Russia in Global Affairs

Next year we will celebrate two great and interconnected anniversaries – the 75th Anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic and Second World Wars, and the establishment of the UN. Reflecting on the spiritual and moral significance of these landmark events, one needs to bear in mind the enormous political meaning of the Victory that ended one of the most brutal wars in the history of mankind.

Since it is unlikely that universalist claims of Western liberalism will evaporate any time soon, they will continue to produce a rationale for counter-ideological alignments.

Stephen F. Cohen ‘s book War with Russia? is controversial and debatable. Any of the author’s arguments should create applause by his supporters and fierce opposition from his critics as they could be the starting point for a much-needed debate.

It is not nuclear weapons that help maintain stability; rather, a gradual decay of the “long peace” will raise the need for the transformation of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons already act not so much as a guarantee against war as a guarantee that your enemy will not use them against you?like chemical weapons in World War II.

A major factor in understanding the present and future global transition processes will be a global rethinking of (asymmetric) resources available to international actors, ideas and perceptions of the leaders of major powers and the nature of internal political processes.

The world of the future will be more complex and volatile than it looked just 20-30 years ago. There will be enough room for a variety of combinations by different world policy actors cooperating with each other in different formats. The concept of multilaterality might become one of the guidelines to follow in this process.

An attempt at decommunization in Russia has brought about the failure of de-Stalinization. As the Yeltsin regime positioned itself as an opponent of all Soviet history, many Russians were reluctant to see a larger part of their lives thrown into the dustbin.

There has again emerged an area of instability and armed conflict (Ukraine) on Poland’s borders. Its relations with neighbors that are vital for its national security and economic development (Russia, Germany, and the European Union as a whole) are ruined again.

Within the framework of “civilizational realism” existing contradictions between Russia and the West could be solved by reaching an agreement with the “civilizational leaders” of the Euro-Atlantic region to create a demilitarized buffer zone made up of limitrophe Eastern European states.