📷 Session 3 of the Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club “The Greater Eurasian Context of Collaboration Between Russia and the Central Asian States”

Photo gallery of the discussion is available in this album.

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📌 Good morning! Programme of the second day of the Valdai Club’s Third Central Asian Conference “Russia and Central Asia: Aligning With a Changing World”

(All times are Tomsk time: GMT+7)

📆 May 17, Wednesday

09:30 – 11:00 — Session 4. Common Challenges to the Security of Russia and Central Asia: What Is Familiar and What Is New?

Global security is now under pressure from the growing contradictions between the major powers, with conflicts between Russia and the West and China and the United States at the centre. The experts’ aim is to review the new and old challenges to the security of Russia and Central Asia, to assess the likelihood of them becoming acute, and to analyse the experience of our cooperation in this field as well as its potential at the multilateral and bilateral levels.

11:30 – 13:30 — What We Know and Don’t Know About the World of Tomorrow. Open Discussion (live)

The open discussion, traditional for Valdai Club conferences, serves to engage all experts participating in the conference in free and dynamic exchange of opinions on topical issues of international and regional development. The following questions are supposed to be discussed:

1️⃣ How irreversible are the processes of de-globalisation?
2️⃣ What do we want to preserve in the international order and what should we abandon?
3️⃣ What new and perhaps potentially extremely significant factors and trends in the world economy and politics are we not yet paying due attention to?
4️⃣ What opportunities do we expect from 2023?

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/programme-of-the-third-central-asian-conference-of-the-valdai-discussion-club/

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📷 Session 4 of the Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club “Common Challenges to the Security of Russia and Central Asia: What Is Familiar and What Is New?”

Photo gallery of the discussion is available in this album.

@valdai_club

📷 Open Discussion at the Third Central Asian Conference. What We Know and Don’t Know About the World of Tomorrow.

Photo gallery of the discussion is available in this album.

The video of the discussion is available here.

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🌏 Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club. Day 1

The Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club took place in Tomsk on May 16–17. 

Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, noted in his opening speech that now, when a new world order is being formed, it is important to understand our place in it, and how Russia and the countries of Central Asia can interact with each other and the outside world, and influence these processes. The integrating role of Central Asia is beyond a doubt.

Tomsk Region Governor Vladimir Mazur noted the special place of Tomsk as a scientific and educational centre with a 145-year history, which retains this status to this day. Vladimir Mazur noted that the countries of Central Asia are key trade and economic partners for the Tomsk region. The potential for cooperation is far from exhausted, he stressed.

Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, noted that Central Asia for us is a contiguous region with which we share a common history, a multi-level and widely branched system of mutually beneficial, equal relations, based on an alliance and strategic partnership and integration. We must not forget about the binding role of the Russian language as a means of interethnic communication, including between the peoples of the region.

1️⃣ The first session, open to the press, was devoted to political dialogue and cooperation between Russia and the states of Central Asia in bilateral and multilateral formats. Watch the video of the discussion here.

2️⃣ The second session was devoted to the role of Russia and Central Asia in the new world economy.

The problems of energy and food security are more acute throughout the world. More and more countries are resorting to protectionist policies. Such a strategy leads to increased costs and increases the likelihood of the country being drawn into conflicts. This is largely due to a lack of information the countries have about each other. The creation of centres for the study of Russia in the countries of Central Asia would help solve the problem. We just need to understand how connected we are, and how we can be useful to each other.

3️⃣ The third session was devoted to the Eurasian context of interaction between Russia and the countries of Central Asia.

Greater Eurasia is the largest region in the world, it is important to understand how we will build cooperation on such a large scale, not only in the economic and trade spheres, but also in the areas of security and ecology, which carry the widest range of risks. This raises the question of how stable their Central Asian neighbourhood will be for China and Russia.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/third-central-asian-conference-of-the-valdai-discussion-club-day-1/

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🛡🌏 Geographically, Central Asia is the core and heart of Eurasia, a bridge between Europe and Asia once home to a stretch of the Silk Road.

Moreover, it has served as a springboard for geostrategic competition between large countries. This competition can lead to a conflict between the ethnic, religious, military-political and economic interests of the parties.

