20th Valdai Discussions in Russia signal emergence of a New Global Order

By Sanja de Silva Jayatilleka

The public address system at the airport in Sochi, a famous resort on the shores of the Black Sea in the Russian Federation, where the 20th anniversary of the Valdai Discussion Club was held in the first week of October, announced repeatedly that there was an emergency, could the passengers please take the emergency exit-gates?

The delegates to the conference were just leaving after a very busy schedule, ending with the plenary session with President Putin who made a substantive statement and took the time to answer delegates’ questions at length. There were over a hundred delegates from 42 countries attending the conference despite the on-going hostilities between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The Black Sea area had recently experienced drone strikes from the Ukrainian side which moved outside the limits of the previous theatre of confrontation into the territory of Russia itself. The ‘Collective West’ as the Russians call the coalition of the willing comprised the US, the UK, the EU and other western countries supportive of Ukraine in the on-going conflict, had just announced the decision to send long range missiles to Ukraine, an escalation and a provocation without a doubt.

In this context, while there was the real and present danger of an actual strike on the city of Sochi, officials and experts from around the world came to attend the conference which ended successfully with many important and significant discussions taking place during it, furthering the theme of the conference, “Fair Multipolarity: How to ensure Security and Development for Everyone”.

The wish to attend the Valdai Discussions, where at an earlier meeting the very idea of the BRICS currency was first mooted and where it is now seriously engaged with laying the conceptual foundations of a more equitable global order, clearly took precedence over other considerations in the minds of the attendees.

The airport announcement turned out to be a mistake, someone had pressed a wrong button. My husband Dayan (who had been invited to chair a panel at the event) and I returned to Colombo safely.

Multipolarity in a ‘Hierarchy- Free Future’

An impressive list of participants ranged from a former Executive Director of the IMF and former Vice President of the New Development Bank from Brazil, ; Acting President of the diplomatic Academy of Vietnam; Former UN Assistant Secretary General and Special Envoy for Syria from Egypt; Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran; Vice Foreign Minister of Venezuela; a former Prime Minister of Burkina Faso and Nuclear Science diplomat and a geophysicist; a former National Security Advisor to the government of India; Advisor to a former Lebanese President; Members of Parliament from Mongolia and Moldova; numerous Professors of Political Science, Social Sciences and Development, Economists, researchers and Heads of Institutions; columnists for prestigious publications and others from across the global South as well as academics based in Universities in the US, Canada, France, UK and Germany and Israel.

They discussed a number of topics from A Fair Multipolarity; BRICS Plus and the New International Architecture; the BRICS currency; Role of Nuclear Weapons and the danger of a Nuclear War; Food Security; A World without Currency Monopoly and Punitive Measures; Energy Markets amidst Military and Political Tensions; Science and Education in the age of confrontation; Russian Economy, Civilization, and Society; and the Post-Soviet Society and the lessons of the past, among others.

While there were several closed sessions with high officials, several at Deputy PM level, of the Russian government, most of the sessions were live-streamed.

Multipolarity being theme of the conference, it was analysed in all its aspects, also with reference to the Annual Valdai Report that a panel of 5 Russian academics had produced – this included Professor Fydor Lukyanov, who also conducts the extended interview every year with President Putin which closes the conference.

The strap of the 2023 Report’s title, “Fantasy of a Hierarchy- Free Future” indicated the aspiration of the conference to overturn the existing hierarchical structure of international relations although the conference itself seems to prove it had already moved beyond the realm of mere fantasy. The moderator of the panel on the subject, Professor Emeritus of Politics from the University of Kent, Richard Sakwa proposed the term ‘Heterarchy’ to describe the new order of multipolarity, suggesting that no country will be hegemonic within that order. This new order would pursue a ‘positive peace’ and be driven by a ‘developmental agenda’.

The Report asserts, in accordance with Russia’s 2023 Foreign Policy Concept, that while multipolarity continues to take shape, it has “definitely become irreversible”. It sees the emerging new order as an “Asynchronous Multipolarity”, where international relations are evolving in different segments at different speeds and times, undermining the stable structure required by a hierarchical system.

