Valdai Club

Almost 35 years ago, US President Ronald Reagan settled down in the White House to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster WarGames as part of his regular Sunday film night. The film, starring a young Matthew Broderick, depicted a teenage computer hacker accidentally breaking into top-secret Pentagon supercomputers that controlled US nuclear weapons.

Since August 2017, legislation allowing the imposition of a range of new sanctions against Russia has been passed by US lawmakers. Although not all this legislation has thus far been implemented by the president, Donald Trump, the mere threat of more draconian economic sanctions from the US created considerable uncertainty in Russia.

It is highly unlikely that the United States could prevail in a trade war with China. Not only Wall Street ‘globalists’ but also farmers, manufacturing workers, and consumers are protesting even against the modest protectionist steps that have been taken thus far.

The China–Russia rapprochement forms the centrepiece of Russia’s much hyped policy of a ‘turn to the East’, a policy aimed at transforming the Russian Far East from a territorial backwater into a new gateway to China, North-East Asia and beyond.

Islamic environmentalism is embedded in the matrix of Islamic teachings. The Qur’an, the central religious text of Islam, is inherently conservationist and mainly concerns the issues of how human beings relate to the natural environment.

It seemed before the Singapore summit, - the meeting of the leaders of the US and North Korea, which was drawing attention of the whole international community while being prepared, that Donald Trump’s “blackmail diplomacy” proved its effectiveness.

Facing its ‘most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history’, Washington increasingly does away with hopeful thinking and seeks new approaches towards Asia. It raised the concept of the Indo-Pacific region.

Faced with threats ranging from climate change to hugely disruptive technological advances, the world is clearly at a crossroads. More than ever a stable, inclusive and global governance is needed.

With the end of transition period, great power competition comes back to shape the international system. China and Russia have posed a challenge to the US hegemony. What is behind this challenge?

Globalization no longer serves American interests. In a bid to reverse the trend, the US administration took on the policy called ‘Trumponomics’, which manifests itself in protectionism.