Russia in Global Affairs

The year 2018 was marked by escalation in trade tensions among the world’s largest economies, mostly via bilateral trade restrictions.

Even if China’s high-tech offensive could be contained through a strategy of decoupling, it would not necessarily benefit most Americans. To the extent that corporations are rerouting supply chains out of China, the jobs and manufacturing are not returning to the United States but relocating elsewhere in Asia.

Globalization American-style has reached its natural limits, and now China and Asia as a whole are becoming the main beneficiaries of world development. The current growth of neomercantilism, protectionism and regionalization in the world resembles the situation of the decade before World War I.

The world is not in disarray, it is in transition. As wealth and power move to the South and the East again after a couple of centuries, the validity of some normative assumptions and the efficacy of incumbent institutions that manage the world order is being severely tested.

Faced with threats ranging from climate change to hugely disruptive technological advances, the world is clearly at a crossroads. More than ever a stable, inclusive and global governance is needed.

The global crisis that started in 2008 signaled the end of the era of neoliberal globalization but not the end of the processes it engendered. We can move forward, using the theoretical legacy left to us by the great thinkers of the Enlightenment and the ideologists of the liberation movement. Like it or not, Karl Marx remains the greatest of them.

Tendencies will continue—a geopolitical shift towards Eurasia and the Asia Pacific Region; symbolic ‘sovereignization’ of Russia and its further distancing from the U.S. and Europe; and the erosion of a foreign policy consensus. The fourth edition of Putin’s foreign policy will most likely differ significantly from the previous three.

Concerns over the global economic slowdown appear to be gradually receding this year as the global economy is set to muster an acceleration in growth on the back of a strong showing by the Eurozone, the US and China.

By building a network of economic alliances across continents, the BRICS may take the lead in shaping global economic integration against the backdrop of waning integration impulses in the developed world.