🇺🇦🌐 The new stage of the Ukrainian crisis will have global consequences.

The contours of the balance for global and regional players — the EU, the US, China, Japan, Iran and others are more clearly visible.

🇪🇺 The European Union bears the most serious losses and costs. They are associated with the rupture of numerous trade and economic ties with Russia. The main challenge is the replacement of Russian oil, gas, metals and a number of other commodities on the European market. This process will require a serious concentration of resources and political will. In the next few years, it will affect the economic growth of the EU and the competitiveness of European industry.

The EU today also bears the heaviest burden of dealing with Ukrainian refugees. The calculation is still difficult given the rapidly changing situation, but it is already clear that the number is in the millions. The EU countries are faced with the task of receiving, providing for, adapting, and possibly integrating migrants. Social spending in many countries of the Union will increase. However, here the European Union turns out to be a beneficiary in the medium term. The EU countries, especially Germany, have accumulated vast experience in working with migrant labour. The EU economy is getting a rich demographic injection.

🇺🇸 The United States, at first glance, incurs significantly lower costs than the EU, although the rejection of Russian oil may lead to local difficulties and an increase in fuel prices. The main problems for Washington lie in other areas. The sharp escalation of confrontation with Russia is again diverting resources from the Asia-Pacific theatre. The United States will have to increase its military presence in Europe, which means that the concentration of resources on containing China is now declining.

The new quality of confrontation with Moscow makes it possible to significantly increase NATO’s internal discipline and achieve a more significant contribution of European countries to common security. Neither Trump, nor Obama, nor G. W. Bush could complete such a task before. Now it has been solved without a great amount of debate. Moreover, the further expansion of NATO is possible.

All in all, for some countries, the Ukrainian crisis will bring short and medium-term costs, and very significant ones. For many, however, it will create opportunities to increase their influence over the long term, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev.

🔗 Ukrainian Crisis. Who Has the Upper Hand?

#EconomicStatecraft #Ukraine

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🎥 What measures to strengthen the non-proliferation regime should be taken?

Nuclear club countries should be more responsible in terms of security, said Kayhan Barzegar, Director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran on interview to Valdaiclub.com. What steps should be taken first to his mind, you can find out in this video.

#nuclearweapons #globalsecurity

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

💻🌐 If corporations behave in a way that reflects the geopolitical interests of a particular state or states, then they seriously undermine the foundational principles of the connected world.

What is dangerous, is the power of a handful of big corporations to act as sovereigns and disrupt the quotidian lives of common citizens in territories where they operate.

To get out of this quandary, the states can undertake two simultaneous actions: 

1️⃣ First, in the short term, each state should diversify their suppliers of critical products and services. No corporation should be allowed to have so much power that it can disrupt the lives of a nation’s citizens without their explicit consent through their elected governments, democratic norms and public scrutiny.

2️⃣ Second, in the long term, states should aim to develop their own digital public goods, which will give control back to their citizens and through them to their respective states. What we mean is that each state should have significant ownership, with participation from the private sector, of  digital commons like national identification cards; the payments architecture; social security disbursements; commerce and health records.

We assume countries and their citizens trust the exchange of ideas, products and services enough to gain new experiences and learn from success stories, and don’t expect to be “blown off” by multinationals. If these corporations model their behaviour to pursue the geopolitical interests of a particular state or states, then they seriously undermine the foundational principles of the connected world write Arvind Gupta, Head and Co-Founder of Digital India Foundation, and Aakash Guglani, Public Policy associate, Digital India Foundation.

🔗 What Nation-States Can Do to Protect Citizens from Omnipotent Corporations

#EconomicStatecraft #digitalisation

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇨🇳🇺🇸🇷🇺 China opposes US hegemony, but China is unwilling to have a military conflict or cold war with the United States.

Instead, it hopes to resolve its differences with the United States by other means and defend China’s core interests from United States interference with a smarter counterattack.

