The "Project of Long-Term Strategy of National Security of Russia" prepared by the Moscow State University for Foreign Relations and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation states that the system of international relations remains either in a state of self-organization or in a state of chaos.
The most likely scenario of international relations before 2050 envisages confrontation between the West and other centers of international power to preserve control over military, political, financial and economic systems that the West has created in the world.
According to the report, the US and the West will be able to maintain the status quo only if they can: a) preserve the military-political coalition of the West, as well as the "system of values" relative to other civilizations and states; b) consolidate the current technological and especially military-technical superiority of the West over others; с) prevent the creation of coalitions of other countries that may stabilize the state of military-political affairs in the in the world, as well as in separate regions.
Thus, one may conclude that international relations will continue to aggravate in the near future, and the military competition between powers will exacerbate against the backdrop of the efforts of the United States to neutralize the processes that jeopardize the USA's monopoly to supervise international relations in the world.
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In the early 2020s, the world will see a new stage of its history, when a global armed confrontation between the Western and other local civilizations, primarily the Russian one, will most likely occur. Preparations for the conflict are to finish in 2015-2025 before the West takes extreme measures to regain the dominant position in the system of international relations.
After 2021, paradigms in the international field will change. The "peaceful" period in the relations between the Russian and Western local civilizations will finally end. The deployment of most effective, state-of-the-art arms systems will be finished.
The modern concept of the use of technological superiority in the global war can be seen already today. This is the concept of a global disarming strike, air and space warfare, the creation of a highly effective global missile defense system, etc. The ultimate goal of all of those projects is to give the USA an opportunity to use military force when necessary, directly or indirectly, as a political tool of no high risks.
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The military coalition of the West will finally be complete in the form of NATO and other superblocs, such as TTP and TAP (trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Partnerships).
The West will thus appear as a unified military and political coalition sharing not only a common system of values, interests and goals, but also a single management system to administer main resources of the planet, with which it will be possible to achieve these goals.
Before 2021-2022, the West will be able to use the controlled chaos strategy to disintegrate the ranks of possible opponents and intimidate other countries with such a possibility. First and foremost, it goes about Russia, China, India, Iran, Venezuela and Brazil.
The clash of local civilizations has already begun: the West wants to maintain its global dominance at all costs. In addition, Western countries want others to obey them. Thus, one may say that the role of "hard power" in international affairs will be increasing steadily.
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The United States has clearly demonstrated the unwillingness to give up its political monopoly on military power in the changing global balance of forces. It does not matter for the Americans how they can make Russia accept their rules of the game.
When it comes to one's readiness to use any means, it goes about nothing but the use of military means. In essence, there is no borderline between military and peaceful means do not exist. Therefore, there is no borderline between war and peace. Nowadays, war has become an inalienable constituent of politics, even in relatively peaceful times.
The global military confrontation scenario may develop according to different scenarios, depending on certain political or other conditions. There can be three variants of this scenario: a pessimistic, a realistic and an optimistic one.
The optimistic scenario stipulates for a rapid replacement of political and diplomatic means to ensure international, regional and national security with military-political and military-technical means. It also envisages the depreciation of international security institutions and their replacement with coalition institutions (the UN and the OSCE, for example, can be replaced by the European Union and NATO). The probability of the optimistic scenario in global confrontation is estimated at 10 percent.
As in the Cold War years, the "optimistic" scenario of military confrontation does not involve an armed conflict. Such risks will be minimized by using the armed forces of Western satellites, private military companies and instructors. Military supplies to Ukraine in 2015 and the deployment of US special forces in Syria is only the very beginning of this process.
At the same time, the "optimistic" scenario stipulates for the escalation of the military conflict to a substantially larger scale than is the case today.
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The realistic scenario involves the transition of a network and network-centric warfare of the Western against the Russia civilization to a new level, suggesting a change to open military confrontation (may occur before 2021-2022).
In fact, this scenario envisages an open war, limited to separate theaters of military actions, as well as the scale and intensity of military actions.
For Russia, the realistic version of the scenario of the development of international relations is the most dangerous one, as it will enable the US and its allies to use their economic, informational, coalition, scientific-technical and military predominance without any restrictions to make Russia curb her international and domestic policies.
After 2021-2022, this scenario will inevitably grow into a global direct military confrontation with the West. The probability of the realistic scenario in global confrontation is estimated at 50 percent.
The pessimistic scenario involves a radical change of paradigm of international relations already before 2021-2022 to proceed to the stage of global war after 2021. In the pessimistic scenario, the war will not be limited either to separate theaters of military actions or specific types of warfare. Huge risks of this option can be compensated by new technological possibilities in the field of missile defense, plus, it will be possible to control escalation to avoid a strategic nuclear war. Most likely, however, avoiding a nuclear war will be impossible. The probability of the pessimistic scenario in global confrontation is estimated at 10-15 percent.