The Arab Spring has shifted the balance in the Middle East, highlighting new problems and challenges for Russia and other regional and extra-regional powers.
Russia’s Sochi played host to the Valdai Discussion Club Middle East section’s conference “Transformation in the Arab World and Russia’s Interests” on February 17-18, 2012.
The Valdai International Discussion Club held the Moscow-Astana videoconference “Elections in Kazakhstan and the outlook for Eurasian integration” at the RIA Novosti press center.
The theses contained in the report “Russia should not miss its chance: Development scenarios” were prepared by the working group comprising Russian and international experts ahead of the VIII annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting, themed “2011-2012 Elections and the Future of Russia. Development Scenarios for the Next 5-8 Years”.
The Valdai Index represents the combined opinion of leading world experts that participated in Valdai Club conferences with respect to Russia’s development in the political, economic, social, cultural and international spheres. Download Russia Development Index 2010-2011 in Russian (PDF)
The report examines how the Russia’s and United States` ties with the countries in post-Soviet Eurasia affect the bilateral relationship. The authors argue that despite the initial successes of the “reset” in Russia-U.S. relations, disputes relating to post-Soviet Eurasia represent “a ‘landmine’ in Russia -U.S. relations that could ‘detonate’ at any time and seriously complicate cooperation on other issues.
02/13/201212:32 Stopping the U.S. missile defense program is a top priority for Moscow. The disagreements over it add to the friction between the two countries. Close Russian ties with Iran and China forced analysts in Washington to caution that information sharing on missile defense may reach wrong hands in Beijing and Teheran rather easily.
12/17/201111:24 The Working Group on the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations held its fourth meeting on December 16 and 17 in Moscow. Along with reviewing the current state of bilateral relations and their future through the lenses of the electoral cycles in Russia and the United States, the meeting addressed Russian-U.S. cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.
12/02/201110:07 What the United States is doing is clearly a threat, if only in the long term, to the nuclear balance of power. As such, it challenges the agreed order that Moscow and Washington drew up a long time ago to govern their respective nuclear deterrents.
11/28/201112:33 Why does Russia want to underline the failure of the talks? Because otherwise an unspoken assumption could emerge that the mere existence of discussions somehow legitimizes the US project, and that it has Russia’s tacit agreement. Now Medvedev has highlighted that the problem remains on the table and that it will be impossible to remove or bypass by ignoring its existence.
11/25/201110:03 Analysts in Russia continue to believe the U.S. antimissile shield is aimed at countering Russia’s nuclear deterrent. So far, NATO has refused to present Russia with written guarantees that the U.S. missile shield wouldn’t threaten Moscow. Even Prime Minister Putin expressed great concern on the matter. So there has been little reset there.
11/21/201113:40 Moscow and Washington failed to develop a new positive agenda of Russian-American relations. Thus, there is a risk that the "Reset Policy" may share the failure fate of the previous attempts of the Russian-American rapprochement.
11/17/201114:36 Nothing would prevent Moscow from withdrawing from cooperative arrangements if it later concluded that its nuclear deterrent was at risk. But sitting on the sidelines will mean missing an opportunity — one that could move broader U.S.-Russian and NATO-Russian relations to a more positive level.
11/09/201111:00 Three recent developments seem bound to go down in history as major milestones of international relations: the completion of NATO’s military operation in Libya, Palestine’s accession to UNESCO and the guilty verdict handed down to Viktor Bout, a Russian citizen, by a US court.
10/19/201109:36 The rise of the French-British tandem has met with a positive reaction from the United States. Washington succeeded in blocking the EU Mediterranean partnership, managed to devalue the role of the Mediterranean Union as an autonomous project and resumed cooperation with France on security issues.
10/18/201110:16 The source of the problem is Russian concern that U.S. missile defense systems could weaken the Russian strategic missile force. The Pentagon says that U.S. missile defenses, as planned, would have little or no capability against Russian missiles. I personally am persuaded by the Pentagon’s arguments, but the Russian military is not.
