🇷🇺🌏 Russia’s policy towards is neighbours is based on three factors: the traditional power component, the existence of a common geopolitical space, and a common history.

Russia has been and remains the dominant power in the so-called post-Soviet space, because it has the largest population, one of the world’s best armies, and a large arsenal of nuclear weapons that is commensurate only to the US stockpile. However, it should be remembered that topography precludes the marking of clear dividing lines between Russia and its neighbours, and that common historical experience will always influence decisions.

Therefore, Russia’s military-political might cannot guarantee control of its neighbours or allow it to keep aloof of them.

Many problems could be solved if Moscow resumed a form of direct control of a part of the former Soviet republics. But the effort required could eventually prove fatal to the Russian economy and statehood. Keeping aloof of its neighbours would imply the development of a defensive strategy for the areas in direct proximity to vital centres of Russian territory. Military domination is a way to develop relations favourable for a sustainable but not imperial international order around Russia, that is, an order that does not include direct control of neighbours.

Moscow needs to find a form of interaction with its neighbours that supports the national security and relative peace of the countries along Russian borders without dictating domestic or foreign policy rules to them, Timofei Bordachev,  the author of a new Valdai Club's report, titled “Space Without Borders: Russia and Its Neighbours”. The report was prepared especially for the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR.

🔗 Space Without Borders: Russia and Its Neighbours — Valdai Discussion Club Report

👉 While working on this report from March through September 2021, I visited
several capitals and other cities in the post-Soviet states, where I met with local intellectuals, politicians and public figures. The content of the conversations, as well as the interpretation of the assessments and opinions expressed in the framework of almost fifty interviews, were used in the preparation of the report.

❗️ The presentation of the report will take place today, December 20, at 12:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3). Watch it live on our website!

#Global_Governance #CIS #Russia #Eurasia

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🎥 WATCH LIVE: at 12:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host a presentation of a new report, titled “Space Without Borders: Russia and Its Neighbours”. The report was prepared especially for the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR.

The author of the report, Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, focuses on issues related to how Russia’s foreign policy towards its neighbours has changed, especially in recent years, as well as how it is perceived in these states.

❓Is there a clear general order today in the vastness of the former USSR?
❓How do the neighbouring countries of Russia see their place?
❓What is required for a successful long-term policy of Russia towards its neighbours?

The participants of the presentation will answer these and other questions.

https://valdaiclub.com/multimedia/video/space-without-borders-russia-and-its-neighbours-presentation-of-the-valdai-club-report/

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇷🇺🌎 At the end of 2021, relations between Russia and the West in the military-political sphere crossed the point of no return to any of the forms of interaction that arose in the first decade and a half after the Cold War.

The fact that Russia and the West will in the near future once again vigorously target each other with military forces will simply reproduce the nature of relations between the powers along the entire historical path of their development at a new technical level.

This, apparently, is the way things are going, regardless of whether the relationship is expecting serious crises or they will develop according to an inertial scenario, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev.

🔗 Counter-Threat Regime and Strategic Frivolity

#Global_Governance #NATO #WorldOrder

📷 ©Reuters

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🌏 Thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union is a sufficient period to assess the effectiveness of the foreign policy strategies of all post-Soviet states. Although in the historical perspective thirty years is a short period, one can already notice the delimitation of states according to certain models of national strategy.

1️⃣ The first group of countries took a course towards nationalism in foreign policy. The nationalist model is based on a black-and-white picture of the world that allows much to achieve and to act with great energy in international politics. Such a model, of course, is demonstrated today by Ukraine, which is unceremoniously trying to find an independent way in resolving the crisis in the east of the country, regardless of its neighbours’ opinion.

2️⃣ The second group of countries followed the path of liberalisation — at least the elites of these countries think so, although this can often come down to nationalist mimicry. According to the elites of such countries, their main problem is their geography. They would like to be somewhere in the Central or Western Europe, but happened to be, for example, in the Caucasus. First of all, this is Georgia.

3️⃣ The third group of states builds their foreign policy strategy from the standpoint of pragmatism. Of course, such countries should include Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which are developing relations with both eastern and western neighbours.

The incomplete nature of the collapse of the USSR echoes current politics and complicates the equation of successful foreign policy for the young states. Will we be able to state in next 30 years that all of the state experiments, which began in 1991, have been successful? Writes Andrey Sushentsov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

🔗 Thirty Years of Post-Soviet States’ Foreign Policy: Is It Enough for Maturity?

#Conflict_and_Leadership #CIS #Geopolitics

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🗽⛔️ What the US Treasury Sanctions review is all about?

The US Treasury has released an overview of its sanctions policy. It outlines key principles for making the restrictive US measures more effective. The revision of the sanctions policy was announced at the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidential term. The new review can be considered one of the results of this work. At the same time, it is difficult to find signs of qualitative changes in the US administration’s approach to sanctions in the document. Rather, it is about upgrading an existing platform.

The US Treasury review suggests that no signs of an easing are foreseen for the key targets of US sanctions. At the same time, American business and its many foreign counterparties can benefit from the modernisation of the US sanctions policy. Legal certainty can reduce excess compliance as well as help avoid associated losses, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/platform-modernisation/

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🐉🌏🦅 It is difficult to overestimate how seriously the current American-Chinese divergence into two different poles will affect the world.

Moreover, despite the fact that the economic divorce in different areas is slow, due to the huge number of mutual ties that are not always visible to the naked eye, the intensity of passions in political rhetoric is no laughing matter. 