However, the fact that many Chinese people support Russia does not mean China’s foreign policy will turn to Russia in an all-round way. More Chinese people want to remain neutral.

The Chinese people are more concerned about how these conflicts will affect the energy pricing trend and economic development, as well as what long-term impact will they have on China’s future, writes Valdai Club expert Wang Wen.

🔗 Why So Many Chinese Feel Sympathy With Russia

#Asia_and_Eurasia #China #Ukraine

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

📆 ANNOUNCEMENT: On March 24 at 4:00 pm, the Valdai Club will host an expert discussion titled “The Politicisation of Digital Supply Chains as a New Geopolitical Strategy. How Can States Resist?”

The combined market value of the world's five largest companies, four of which are technology companies, is over $10 trillion dollars, which exceeds the gross domestic product of most countries. Among them, Western transnational companies Meta* and Google remain clear monopolists in the digital sphere.

Digital giants accumulate users' personal data in order to use it to select relevant content, as well as to extract commercial benefits and influence the consumer behavior, views and preferences of millions of people. They can block access to digital markets, limit the presence of users on social networks, affect smartphone shipments, or remove specific content in a matter of hours.

In this regard, questions arise about the positioning of platforms and the possibility of neutrality, which could ensure information security and the freedom of users. However, multinational companies are increasingly engaged in advancing the interests of specific groups and states, and their data collection activities lack transparency and accountability. All this brings to the agenda issues related to the governance mechanisms of digital platforms, their accountability to local law, the ethical use of artificial intelligence, and how to combat the threat of fake news and misinformation.

Such trends are pushing many to embrace the idea of creating and developing alternative digital platforms, which have great potential and could compete with the “giants”. Over the past years, companies in Russia and some non-Western countries have been successfully developing their own platforms, which are used by tens of millions of people around the world.

❓ How practical is the idea of digital platform neutrality?

❓ Can Russian and Asian platforms completely replace Western competitors?

❓ What will be the future of digital platforms?

Participants of the expert discussion will answer these and other questions.

👥 Speakers:

🇷🇺 Igor Ashmanov, President of Kribrum JSC

🇮🇳 Glenn Diesen, professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway

🇳🇴 Arvind Gupta, Head and Co-Founder of the Digital India Foundation

Moderator:

🚩 Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Valdai Discussion Club

Working languages: Russian, English.

🔗 Valdai Club to Discuss the Politicisation of Digital Supply Chains

ℹ️ Information for the media: In order to be accredited to the event, please fill out the form on our website or call +7 926 930 77 63.

A link to the live broadcast of the discussion will be posted on all online-platforms of the Valdai Club: on the website, on Telegram and Twitter.

*Meta is designated an extremist organization in Russia.

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

⛽️ What will happen if Russian gas flows to Europe stop?

Amid hostilities in Ukraine and the avalanche of the European economic sanctions against Russia, Russian gas has been flowing to Europe, including the transit via Ukraine, without interruption.

For now, it looks like Russia-Europe gas trade has been in the eye of the storm (an area of calm weather at the centre of a strong cyclone). But can it remain immune to the greatest geopolitical crisis of this century?

📝 Writes Vitaly Yermakov, Expert with the Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, Higher School of Economics.

🔗 Russian gas exports to Europe: In the Eye of the Storm

#EconomicStatecraft #Europe #sanctions #gas

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇷🇺🌏 While Russia seeks to realise its eastern pivot, the Southeast Asia has undergone a major transformation, with deep implications for its positioning.

The intensification of the US-China rivalry and the reimagining of the region as the Indo-Pacific, not to mention cooperation among states in the Quad and AUKUS format, are issues where Moscow will face key questions regarding its own policy formulation.

Russia has opposed the Indo-Pacific notion and has reservations about AUKUS, which also found an expression in the recent Sino-Russian joint statement. But its other strategic partner in the region — India — has embraced the Indo-Pacific and Quad, having grown increasingly concerned about the rise of an aggressive China. Other regional powers like Japan and Australia are also increasingly interacting with each other and key Western partners amidst increasing concerns about the kind of power China will emerge to be, and recognising the need to ensure a ‘more balanced Asia.’

