| Summary/Abstract |
This is happening already. The way I see it, we are living through a fundamentally different stage of international relations, and its meaning is still beyond our grasp. We habitually think that the religious factor enjoys an insignificant role in real politics. In Europe, since the middle of the 17th century, after the Westphalian Peace Treaty when religious wars came to an end, and in Russia since a more recent moment, starting from the 18th century, religious matters gradually stopped to determine foreign policy guidelines. Addressing religious issues could be propagandistically or ideologically motivated or they could be a means of propaganda and ideology or a tool to mobilize society, but they were never decisive. When Joseph Stalin asked how many divisions the Vatican had at its disposal he reflected a common trend.
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