Russian military strategy policy is of particular importance in Central Asia, since twelve regions of the Russian Federation share a border with the countries of  Central Asia, which stretches about 7,500 km. Furthermore, a vital infrastructure link connecting Siberia and the Far East passes through the region.

Therefore, Russian policy is aimed at reducing the military presence of third countries in Central Asia, strengthening the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and maintaining the status of Russia’s military bases in the region, writes Erdenetsogt Dorjpalam, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies of Mongolia, for the Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/russia-central-asia-and-the-csto/

#CentralAsianValdai #Asia_and_Eurasia #CSTO

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🌏 The anti-Russian sanctions of the West did not change the structure of the Central Asian economies, did not cause a sharp reorientation to the markets toward the EU or China, and did not lead to a full-scale collapse.

Especially for the Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club we created an infographic on Central Asia in the new geopolitical reality. The full infographic is available via this link.

#CentralAsianValdai #valdai_infoghraphics #geopolitics

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🇷🇺🌏 This year Russia is chairing the Eurasian Economic Union.

Amid difficult conditions which have seen increasing confrontation in the world, this role imposes special obligations on Moscow.

One of the main tasks within the EAEU, as the leaders of our country see it and formulate it, is to use the potential of the Union to the fullest extent to develop new areas of cooperation.

However, until recently, the issues of humanitarian and cultural cooperation within the framework of the EAEU remained on the periphery of the integration agenda. 

The key mistake in the perception of our partners in the EAEU and the CIS as a whole is the opinion that they think the same way as we do, because we are all “originally from the USSR”. Practice shows that this is far from the case.

Each country has its own specific features, which must be taken into account, in addition to economic indicators, writes Ekaterina Chimiris.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/eurasian-economic-union-new-prospects-for-humans/

#EconomicStatecraft #EAEU

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🤝🌏 The Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club. Day 2

The third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Club was held in Tomsk on May 16–17. On the second day of its work, two sessions took place. The fourth session opened during the day, which was devoted to common security challenges facing Russia and Central Asia. It was held in a closed-door format.

At the beginning of the discussion, it was noted that the issues of security and prosperity in Central Asia are interconnected. And, as one of the speakers emphasized, regardless of anyone's wishes, the Russian Federation will continue to act as a guarantor of security in the region, as it has been doing for more than a century.

Under the current conditions, Central Asia can become a space of opportunities and communication. Indeed, today it is one of the few regions in the world through which a dialogue between the West and Russia is maintained. Today it is a stable region, where the growth of intra-regional and extra-regional trade is recorded. This indicates that the states here are able to negotiate, the expert explained, but in order to achieve their goals they need to defend their subjectivity. The experts agreed that it is very important for the countries of Central Asia to act with a consolidated position on external platforms, despite the existing contradictions.

🎞 An overview of the results of the fourth session is available in our podcast with Fyodor Lukyanov, Research Director of the Valdai Club.

The conference ended with an open discussion, titled “What We Know and Don’t Know About the World of Tomorrow,” which gave the participants an opportunity to discuss various problems of the region and answer questions from students of Tomsk State University.

🎞 The discussion moderator, Programme director of the Valdai Club Timofei Bordachev, summed up the results of the discussion for our website, and the full recording of the broadcast is available here.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/the-third-central-asian-conference-of-the-valdai-discussion-club-day-2/

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🌏 The new concept of Russia’s foreign policy, unexpectedly for many, introduced the idea of a state-civilisation in official use.

The concept of civilisation has long appeared on the “radar” of political theory. For liberalism and socialism, civilisation is determined by the measure of the dominance of the human mind. The more civilised a society is, the more rationality and progress it has. Such a linear picture divides the world into developed civilised societies and undeveloped uncivilised ones, with a large grey area in between.

There was another approach, considering civilisations as large communities, united within themselves by spiritual and material culture and by no means always reduced to separate states. Civilisation can go far beyond the history of a particular state, and also spatially cover a large number of them.

What is the advantage of this approach to international relations?

