🎥 How have attitudes in the US and the EU changed towards Euro-Atlantic security issues in the 21st century compared to the Cold War period? How are responsibilities now shared among the allies? 

👉 Anatol Lieven, Senior Fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (USA), gave his analyses. He took part in the 18th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

#VALDAI2021 #Europe #EU #ColdWar

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

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

🎥 LIVE: at 15:00 Moscow time (GMT+3) we are starting an expert discussion, titled “AUKUS: A New Cold War in the Indo-Pacific?”

🔗 LIVE: AUKUS: A New Cold War in the Indo-Pacific? An Expert Discussion


#AUKUS #ColdWar #NewWorldOrder

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🛡🏰 It is not yet clear what will replace the post-Cold War order in Europe.

🔹 Russia professes an increasing turn toward Eurasia; the most recent Russian national security strategy barely mentions Europe.

🔹 The US has identified China as its major rival and security challenge in the foreseeable future, and seeks to enlist Europe in this effort.

🔹 The EU is still adjusting to the loss of a major member state and contributing economy, while also deliberating its future security and defense capabilities and posture, given a possible reduction in American involvement in Europe.

🔹 The OSCE is preparing to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2025, but it remains unclear whether any of the major participating states is prepared to use the Organization as a forum or instrument for anything truly important. 

So, what will the emerging European security order look like? Writes William Hill, Global Fellow at Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies.

🔗 The Post-Cold War European Security Order Is Gone: What Will Replace It?

#Conflict_and_Leadership #Europe #ColdWar #security #NATO #OSCE

📷 ©Reuters

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🌎🌏 Today, as in past epochs, the search for an international political balance is accompanied by intense confrontation between major powers and military blocs.

Not surprisingly, mutual hostility is emerging as the dominant mode in relations between Russia and the West. The checks and balances of the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act are now a thing of the past. Any hope of building an inclusive European security architecture or developing tools to restrict military activity and provide greater transparency have been dashed, as have cooperative approaches to resolving differences.

All of this has been replaced with furious rhetoric, a broad range of methods to weaken the enemy, and a military build-up in the direct vicinity of the Russian border. The West’s policy in Ukraine testifies to the revival of proxy conflicts as a means of inflicting a strategic defeat on adversaries at low cost, with someone else doing most of the dirty work.

At this new stage in its development, the international system is rapidly relapsing into the same kind of bipolar confrontation it left behind 30 years ago.

The stereotypes of “bloc thinking” are being revived; the gap between the sides is only growing larger and the language of containment is already dominating contacts. At the same time, there is less proficiency in wielding the tools of crisis balancing which reflects a partial loss of acumen.

📑 Read more in a new Valdai Club report “The Return of History: Cold War Lessons for Current International Crises”.

💡 We will discussed this issue on July 27, within the framework of an expert discussion on the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Watch it live on our website.

#ModernDiplomacy #ColdWar

@valdai_club

🇰🇵🇰🇷 Acute Stability: Lessons from the Korean Confrontation

On July 27, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion dedicated to the situation on the Korean Peninsula and timed to coincide with the release of the Valdai report titled “The Return of History. The Cold War as a guide to contemporary international crises”. 

Andrey Sushentsov, programme director of the Valdai Club, moderated the discussion. He noted that after the end of the Cold War, the state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula was perceived by many as a relic of the past, but now, “when history has returned,” it seems to be a possible model for the future situation in Europe.

💬 Gleb Ivashentsov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Korea (2005–2009), RIAC Vice President, stressed that the Russian special operation in Ukraine coincided with the emergence of new tensions around the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. “In recent years, North Korea has significantly increased its nuclear potential,” he explained, adding that there were statements from the DPRK about the possibility of using nuclear weapons against South Korea in the event of a military confrontation, although Pyongyang had always denied that it would do so before. In Seoul, in turn, the idea has firmly established itself that now North Korea will definitely not give up nuclear weapons.

💬 Andrey Kulik, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Korea, noted that almost seventy years ago, the Korean War took the lives of 2.5 million people, before it escalated into a frozen conflict - but a very peculiar one. On the one hand, the situation on the peninsula has remained generally peaceful all this time. On the other hand, in the 21st century, the DPRK acquired nuclear weapons, which brought the destructive potential of the conflict to a new level. “In recent years, the Russian Federation has made great efforts to find a way out of this situation,” the ambassador said, recalling the road map proposed by Russia in 2017 for the settlement. However, the United States turned towards denuclearisation instead of a comprehensive solution to the problems of the Korean Peninsula, and this only led the situation to a dead end.

💬 Gu Ho Eom, Director of the Asia-Pacific Center, and a professor of the Graduate School of International Studies at Hanyang University, suggested that military tensions between North and South Korea would increase. Speaking about the broader international context, the scholar emphasised that inter-Korean relations are now hostage to a new Cold War, in which the United States, China and Russia are involved. Nevertheless, he sees certain prospects for a settlement within the framework of an international approach, and he would consider it useful at the first stage to conclude a so-called low-level nuclear agreement as soon as possible.

💬 Ilya Dyachkov, Associate Professor at the Department of Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Mongolian Languages, MGIMO, Russian Foreign Ministry, and RIAC expert, noted that although the situation on the Korean Peninsula has long been characterised by a certain degree of stability, “this stability is acute and rather turbulent.” This is exacerbated by the practical absence of channels for political communication between the parties. “It is imperative to change the interactions in the region, but this is a very difficult task,” he believes. Dyachkov denied linking the dynamics of the DPRK's nuclear missile programme to external factors, pointing out that North Korea intends to continue its nuclear developments in any event, considering them a guarantee of the state's survival.

#ModernDiplomacy #SouthKorea #NorthKorea #ColdWar

@valdai_club

🌎🌏 A new round of military escalation in Ukraine has shown that the system of international relations is rapidly returning to the Cold War confrontation model.

It had several characteristics.

🔷 First, the bipolar confrontation was saturated with the dynamics of local conflicts: they were called “proxy wars” because they were fought by proxy — the superpowers competed with each other through the hands of their clients. The Ukrainian conflict is more reminiscent of such crises than US interventions following the collapse of bipolarity.

🔷 Second, the Cold War took place within the framework of an irreconcilable ideological confrontation. In today’s realities, the international arena is divided between the narrative of unipolarity and the “right side of history” on the one hand, and the new multipolar world order, on the other.

Both Russia and the West resort in the best traditions of bipolarity to the strategy of purposeful military, political and economic pressure in an attempt to undermine the viability of a competitor.

It is possible that, once they get the hang of it, the parties will retain this line of conflict behaviour for decades, realising that this is the optimal strategy for interacting with the opponent. However, the risks of an inadvertent transition to military escalation are much higher than they were seventy years ago, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

#ModernDiplomacy #ColdWar

@valdai_club