Russia in Global Affairs

A variety of principles of international relations are manifest in the emerging world of neo-modernity. While the Middle East concept within Western Asia and North Africa is struggling with the challenges of postmodern relativism and some of its elements are waning, the premodern concept of the Islamic world is regaining relevancy.

The masses became increasingly unruly and unwilling to be led in a “postmodernist” way. The elite cannot accept this. Thus, it was proclaimed that Western “postmodernism” had been overtaken by Russian “postmodernism,” even more cunning and sophisticated.

Complexity and diversity make the world more stable. A global world with identical political, economic, and any other elements could have more, not less conflict. Globality is getting localized, and locality can be globalized, too. These two trends do not contradict each other: on the contrary, their synthesis is a source of stability.

One glaring distinction of Russian conservatism is its ability to take the shape of an integral outlook, but not within an orderly arranged space of logic, but through emotions, for which words are important not by virtue of their meaning, but because of the feelings they evoke.

Our oikumene will have to be recognized as multi-civilizational if a more balanced and multi-polar world is the ultimate goal. It is this kind of approach that is capable of making civilizational dialogue conflict free and mutually enriching.

Russia’s soft power should develop a broad and long-term narrative, capable of giving constructive answers to challenges facing Russian and Western societies. Berdyaev’s model of liberal conservatism can serve as the basis for an alternative discourse.

“Impartiality,” “realism,” a stop to meaningless rhetoric, and a business-like approach to world politics are demands for an honest political language, which, in Weber’s scheme of things, is to be accepted by opponents so as not to aggravate relations or make the situation worse.

For the majority of neo-modernists the question of democracy and authoritarianism is drifting into the background, giving way to an issue they consider much more important, namely the border between order and chaos in international relations.

In many respects, Yevgeny Primakov shaped the political philosophy of modern Russia's foreign policy, a country which is both the successor of multi-century history and a new state born in the breach of the old model.