🇦🇫🇺🇸 The Western withdrawal from Afghanistan makes it clear once again that the unipolar Western order that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago is coming to an end.

The multipolar world order is a reality. The vacuum left by the West in the Middle East will very quickly be filled by China and Russia.

The US has made its strategic choice, and its European allies have no choice but to follow Washington further. America will focus on containing China and Russia – the two main rivals in the fight to preserve the pro-Western world order. The danger of Islamism, the emergence of a new "Islamic State" in the Middle East - is considered secondary by the USA. Unfortunately, the international community will have to live with this miscalculation. 

The West has contributed to the destabilization of the Arab world by supporting the Arab revolutions, and now it must accept that its diplomacy based solely on liberal values has been fatal. The West has lied to itself by believing that it can always delight the entire world with its liberal ideals, writes Alexander Rahr, Research Director of the German-Russian Forum.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/afghanistan-a-new-vietnam-for-the-west/

#Conflict_and_Leadership @valdai_club

🇺🇸🇦🇫 Biden, an experienced politician, took an important theme from the Republicans: “the end of forever wars”.

America’s image as a “responsible superpower” has faltered, but it is unlikely that American allies in other regions will learn from this story.

For Eurasia, the Taliban’s coming to power is fraught with not leaving, but returning the topic of combating terrorism to the current agenda, and the advanced American weapons left in Afghanistan hypothetically bring this struggle to a new technological level, writes Valdai Club expert Maxim Suchkov @postamerica.

#Conflict_and_Leadership #Afghanistan #Biden

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/biden-s-withrawal-from-afghanistan-consequences/

🇺🇸🇷🇺 If there is one lesson to take from the Cold War it is that even when bilateral relations are most strained everyone benefits from continued communication.

The dialogue, which was announced following a summit meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on 16th June, has been seen as an important first step in addressing a growing range of national and global security concerns held by both parties, and to hopefully lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.

What is hoped is that these high-level meetings will help to address the most pressing national security concerns, explore possibilities for arms control and thus hopefully prevent a future arms race and conflict, writes Andrew Futter, Professor of International Politics, University of Leicester, UK. Professor Futter’s work is currently funded by the European Research Council.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/us-russia-strategic-stability-dialogue-why/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #US #Russia @valdai_club

🇺🇸🇦🇫 The war in Afghanistan is an extraordinary textbook on the American strategy that can be summed up as a growing up novel.

Inflated expectations, a sense of omnipotence, which, through a series of crises, gives way to deep disappointment and the overestimation of goals.

This painful experience for the United States was too expensive, but perhaps it will push it to become more sober in the future, writes Andrey Sushentsov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-war-in-afghanistan-as-a-textbook-on-us/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #Afghanistan #USA @valdai_club

❌🌎 What the West does not understand is that NATO is facing a historic end after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Even if the West does not want to admit it, the terrorists responsible for the attacks of 9/11 exactly twenty years ago inflicted a historic defeat on the West and drove NATO out of the Middle East.

The aim of Bin Laden's diabolical plan was to lure the US into the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan in order to defeat it there in the gruelling petty war. The West is footing the bill for its mindless policies.

Instead of promoting democracy in the region, NATO has left behind a field of devastation. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan have become failed states. Worse still, instead of Arab nationalism, the "Islamic State" will be resurrected on the territories of these countries – ideologically and militarily directed against the West. And much stronger than in Iraq at the time.

Who needs a highly armed military alliance that has been defeated by local Islamists?

The real lessons of 9/11 have yet to be learned, writes Alexander Rahr, Research Director of the German-Russian Forum.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/9-11-and-the-defeat-of-the-west/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #NATO #Afghanistan

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇬🇧🇷🇺 Are there ways to stabilise UK-Russia relations?

There are two quick and cynical responses to what has become over the past decade an almost eternal question: how can relations between the UK and Russia be, if not improved, then at least stabilised.

1️⃣ The first would be to observe that relations have, in fact, been quite stable for most of that time - stable at a rock-bottom setting of very bad, verging on non-existent.

2️⃣ The second would be to suggest that maybe both sides like it that way, or at least that it suits their interests.

Anyway, now could be the time for both countries to start making the change, writes Mary Dejevsky, Chief editorial writer and a columnist at The Independent.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/are-there-ways-to-stabilise-uk-russia-relations/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #UK #Russia

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇷🇺🇺🇸 No one believes US-Russia reset is possible.

