🌐 Values, Technology and Myths about Russia: The Third Day of the 19th Valdai Club Annual Meeting

On Wednesday, October 26, as part of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, four thematic sessions were held on humanitarian issues - values, communications and technology. During a special session, held as an open discussion, the experts discussed the image of Russia in the world.

The sixth session of the conference (he recording of the broadcast is available on www.valdaiclub.com) was devoted to values in the modern world. 

During the seventh session, experts discussed the role of communications in our world. They stated that the Internet, which was created so that everyone could instantly get access to the entire array of knowledge accumulated by mankind, has become in many ways a tool for manipulating public consciousness. The dominance of American companies in the communications market plays a big role - and here one can draw a parallel with the discursive power of the West, discussed on the first day of the Annual Meeting.

Information campaigns conducted through traditional and online media, as well as social networks, are part of the hybrid war of the West against Russia, just like the sanctions discussed the day before. Perhaps an even more formidable aspect of hybrid warfare is the technological blockade, which became the theme of the eighth session.

Anticipating the topic of the next session, the experts touched upon the topic of military mobilisation. It was noted that the announcement of partial mobilisation provoked an outflow of scientific personnel from Russia. Measures must be taken to ensure the return of scientists who have left the country.

The ninth session was devoted to mobilisation in a broad sense. In sociological terms, mobilisation means that a significant part of society is preoccupied with the same problems. Such an “assembly” of society leads to its polarisation, when sharp contradictions (including intergenerational ones) arise between people who evaluate the same events differently.

Comprehension of what is happening leads to a "reassembly". The attitude of people to such concepts as the West, capitalism and individualism is changing; the idea that the state of the world will be eternal is dying out.

All this does not fit well into the stereotypical image of the Russian state machine as rigid and non-adaptive. A special session was devoted to stereotypes and myths about Russia, that took place in the format of an open discussion. The topic sparked great interest among experts, and the main conclusion of the discussion can be formulated as follows: Russia for years has been investing in creating a positive image for itself in the West, while ignoring the "third world". The result is a vacuum, which the people of the Global South are filling with information from the Western sources. Meanwhile, properly in the Global South there is a demand for Russia, which is largely connected with the legacy of the Soviet period. The Soviet Union projected the image of a strong, just state, fighting colonialism, and today it is most missed by those who are sympathetic to Russia. 

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/values-technology-and-myths-about-russia-the-third-day-of-the-19th-valdai-club-annual-meeting/

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🎞 The 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. Day 3

On Wednesday, October 26, the Valdai Club experts continued their work. The third day of the 19th Annual Meeting was very eventful: there were five sessions, including one special session.

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🌾 Amid the current geopolitical and economic shocks, the global economy has entered a period of turbulence and structural transformation.

Since the beginning of 2022, the total cost of energy resources in the world has increased by almost 40%. The growth in the cost of raw agricultural materials reached 20% in May-June. Since then, prices have declined, but how sustainable this decline is remains a big question.

Current geopolitical divisions are causing global markets to stop functioning normally. Markets themselves have become fragmented, supply chains are more risky, and incentives to invest and expand production have weakened, writes Marsel Salikhov, President of the Institute for Energy and Finance Foundation, for the 19th Annual Valdai Club Meeting.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/food-energy-security-and-global-markets/

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🛒 Despite the interconnectedness of the global economy, in many areas individual countries and even companies wield disproportionate weight. These can be very small countries and even separate territories. The most striking example is the semiconductor and grain markets.

Why these disproportions arise, what crises they can lead to, and most importantly, what are the ways to solve these problems you can find out from our videoinfographic.

📍 The infographic is prepared for the Valdai Club’s 19th Annual Meeting.

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📷 The third day of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club started with Session 10, titled “The World That Crumbled: Lessons for the Future from the 2022 Military-Political Crisis”.

Follow this link to see photos: https://vk.com/album-214192832_287679737

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🎥 LIVE: The Plenary session of the Valdai Club’s 19th Annual Meeting “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone” is coming soon.

Live broadcast in English:

https://vk.com/video-214192832_456239041

https://valdaiclub.com/multimedia/video/plenary-session-of-the-19th-annual-meeting/

Live broadcast in Russian:

https://vk.com/video-117768947_456239405

https://ru.valdaiclub.com/multimedia/video/plenarnaya-sessiya-v-ramkakh-xix-zasedaniya-kluba-valday/

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🎥 Is globalisation over?

Globalisation for the Americans meant exporting manufacturing to China and other low-cost places. US sanctions against Russia demonstrated not so much to Moscow, but to Beijing the risks of the US-led financial system, says Christian Whiton, Senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest.

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🌐 The World Crumbles: What's Next? Fourth Day of the Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club

One thematic session was held on the last day of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, during which the Club's experts tried to formulate what lessons the military-political crisis of 2022 presents for the future.

Experts were unanimous in their assessments of the events that unfolded in Europe after February 24, 2022: a special Russian military operation in Ukraine provoked an all-out war of the West against Russia. The goal of the West is to inflict a military defeat on Russia and, by destroying its military power, to bring it into a state of “1990s minus”, which Western propaganda holds will succeed in “turning Russia into a normal country.”

According to one of the experts, the Russian operation has several goals. This is not only the elimination of the anti-Russian foothold within the country's borders, but also the preparation of Russia for a long existence in a crumbling world, the cleansing of pro-Western elements from the elite, as well as the final liberation of the world from the 500-year yoke of Western civilisation, and the return of rights to the "global majority".