Ideally, Russia too would benefit from an Asia that is multipolar, and where its engagement in the region is not disproportionately dependent on China. 

It is clear that how the ongoing crisis is resolved will have an impact on Russia’s policy towards the East as well, writes Valdai Club expert Nivedita Kapoor.

🔗 Russia’s Pivot to Asia – A 10-Year Policy Review

#Asia_and_Eurasia #AsiaPacific #India

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

⏰ TODAY at 4:00 pm, the Valdai Club will host an expert discussion titled “The Politicisation of Digital Supply Chains as a New Geopolitical Strategy. How Can States Resist?”

❓ How practical is the idea of digital platform neutrality?
❓ Can Russian and Asian platforms completely replace Western competitors?
❓ What will be the future of digital platforms?

Participants of the expert discussion will answer these and other questions.

A link to the live broadcast of the discussion will be posted on all online-platforms of the Valdai Club: on the website, on Telegram and Twitter.

🔗 Valdai Club to Discuss the Politicisation of Digital Supply Chains

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🎥 LIVE: at 4:00 pm, we are starting an expert discussion titled “The Politicisation of Digital Supply Chains as a New Geopolitical Strategy. How Can States Resist?”

https://vk.com/video-117768947_456239334

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 This US trend of military escalation is thereby a general threat to humanity. Why the US is embarking on such policy?

The core of the issue is that the US has already lost overwhelming world economic predominance. Even taking the US’s single biggest competitor economy, China, the US no longer has an overwhelming lead.

At market exchange rates the US economy is still bigger than China but in realistic price levels, purchasing power parities (PPPs), China’s economy is already 18% larger than the US. The economy the global era of multipolarity has already arrived.

The great present danger is that while the US has irreversibly lost global economic dominance it has not yet lost military supremacy. Certainly, in nuclear weapons the US and Russia are approximately equal but the conventional military spending of the US is far higher than any other country.

In 1912 German Chief of Staff Moltke made the notorious statement “war is unavoidable and the sooner the better.” This, from Germany’s viewpoint, was a rational calculation. Russia and the US’s economies were growing more rapidly than Germany - inevitably leading to them becoming militarily stronger than Germany.

This is similarly the great present danger flowing from the US. The US is attempting to use its military strength to avoid the geopolitical consequences of its relative economic decline, writes Valdai Club expert John Ross.

🔗 Russia-China Cooperation Crucial in a Very Dangerous Moment for Humanity

#Norms_and_Values #USA #militarism

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🌏 In the coming years, the main regulator of political and economic interaction will be the ability of governments to find solutions that are beneficial for themselves in an anarchic environment dominated by the rule of the strong.

This is not to say that such circumstances are particularly comfortable for most of the states around Russia, including even powerful China, whose rule for decades was not to adapt the existing norms to suit their interests, and not to act in the absence of any norms in principle.

As for the less important countries, for them the likely benefits will be offset by the constant tension resulting from their inability to exert even theoretical influence on the behaviour of the most powerful.

The fact that Western countries preferred the military scenario of restructuring Europe’s security architecture, with which Russia was forced to agree, shows that no one can boast of confidence in the future, and any agreements will easily be sacrificed to the priorities of the stronger.

Therefore, in a hypothetical future, for Russia and China, the two most important powers of Eurasia, it will be important to answer the question of how they are able to create at least relative confidence in their environment, writes Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

🔗 Peacebuilding in Eurasia

#Asia_and_Eurasia #geopolitics #world

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🛡💻 Digital Sovereignty as a Factor of State Sovereignty

On March 24, the Valdai Club held an expert discussion, titled “The Politicisation of Digital Supply Chains as a New Geopolitical Strategy. How Can States Resist?”

🔹 The moderator was Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club. He raised the question of the impact of technological platforms on society and the possible danger of manipulations associated with them.

