⏰ TODAY at 16:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host a discussion dedicated to the technological gap between developed and developing countries, titled “How to Avoid Inequality in Access to the Digital Future.”

❓How can we overcome the digital divide?
❓Should poor countries expect help from rich countries in achieving digitalisation?
❓Or is it better to think about a coalition of developing countries that would resolve this problem, for example, through BRICS?

Participants in the discussion will try to 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, X (formerly Twitter), VKontakte, Telegram and Dzen.

#Norms_and_Values #digitalisation #technologicalgap #inequality
 
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🇧🇷🇷🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇿🇦 The XV BRICS Summit in Johannesburg held in August of this year sparked a wide range of expectations regarding its growing weight in the international system.

The Summit’s agenda foresaw two prominent issues to address.

🔹 On one hand, particularly due to movements in favour of using national currencies in trade and financial exchanges among group members and other nations of the Global South, the creation of a common currency to replace the U. S. dollar as the dominant currency appeared as key issues to be addressed.

🔹 On the other hand, the expansion of the bloc to a broader platform, taking into account the numerous requests for entry from countries in the Global South.

The geographical balance of the new additions to BRICS clearly illustrates this intention. However, just like the original group and the currently expanded BRICS+, they present heterogeneities and asymmetries that will likely pose challenges in the future for consensus-building, Andrés Serbin writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/brics-political-and-geopolitical-challenges-a-view/

#EconomicStatecraft #BRICS #BRICS2023 #GlobalSouth #LatinAmerica #Argentina

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🗺️ BRICS no longer exists: the time of BRICS+ has come.

From 2024 onwards, BRICS+ will account for 44.4% of the world population and for 37.3% of the world’s GDP, with its overall natural endowment capable of leading, as anticipated, to a world-challenging super-OPEC:

📍Home to 79% of the world’s aluminium output
📍77% of palladium production
📍75% of the world’s manganese
📍50% of its graphite
📍Approximately 50% of the world’s gas reserves
📍44.3% of the world’s oil reserves and 41% of oil production
📍More than 50% of global food production
📍38.8% of total global industrial production
📍Over 30% of the world’s nickel reserves
📍Four-fifths of all rare earth reserves
📍One-fifth of global lithium production
📍One-tenth of the world’s copper

Common energy considerations and long-term geo-economic goals (de-dollarisation) are the main driving reasons for the BRICS’ existence and its first enlargement, but (much) more is needed if the aspiring G7 rival hopes to win the battle for the de-Westernisation of the world.

To make this informal forum into a structured reality, one capable of withstanding bumps and games, a radical rethinking of its purposes and its current skeleton is needed, writes Emanuel Pietrobon.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-case-for-a-brics-academy/

#EconomicStatecraft #BRICS #BRICS2023

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UPD: The livestream is over. The video of the discussion is available via the same link. Stay tuned!

🎥 LIVE: at 16:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host a discussion dedicated to the technological gap between developed and developing countries, titled “How to Avoid Inequality in Access to the Digital Future.”

https://vk.com/video-214192832_456239118

#Norms_and_Values #digitalisation #technologicalgap #inequality

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📷 On September 18, 2023, the Valdai Club will hosted a discussion dedicated to the technological gap between developed and developing countries, titled “How to Avoid Inequality in Access to the Digital Future.”

Photo gallery of the discussion is available in this album.

The video of the discussion is available via this link.

Stay tuned!

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⛓️💻 How to Overcome Digital Colonialism

On September 18, the Valdai Discussion Club hosted an expert discussion, titled “How to Avoid Inequality in Access to the Digital Future”, dedicated to the technological gap between developed and developing countries. 

💬 Oleg Barabanov, the moderator of the discussion, called digital inequality an extremely important topic and emphasised that this year the BRICS and G20 agenda was largely devoted to it.

💬 Igor Ashmanov, President of Kribrum JSC, Member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, pointed out that the digital divide is often understood as the difference in the access of ordinary users to certain digital technologies. Meanwhile, in his opinion, such access in itself should not be considered an unconditional benefit and the difference in it should not be presented as a key problem. More important, from Ashmanov’s point of view, is another aspect - the stratification between countries, and the lack of technology in developing countries.

💬 Arvind Gupta, Chairman and Co-founder of Digital India Foundation, spoke about India’s experience preventing “digital colonisation”. He emphasised that the Internet was created as a public technology, and not a technology over which only a few select parties should have control. It is important for India that it does not turn into an instrument of influence of certain countries or corporations, as happened at a certain moment. To prevent this from happening in the future, India is creating a public digital infrastructure.

