Russia in Global Affairs

The fossilized structures of the Cold War reproduce themselves in new forms, prompting conflict and global polarization. The political West is now challenged by the steadily constituting political East, a process that may restore balance in international politics.

A crisis is a moment of reflection in the life of a community. The response to a challenge is as important as the summons itself. In the case of Covid-19, the crisis is the most profound in living memory. Like a neutron bomb, it destroys people but not the physical infrastructure. It prowls unseen, and the threat of contagion pushes people apart. No less important, it undermines accustomed models of normality, the ‘common sense’ of an era, and breaks boundaries that had hitherto been sacrosanct.

An international system in which multiple models compete may be more balanced, ordered and innovative than a hegemonic one, and allow the common challenges facing humanity to be managed more coherently.

In her recently published book on why she lost the 8 November 2016 US presidential election, What Happened, Hillary Rodham Clinton provides a powerful and in some ways convincing interpretation of events.

Russia will have many futures because it has had many pasts. Three aspects in particular stand out in any discussion of Russia’s future.

Donald J. Trump is an outsider to the political establishment, having never served in an elected of?ce before his unexpected victory in November 2016. His populist insurgency is grounded in his long experience as a maverick business tycoon.

The terror attack that struck London on Saturday night, leading to seven deaths and 48 people injured, will not make much of a difference to Britain’s internal situation.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party in September 2015 ranks as one of the most unexpected political developments in modern British history.

The emergence of the new Atlanticism represents a shift in the meaning of ‘the West’. The traditional pluralism and capaciousness of the concept is now narrowed into a transdemocratic combination of security and normative concerns.