Asymptotic freedom and IR freezing in QCD: the role of gluon paramagnetism

Paramagnetism of gluons is shown to play the basic role in establishing main properties of QCD: IR freezing and asymptotic freedom (AF). Starting with Polyakov background field approach the first terms of background perturbation theory are calculated and shown to ensure not only the classical result of AF but also IR freezing. For the latter only the confining property of the background is needed, and the effective mass entering the IR freezing logarithms is calculated in good agreement with phenomenology and lattice data.