On Monday, October 24, the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club began in Moscow. Three sessions were held on the first day of the forum, as well as a meeting of experts with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. All events were held behind closed doors except for the presentation of the annual report of the Club, which was open to journalists and broadcast online.
This year, the title of the Valdai Club report is “A World Without Superpowers.” Its authors postulate the termination of the “end of history” period and the transition from unipolarity to a new world order characterised by the democratisation of the international environment. This transition will be painful, as war becomes the new international reality, regaining its status as the leading factor in world politics. “The historical period to come will be marked by conflicts and, most likely, hostilities that are an inevitable part of the emergence of a new international order,” the authors of the report write. However, military conflicts, they remind, "are not about building a new order, but are the result of the dysfunction of the one that has existed so far.”
A world without superpowers will need a self-regulation system, but are international actors capable of creating such a system? It was this question that was at the centre of the discussion of the experts who participated in the presentation of the report.
It should be noted that the crumbling of the existing international order is perceived as a source of threats rather than opportunities - even among those countries whose role in the international system should increase. For example, China would prefer to avoid shocks: it is, according to Professor Wang Wen, Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, "always patient, even on the issue of Taiwan, and tries to avoid any wars." Most Chinese consider the weakening of the United States inevitable, it is only a matter of time, and China is ready to wait, taking advantage of the benefits that the existing international order still brings to it. At the same time, having lost its complete dominance in the global economy, the United States remains a superpower in the sphere of discourse. According to Wang Wen, 80% of the Internet content in the world is an American discourse, and this cannot but affect how developing countries, including the new great powers, perceive the changes taking place in the world.
Andi Widjajanto, Governor of the National Resilience Institute of the Republic of Indonesia, pointed out that initiatives to increase regional connectivity promoted by various centres of power (the USA, China, Russia) are not actually leading to a unification of the world, but to its disintegration into competing blocs. A no less dividing factor is the competition between digital platforms, primarily between the US and China. The best-case scenario would be global collaboration to create more resilient supply chains, but so far this idealistic vision is being shattered by harsh reality.
BK Sharma, Major General (retired), Director of the United Service Institution of India, touched upon the topic of relations between the two new great powers - China and India. According to him, China is projecting a very benevolent vision of the world order (“a community with a common destiny”), but one cannot help but wonder how this vision correlates with Beijing's strategic behaviour. India believes that China wants to dominate in Asia and opposes it. At the same time, neither country will be able to reach its full potential if they do not reach a mutual understanding between themselves. Relations between China and India should become a role model for friendship in our world, the expert believes.
Christian Whiton, Senior Fellow for Strategy and Trade at the Center for the National Interest (USA), represented the part of the US establishment that opposes liberal interventionism. He believes that by focusing on domestic development and returning industrial production to its territory while reducing defence spending, America will become much more efficient. However, America's loss of its global role is out of the question. Despite its decline in the global economy, it has enormous influence and is able, in particular, to shift its current economic problems onto the shoulders of its European allies.
Professor Yahia Zoubir, Senior Professor, Visiting Fellow at the Brooking Doha Center, foresees an increase of conflicts in the world as the international order faces reconfiguration. Although the Global South is becoming louder and louder about the unacceptability of anyone else's hegemony, the Western world does not intend to lose ground. If the United States says that a new world is really being born, but America should lead it, then Europe, using the metaphor of the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, perceives itself as a "garden", and a significant part of the surrounding world as a "jungle". Under these conditions, those who can unite both at the institutional level and at the level of values will be able to successfully resist the collective West. Whether there is a set of common non-Western values remains a big question.
The first thematic session of the Annual Meeting, “The Past and the Future. How the Pandemic and the Military-Political Crisis Have Affected the International Situation”, was held as a general discussion. The ideas expressed there had much in common with what was discussed during the presentation of the annual report. The participants in the discussion agreed that the democratisation of the world order does not mean peace, and more regional conflicts await us. The most important conflict of our time is in Ukraine, where the West, according to one of the experts, is waging a "total war" against Russia, which carries threats of an unprecedented scale.
Meanwhile, today the consolidation of the West is more extensive than during the Cold War, but the US is not a "benevolent hegemon", even for its allies. This can be seen in the example of Europe, which was "ordered to commit economic and political suicide." However, the ability of the United States to overcome negative phenomena in its economy at the expense of its allies does not negate a broader problem: globalisation in the form we are accustomed to has ended. It was possible thanks to unprecedented economic growth, when developed countries used cheap labour in developing countries, and developing countries focused on a high level of consumption in developed ones. Today the key question is: How may growth be ensured? Without growth, there will be no peace, and without peace, the democratisation of international relations can lead to global chaos.
The second session was devoted to the Cuban Missile Crisis, whose sixtieth anniversary we are remembering these days, as it parallels the current situation in relations between Russia and the West. The experts' conclusions were disappointing: today the situation is much more dangerous. During the Cold War, peace and containment prevailed, and these were underscored by fear.
We have returned to the absence of fear, to nuclear adventurism, when talk about the use of nuclear weapons is an instrument of psychological warfare between two sides.
Another important difference is that in 1962 the forces of the parties were approximately equal, and today we see a huge disparity between Russia and the United States, as well as very different stakes. Any solution to the Ukrainian conflict which will be perceived in Russia as a compromise, will mean defeat for the West.
According to one of the experts, today the containment strategy has received a “serious hole”: there is an indirect war between Russia and NATO, which could turn into a direct clash. This is the worst scenario to date, given the growing risk of tactical nuclear weapons being used. Similarly, the theory of escalation dominance has been consigned to the dustbin of history: all attempts to manage escalation in Ukraine have failed.
The main lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the need to have the maximum number of communication channels that are trusted by all parties. The leaders of the USSR and the USA followed this principle for many years, which made it possible to build an arms control system. This system was consistently dismantled at the initiative of the United States after the end of the Cold War, and the communication channels also disappeared. It is still difficult to say whether the latest contacts between representatives of the Russian military and their Western counterparts constitute a step towards their re-creation.
In accordance with tradition, the meeting of the Valdai Club was attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He answered questions from Club members, covering such topics as the current crisis in the world order, the emergence of alternative centres of power and the West's reaction to it, the reform of the UN Security Council, the situation in Syria and a number of others.
At the end of the first day of the Annual Meeting, a special session was held, titled "The Ukrainian Question – Its Origins and Consequences". During that session, Andrei Artizov, Head of the Federal Archival Agency, shared with the Club members the results of the joint work of a large group of archivist historians who are preparing for publication an anthology of documents revealing the theses of the article by Russian President Vladimir Putin "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians."
