperation which would be able to solve various regional problems. The authors arrive at the conclusion that the mechanism of creation of effective models of interstate cooperation in the Middle east is significantly aggravated by severe regional problems including ethnic and religious conflicts, the lack of a regional leader, the weakness of regional organizations, the involvement of extraregional actors, and the presence of a large number of terrorist organizations.   

  This article is dedicated to examination of the phenomenon of private military companies as a regional actor of security. Leaning on the analysis of international normative legal documents, the authors derive the definition of private military companies due to the fact that neither academic nor applied spheres have precise understanding of this phenomenon. The key research method is the structural and functional analysis, which allows authors considering the object of study from the perspective of various systems of actors. With the increased demand for private military services, private military companies gradually shift from the category of organizations serving military operations to the category of full-fledged independent military organizations that are capable of fulfilling the functions of regular army. For the past two decades, the market for private military services has grown from $ 55 billion to over $200 billion in 2010. The scientific novelty consists in comprehensive overview of various aspects and trends that take place in the market of private military services, as well as in classification of motives and consequences of usage of private military companies in armed missions. The authors discuss the question of international legal status of private military companies, provide practical examples of their activity with the prolonged consequences for regional systems of international relations, analyze the mechanisms of use of these companies in the current context, as well as synthesize the key factors of the increased demand for their services. The absence of regulation of the work of private military companies and ambiguous status of their employees in international law make it virtually impossible to impose international responsibility upon them.  

This article analyzes the ways of legitimation that are characteristic to the Russian-language propaganda of the terrorist group “Islamic State” that is banned in Russia. The arguments the extremist propaganda resorts to are revealed on the example of the online magazine “Istok”: founded on Muslim law, legitimation on the basis of Quranic texts, appeal to moral justice of the establishment of “Caliphate”, and positioning of “Caliphate” as the traditional sovereign state with its attributes. Description is given to the peculiarities of the Russian-language jihadist propaganda and radical discourse of the “Islamic State” overall: an important distinctive feature of the Islamist propaganda is the archaic motives. Having studied the propagandistic materials, the author outlines such features of jihadist propaganda as propensity to determinism and fatalism, orientation towards eschatological worldview, reference of the logical and political arguments to the times of the establishment of Islam. Application of the methods of political linguistics to the information product of terrorist organization reveals the basic strategy of legitimization of the “Islamic State”, which resorts to the archaic, establishment of the “caliphate” of Islamists to the time of origination of Islam and the era of the “righteous caliphs”. The elements of the traditional state are largely translated onto the external, non-Muslim environment: coverage of the activity of the administrative structures of Islamic State, demonstration of the own economic system, and abundance of national symbols. The analysis of propagandistic materials allows concluding on the nominal role of the leader of the jihadist group Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose name is associated not only with the phenomenal success of the jihadist project, but also the equally painful defeat that the “Islamic State” suffered in the end.

For almost 30 years since the end of the civil war in Lebanon, signing of the Taif agreements in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 with the emergence of new Russia, the bilateral Russian-Lebanese relations remained partnership and friendly. They have reflected the trend of strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation. Nevertheless, Russian-Lebanese relations at the present stage (21st century) have remained partially unexplored. The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of Russian-Lebanese relations in the political, diplomatic, economic and cultural spheres; the focus is made on the 2000s. The research contains a quantitative analysis of Russian-Lebanese official contacts (2006-2020), as well as a review of the commodity structure of the countries turnover.