💬 Jacques Sapir, Professor of Economics at the Paris Higher School of Social Sciences (EHESS) and Lomonosov Moscow State University, pointed out that in addition to the digital divide between countries, there is a digital divide inside countries. He noted that often, particularly in France at the moment, increases in the cost of living and decreases in income serve as an obstacle to the spread of digitalisation. Speaking about the gap at the country level, he emphasized the need to develop common rules for the whole world.

💬 Rasigan Maharajh, Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at the Tshwane University of Technology (South Africa), returned to the issue of the uneven distribution of science and technology around the world, recognising the serious imbalance between African countries and the rest of the world and the growing digital divide both between and within specific countries. A situation of neo-colonialism is created, when, despite formal sovereignty, state policy in many areas is actually controlled from abroad. To overcome this, he considers it necessary to work more actively at the BRICS+ level.

💬 Radhika Desai,Professor, Faculty of Political Studies, Director of the Geopolitical Economics Research Group, University of Manitoba (Canada), is confident that if current trends continue, the digital divide, which has been on the international agenda since the beginning of the 2000s, will increase. She compared the socio-economic consequences of insufficient access to digital technologies with those of illiteracy in the last century. She believes important aspects of this include providing the world with electricity and industrial development, as well as improving education, without which digital development is impossible.

💬 Konstantin Pantserev, Professor at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations, Faculty of International Relations, St. Petersburg State University, analysed the relationship between the concepts of technological sovereignty and the digital divide. According to him, digital technology was and is perceived by African countries as a key tool for economic development. As a result, almost the entire ICT industry of the continent came under the control of Western businesses.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/how-to-overcome-digital-colonialism/

#Norms_and_Values #digitalisation #technologicalgap #inequality

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🌍 In recent years, African countries have begun to make significant efforts to solve the problem of inadequate training.

For this purpose, modern scientific and educational centres have been established in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and some other African countries. However, it is clear that they are not able to meet the demand for highly qualified personnel, as the shortage affects the whole continent. As a result, many promising young professionals are often forced to leave the continent in order to receive a high-quality technical education; not all of them come back.

Russia is extremely interested in making education accessible to Africans. Today, according to various estimates, about 35,000 students from Africa study at Russian universities. In order to make education in Russia more accessible to students from Africa, the Russian-African Network University was created in August 2021, in which 12 Russian universities participate.

Today, the transition to a modern innovative economy with the use of advanced technologies is a key task for African countries. In order to ensure this transition, human capital is required, namely, highly qualified specialists, primarily technical specialties, who are trained by the leading universities and schools of the world, Konstantin Pantserev writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/training-highly-qualified-personnel-for-africa/

#Norms_and_Values #Africa #highereducation

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🗣 #VALDAI2023: The 20th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Fair Multipolarity: How to Ensure Security and Development for Everyone” will be held in Sochi on October 2–5, 2023.
 
🗺️ The meeting will be attended by 140 experts, politicians and diplomats from 42 countries throughout Eurasia, Africa, North and South America. Traditionally, at the Annual Valdai Meeting, the majority of guests are foreign participants.
 
In recent years, the reports of the Valdai Club have analysed in detail the dynamics of changes in the world order — first the crisis, and then the dismantling of the old world. The breakdown of the previous system of international relations has already occurred. The concept of multipolarity has sprung into life. This year, participants will try to produce an image of the new world: for example, what it will be like by the beginning of the next decade.
 
Amid the new conditions, the international architecture should be discussed, including in the context of the BRICS transformation. The countries of the community have opted for a model of its further development through enlargement. The association itself attracts those who do not follow the Western model of development or share its common principles and “universal” values, choosing instead to adhere to their own interests and traditions. The Valdai Discussion Club is closely following this trend and will devote the first session of the Annual Meeting to it.

Structurally, the programme is divided into several thematic blocks: each day will be devoted to one broad topic — politics, economics or humanitarian issues. Over the four days of the Valdai Club Annual Meeting, 17 sessions will be held, at which the following issues will be discussed:

🔹 The role of nuclear weapons and the danger of nuclear war;
🔹 Food security and Russia’s contribution;
🔹 The world economy without a currency monopoly or punitive measures;
🔹 Russian economy, society and culture in an era of transformation;
🔹 Energy markets against the backdrop of military-political tensions;
🔹 Science and education in an era of confrontation.
 
