Russia in Global Affairs

We must remember that mutual trust between society and the government has always been the basis of military success in history. When it is irrevocably violated, then no semantic euphemisms can help.

Nobody has any doubts that what is happening now in Ukraine is not simply a regional conflict but a test for the current international hierarchy. Predictions of the outcome would be woefully premature in any case, but one can try to imagine which principles may form the foundation of a future system of global co-existence and which will be relegated to the past.

Vladimir Putin took part in the 19th Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone”. The plenary session was held by Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs, Research Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

On October 24-27, 2022, Moscow is hosting the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club titled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone”. The moderator of the Plenary Session is our Editor–in-Chief Fyodor Lukyanov.

World politics has begun to rapidly return to a state of anarchy built on force. “The end of history” culminated in the restoration of its usual course – the destruction of the international order resulting from large- scale conflicts between centres of power.

China should understand that Washington’s end goal is to systemically curb Beijing’s very ability to exercise its sovereignty as it sees fit.

In modern international relations, inequality and hierarchy are preserved, and are determined by differences in power, economic and human potentials. The voluntary nature of an organisation does not exclude coercion and domination. The softness of politics in comparison with the empires of the past hardly indicates the absence of coercion and domination as such, writes Ivan Timofeev.

Presidential elections will be held in South Korea in early March. Given that there will be about a dozen candidates, as one might expect, everyone understands that the real struggle for the presidency will be led by representatives of the country’s two main political camps: Yoon Seok-youl and Lee Jae-myung. Nobody can predict the outcome of the elections, so that everything will be decided in the last days or even hours.

The movement of troops is combined with the threat of economic sanctions, and the appeal to international law and institutions are combined with clear examples of disregard for weak states. Indeed, it was worthwhile for international politics to accumulate such experience and tools over several centuries in order for us to wait for a crisis where all these measures would become available to an interested observer.