🔹 Arvind Gupta, head and co-founder of the Digital India Foundation, noted that the Internet was originally created as a public good, but over time it has turned into a weapon and tool of geopolitical struggle. Most of the digital platforms that control the data flow are located in the United States - and clearly do not observe the principles of geopolitical neutrality. At the same time, having enormous power, they do not bear any responsibility for the dissemination of misinformation.

🔹 Glenn Diesen, a professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, argued that the free market is also extremely important and maintaining tight control over digital platforms and restricting their activities is not justified. However, he acknowledged that without digital sovereignty, there can be no state sovereignty, and that countries need systems of national control over data. He added that it is important to avoid a monopoly so that if one or another platform leaves the country, users can switch to another painlessly.

🔹 Igor Ashmanov, President of Kribrum JSC, pointed out the impossibility of reaching effective international agreements in the field of Internet control and information security. All such attempts, he said, are torpedoed by the Americans. In turn, attempts to conclude an agreement on artificial intelligence are opposed by both leaders in this field - America and China. He is also sceptical about the ability to force digital platforms to comply with government laws outside the United States. The expert considers digital sovereignty a possible way out, but this is a complex phenomenon and almost no one has the opportunity to fully build it.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/digital-sovereignty-as-a-factor-of-state-sovereignty/

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇮🇳🇷🇺 Differences do exist between India and Russia on the ongoing situation in Ukraine but that has been the nature of India-Russia relationship since decades where difference of opinion has not impacted their bilateral ties.

In line with the Realist perspective, India has tried to safeguard its national interest in this situation:

1️⃣ One, India shares a disputed border with China and a border standoff is ongoing between the two Asian giants in high Himalayas. To maintain balance of power in the Eurasian region through diplomatic and military means, Moscow has been supplying critical military hardware to India and is the only country to have made attempts to diffuse tensions between India and China by facilitating contact and interaction between their leaders over the past year.

2️⃣ Second, historical memory in India and Russia with regards to the days of former ‘Empire’ and their current neighbourhood is similar. Pakistan was created after the British Empire decolonised in 1947. Similarly, Ukraine became independent after disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991. During the Cold War, Pakistan’s alliance with the US had created security problems for India. The current China-Pakistan nexus also has security implications for India. In the same way, Russia has had historical apprehensions about NATO’s role in its neighbourhood and former Soviet republics becoming NATO members crosses Russia’s security threshold.

3️⃣ Third, despite India’s deepening ties with the US, India continues to depend on Russia for military hardware. Contrary to the oft cited figure of 60-70 percent, a study by Stimson Centre, US found in 2021 that India’s dependence on Russia for arms supplies is as high as 85 percent. Indian military facing China on its northern borders depends on Russia for critical supplies and antagonising Moscow at such a juncture remains impossible. The military-technical cooperation between India and Russia remains ahead of what is or may be there between India and the US. Reliability is still a factor that remains uncertain in India-US ties despite their deepening relationship.

A weak and isolated Russia is not in India’s interests and New Delhi will make efforts to help its traditional friend in its hour of need, writes Raj Kumar Sharma, Post-Doc Fellow, Delhi School of Transnational Affairs, University of Delhi.

🔗 India’s Diplomatic Stand on Russia-Ukraine Crisis

#Asia_and_Eurasia #India

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇺🇸☢️🇮🇷 It is becoming increasingly clear that neither Washington nor Tehran want the Vienna talks to fail and the confrontation to escalate.

The fuel crisis in the United States, which worsened after the ban on the import of energy resources from Russia to America, may soften Washington’s position at the negotiations in Vienna. 

Both sides understand that they will not be able to achieve their maximalist goals, which means that intermediate compromise agreements are needed to keep the nuclear deal afloat, at least in the near future, and to continue the search for more long-term solutions, writes Valdai Club expert Alexander Maryasov.

🔗 The Fate of the Nuclear Deal with Iran

#ModernDiplomacy #Iran #NuclearDeal

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club