It acknowledges that the International Order is governed by the distribution of power, recognizing however that there is more than just military power that determines it. The report declares that there are other powers that can be ‘weaponized’, reflecting the complexity of international relations, where for one, the US dollar overwhelmingly dominates the global financial system.

A response of the major powers of the global South is the present tendency towards de-dollarisation pursuant to the unilateral sanctions regime imposed on Russia. While the US $ continues to dominate and will do so for the foreseeable future, those countries especially of the BRICS wished not to limit their options in global trade and to pursue their economic and foreign policy guided by their own national interest and developmental compulsions.

It indicates that the digital sphere as another area of competition where the West dominates, although China, earlier than Russia, had found it necessary to develop their own digital platforms to mitigate their vulnerability to strategic shocks, as has Russia which also developed its own digital platforms. It hopes that China and Russia could become exporters of “digital sovereignty” in the future.

BRICS

“BRICS has arrived” declared Dr. Matab, part of the Indian delegation. The intention of the BRICS Plus group is not to replace one version of domination by another, he said, adding that instead, it sees it as evolving into a truly representative global economic system of governance. “BRICS is a vision not an organization” he said, one which takes responsibility for shaping a new world order.

Another Indian perspective was that BRICS plus emerged to rebalance the world order, and as part of that, it should go beyond State level engagement to connectivity of youth, think-tanks, and BRICS games. Indian currency is being used in 22 countries at present he said, while China’s is used in 120. However, he thought that a new world order was still premature.

Brazil’s Dr. Nogueira, formerly the Vice President of the BRICS’ New Development Bank said that progress is slow due to the resistance of Central Banks. Not all members of the BRICS are in a rush to create a BRICS currency, with some such as India preferring to take time to make a final decision. The new currency, if created, is not intended to replace local currencies, and the US$ would remain the dominant reserve currency.

Russia will take over the presidency of the BRICS bank in two years, when Brazil’s ex-President Dilma Rousseff completes her two years as President of the Bank. Russia will also host the BRICS Plus summit in 2024, where 200 events have already been planned, including BRICS games.

The Chinese vision for BRICS was not to topple nor overhaul but only to restructure the current global financial and economic architecture; to gradually modify the global system to represent the more than 50% of the world’s population.

The South African delegate, Dr. Maharajh asserted that one cannot solve the world’s problem with a homogenous group such as the G7. The BRICS Plus shows the embrace of complexity in international relations but there was a need for the increase of regional voices to understand regional dynamics within which the world’s problems take place. This would make for a more stable international system, he said. He noted that South Africa which hosted this year’s successful BRICS summit, invited members of the African Union which were not BRICS members, to the summit to hear their views.

Valdai goes nuclear

A slightly surreal moment at the conference occurred when Russia’s preeminent strategic studies intellectual, Emeritus Prof Sergei Karaganov who has been described as the Russia’s Kissinger (and is a real-life friend of Henry K) reiterated his recent writings, widely criticized in academic and policy circles in the country, recommending a change to Russia’s nuclear policy to lower its threshold of the use of nuclear weapons to include the first use of tactical nuclear weapons.

The logic of his argument was that it was now clear that the deterrent capacity of nuclear weapons was no longer effective, as evidenced by the West’s enthusiastic military support to Ukraine against a fellow nuclear power, Russia. It was time to make deterrence credible by using tactical nukes against a third non-nuclear country openly supplying Ukraine with weapons. This would be a reasonable choice in the circumstances, indeed its historic mission, he said, motivated by the fervent desire to stop the escalation towards the Third World War by the irresponsible behavior of the Western coalition which didn’t seem to care that millions could die in such an eventuality.

Sri Lanka’s Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka promptly stood up to intervene saying that as a country which had contributed so much to humanity, more than most countries, Russia should not let it be said that it initiated its very destruction. He warned that any use of tactical nukes would invite a western response and could lead to an escalation, with retaliatory tac-nuke strikes carried out against Crimea or the Donbas. He exhorted that what the on-going situation needed instead was to have new Marshals Zhukov, Timoshenko and Rokossovsky, heroes of the Red Army’s counteroffensive against the Nazis, while the very suggestion of tactical nuclear weapons would indicate Russian weakness, not strength.

