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

🎥 LIVE: at 12:00 noon Moscow time, we are starting an expert discussion dedicated to the protest movement in Africa.

https://vk.com/video-214192832_456239145

#Norms_and_Values #Africa

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📷 On October 26, 2023, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion dedicated to the protest movement in Africa.

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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🇷🇺🇮🇳 Russian-Indian strategic cooperation has been successfully developing for many decades.

The foundation of the Russian-Indian partnership is mutual respect for the uniqueness of the civilizations of the two countries. We recognise the unique nature of the civilizational choice of our peoples and recognise the value of the special path that our countries have chosen. This attitude is a decreasing value in modern world politics, which seeks to standardise and unify all approaches to the interaction of countries, presenting them as identical billiard balls.

Moscow and New Delhi stand for strengthening national sovereignty and refusing to interfere in each other's affairs. Russia and India also mutually respect the interests of their partner in international relations, recognise their legitimacy, and share an emphasis on equality in relations with each other and with other countries.

This is especially important in an environment in which international relations are beginning to be determined by a narrow circle of countries that consider themselves to have the right to dictate their will. 

Our common interest in the formation of polycentricity and the preservation of strategic autonomy and subjectivity in an international environment that is constantly becoming denser, as well as our intentions not to yield to the pressure of external forces that call for the channelling of foreign policy strategy in a direction beneficial to them, should unite our countries, writes Andrey Sushentsov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club; Dean of the School of International Relations at MGIMO University.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/what-is-the-big-idea-of-russia-india-relations/

#ModernDiplomacy #Russia #India #BRICS

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🌍 African Turbulence: An Internal Process or the Consequence of Neocolonialism?

On October 26, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion dedicated to the protest movements in Africa. The moderator was Oleg Barabanov, programme director of the Club.

💬 Aliou Tunkara, a Member of the Mali Parliament and former head of the African Unity club in St. Petersburg, noted that turbulence persists in many of the continent’s countries, despite all attempts by regional organisations to cope with it. He indicated that the main reasons are the separation of the authorities from the people, discontent caused by the low standard of living, the inability of the authorities to ensure peace and security, intra-elite conflicts, and the orientation of the elites and international organisations towards the interests of Western countries.

💬 Elena Kharitonova, Senior Researcher at the Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Member of the Board of the Strategic Agency for the Development of Relations with African Countries, stressed the need for a systematic view of the events taking place. With this view, the possible causes of protest movements and coups may exist simultaneously. The reasons may be related to the struggle of power groups in the country, and with the "fatigue" of the permanent government, and demographic factors (for example, the "youth hill"), and dissatisfaction with the government, and also protests and coups can be attributed to the anti-colonial struggle of African countries. Kharitonova stressed that the "turbulence" in Africa can be used in the strategic plans of major geopolitical players.

💬 Marius Okoli, head of the organisation “Community of Nigerian Citizens” for the support and social adaptation of Nigerian citizens living abroad, sees what is happening as a consequence of the destruction of the unipolar world and the transition to multipolarity. The attempts to maintain a unipolar system and at the same time to control the resources cause the turbulence on the African continent.

💬 Lassina Zerbo, Prime Minister of Burkina Faso (2021–2022), former executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), called for talk less about coups and more about building institutions and improving the quality of governance. He considers the key factor for the Sahel states the large number of young people who are dissatisfied with the current situation and feel alienated. He pointed out the importance of the gap between the promises of democracy and the actual behaviour of African governments, which leads to widespread scepticism in Africa about democratic values and the status quo in general. “We need to improve people's well-being and education, combat the devastating effects of climate change, and make people feel they have a futureб” Zerbo said.

💬 Israel Nyaburi Nyadera, Kenya's Egerton University lecturer, believes it is necessary to consider the current crisis in Africa in the context of global processes associated with the collapse of the liberal political and economic order. At the same time, at the regional level, attempts to create a pan-African political structure capable of ensuring order on the continent have not yet been crowned with success.

💬 Konstantin Pantserev, a professor at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations of the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University, noted that since African states first gained independence, more than 85 coups d'etat had taken place. Sometimes protests develop into protracted civil wars. All these conflicts often lead to an increase in protest sentiments.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/african-turbulence-an-internal-process-or-the-consequence-of-neocolonialism/

#Norms_and_Values #Africa

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🌍 Advanced technology has long been seen by African countries as a key tool that can provide new impetus to the development of their economies, making them more innovative.

