Russia in Global Affairs

Washington’s extreme reaction is due to panic at the fact that it’s losing its monopoly on global media.

The American global hegemony of the 1991-2021 edition was so impressive and probably unprecedented in scale that a mild and gradual departure from it was not possible.

Whether the United States, after four years of backsliding on democracy and continuing domestic political rancor, is itself fit to lead a global democratic alliance is a question many American allies and partners are asking. The Biden administration likes to announce that “America is back.” But it needs to demonstrate that American democracy and predictability are back for the long term before countries will be willing to bear significant risks to pursue joint endeavors with Washington.

What do societies expect, and what are they afraid of in the new era? And what obligations does this impose on the states? On October 20, 2020 the Valdai Discussion Club opened its 17th Annual Meeting with a session titled “Struggling With Pandemics: How the World Is Composing Itself.” Moderator: Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs. To find out what the experts spoke about and what conclusions they came to, read the review by Timofei Bordachev, programme director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

Today, many point to a crisis of liberal democracy and fret over whether liberal democratic has enough dynamism to shine again. Why has such a promising beginning turned into such a whimpering finale? Is liberal democracy really at an end? We asked Ivan Krastev, a leading researcher at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, for his thoughts.

Instead of pouring oil on the fire of the relentless struggle between self-declared progressivists and populists and looking for dragons (or bears) to slay abroad, Western politicians and mainstream media should resort to the art of compromise in dealing with their political opponents at home and accept that in international relations balance of power is even more important than separation of powers in domestic politics.

The pandemic has ruined one of the main factors that has long cemented modern society: the unity of wealth, health, comfort, enlightenment, and security.

The Russian ideology might well take shape as an equivalent of chuch’es?ng ?a combination of ideas of self-strengthening and traditionalism, but tightly pegged to the endemics of a multi-ethnic/multicultural country.

Almost all foreign policy concepts inherited from the bipolar and unipolar eras are either obsolete or false. Russia must stop dragging in the wake of the old foreign policy thought, which is obviously used more and more selfishly for protecting the waning positions of the West.