Indeed, neither Moscow nor Washington wants one, so great are the contradictions between them.

The most ominous threat might arise from the continuing intense rivalry in cyberspace, which could spin out of control, despite the ongoing cybersecurity dialogue.

Both have settled for the less ambitious goal of stabilizing relations to halt, if not reverse, a dangerous downward spiral. That sounds good and responsible. But what does it mean?

👉 Writes Valdai Club expert Thomas Graham.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/stabilizing-u-s-russian-relations-so-far-so-good/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #UnitedStates #Russia

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇺🇸🇦🇫 Apres nous le deluge?

The withdrawal of American troops not only turned into a worldwide crisis of confidence in the United States, but also became the biggest challenge for the presidential administration on the domestic political front.

It is becoming obvious that after the “Afghan exodus” a real war of compromising materials began in Washington. The State Department blamed the Pentagon, the Pentagon — intelligence, and intelligence agencies blamed the White House. Together they blame former President Donald Trump: he was wrong to make an agreement with the Taliban, organised the negotiation process poorly, etc. However, it was Joe Biden who turned Afghanistan into one of the most critical problems literally from scratch. It was supposed to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The metaphorical connection between the 20th anniversary of the terrible terrorist attacks and the inglorious end of the retaliatory operation deeply hurts the American public and the elite alike, Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/apres-nous-le-deluge-afghanistan/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #UnitedStates #Biden #Afghanistan

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇺🇸🇦🇫 Since the mid-2000s, the Americans themselves have begun to admit that the strategy of democratisation both in Iraq and in Afghanistan had turned out to be wrong and did not bring results.

Systematically, the Americans failed, because they were not able to build trusting relationships with a society that they did not respect, considering it underdeveloped, archaic, chaotic, and completely undemocratic, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/why-was-the-soviet-experience-not-useful-to-the-un/

#Conflict_and_Leadership #Afghanistan #UnitedStates

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇮🇳🇦🇫🇺🇸 India has yet to come to terms with the Taliban takeover. The Taliban cabinet consists of UN-sanctioned individuals who have committed heinous terror attacks in the past. The Taliban are not independent, writes Arvind Gupta, Director of the New Delhi-based Vivekananda International Foundation.

#Conflict_and_Leadership #India #Afghanistan #UnitedStates

🔗 How Will the Collapse of the Government in Afghanistan Affect Relations Between India and the United States?

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🏰🐉🗽The European NATO countries are pushing the United States to confront China.

However, the American understanding of security problems in East Asia is also deeply mistaken. For decades, the United States has pursued a strategy of engaging China, seeking to manage its rise and development. When the Americans became convinced that this strategy didn’t work, the United States moved on to contain China, prevent its technological development, cooperate with the EU countries, and even more so prevent it from taking over Taiwan, a key semiconductor manufacturer.

As we know well from the experience of Russia, the countries of Eastern Europe have coped successfully with torpedoing relations between Russia and the West. It is possible that they will do even more damage to the US relationship with China, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

🔗 NATO in the Pacific: How Will Article 5 Work?

#Conflict_and_Leadership #NATO #UnitedStates #EasternEurope #China #worldorder

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇺🇸🇷🇺 From attempts to universalise the American-centric world order, the United States has moved to its consolidation and defence, and from the “post-Cold War” era to the era of a new global confrontation.

US foreign policy is undergoing an important transition. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan drew a final and symbolic line under the period of its foreign policy, which began not on September 11, 2001, but in the early 1990s — what’s commonly called the “post-Cold War” period. 

The abandonment of the paradigm of universalisation of the American-centric world order is in no way a signal of the readiness of the United States to form a joint multipolar world order with non-Western centres of power, primarily with China and Russia. 

Liberal ideology in its newest left-liberal form is turning from a means of expansion into an instrument for consolidating the “collective West”, defining “us and them” and splitting the international community into opposing blocs, writes Valdai Club expert Dmitry Suslov.

🔗 New Paradigm of US Foreign Policy and Relations with Russia

#Conflict_and_Leadership #UnitedStates #Biden #worldorder #geopolitics

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇦🇺🇬🇧🇺🇸 The AUKUS agreement, and particularly the nuclear-submarines component, appear to be part of a broader plan to bolster US capacity in the Asia-Pacific, reassure regional allies of the US commitment to defence of the region, and perhaps above all, to counter the perception of a “rising” and more assertive China.