The loud round of approving applause for his intervention from the mainly Russian audience indicated that Emeritus Prof Karaganov’s view on this was not widely popular and was regarded with as much consternation by his compatriots as by most of the foreign delegates.

The Chinese delegate said that a first strike went against China’s nuclear policy and would be viewed unfavorably by China, although they would be interested in seeing the results of such a policy if it were to be adopted, in order to evaluate their own stand. The Indian panelist, a former Ambassador and a fellow representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva at the same time as Dayan, firmly asserted that such a policy would not be supported by India which was very concerned at its suggestion.

The same question was posed by Professor Karaganov to President Putin on the last day, and President Putin was unambiguous in his response that Russia does not need to change its nuclear policy, as they had stationed thousands of missiles and any strike on Russia would trigger a massive automatic retaliation that could reach anywhere in the world, no matter where it originated, thus thankfully retaining that particular proposal in the realm of the surreal, at least for now.

The very notion of such a suggestion by an eminent scholarly personality, even though not by any means shared by the intellectual elite of Russia, however invites thoughtful examination. The deliberate derailment of a credible opportunity for a peaceful settlement between the parties to the Ukraine conflict by then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who reportedly flew to Kiev to successfully urge President Zelensky to reject the deal, and according to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s revelation at Valdai this time, personally advised president Zelensky not to negotiate, is a morality tale in international relations. Mr. Johnson’s sliding domestic popularity was ultimately not helped by this cynical intervention and his own career came to an end sooner than expected. As a result of that irresponsible move by a third country, the conflict escalated to the point of the possibility of a direct confrontation, however unlikely, between powerful, nuclear armed former adversaries.

Turning East

The ‘Sanctions War’ forced a transition, according to an aide to President Putin, “from the sick economy of the West to the healthy economy of the East”. President Putin asserted that Europe had lost its sovereignty. “Why do we need this partner? We have found new markets in Asia.” He said that China’s economic growth is over 6% and India’s is at 7%. He declared that the relationship between China and Russia is a stabilizing factor in international relations. Russia supports China’s Belt and Road initiative, which President Putin said was a “promising project”.

Russia’s economy, as reported, has now overcome the shock effect of sanctions and is self-sufficient in agricultural products with its GDP growing at 5%, showing progress in all aspects of its economy with an enviable level of unemployment at 3% this year, and real income growing at 12%. President Putin said that Russia spends 6% of their GDP for military expenditure.

He said this was a defining phase in history. The arrogance of the West he said was “off the scale”, adding ruefully “We thought we were one of them!”. He said the West needs an enemy, and it could easily be India or China next. He commended the Indian leadership which he said “is acting independently”.

He said that Russia is a distinctive “civilizational state”, drawing its ideals and values from its own history and culture. It is working with numerous other civilizations “which are equal in their rights”. The main features of such a state are diversity and self-sufficiency, choosing its own developmental path, rooted in its own experience. He said that the world is moving towards a synergy of civilisational states. “We want to live in an open, interconnected world” he said, with diversity being a fundamental feature of universal development, “free from a ‘bloc’ approach”, with access to modern development for everyone.

There was a palpable sense of an irrevocable shift in global politics, a sense of an inevitable transition to a better mode of operations in global governance with a new and visible confidence among emerging powers.

India was seen to be assertively undertaking its global responsibilities as befits its rapid rise in status as the fastest growing economy in the world and widely respected, especially in Russia as it partners them in on-going and proposed global initiatives. China showed itself to be superbly self-assured, taking note of the obvious geopolitical challenges while sharing its vision of development.

In Sochi, optimism about the future seemed predominant. With Russia having recovered from the sanctions shock, providing the platform and framework for shaping a more equitable global order together with their partners, the 20th Valdai conference seemed thoughtfully determined.

[Sanja de Silva Jayatilleka was a participant by invitation at the 20th annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, October 2-5, 2023, Sochi, Russia.]