In the emerging world, Russia is positioning itself as a unique state-civilization that has absorbed both Western culture and Eastern traditions. This conceptual basis of modern Russian foreign policy will be reflected in the programme of the Annual Meeting. For the first time, the forum features a session titled “Russian Civilization Through the Centuries”.

📑 The opening session of the 20th Meeting will feature the presentation of the Valdai Club Annual Report. Its authors try to present an image of the future world and bring their findings to the discussion of the entire forum.

Despite the changed geopolitical conditions, the Valdai Club Annual Meeting promises to become one of the most representative ones in recent years. The Forum is closer than ever to its main goal: to gather an audience that, in the words of the Club’s Research Director Fyodor Lukyanov, would be “a cast of the whole world”.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/announcements/fair-multipolarity-how-to-ensure-security-and-development-for-all-the-20th-annual-meeting-of-the-val/
 
Working languages: Russian, English.
 
ℹ️ Information for the media: Dear journalists, in order to be accredited for the event, please fill out the form on our website. If you have any questions about the event, call +7 926 930 77 63.

A link to the live broadcast of open sessions will be posted on all online platforms of the Valdai Club: on the website, X (formerly Twitter), VKontakte, Telegram and Dzen.

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🗣 Dear friends! This is a reminder that the Valdai Discussion Club is present on the following social media platforms:

🇬🇧 In English:

🌐 Telegram

🌐 VK

🌐 X (formerly Twitter)


🇷🇺 In Russian:

🌐 Telegram

🌐 X (formerly Twitter)

🌐 VK

🔹 Dzen

Stay tuned!

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🇷🇺🇮🇷 The banking and financial relations between Iran and Russia have developed significantly in recent years under the influence of several factors, which is unprecedented in the history of relations between the two countries.

1️⃣ The first factor is the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) that was implemented on October 27, 2019, offering lower tariffs on 862 commodity types, of which 502 are Iranian exports to the EAEU. “This agreement significantly increased the trade volume between Iran and the member countries of the Union, including Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

2️⃣ The second factor in the continuation of unilateral US sanctions against Iran is in the administration of Joe Biden. In particular, the SWIFT embargo against Iran has remained a serious obstacle for international banking transactions. These conditions would push Iran towards “barter transactions” in trade and bank transactions with “national currencies”, especially with its neighbours, including Iraq (dinar) and Russia (ruble). It is clear that the bank exchange in rubles and rials between Iran and Russia and the elimination of the dollar requires the creation of a new banking mechanism between the two countries. 

3️⃣ The third factor is the new policies and approach of Iranian president Ibrahim Raisi, that declared a “Neighbourhood Policy” and “Economic Diplomacy” to be his administration’s top two foreign policy objectives. In this context, expanding relations with neighbouring countries Russia and China, upgrading the PTA to a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Iran and the EAEU, Iran’s full membership in the SCO and efforts to join BRICS would strengthen it.

4️⃣ The fourth factor is the conflict in Ukraine and the extensive related Western sanctions against Russia. In particular, “in late February 2022, a large coalition of states, including EU members, the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, among others, agreed to ban several Russian banks from SWIFT with the intent of economically isolating Russia and crippling its financial system,” according to Euronews. Under these circumstances, Moscow tried to expand the Financial Messaging System of the Bank of Russia (SPFS) to its BRICS partners, the EEU, the SCO and other countries it had maintained normal diplomatic ties with. In this endeavour, Moscow found a willing partner in Iran.  

The meetings, negotiations and agreements between Iran and Russia in recent years clearly show the will and decision of the two countries to develop financial and banking cooperation, writes Vali Kaleji.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/banking-cooperation-between-iran-and-russia-capaci/

#ModernDiplomacy #Iran

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🗽⛔️ The US Treasury has introduced another series of financial blocking sanctions against Russian citizens and legal entities.

The purpose of such sanctions is to isolate the Russian economy from American-centric global finance, to block the possibility of normal foreign economic activity, inflict maximum damage, and force it to make political concessions on the Ukrainian issue and other security issues.

As part of a new round of US sanctions, more than a hundred Russian companies have been blocked. Their distribution by sector indicates a continued focus on defence industry enterprises and the electronics industry.

The introduction of a large new package of restrictions can hardly be called a new phenomenon. Over the past year and a half, they have become routine. However, the latest wave of sanctions is notable for its emphasis on certain sectors of the Russian economy, as well as the practice of applying secondary sanctions against companies in third countries involved in circumventing American restrictions.

Sanctions have caused damage and continue to distort normal market relations, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev. But business continues to find alternative ways. The regime of Western sanctions against Russia is likely to continue for decades. Therefore, investing in diversification is in many ways a non-alternative strategy.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/already-routine-new-us-sanctions-against-russia/

#EconomicStatecraft #sanctions

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✈️ Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are actively changing aviation.