1️⃣ First, the historical depth. Liberalism, socialism and conservatism often operate within a relatively narrow range of historical experience. At best, we are talking about several centuries, although their intellectual roots are much deeper. For civilisational studies, the depth of analysis is hundreds and even thousands of years.

2️⃣ Second, this approach allows us to go beyond the usual scheme in which the players are nation-states. Obviously, cultural and civilisational motives can act as a factor in international politics, where not only interests but also identities collide. In addition, quite specific civilisational components are used in the national ideology of a number of states. The states of the Islamic world are a striking example.

3️⃣ Third, the civilisational view covers both spiritual and material aspects of culture. The nation state is but one of the possible political forms born of the Western civilisation and, in a relatively short period of time, became ubiquitous, but not necessarily definitive.

Bringing the concept of the state-civilisation into an official document brings us back to the fundamental questions of our identity, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/a-state-as-civilisation-and-political-theory/

#EconomicStatecraft #politics #state #civilisation

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⚓️ Three main routes of the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) has been developed including:

🔹 Western route (Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran-India)

🔹 Middle or Trans-Caspian route (Russia-Iran-India)

🔹 Eastern route (Russia-Central Asia-Iran-India)

In the Eastern route of the INSTC, the Chabahar port in the extreme southeast of Iran in Sistan and Baluchistan province is of great importance, because it is the only Iranian port with direct access to the Indian Ocean because it reduces the cost of transporting goods from India to Russia by one fifth and is the shortest and least expensive transit route is on the eastern wing of the INSTC, writes Valdai Club expert Vali Kaleji. 

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/chabahar-port-transit-project-the-eastern-wing/

#ModernDiplomacy #Iran

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🌏 In Central Asia today, three poles of world politics and economics come into contact. These poles are centred on Russia, China and the United States.

The collective West and its leader, the US, initiated or at least supports the policy of confrontation with Russia and China, which ultimately provoked today’s multi-level political, economic and financial crisis around the globe.

The collective West today is persistently trying to involve Central Asia in the process of confrontation between the West and Russia. It is demanding that the countries of the region make a choice between the opposing sides. The United States has already begun to speak with the countries of Central Asia in the language of threats and ultimatums. American emissaries visited the countries of our region in April 2023 with a whole package of warnings and threats.

At present, we see that the ruling elites of the collective West are not going to acknowledge the loss of their dominant position in the world economy or in world politics. Therefore, they will try to destabilise other regions of the world. Now the collective West holds the South Caucasus and Central Asia at gunpoint.

Today, the countries of Central Asia are developing equal relations with all subjects of international relations on the basis of national interests. At the same time, the region, which has taken advantage of the formation of a new world order, will try to play a more important role in the modern system of international relations.

Central Asia strives to become a new driver of the growing multipolarity of the modern world order, writes Valdai Club expert Rustam Khaydarov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/prospects-for-cooperation-between-russia/

#CentralAsianValdai #Asia_and_Eurasia #CentralAsia #WorldOrder

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🇷🇺🇨🇳🇺🇸 A year ago, it seemed to many that the confrontation between Russia and the West in Ukraine would be intense, but short-lived. Twelve months later, it has become clear that these calculations were strategic illusions.

The conflict in our neighbouring country has entered the stage of a protracted confrontation, and its dynamics can be compared to a marathon. This is a protracted standoff — for the right to be a free and sovereign subject in a polycentric world order.

Previously, the United States presented itself to the world as a guarantor of globalisation, a solidary international community, a country that creates comfortable conditions for the development of other states. The infrastructure of American influence, particularly the currency and financial system, was presented as a public good. On February 24, 2022, the US began to use the resources, which had allowed it to be a leader for the public good, as a weapon.

Thus, America has dramatically changed the nature of its participation in world politics: from leadership based on positive incentives to hegemony based on prohibition and isolation from public goods.

The participants in the new edition of the long-term confrontation have high stakes. On the one hand, Russia has put at stake its vital interests as a great power and a conductor of multipolarity. China, having joined the confrontation, cannot afford to rewind time and return to the position of a minor player acquiring the benefits of Western globalization.