However, for the “Greater Eurasia” project, the intensification of US-Chinese competition, on the contrary, presents a new horizon for development, as if reminding us that in the Chinese language, the word “crisis” consists of two characters: “danger” and “chance” (危机), writes Adil Kaukenov, Director of China Center (Kazakhstan).

🔗 Greater Eurasia and the US-China Confrontation

#Global_Governance #UnitedStates #China #Eurasia

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🌐 In the outgoing year, international politics finally got rid of all remnants of controllability.

In principle, the global changes in the balance of power, provoked by the growth of China and the West’s reaction to this, initially did not leave much room for the leading powers to consider the interests of others as among their own.

However, until recently, one could expect that the most important consequence of the destruction of the United States’ monopoly together with its closest allies on playing the role of a global distributor of benefits, would be the democratisation of international politics: the need to create broad coalitions capable of solving the most important tasks on the basis of comparatively equal benefits. This, in turn, could increase the controllability of world affairs, which was considerably shaken in the decades since the Cold War.

As we can see, these expectations turned out not to be sufficiently connected with reality, and now the states are faced, not with the task of how to improve human civilization and cooperation with each other, but how to manage the relative general savagery.

The passing into oblivion of international institutions, the most important achievement of the 20th century, leaves a huge field of opportunities for the great powers, and we cannot say now which of them will be in demand in order to avoid general destruction, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev.

🔗 Undemocratic Uncontrollable World

#Global_Governance #Valdai_WrapUp2021 #worldorder

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇿🇦 Despite political and accelerating socio-economic uncertainties, South Africa is still a destination of leadership and the driver of economic growth in the region and on the continent, while Africa is becoming even a more attractive zone of strategic interests for old and emerging power poles, writes Valdai Club expert Alexandra Arkhangelskaya.

🔗 South Africa Today: Opportunities and Challenges for Foreign Policy

#SouthAfrica #Africa #internationalrelations

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

⚖️🌐 In 2021, the coronavirus pandemic continued to be one of the most important events.

Naturally, its influence on world politics and society remained the main focus of the Valdai Discussion Club experts.

In addition to the pandemic, the climate agenda has become the most important event of 2021. The COP-26 Summit in Glasgow in October-November was at the centre of global interest, sparking a heated debate in the world regarding the strategy and pace of green transformation. 

A separate large topic of the Club’s work was the impact of the pandemic on international migration, on the value and ethical perception of global migrants, and on the dynamics of migrant phobia in host societies.

The politics of historical memory in recent years has become one of the key topics in the expert work of the Club. Its analysis was continued this year as well.

👉 All these topics (the pandemic, climate and history) directly affect the evolution of values and moral norms in today’s global society, writes Oleg Barabanov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

🔗 Pandemic and Climate, History and Values: Results of the Valdai Club Expert Programme

#Morality_and_Law #Valdai_WrapUp2021 #pandemic #climatechange #migration

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🌍 Africa remains practically the only hotbed of positive demographic dynamics in the world.

With such demographic prospects, the continent's population will practically double over the next three decades - from 1.3 billion now to almost 2.5 billion by 2050 (meanwhile, the population of developed countries will remain virtually the same).

What does it mean for businesses and potential exporters? The fact is that when they go to Africa, they go to expanding markets, which in thirty years will be twice as large as they are now.

The population will be twice as large, and will need more roads, power plants, food, electronics, cars, clothing, etc. Moreover, the middle class in Africa will grow at a much faster rate than the demographic increase would otherwise dictate. By 2050, it will at least triple.

Africa's advantages as a platform for Russian foreign economic expansion are not limited to demographic factors. The developed markets of the OECD countries, especially the European Union, are highly regulated, which creates the highest barriers for exporting companies from Russia. Although tariff barriers are limited by WTO rules, the same European markets have a lot of non-tariff barriers. The regulatory environment in Africa is generally much more favourable, although of course it differs from country to country.

The third advantage of Africa is that the local market is experiencing a shortage of both high-tech companies and companies with a medium level of technology development.

Of course, the African market is not a panacea and one hundred percent recipe for the development of an effective industrial policy of Russia. This is just one of many directions in which the development of foreign economic activity of our country should proceed. However, to neglect its importance would be extremely short-sighted, just as it is short-sighted to neglect the future, writes Valdai Club expert Alexander Zotin.

🔗 Where to Look for an Effective Industrial Policy, and Why Russia Needs Africa

#Corporations_and_Economy #economy #Africa

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

⛔️🌐 The past year has been marked by a number of interesting trends in sanctions policy.

In part, they were influenced by last year's victory of Democrat Joe Biden in the US elections. Washington is still the largest instigator of sanctions, and the restrictive measures taken by the Americans are the most dangerous for business.

The change of administration in the United States has resulted in adjustments to the policy of sanctions against Russia, China and Iran.

The EU’s toolkit of restrictive measures has been gradually developing, although there have been no significant breakthroughs.

Belarus can be directly called the “target country” of the year. The level of sanctions levied against Minsk by the US, EU, UK, Canada and Switzerland has increased significantly.

China has shown its determination to offer a strong response to the West’s restrictive measures.

The key intrigue of the coming year is the situation around Ukraine. At present, the scenario of an open military clash between Russia and Ukraine is the only real factor that can lead to a radical increase in the quantity and quality of sanctions pressure on Russia, writes Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

🔗 Results of 2021: Sanctions Policy

#Valdai_WrapUp2021 #sanctions

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club