However, today African countries do not have the appropriate financial, material or technological resources to develop local information infrastructure and transition to having an innovative economy.

In order to catch up with Western countries in their development, they have to resort to the help of the same Western states, which, skilfully speculating on the financial dependence of their African partners, force them to carry out the necessary reforms to open the African information market for their telecommunications enterprises in order to strengthen their positions in region.

Undoubtedly, this circumstance poses a serious threat to the technological sovereignty of African countries, writes Konstantin Pantserev, Professor at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations of the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-problem-of-technological-sovereignty/

#Norms_and_Values #Africa #technologies

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🌎🌏 Recent processes, especially the crisis in the Middle East, may open a new chapter in how most countries around the world perceive the policies of the United States and Europe, as well as make it impossible to return to the previous world order.

Israel's confrontational policy does not pose a direct threat to Russia, the United States or China, the main powers of the modern world, and they are not going to cross their swords over what the Middle East region should look like after the events of this fall. But it would be short-sighted to underestimate the detrimental effect that some features of the position chosen by the West have had on the credibility of the United States and its allies among the world community. 

The West is erasing its own previous achievements. A huge part of the world's population has clearly become convinced of the boundless cynicism and duplicity of the political elites, brought to the top of the power hierarchy by the vaunted democratic system.

Due to their obsession with the current election cycle and their own career ambitions, the current leaders of the West aren’t hesitating to jettison the enormous achievements of past years in building trust in international relations and a balance of interests at the global level, writes Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/how-the-world-majority-sees-the-consequences/

#Asia_and_Eurasia #UnitedStates #EU #WorldMajority

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🧨 It can be expected that due to US neglect of the arms embargo, which has resulted in arms and ammunition being transferred to the Ukrainian armed forces and possibly ending up in the Middle East, the Yemeni UNSC sanctions regime (which expires on November 15, 2023), as well as the mandate of the Group of Experts (ends on December 15, 2023) will not be extended, writes independent analyst Vitaly Sovin.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/us-double-standards-in-enforcing-the-un-security-c/

#EconomicStatecraft #UnitedStates #arms #Yemen

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⚔️ The sharp escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict became the main event of October 2023, pushing into the background the recent fall of Nagorno-Karabakh and even Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

Such attention is entirely justified. First, the barbaric attack by Hamas, and then the disproportionate Israeli response, causing untold suffering for the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, attracted the attention of the entire world community.

When observing the progress of the current phase of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is worth noting an important feature of modern armed conflicts. In recent years, we have observed the blurring of the boundaries between war and peace, the convergence between military and non-military instruments of confrontation, the “weaponisation of everything,” and the active development of the concepts of multi-domain operations, hybrid wars and integrated deterrence.

The Hamas attack on October 7 forces us to think about what the outbreak of a major regional conflict might look like in the near future, given the experience of the operation in Ukraine and the rapid, difficult-to-predict development of new technologies, writes Prokhor Tebin, Head of the Section of International Military-Political and Military-Economic Problems, HSE Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/hamas-israel-dead-end-the-military-dimension/

#EconomicStatecraft #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #war

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🇺🇸🇻🇪 For a long time, Washington has consistently increased sanctions pressure against the government of Nicolas Maduro. Subsequently, the sanctions continued to increase.

Signs of changes began to appear in 2022. In November 2022, following an agreement on negotiations between the government of Nicolas Maduro and the opposition on the 2024 elections, the United States began to reduce sanctions pressure. The US Treasury issued two general licenses that introduced some exceptions to the sanctions regime.

 In addition, the US is interested in the world market gaining access to Venezuelan oil, taking into account the ban of supplies from Russia and uncertainty in the energy market due to political factors. At the same time, easing sanctions has its own nuances.

The question is how long-term such a mitigation can last, and what similar US actions in relation to other target states tell us, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/us-sanctions-against-venezuela-a-temporary-easing/

#EconomicStatecraft #Venezuela #sanctions

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🇵🇸 The recent crisis in Gaza was totally unexpected and confusing to the entire world, which was not prepared for the greater magnitude of escalation in the strategic region.

The impact of the conflict was more severe for North African countries, as they are already experiencing worsening economic and political crises. The region is struggling, with instability in Libya and chronic tension between Algeria and Morocco. Egypt has suddenly found itself facing a war on its borders, as it neighbours the two sides of the crisis, the Gaza Strip and Israel.

