Russia in Global Affairs

The acceptance and spread of China’s foreign policy concepts will be limited for the foreseeable future by Beijing’s lack of an internationalist agenda, an agenda that is contradicted by the CCP’s national-patriotic domestic ideology.

Universalism virtually guarantees useless, exhausting, and counterproductive conflict with many other states, and the ultimate failure of a state’s foreign policy. Particularism, as the absence of universalism, provides the possibility that a state will thrive or at least muddle through on the international stage.

The shift in the UN power model from politics to ideology, over the past 30 years, is changing the organization’s reputation. Endowed with explanatory and motivational power and leading the way towards sustainable global development, the UN appears to be an institutional bearer of the global conscience.

Due to their geographical location between Europe and Asia, the tolerance of Eastern Christian culture, and broad political and economic ties, Russian people are destined to play an active role in maintaining global peace. The outside world will still need Russia in the foreseeable future in order to update the ideas of dialogue and global interaction.

The struggle for “traditional values” should mean not the protection of some specific list of “values,” but the protection of the mindset that distinguishes between science and politics, public and private, rational and emotional, male and female, truth and lies, etc. All these values, in fact, make up the principles of classical liberal conservatism, which the West has rejected, opting for a “culture war” and a new version of radical modernity.

For a long time, Russia preferred to rely on the principles of realism in foreign policy. However, the very fact that Russia has thrown an open challenge to the United States and its allies in the situation around Ukraine is a significant precedent. If the “Russian rebellion” is not suppressed, the blow to US prestige could be extremely painful. Such a blow would not necessarily bring down the US leadership. However, it can become a factor in its erosion.

The collapse of the USSR shows that its current idealization can only be the result of an ideological vacuum. Undoubtedly, the idealization and mythologization of the Soviet past, especially of the late Soviet period, is, above all, a consequence of the post-Soviet trauma. But this trauma was inflicted not on Russia alone, but almost on the entire post-Soviet space.

The events of 2022—the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and the subsequent economic war of the “collective West” against Russia—have aroused speculations that the St. Petersburg period of Russian history is over. Russia is secluding itself on an “island” and turning towards Asia. The period of rapprochement between Russia and the West is closing up. The country has chosen its own civilizational path, diverging from that of Europe.

The historical roots of the current crisis between Russia and the West are partly related to Russia's three hundred-year striving for the global power status, which has undermined the country’s stamina and deepened the gap with the West. Today, this striving requires Russia to revise the very foundations of its internal development and foreign policy.