Russia in Global Affairs

September 11, 2001, is popularly believed to be the watershed event. Indeed, the “mega terror” acts in New York and Washington made people take a new look at the world, at least from two vantage points.

The end of the Cold War did not put a stop to the confrontation between ideas and perceptions. The clash continues in various forms and in different situations across the board, but it has lost – and I would like to emphasize this – the mainstream nature of ideological clashes as a key factor determining global development.

If Israel annexes the Arab territories it occupied in 1967, it will soon cease to be a Jewish state as the ratio between the Jewish and Arab populations in it will inevitably change in favor of the latter due to its birth rates.

Naturally, the Russian Federation cannot be compared with the Soviet Union, which played a much more significant role in world politics. But there are shortsighted politicians in the U.S. who have excluded Russia from the list of great powers and underestimate the dynamics of its development.

The UN Charter provides for all possible ways to collectively counteract threats to security and stability. So the question is not how to amend the Charter, but how to best use the high potential of this document, as well as the potential of the UN Security Council and the United Nations as a whole.

Washington’s unilateral actions on the global stage, far from yielding positive results in Afghanistan and Iraq, run counter to the objective processes in the international economy and politics. Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been leaning toward a multipolar power structure, and even the world’s mightiest nation is unable to reverse this trend.