They have found applications in logistics, industry, agriculture, environmental monitoring, military, etc.

You can learn about the different types of UAVs and their advantages over other aircraft in our infographic.

#valdai_infogaphics #aviation #UAVs

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🇺🇸🇨🇳 US President Joe Biden signed an executive order to launch the first phase of the "U.S.-Taiwan Trade Initiative for the 21st century”, a trade agreement between the US and Taiwan.

This will change the status quo that has developed over the past 70 years around the self-governing island.

Movement in this direction could not but provoke a negative reaction from the PRC. The country's Foreign Ministry declared the inadmissibility of such actions on the part of Washington and called on the US administration to abandon such initiatives. 

The dissatisfaction of the Celestial Empire is understandable, because the conclusion of any kind of agreements between a de facto independent state (Taiwan) and a full-fledged subject of international law (the United States) can formally mean recognition of the independence of the former. In this case, this will be an official attempt on the territorial integrity of China, which means a weighty reason to prepare or start a real military conflict between Beijing and Taipei, possibly with the participation of Washington.

The United States is willing to take risks for many reasons, but it will lead to nothing but a new round of escalation of the conflict with China, writes Roman Romanov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/usa-vs-taiwan-trading-at-the-price-of-stability/

#Norms_and_Values #Taiwan #China #UnitedStates

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🌏 Russia is a significant trading partner and a welcome element of regional food and energy security systems, not only for politicians, but also for business circles in Asia.

From the point of view of our eastern partners, the main aspect of Russia’s Pivot to the East 2.0 is that it provides a testing ground for solutions and projects for a new type of international cooperation: less vulnerable to sanctions or any unilateral decisions, and tailored to the fundamental and long-term interests of the participants.

This ambition is quite understandable – there is not yet a single country in the world with an economy comparable in scale and structure that has fallen under such large-scale sanctions. Russian pioneering in this case is not only a serious challenge, but also a potential asset.

However, this can only become an asset with the consistent construction of new infrastructure and the creation of cooperation networks, writes Anastasia Likhacheva.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/nets-over-ropes-or-the-new-priorities-of-the-pivot/

#Asia_and_Eurasia #Asia #East

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🔄 Mediation is the participation in a dispute or conflict by a third, neutral party.

The goal is to resolve the dispute in a controlled, iterative process. Nowadays, mediation is used to resolve conflicts, which vary widely in their cause, scale and severity. Despite the fact that the UN can be considered the main mediator, there are at least four more types of mediators.

In October, 2022, we published a video infographic about the history of mediation and possible mediators.

📌 Next Monday, October 2, the opening of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Fair Multipolarity: How to Ensure Security and Development for Everyone” will take place in Sochi. This year, participants will try to produce an image of the new world: for example, what it will be like by the beginning of the next decade.

#VALDAI2023

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🎓🌐 Many discrepancies between the leading countries offering their solutions to world problems are rooted in this difference in worldviews. 

By studying the teaching of international relations in different countries, we can note differences in the national epistemology of knowledge about the world. Many states rely on their own foreign policy experience, while others “import” this experience, borrowing foreign policy assessments from the countries which lead their coalitions.

The Russian approach to training diplomatic personnel and international relations students in general is based on the experience of Soviet diplomacy during and after the Second World War. In the mid-1940s, the leadership of the USSR realised the need to design the architecture of the post-war world order and, accordingly, prepare a new generation of diplomats to work in a changed international environment. Their tasks were to include laying the foundation of a new political order for the world, creating its institutional framework in the form of the UN, as well as establishing the format of interaction between the victorious states. At that moment, it was obvious that with the impending emancipation of new states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, a large-scale expansion of the USSR's diplomatic corps was necessary, as well as the opening of new embassies. 

Today we are seeing similar processes. Just 10 years ago, international relations graduates believed that they were graduating into an established, predictable world - in which all bilateral relations were fully established and all multilateral organisations were functioning. Students believed that they would find themselves in a routine foreign policy process, where there were no opportunities to express themselves.

Today, however, students, as in the 1940s, are again faced with the task of shaping a new world where the future of the world order will be determined, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/differences-in-the-training-of-international/

#ModernDiplomacy #diplomacy

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🗺️ World politics has begun to rapidly return to a state of anarchy built on force.

🔹 The crisis of globalisation as a universal framework for global development started in the 2000s.

