  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.
