TRANSFORMATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS

Abstract

The article examines the transformation of international relations as a factor influencing intelligence activities. It argues that the transformation of international relations is a profound change in the system of interactions between states, international organizations, and other actors at the global level. It is shown that the existing system of international relations and security space, unable to withstand the hybrid challenges and threats of the 21st century, is undergoing a fundamental transformation. This, in turn, has led to the formation of a new global architecture of security space and the environment of international relations. In the context of contemporary global challenges and threats to international and national security, a transformation of the geopolitical space has taken place, revealing a number of political, security, economic, and humanitarian problems that cannot be adequately assessed and overcome solely at the level of individual states. Their solution lies in the international political sphere and in the international security space formed by globalizing states. The 21st century has seen the restoration of a great power, imperial type of geopolitical consciousness, which, based on the experience of the historical past, offers the ideal of state development in the form of the creation of “great empires” and mechanisms for their domination over ‘medium’ and “small” states. This is primarily characteristic of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, which are trying in various ways to implement the idea of a “great power renaissance”. Russia's unprovoked large-scale invasion of Ukraine confirmed that the era of interstate competition and conflict is not a thing of the past, but has instead become a defining feature of the current era. Researchers and experts in intelligence, taking into account the “revolutionary changes” in the security environment, in the nature of threats and peace, as well as changes in the nature of warfare, emphasizing the changing nature of information, the speed of technological change, and the variability of expectations not only of consumers of intelligence information but also of society, have begun to talk about the need for a “revolution in intelligence”.