There is an urgent need for serious and active move from all countries to stop the war. The risks of a widening war are increasing. The burning fire must be extinguished before it turns into a regional or international war, a worst-case scenario that nobody wants to see happen, writes Nourhan ElSheikh.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/north-african-countries-and-the-palestinian-crisis/

#ModernDiplomacy #Palestine #GlobalSouth

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🤖 Modern robots have different abilities, vary in design features and can perform many different functions. They can be used in household, production, education, healthcare, security, military operations. Robots improve working conditions and safety and can replace people to work in hostile environments. However, the wider use of robots may also have negative consequences.

The new videoinfograpic of the Valdai Discussion Club discusses some issues associated with the development of robotics.

#valdai_infogaphics #robotics #robots

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🗣 ANNOUNCEMENT: On November 16–17, the Valdai Discussion Club and East China Normal University will hold a Russian-Chinese conference in Shanghai, titled “Crisis and Global Transformation: China and Russia Facing the Challenges of a Changing World Order”.

🇷🇺 The Valdai Club was one of the key players which helped foster an active expert dialogue between Russia and China. For the past 10 years, it has been a leader in organising the most relevant Russian-Chinese political discussions and shaping the agenda of bilateral expert cooperation.

🇨🇳 East China Normal University is home to one of the largest research centres in China studying Russia, the former Soviet space and Sino-Russian relations. It has established itself in aggregating the efforts of Chinese intellectual centres and serves as a platform for meetings of experts from Russia and China.

From 2010 until the start of the pandemic, Russian-Chinese conferences were held regularly. In November, the university will host its first in-person conference after a four-year break. This will be the first expert meeting of the Club with partners from China to take place following a series of top-level Russian-Chinese negotiations.

The meeting will take place a month after the recent Belt and Road forum; in Shanghai; Russian and Chinese experts will discuss the impact of global and regional processes on the position of China and Russia in the international system, share expectations for what the new world order and international security relations will look like, and review the global economy and trade, as well as high technology and science.

The two-day conference programme includes opening and closing ceremonies, as well as 4 thematic sessions:

🔹 Political dialogue between Russia and China in new conditions: achievements and common objectives;
🔹 Multilateral cooperation in Greater Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region: a view from Beijing and Moscow;
🔹 Information and communications in the modern world: significance and challenges for China and Russia;
🔹 Globalisation and regionalisation: what do these concepts mean in the new conditions?

Russia and China are now engaged in closer relations than at any other time in history. There is mutual trust and a common vision of a new, fairer world order. “The Russian-Chinese dialogue today is more multifaceted than the Russia-US and China-US dialogue. In Russia there are many more specialists on China than on the USA and the EU. The high level of Chinese studies in Russia and Russian studies in the PRC is becoming an advantage of bilateral relations,” noted Timofei Bordachev, curator of the Russian-Chinese conference and programme director of the Valdai Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/announcements/the-russian-chinese-conference-crisis-and-global-transformation/

#Valdai_ThinkTank #China

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🇹🇷🇵🇸🇮🇱 In the aftermath of the breakout of the another regional crisis in the Middle East, Ankara was cautious before taking sides and called for an immediate ceasefire.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proactively sought a diplomatic solution by employing telephone diplomacy and dispatching Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to the capitals in the region. Ankara’s message was clear: there is a need for a two-state solution, and the international community should work on a political framework after a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages between the parties. Ankara’s position reflects Turkey’s traditional foreign policy on the Palestinian issue, which it has maintained for decades.

AK Party officials, with President Erdogan at the helm, were careful to avoid bashing Israel and PM Benjamin Netanyahu as the humanitarian crisis deepened in the first two weeks. Instead, President Erdogan vocally questioned the increasing presence of the US military in the region, as aircraft carriers approached the Eastern Mediterranean, and called for humanitarian assistance to be allowed to be sent via the Rafah border. 

An incident at al-Ahli ignites a stark transformation in Ankara's diplomatic voice, revealing the deep undercurrents of ideology and domestic politics that could reconfigure regional alliances and reshape Turkey's geopolitical path, writes Hasan Selim Özertem, Ankara-based political analyst.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/israel-hamas-conflict-shifting-discourses-Turkey/

#ModernDiplomacy #Turkey #HAMAS #Israel

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🇨🇺 Cuba is one of the most important countries in the world; one of the few that can really disturb the sleep of the United States.

