🤝🌐 The language spoken by the political elites of the leading countries of the world is not the language of money, institutions or laws, but the language of history.

History allows you to put yourself in a broad context of events and make strategic decisions based on the national experience of foreign policy. Far from all countries have preserved the principle of historicism in long-term planning. It was preserved only by the leading countries, which have retained the experience of great power politics, when the use of force is perceived as another tool to achieve a political goal along with others.

It is this parameter that leadership is determined today. It can be assumed that for this reason Russia’s negotiations with the United States will take place much earlier than with the EU, since there are no countries in Europe that could make their own big bet in the unfolding geopolitical game. It’s like playing in a casino not with your own money, but with candy wrappers from Monopoly: you lose the sense of responsibility for your decisions, there is no understanding that you will have to answer by yourself.

There are few countries in the world today that “play for their own”: Russia, the United States, China, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Perhaps that is all.

The European foreign policy tradition has been severely devalued by the inflation of the “liberal dream”. Europeans have ceased to soberly understand the cause-and-effect relationships in the world’s power system of coordinates. 

Diplomats must make sure from personal experience that the international system still exists, it is solid and based on military-political, not ideological realities, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

#ModernDiplomacy #diplomacy

@valdai_club

🤝🌐 In the context of the global crisis, diplomacy is experiencing a rebirth.

The modern age makes the job of a diplomat more difficult in two respects.

1️⃣ The first difficulty is the digital information space that we consume through smartphones. It makes the amount of information consumed a hundred times greater than it was a few years ago, in the pre-digital era, and makes special demands on realism, pragmatism, the ability to soberly assess incoming data, and the ability to communicate in this digital environment.

2️⃣ Second, the modern communication environment is very different, depending on the generation that diplomats are addressing. The generation born in the 60s, 80s and 2000s are different groups in terms of their worldview.

The changing modern world requires adaptation: it is important not only to preserve the traditions of teaching historical disciplines for future diplomats capable of managing crises, but also to prepare them for the perception of large flows of information that their predecessors did not encounter.

At the same time, however, the fundamental foundations that underpin systemic thinking should not be neglected — the representation of any situation as a system that works according to its own laws. A point of balance must be found in a system where the reached agreement is respected by all parties, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

#ModernDiplomacy #diplomacy

@valdai_club