In a world of new transnational challenges created by non-state actors the United States and Russia have much to gain from working together to cope with these new challenges. In short, the U.S. has more to gain from partnership with a strong reformed Russia rather than a weak declining Russia.
In the post-nuclear age, or rather beginning with NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia, military campaigns have actually turned into international political campaigns. The new strategic logic aims not to destroy an enemy state but to overpower it with a view to subordinating it to the victor’s interests politically and economically.
The West and the rising rest are poised to compete over principles, status, and geopolitical interests as the shift in global power quickens. The challenge for the West and the rest alike is to forge a new and pluralistic order – one that preserves stability and a rules-based international system amid the multiple versions of modernity that will populate the next world.
The bankruptcy of transitology does not rule out the fact that modern liberal democracy is a product of European civilization and, consequently, that it is based on the historical and intellectual experience of the Enlightenment and subsequent eras. This concrete and essential component of the notion of democracy remains the last line in democracy’s defense against relativism – it allows us to distinguish genuine democracy from all kinds of fakes.
We should not wait till the next crisis makes all the states it will affect in North America, the European Union and the rest of Europe realize that everybody is interested in close and friendly cooperation from Vancouver to Vladivostok. The way along this track has long been determined and responsible politicians should embark upon it.
When the Baltic countries entered NATO and the European Union a couple of years ago, many thought it was the end of the centuries-old "red line." Euro-Atlantic organizations had crossed into the former Russian and Soviet empires.
In September 2004, the Russian city of Novgorod hosted an international conference entitled Russia at the Turn of the Century: Hopes and Reality. Its organizers were the RIA Novosti news agency, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Russia in Global Affairs, and The Moscow Times.