International scientific review

The relevance of the study
is due to the fact that, first, the "image of the enemy" continues to 
be actively used in the practice of interstate relations, used both as an instrument of socio-political 
mobilization of the population of states pursuing an aggressive foreign policy, and for the 
formation of a negative international image of competing countries. Second, the relevance of the 
topic is connected with the increasing importance of mass media (hereinafter: mass media), 
including electronic, in the life of the world's population in the conditions of the formation of the 
newest world information civilization. In modern times, given the strengthening role of the state in 
public life, the government itself and the subordinate institutions began to have a serious impact on 
the content of images of the outside world. Political and ideological propaganda, actively 
implemented both in the media and in other forms of information retransmission, has acquired 
particular importance. Third, the study of the topic stated in our monograph is important for 
understanding such a unique phenomenon as war in all its forms, and especially the implicit, 
"silent" war, the war of ideologies, political systems, propaganda organs. The key concept of any 
war is the concept of "image of the enemy", because it largely determines the psychological outline 
of events. 
And finally, we cite the practice of forming the image of the enemy amid the heightened 
Armenian problem, which was the case during the First World War (1914-1923). Considering the 
problem under study in this perspective allows to demonstrate how national problems can be used 
in world geopolitics. This is important for the modern, still young and not strong, Ukrainian state, 
as well as for understanding the role and place of Russia in modern geopolitical and geo-economic 
transformations. 
Consequently, the nature of the "image of the enemy", the means, methods and goals of the 
formation of this phenomenon and its use in geopolitics at different times by different states, for 
different purposes and, not less important, with different consequences, must be subjected to 
careful scientific study. Not less important is the understanding that the "Armenian issue" has not 
found its final solution in the world so far, and Ukraine and especially Russia have their own 
geopolitical interests in such a strategically important region of the world as the Caucasus. In 
addition, we should not forget that a large number of people of Armenian nationality live on the 
territory of Ukraine and on the territory of the Russian Federation. Therefore, both the Ukrainian 