On the other hand, the United States did not realize that, by moving to the position of hegemon, it puts the existence of the US financial system at risk in this confrontation as an unshakable basis of their global influence. There is a danger in this situation: now the US cannot afford to lose and will seek to have the initiative, escalating tension in different parts of the world, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/russia-the-us-and-china-in-the-long-confrontation-/

#ModernDiplomacy #Russia #US #China #multipolarity

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💸 Brazil and China have recently struck a multi-billion-dollar currency swap agreement which is expected to fuel de-dollarization in the United States’ near abroad, Latin America.

It is just one major piece of evidence of the ever-growing geopolitical and geo-economic importance played by the Western Hemisphere in the context of great power competition.

However, it is essential to calm enthusiasm and maintain objectivity. The US dollar might look like the walking dead, but it is still walking and will walk for a long time. 

In a growingly multipolar world, where the United States is slowly ceasing to be the primary pole of power, it is not strange, but absolutely normal and physiological, to witness a worldwide process of reserve currency diversification, writes Valdai Club expert Emanuel Pietrobon.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-day-after-the-dollar/

#ModernDiplomacy #dollar #currency #Brazil #China #yuan

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🌏 As confrontation between the major countries grows, the world economy will undergo serious changes in the coming years.

On the one hand, to some extent, we are talking about growing regionalisation, in fact, a reduction of the transportation leg in foreign trade to reduce risks. Another factor is the desire to diversify partners, also to mitigate the increasing level of political risks. The economic factor will be less decisive amid the new conditions.

The global changes will affect the countries of Central Asia and Russia, in part, by contributing to the expansion of mutual trade and investment, writes Marsel Salikhov, President of the Institute for Energy and Finance Foundation, for the Third Central Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-role-of-russia-and-central-asia-in-new-word/

#CentralAsianValdai #CentralAsia #economy

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⏳ A clash of values and ideologies plays a large role in the current geopolitical struggle. In this regard, history has also frequently become a battlefield for modern political controversies.

The parties to the conflict use historical arguments to reinforce their positions. The politicisation of historical memory plays its most important role in the formation of modern national and other identities on both sides of the barricades.

Moreover, history is almost openly divided into “right” and “wrong”. The phrases “on the right side of history” and “on the wrong side of history” have become widely used and are taken by many for granted.

Entire histories of individual countries and peoples that are now on the “wrong” side for one view or another are being crossed out and become a direct target for “cancel culture”.

Thus, here we see the struggle between the universalist and the national concept, not only in the sphere of identity and patterns of behaviour, but also in relation to history, and within the emerging universalist canon of rules, where national historical identities can become victims, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/history-and-tasks-of-geopolitics/

#Norms_and_Values #history #geopolitics

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🇨🇳 China’s economic growth accelerated in the first quarter of 2023.

Consistently adhering to the development concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics (中国特色社会主义), and steadily promoting modern reforms and openness, China in the new decade is placing its main emphasis on developing domestic demand, increasing supply, and macroeconomic regulation. Further development tasks also include strengthening China’s economic, technological and aggregate potential, carrying out new industrialisation, and modernising the Chinese management system.

During the post-COVID years, much attention will be paid to the development of innovations, support for the real sector of the economy, the modernisation of industrial chains and supply chains.

Despite numerous challenges, strong growth in services and consumption contributed to the recovery of the economy and raised market expectations, writes Valdai Club expert Anastasia Stepanova.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/china-after-the-pandemic-what-to-expect/

#EconomicStatecraft #China

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📉 This is undoubtedly the first time in many years that the world economy has been threatened by three crises, each quite distinct in its origins, but whose consequences are intertwined.

A serious economic crisis, or the bursting of multilateralism, can very well lead to a new banking and financial crisis. The latter, in turn, will certainly aggravate the recessionary tendencies, and therefore the debt crisis, and the implosion of multilateralism. Certainly, the worst is not certain.

🏷️ The banking crisis is played out over a few days.

🏷️ The economic and debt crisis occurs over several months.

🏷️ The crisis of multilateralism can take several years.

However, what is new in today’s situation is the possible combination of these relatively short-term crises. This is the main risk, writes Valdai Club expert Jacques Sapir.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/crises-ahead/

#EconomicStatecraft #economy #crisis

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