🇺🇸 Who Should We Root For in the American Elections?

On February 29, 2024, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion dedicated to the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. 

💬 Ivan Timofeev, the moderator of the discussion, emphasised that the American elections attract great attention in Russia, regardless of the state of bilateral relations. “Elections in America are often perceived as some kind of championship in which you need to root for one of the candidates,” Timofeev noted, calling for such an approach to be avoided. He said we shouldn’t consider the candidates pro-Russian and anti-Russian, or take everything that is heard during public debates seriously. He called the future elections atypical due to the fact that both main candidates are in a relatively vulnerable position and, moreover, this time foreign policy and domestic policy problems have converged.

💬 Robert Legvold, Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, and Director of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative, pointed out that the outcome of the elections is still practically unpredictable. A lot will depend on the swing states. Also, there is the possibility that one of the main candidates will withdraw his candidacy. Speaking about how events will develop if Donald Trump wins, Legvold suggested that “Trump 2.0” may turn out to be more conservative than in the first term, but radical steps, primarily regarding migrants and the supposed “deep state”, cannot be excluded. In foreign policy, the United States under Trump will be less committed to cooperation with allies and global institutions and less concerned about the Ukrainian conflict and the Taiwan issue. In relation to Russia, policy in general is unlikely to change. However, for Russia, President Trump may be somewhat preferable, since he will probably concentrate more on domestic issues. Relations with China will continue to move towards a Cold War, but a war over Taiwan is unlikely in the near future.

💬 Dmitry Trenin, research professor at the Higher School of Economics and leading researcher at IMEMO RAS, noted that for Russia, the result of these elections is much less important than ever, since the opportunities for constructive relations with the United States are minimal. In essence, their agenda boils down to preventing a nuclear war; he emphasized that the world is on the brink of this worst-case scenario, as well as a major war in Europe. Moreover, in fact, Russia and the United States have found themselves in a state of proxy war. The decades-old paradigm of Russian-American relations, which presupposed a combination of cooperation and competition, is a matter of the past; relations have become openly hostile, and their very foundation has collapsed. Trenin, citing the words of President Putin, pointed to the possibility that in the current conditions, Russia may prefer the candidacy of Joseph Biden as a more predictable player. The expert also added that the American elections in Russia are viewed with interest, but as a kind of entertainment, without any expectations that the situation could improve.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/who-should-we-root-for-in-the-american-elections/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #UnitedStates #elections

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⛔️ Amid the second anniversary of the start of the Special Military Operation (SVO) in Ukraine, a number of Western countries and associations launched a new set of sanctions against Russia, as expected.

💢 The most significant package of restrictive measures was introduced by the United States. More than 500 Russian citizens and organisations were included in the list of blocked entities. Secondary sanctions against a number of companies from third countries cooperating with Russia can be considered equally common. 

💢 As for the EU, the new sanctions have their own characteristic: 87 organisations and 105 individuals were included in the lists of blocked persons. However, even here the structure of the distribution of sanctions changes little. The new secondary EU sanctions have become peculiar. A number of companies from Turkey, Thailand, Kazakhstan, China, Serbia, India, Singapore, Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka have been listed in Annex IV of Regulation 833/2014.

💢 The UK has extended blocking financial sanctions to a number of large Russian industrial companies. The country has also decided to introduce secondary sanctions against Russia’s partners from third countries, but unlike Brussels, it has applied the mechanism of blocking sanctions to them. They include companies from Turkey, China, the UAE and Switzerland. 

💢 The lists of blocked persons have also been expanded or are about to be expanded by Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. 

In quantitative terms, the number of Russian companies and citizens subject to restrictive measures was indeed high. However, the latest wave of sanctions does not bring qualitative changes - their impact on the Russian economy and its relations with foreign partners is unlikely to be fundamental, writes Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/new-sanctions-against-russia-taking-a-swing/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #sanctions #UnitedStates #EU #UK

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🌎 Today’s world has added another level of complexity to the US – Latin America relationship.

The five monopolies that Egyptian scholar Samir Amin identified as the source of strength of the US-led world order: weapons of mass destruction, mass communication, monetary and financial systems, technology, and access to natural resources, are beginning to break down.

New trading arrangements as well as the de-dollarisation efforts coming from BRICS+ call into question the financial control; advances by Russia and China have curbed US technological superiority; and even Washington’s control over certain natural resources is diminishing.

This means that the United States will now have to rely even more heavily on its military strength and its information apparatus to exert control over what it believes is its natural sphere of influence.

The US information and military presence is likely to increase, but any true agenda of development and autonomy in the region can only be pursued through the efforts of the Latin American and Caribbean nations themselves, not via a partnership with Washington, writes Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America and President of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-impact-of-the-coming-us-elections-on-latin/

#Return_of_Diplomacy #LatinAmerica #UnitedStates

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🇺🇸⛔️ In the United States, both houses of Congress approved the bill H.R. 8038, titled “21st Century Peace through Strength Act”.

In Russia, the bill received resonance in connection with the legal mechanism for the confiscation of Russia’s sovereign assets. Previously, there were no such mechanisms in the arsenal of US sanctions policy towards Russia. 

The new federal legislation gives the president a mechanism that was previously absent from the executive branch. The head of state, by his decrees, may freeze, but not confiscate, the property of a foreign state.

In the future, this legal mechanism can be expanded, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev. 

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/on-a-new-mechanism-for-the-confiscation-of-russian/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #confiscation #sanctions #UnitedStates

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🗽 We are at the beginning of a major confrontation involving several fronts, and our task is to use our own resources wisely.

The Americans have a long history of redefining the goals of their military involvement in a number of crises: from the grandiose — democratisation of Iraq, transformation of the Middle East, etc., to a reasonable scale. As the commander in Iraq David Petraeus formulated it in 2006, the US goal was no longer to build a “Jeffersonian democracy”, but to create conditions for the withdrawal of troops so that it would not look like a defeat.

Washington’s goal in Ukraine — from a grand defeat, the “decolonization of Russia”, and creating conditions for internal upheaval — may gradually begin to shift to an attempt to end the confrontation in a way that does not look like a defeat, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-us-presidential-election-and-the-dilemmas/

#Return_of_Diplomacy #UnitedStates

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🇺🇸🇨🇳 China has firmly integrated into the American-centric model of globalisation, but unlike most other countries, it has been able to maintain its sovereignty and prevent the United States from influencing its domestic political processes.

China's economic rise has led to the strengthening of its technological, industrial, and military capabilities. Sooner or later, such growth was bound to become a problem for the United States. The presidency of Donald Trump in 2016-2020 was a period when a visible shift occurred in American policy towards China. 

Trump changed the approach to China both at the doctrinal level and at the level of practical policy. In doctrinal terms, Trump exacerbated all the comments that were previously made about the PRC in a cautious and delicate manner: China is an authoritarian country with a communist regime that has little in common with American values. The rise of the PRC is a problem and a challenge for the United States. China's overseas projects, such as the Belt and Road project, are a means of economic expansion for the Celestial Empire that must be contained.

The Biden administration was much more restrained in its anti-Chinese rhetoric. However, it did not change the structure of sanctions pressure on China. The problems that generated the sanctions were not resolved.

In the end, both Trump and Harris, if they win, will continue the course of containing China. However, Trump's performance will be more aggressive and assertive, writes Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/trump-or-harris-does-it-matter-for-china/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #UnitedStates #China #Trump #Harris

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