Indeed, the institutions of global governance that arose after the Second World War were created to express the interests of the developed countries, which today account for a mere eighth of the world's population. After the end of the Cold War, the West abandoned agreements with Russia on acceptable coexistence, deciding to create an even more rigid system - the so-called "rules-based world order". However, according to one of the participants, this ‘new’ world order was a product of Western imperialism, grounded in the use of resources and cheap labour from poor countries.

According to one of the experts, confrontation between Russia and the West is inevitable, since the Western (primarily American) vision of the world does not imply the existence of alternative centres of power in the world. As long as Russia in any of its incarnations claims such a role, the West will always counteract by any means.

The annual meeting traditionally ended with a plenary session with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/the-world-crumbles-what-s-next/

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🎞 The 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. Day 4

The key moment of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Club was the plenary session with the participation of the President of Russia. But before that, the last, tenth, session of the forum titled “The World That Crumbled: Lessons for the Future from the 2022 Military-Political Crisis”  was held. The conference ended with a plenary session with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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🎥 If you missed the live broadcast of the plenary session of the Valdai Club’s 19th Annual Meeting “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone”, you can watch the video.

In English: https://valdaiclub.com/multimedia/video/plenary-session-of-the-19th-annual-meeting/

In Russian: https://ru.valdaiclub.com/multimedia/video/plenarnaya-sessiya-v-ramkakh-xix-zasedaniya-kluba-valday/

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🪙 The world, including Russia since the early 1990s, has been accustomed for decades to the fact that there are only two types of currencies: hard currency and soft currency. In 2022, this unshakable currency dichotomy collapsed.

Now, no currency in the world, including the US dollar, is "hard" anymore in the sense of the original definition.

The large-scale unsecured issuance of major world currencies, record inflation and sharp changes in monetary policy, social and economic instability, political risks, and the weaponising of the EU and US financial systems through the use of sanctions and hybrid war have put an end to the firmness and strength of the dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen.

Meanwhile, the once “soft” currencies are gaining strength because they are backed by real industrial capacity (Chinese yuan) or commodities (Russian ruble), as well as politically stable regimes.

It is the Chinese yuan that is becoming the most popular “friendly” currency among both Russian entrepreneurs and citizens, who are converting their dollar savings into yuan. Demand growth is trending, and the position of the yuan in the Russian foreign exchange market is strengthening month by month, writes Alexander Losev,  financial expert, Member of Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (SVOP).

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-yuan-as-the-leading-foreign-currency-in-the-ru/

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🌎🌍 The world was, and is, a colonial order.

It is divided into two great blocs in which the superior wealth of the Collective West comes from the economic plunder of the global South, achieved by the west’s monopoly of high-tech goods and its consignment, to four-fifth of the world of the status of the providers of raw materials and the products of cheap labour.

All that has happened compared with colonial era and that of high imperialism is that this economic oppression – always the material basis of this profoundly unjust division of the world - has been perfected to the point where formal conquest is kept in the back pocket, writes Alan Freeman, Co-Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Institute, for the 19th Annual Valdai Club Meeting. 

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/world-capital-acts-globally-so-should-the-peoples/

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🇷🇺🌍 African countries and those in the global South have also come under greater diplomatic pressure from their European and US counterparts.

It is something that became a subject of discussion during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to South Africa, where Minister of International Relations Dr. Naledi Pandor expressed South Africa’s reservations regarding a US law that seeks to punish countries seen as having close relations with Russia.

In a changing geopolitical environment, African countries and those of the global South seeking to maintain cooperation with Russia will thus need to factor in these dynamics, which have been introduced to undermine relations in a similar manner that China’s engagement with Africa and the global South has been viewed with scepticism by counterparts in the West.

In order to achieve their development goals, African countries will largely seek to not get drawn into taking positions that may backfire against their strategic interests. They will thus seek to work with all external actors wanting to forge ties with the continent, and Russia and its African partners will need to build on their comparative advantages.

As an agricultural power, Russia could identify opportunities to boost Africa’s own production and enhance its food security. This would position Russia as a strategic partner in the pursuit of Africa’s green revolution and efforts to build a greater degree of resilience on the continent, writes Philani Mthembu, Executive Director at the Institute for Global Dialogue, South Africa, for the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/russia-africa-and-the-global-south-enhancing/

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🌐 Recently the United Nations commemorated its 77th anniversary. The International Monetary Fund will be 77 years old in December, when the World Bank turns 76 years old.

These three institutions of world governance were established after a significant extermination of human life, the destruction of massive amounts of fixed capital, and social infrastructure.

While we are all, as a species-being, confronted by this crisis of existence and challenges of survival, it is the ‘geriatric’ institutions of global governance established in the second half of the 20th century that have governed us into this iniquitous situation.

If our current negative conditions are the outcomes of these institutions and their agencies, then we should and must reimagine a system of rules and governance structures that are actually capable of delivering the world that we want, need, and demand.

We should creatively destroy that which is ill-suited to our real requirements, and which persistently reproduces the hegemony of an absolute minority of people through advancing the narrow interests of a dominant fraction of capital in one country out of the multitude that constitute the world systems and the UN, writes Rasigan Maharajh, Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at the Tshwane University of Technology (South Africa) for the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/we-should-creatively-destroy-that-which-is-ill-sui/

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