On February 20, in the run-up to the 12th Middle East Conference, the Valdai Club presented a report titled “The Middle East and the Future of Polycentric World”. The moderator was Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club.
The co-author of the report, Vitaly Naumkin, Academic Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke about the scenarios for the development of the Middle East formulated in the report. The first of them involves the transformation of the Middle East region into an independent centre of power in the new polycentric world. This would require a greater homogeneity in the Middle East, as well as a reduction of the fractures outlined in the report. The second scenario is the withdrawal of the region to the periphery of world politics. The third scenario entails the adjoining of certain parts of the Middle East and North Africa to other global political centres, that is, in fact, the division of the region into a European-oriented Maghreb and a Eurasian Mashriq.
The second co-author of the report, Vasily Kuznetsov, head of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called the report a warning that underscores the serious, fundamental challenges that the Middle East is facing. He stressed that although the events that have been taking place in the global world over the past year may give the impression that nothing important is happening in the region, the underlying transformational processes that are going on there are of great importance for the whole world. He also said that one idea in the report was particularly important: that the Middle East remains a space in which positive interaction between the centres of world politics is possible in reducing global threats and global conflict.
Yahya Zubir, a senior fellow at the Qatari Middle East Council for Global Affairs, described the report as a deep and correct overview of the situation in the region. He pointed out that for many countries in the Middle East, the BRICS group has become the centre of attraction. He stressed that the reaction of the countries of the region to pressure from the West is the search for alternatives and movement towards a world without hegemony. Basically, it's about a clash of values. The universality that was imposed on the region before is no longer there; the new colonialism has been met with rejection in the Middle East and a transition to polycentricity is taking place. “The old world will be destroyed, it will change,” Zubir believes. “However, we do not yet know in which direction the situation will change.”
Çağrı Erhan, the rector at Altinbas University, noted that the concept of the Middle East is expanding all the time and now the region includes territories located in Asia, Africa and Europe. He stressed that the changes in the Middle East should be analysed in the context of global changes. Europe and the United States are losing their former undivided influence in the region, and India and China are becoming new centres of power. This leads to more complex scenarios in the Middle East, when the interests of old and new players clash there, which increases tension and leads to a change in the concept of regional security.
