The catastrophic attacks of terrorists in Russian cities Kaspijsk, Bujnaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in 1999, and in New York and Washington, D.C., in 2001, as well as ensuing events, “culminating in the victory of the antiterrorist coalition over Taliban in Afghanistan”—they changed the world and “gave hope for the creation of a new, [free and fair] world order.”
It is popular to speak about the radical transformation of international relations’ essence since the end of the Cold War. There is no conflict of superpowers anymore. The United States and Russia are not competing for influence in Europe, the Middle East, and Third World countries. But this new era of cooperation and stability did not emerge. Quite the opposite—the new global threat of international terrorism took the place of superpower conflict as the main defining factor of global and regional politics all over the world.