Valdai Club

At the moment, holding a summit of the leaders of the permanent members of the UN Security Council seems rather unrealistic. The only two topics worthy of such a summit are related to nuclear weapons issues. For Russia, this is the preservation of the current model of nuclear arms reduction and limitation (New START, which may cease to exist next year). For the United States, it’s forcing China to participate in international efforts to control and limit the number of nuclear weapons.

Russia, realizing that international processes were taking an unfavorable turn, encouraged the creation of a totally different structure, where its voice would be heard plus its interests would be taken into consideration. BRICS has proved precisely this kind of organization.

Russian policy towards Cuba today serves as a litmus test for assessing relations between Russia and the United States. If issues of military-technical cooperation will prevail in the dialogue between Moscow and Havana, it means that the Russian-American conflict is growing.

Luckily, Donald Trump, unlike most of his predecessors, has not yet unleashed new military conflicts involving the use of weapons and human casualties. But his passion for trade disputes and full-scale economic wars has surpassed anything known before and will certainly go down in history.

The confrontation between China and the US that has been escalating for several years reached a new level this August due to the actions of the US administration, which itself is likely to become the first victim, followed by China, the world trade system and the entire global economy.

One of the most important preconditions for the "peaceful rise" of China during the period of reforms (since 1978) was a series of agreements reached by its leaders with the leadership of the United States in the 1970s: the Shanghai Communiqué (February 1972), as well as agreements signed during Deng Xiaoping's visit to the United States in early 1979. They envisaged a qualitatively new situation in Eastern Eurasia.

If the authorities lack the necessary wherewithal, the new Assanges will be incarcerated, shot or die in dubious car accidents. If they develop this wherewithal, they will take into account the whistleblower factor, practice more discretion and rely less on the methods the Americans used in Iraq or Russia.

The EU is enviously keeping an eye on how Russia is exchanging its dollar reserves for gold, renminbi and euros in fear of today’s most dreadful “black swan” called the “collapse of the US dollar.” The global financial markets have been expecting it for the last 40 years and know how to live with this threat.

Donald Trump’s State of the Union address begins the second half of his tenure, ushering in a new presidential campaign, to continue for almost two years until November 2020.

Although the G20 still retains its potential to support the global economic stability, there is an impression that its mission is coming to an end. If this trend is not reversed, then, a summit or two from now, we might see the return of trade wars and competitive devaluations of national currencies. In that case, the current G20 format, built around the US leadership and hegemonic in nature, will not work at all. The nature of the G20 is that of an international forum, not an international intergovernmental organization.