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and Russian states are forced to find a balance of interests in such very complex and counter-
intuitive issues of their internal and external geopolitics. 
The political elite and the media of Western countries, pursuing the goal of uniting civil society 
in the face of the threat of global terrorism, purposefully shape images of the enemy of democracy, 
global terrorism, the axis of evil, the haven of terrorists, etc. And now the active promotion of the 
"culture of abolition", including the one that is applied to Russia, actively continues the three-
hundred-year tradition of Russophobia and the fight against everything Russian. Russophobia has 
acquired in the West not just a domestic nature, but has become a state policy, a mobilizing factor 
of the "collective West", revives the era of block confrontation of the "Iron Curtain" era. However, 
the "image of the enemy" as such, as a social phenomenon, is not only a legacy of the Cold War era 
and an achievement of the present, but has long-lasting and specific domestic political traditions 
with reference to the countries studied (the United States and Great Britain). It is easy to figure out 
the political goals and mechanisms created by the stimulators of the emergence of the "image of the 
enemy" in the geopolitics of these two great powers of the world. These include the efforts of the 
United States to create an image of the enemy on the eve of the NATO war against Serbia, as well 
as before the invasion to Iraq; the actions of some American politicians to form the image of hostile 
"they-groups", etc. Therefore, it becomes relevant for historians to study the process of forming the 
image of the enemy in the first turbulent decades of the 20th century in general and, above all, as it 
was done in the USA and Great Britain in particular, and especially in the aspect associated with 
the aggravation of the "Armenian problem" at that time, to which insufficient attention is still paid 
in modern historical science. 
However, it should be noted that the intensification of globalization processes in the modern 
world objectively, according to the laws of dialectics, gives rise to an equally powerful opposite 
process – the growth of ethno-national movements, which makes the geopolitical picture of the 
modern world very motley and diverse. And the first signs of this phenomenon appeared already in 
the first two decades of the 20th century – the time of the activation of radical national movements 
in Europe, including the Ukrainian national movement, the destruction of the last ancient European 
empires (Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman) and the subsequent formation of a number of 
European national states (first of all, according to "14 points" of the US President W. Wilson's 
Doctrine, April 1917). So, the study of the manifestations of this very significant phenomenon in 
the geopolitical sense of shaping the "image of the enemy" in the period under study on the 
material of the history of the United States and Great Britain, in particular in the aspect associated 
with the heightened Armenian problem, is of great scientific importance. 
In this context, it should be noted that any "national issue" or "national problem" (the definition 
depends on the conceptual apparatus chosen by one or another researcher) includes the problem of 
national self-determination of a particular people, the question of which is actualized in world 
geopolitics at one time or another. This may be as a desire to create their own national state (it was 
in this plane that the Ukrainian national question arose during the First World War (1914-1918) and 
thereafter), or a desire to remain within the state in which the people were before, but to have their 
own national–cultural autonomy or other forms of national-cultural expression. It should be noted 
that the "Armenian problem", the aggravation of which emerged precisely at the time studied, 
generally belonged to the second type of national problems, while having its own specifics. 
For a long time, the consolidation of peoples took place according to the "us/them" antithesis. It 
should be noted that in the process of any kind of interaction between states and peoples, certain 
ideas about other countries are formed, well-established images and stereotypes are created. This is 
a very complex phenomenon, as well as the mechanisms of its formation, including the subject, 
object, circumstances of formation, forms of interaction, etc. Naturally, the conditions of armed 
confrontation between states are extreme situations not only in the relations of countries and 
peoples, but also in their mutual perception, which also obeys certain laws. An armed enemy, 
bringing death and destruction, is perceived by the population in a fundamentally different way 
than a partner in the field of economics, culture, science, education. Stereotypes of the perception 
of the peoples of the peaceful period during the military confrontation inevitably transform into the 
image of the enemy, especially if the state purposefully influences its population by means of 

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propaganda. Since the beginning of the 20th century, world history has been extremely saturated 
with wars and armed conflicts, when unprecedented development and dissemination reached the 
media, as well as technologies of influence on both the consciousness and the subconscious of 
people. It is not by chance that the "image of the enemy" – as an ideological and psychological 
construct - took a significant place among the numerous phenomena of mass consciousness in the 
20th century. The consciousness of American and English societies at all their levels was no 
exception. 
In the human, historical and even philosophical aspect, the United States and Great Britain are 
related substances. According to the American researcher John Ryder, American society, especially 
in the early stages, was formed on the basis of British Puritanism, which were reflected in the 
idealistic works of James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. According to Ryder, 
the studies of British philosophers John Locke, Isaac Newton, John Wise and Jonathan Mayhew 
greatly influenced political traditions, especially foreign policy (See: American Philosophy. 
Introduction. – M., 2008. – p. 576, p. 31). This is both the paradox and the regularity of the 
development of the so-called Anglo-Saxon foreign policy tradition, which has come a long way 
from the opposition at the ideological level of the American colonies and its former metropolis, 
through the competition of the new doctrine of Woodrow Wilson and the British plan of Edward 
Smets to reform the Atlantic empire, which was proposed by the ideologists of American foreign 
policy after World War II, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Kissinger G. Diplomacy. – 
M., 1997. – 848 p.; Brzezinski Z. A large chessboard. M., 2000. – 256 p.). 
According to a significant cohort of researchers, it was the United States that became the force 
that pushed Britain after World War II, and reached the point where complete criticism and 
rejection of the ideas and approaches of the former colony were replaced by copying and imitation. 
During the First World War and in the first post-war years, especially during the settlement of the 
Armenian problem, the United States almost for the first time in world politics had the initiative to 
resolve the Armenian issue and was almost the main country where a large-scale and effective 
propaganda campaign was launched to form the image of the enemy-the German and the enemy-
the Turk.