Geography makes this island geostrategic and whoever wants to challenge the United States must set foot on it. Dividing Cuba and the United States is a strip of sea that can be flown over in just one hour by plane, which means that the island is the perfect staging ground for  challenging the latter.

Geographical proximity can be a political advantage as well as a political risk, which is why the United States has historically gone to great lengths to gain control of this small island. 

Cuba has a role to play in the current hegemonic struggle between the West and the Rest. Russia and the BRICS should take advantage of its geostrategic and geopolitical position and act accordingly – Cuba's salvation might mean the Multipolar Transition's culmination, writes Emanuel Pietrobon, geopolitical analyst, political consultant and author from Italy.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-strategic-importance-of-cuba/

#EconomicStatecraft #Cuba #geopolitics

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🇷🇺🌏 So far, Moscow’s policy in its immediate circle is showing signs of such adaptability to inevitably changing conditions.

However, in order for this not to become just a form of retreat, which is delicate for our own pride, we have to solve several more important problems.

1️⃣ First, Russia will be faced with the question of how to find a relatively optimal combination of adaptability to changes that occur against our will, and consistent firmness where the problem is truly of fundamental importance.

2️⃣ Second, the general crisis of international institutions will inevitably force us to answer difficult questions in the case of those organisations whose condition now looks quite good. The aforementioned SCO, the Eurasian Economic Union or the CSTO — all of these organisations differ in their nature from Western institutions, which are built on the “leader — tribe” model. However, we still have no way of gauging the viability of organisations within which there is no strict disciplinary principle in the form of a patron power.

3️⃣ Finally, we do not yet know very well how to interact with medium- and small-sized neighbours when they find themselves in a crisis. So far, Greater Eurasia is a region with relatively established states capable of conducting responsible foreign policy. However, we must not forget that many of them in the coming years may face serious internal challenges.

In the coming years, Russia’s policy in the Eurasian space will most likely be aimed at avoiding excessive obligations, but at the same time strengthening relations with those countries that are really interested in cooperating with Moscow, as well as strengthening the influence of broad international institutions, particularly the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Such a strategy will have to meet Russia’s most important goals, which are internal in nature and consist of maintaining social stability, social harmony and economic growth, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/mideast-crisis/

#Asia_and_Eurasia #Eurasia #Russia #MiddleEast

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1️⃣0️⃣5️⃣ November 11, 2023 marks 105 years since the end of the First World War.

Despite the seeming distance of the events of that era, they continue to have a significant impact on the politics of historical memory, right up to the present day. In terms of the number of casualties, the scope and ferocity of hostilities, and the role of technology in the conflict in relation to the realities of that era, the First World War had no precedents in history at that time. Therefore, it is no coincidence that it became known as The Great War in the camp of the victorious powers.

The politics of historical memory is evoked to comprehend those political failures in our history that seriously influenced its course. These failures might not have happened if not for the arrogance and irresponsibility of the rulers of the time.

The First World War provides an example which is significant for historical memory in Russia, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-first-world-war-in-historical-memory/

#Norms_and_Values #WorldWarI #GreatWar #history

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🛜 As with every advanced technology, access to digital technologies is unequal; such inequality could restrain opportunities and threaten development potential.

There is a significant lag between rich and poor countries in their access to digital technology, a gap seen before with respect to railways, the electronics industry, and pharmaceutics during the COVID-19 pandemic. But this gap had even greater potential consequences with the problem of data safety, the defence of private life, and the development of AI systems. 

Aside from issues related to digital security and digital sovereignty, this entails global problems with regard to development economics, writes Jacques Sapir, director of studies at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and head of the Centre d'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation (CEMI-EHESS).

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/factors-of-inequality-in-access-to-the-digital/

#Norms_and_Values #technology #digital #unequality

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🇩🇿 At the 15th BRICS Summit in South Africa, Algeria’s candidacy was not retained to join the 5-member grouping.

Six out of 23 candidates were chosen: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

While politically, Algeria is the ideal candidate, its economic standing might not have been attractive enough, at least not yet.

The pause before eventual membership in the BRICS at a later date should entice Algeria to accelerate long-overdue domestic reforms, reflect, innovate, and bolster efforts to position itself as an indisputable player on the global stage, write Yahia H. Zoubir and Xuanrong Wu.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/algeria-at-the-brics-doorstep/

#ModernDiplomacy #Algeria #BRICS

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