🔹 The pandemic proved that globalisation, as it was understood in the 1980s, was quite reversible.

🔹 The military-political crisis that broke out in Europe in 2022 – an extremely dangerous and almost unpredictable relapse into rivalry between the major superpowers – has impacted most of the world in one way or another. It also signals the end of the model of relations in which the “blessing” of mutual dependence was a bedrock assumption.

The current state of affairs is marked by the fact that the United States and its allies, in fact, no longer enjoy the status of dominant superpower, but the global infrastructure that serves it is still in place.

The authors of the Valdai Annual Report-2022 “A World Without Superpowers” try to imagine which principles may form the foundation of a future system of global co-existence and which will rightfully be relegated to the past.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/reports/a-world-without-superpowers/

📌 The opening session of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Fair Multipolarity: How to Ensure Security and Development for Everyone,” will feature the presentation of the Valdai Club Annual Report. Its authors try to present an image of the future world and bring their findings to the discussion of the entire forum.

#VALDAI2023

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🇺🇳 The UN system is in crisis. The main reason for this is the general loss of the West's ability to bolster its institutional capabilities with the resources needed for unchallenged global leadership. 

The recently concluded High-Level Week within the framework of the 78th UN General Assembly was accompanied by growing discussions about the need to reform this organisation. First of all, we are talking about the future of its highest body - the Security Council (UNSC), whose five permanent members (Great Britain, China, Russia, the USA and France) have exclusive rights in the field of international security.

The United Nations is the institutional embodiment of the West's desire to preserve the international order in which it has played a leading role for more than 500 years. That is why it is fundamentally important for the United States and Europe to maintain their majority in the Security Council. This is what ultimately makes it possible to effectively control the working bodies of the UN. First of all, the secretariat of this most important international organisation.

Now the UN remains the last “pillar” of a relatively stable world order and, at the same time, ensures the formal participation of almost all countries of the world in the discussion of the global agenda. In other words, the UN as we know it is the product of a compromise in which the West maintains its dominance and everyone else does not feel a complete injustice is being done to their basic interests. 

Russia and especially China are feeling increasingly confident and are actually rejecting the UN-centred common order as an instrument of Western dominance. The Western countries themselves are trying to counterattack in response, and are raising the issue of reforming the Security Council, including new permanent members.

Timofei Bordachev writes on possibility of the reform of the United Nations.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/reforming-the-un-possibility-and-necessity-/

#Азия_и_Евразия #UN #UnitedNations #SecurityCouncil

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🗣 #VALDAI2023: Programme of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club “Fair Multipolarity: How to Ensure Security and Development for Everyone”

📍Sochi, October 2–5, 2023

 
📆 October 2, Monday
 
09:50 – 10:00 — Opening of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club (LIVE)

10:00 – 11:00 — Presentation of the Valdai Discussion Club’s Annual Report (LIVE)

11:30 – 13:30 — Session 1. A World Beyond Hegemony: BRICS as a Prototype of a New International Architecture (LIVE)

14:30 – 16:00 — Session 2. The Role of Nuclear Weapons and the Danger of Nuclear War

16:30 – 18:00 — Meeting with Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

19:30 – 21:00 — Session 3. Food Security: What Russia Can and Is Ready to Give the World

 
📆 October 3, Tuesday
 
09:30 – 11:00 — Session 4. Interconnection Instead of Dictate: A Global Economy Without Currency Monopoly and Punitive Measures (LIVE)

11:30 – 13:00 — Meeting with Alexander Novak, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation

14:30 – 16:00 — Session 5. The Russian Economy: Against All Odds or Thanks to the Shake-Up?

16:30 – 18:00 — Meeting with Maxim Oreshkin, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation

19:30 – 21:00 — Session 6. Energy Markets Amid Military and Political Tensions: How Will They Develop?


📆 October 4, Wednesday
 
10:00 – 11:30 — Session 7. Science and Education in the Age of Confrontation

12:00 – 13:30 — Session 8. Russian Civilisation Through the Centuries (LIVE)

14:30 – 16:00 — Session 9. Russian Society in the Era of Transformation

16:30 – 18:00 — Meeting with Alexei Overchuk, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation

19:30 – 21:00 — Special session. The Post-Soviet Space: Lessons of the Past, Contours of the Future


📆 October 5, Thursday
 
09:30 – 11:30 — Session 10. Twenty Years of Valdai Discussions. Memories of the Future. General Discussion (LIVE)

16:00 — Plenary session (LIVE)

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/programme-of-the-20th-annual-meeting-of-the-valdai-discussion-club/

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