At the same time, it will look to many like US double standards and even reflective of a neo-colonial attitude to nuclear proliferation where some countries are deemed “responsible” nuclear operators and others are not, writes Valdai Club expert Andrew Futter.

🔗 Unpacking the AUKUS Trilateral Security Partnership: Politics, Proliferation and Propulsion

#Conflict_and_Leadership #AUKUS #Australia #UK #UnitedStates #China #AsiaPacific

@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

🇺🇦🇷🇺 Ukraine is gradually becoming a mere circumstance factor for Russia.

Of course, this circumstance cannot be ignored, but the difference between a foreign policy circumstance and a problem is that it is customary to solve the latter, and “make adjustments” in policy to cope with the fortmer.

So, it becomes obvious that an active Russian policy regarding Ukraine cannot emerge in the near future: neither strategic expectations nor instruments suitable for changing such a “circumstance” are associated with it, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

🔗 Red Lines of Russia and the Ukrainian Problem

#Conflict_and_Leadership #Ukraine

📷 ©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

🇰🇷 Presidential elections will be held in South Korea in early March.

Given that there will be about a dozen candidates, as one might expect, everyone understands that the real struggle for the presidency will be led by representatives of the country’s two main political camps: Yoon Seok-youl, representing the right-wing conservative camp, which is now in opposition, and Lee Jae-myung, representing the moderate left-wing nationalists, who have been in power since 2017.

Nobody can predict the outcome of the elections: as often happens in Korea, polls show that both main candidates have almost equal support, so that everything will be decided in the last days or even hours.

Both the right-wing conservative and the progressive camps are almost equally emphasising their readiness to orient themselves towards Washington. Nevertheless, the conservatives accuse their opponents of not being pro-American enough in their stance. 

Of course, these accusations, like any election propaganda, are an exaggeration, but there is some small grain of truth in them, writes Valdai Club expert Andrei Lankov.

🔗 South Korean Presidential Election: Why Former Left-Wing Radicals Become Staunch US Allies

#Conflict_and_Leadership #SouthKorea

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🌐 2021 was a year of growing confusion and a jubilee year for the New Peace, which ended the Cold War thirty years ago.

It was the second year of the pandemic, which is increasingly being perceived as the new normal, a kind of common life.

2021 was a year in which the old world order continued to crumble, and through the cracks, the contours of the new order are beginning to emerge. The increasingly complex vortex of international life makes it difficult to implement foreign policy for most countries. The polycentricity towards which Russia has been striving so much, is yielding more and more surprises.

The erosion of American hegemony has opened up a wide scope for the activities of medium and small countries amid crises in Eastern Europe — primarily in Ukraine and Belarus. In these situations, we observe medium-sized and small countries such as Poland, Lithuania and Latvia engaging in especially risky behaviour. However, this behaviour is not accompanied by an awareness of their responsibility for peace and stability in Europe.

The increasingly complex vortex of international life makes it difficult to implement foreign policy for most countries. The polycentricity towards which Russia has been striving so much, is yielding more and more surprises, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

🔗 The Crumbling of the World Order and Its Friends: Results of 2021

#Conflict_and_Leadership #Valdai_WrapUp2021 #worldorder

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇺🇸🇪🇺🇨🇳 It’s in the interest of the European countries that Washington not take for granted an automatic solidarity in the event of war.

Their interest is to avoid a new and uncontrollable escalation of tensions. The best way for the Europeans to prevent hawks from taking the lead in Washington is to tell America that their appreciation and behaviour depends on that of the US, writes Valdai Club expert Pascal Boniface. 

🔗 USA, Europe and Containment of China

#Conflict_and_Leadership #China #EU #UnitedStates

📷 ©Reuters

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🇮🇷🇦🇿🇦🇲 What are Iran’s perceptions of the border tensions between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia? And what issues have caused concern for Iran?

In his article, Dr. Vali Kaleji, a Tehran-based expert on Central Asia and Caucasian Studies, believes that informing Tehran of the results of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border commission, creating a complementary agreement to clarify Article 9 of the Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement for clarifying Zangezur corridor and continuing the meeting of 3 + 3 format can reduce Iran’s concerns about the border tensions between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan and also help peace and stability in the South Caucasus.

🔗 Iran’s Perceptions and Concerns of Border Tensions Between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan

#Conflict_and_Leadership #NagornoKarabakh #Iran

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club