The challenges of modernity in the Mongolian world
Article received: 2021.03.05 17:11. Accepted: 2022.04.27 17:11
DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2022.04.10
The authors acknowledge support of RFBR and the Ministry of Culture, Education, Science and Sports of Mongolia, project N 19-511-44012 “Inter-civilizational interaction of Russia and Mongolia in the context of the Great Eurasian Partnership”.
Abstract
The article is devoted to the problem of positioning Mongolia in the modern world. The research is based on a civilizational approach to understanding the Mongolian world and political realism. To determine the characteristics of the Mongolian civilization, the authors study philosophical thoughts and ideas about harmony, duality, specific understanding of time, and Buddhism – all those ideas that influenced the views of the Mongols on “nations”, history and geopolitics. From the point of view of political realism, the position of Mongolia is quite vulnerable. Mongolia currently has a difficult choice of foreign policy strategy. As a possible response to the growing threat of a potential conflict between the three main centers of world development – the United States, China and Russia, the authors consider the deepening of Mongolia’s cooperation with its closest neighbors Russia and China in a trilateral format. In this case, the role of Mongolia would increase sharply to the level of an equal subject of international relations, since the country appears as the core of the Mongolian world and a separate local civilization of Inner Asia. Mongolia willingly engages in new forms of cooperation, being an observer of the SCO, and even expressing its intention to join the EAEU in the future. At the same time, in the choice of Mongolia’s foreign policy strategy, the previously chosen line of the cautious “middle path” is clearly traced; it can only be understood by carefully studying the features of Mongolian civilization.
Keywords
Mongolian civilization, national identity, foreign policy, multipolar world, economic corridor Russia-Mongolia-China.
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