Valdai Club

NATO’s modest 2025 summit does not indicate a deepening trend toward crises in the alliance, but reflects the desire of its leadership to use the effect of continuing external challenges and changes in the internal dynamics in NATO following Donald Trump’s return to the White House to maintain institutional inertia in the bloc, Julia Melnikova writes.

The “new era” of multilateral cooperation in Eurasia will need not only cooperation between great powers of a “new type”, but also “new thinking” in general. This is, first of all, the task of harmonizing the dialogue between Russia and China, Julia Melnikova writes.

NATO demonstrates consistency in creating ordered chaos by returning to Cold War practices. On the other hand, the conservatism of the approach is aimed at cementing the status quo and will exhaust itself as soon as external conditions change. A structure adapted to positional actions in Europe will have to be rebuilt or dismantled, because the conflict in Europe will ultimately be on the periphery of global processes, writes Julia Melnikova.

If we analyse cooperation within the framework of 16+1 format and its accompanying projects under the auspices of the BRI by potential KPIs — the number of practice institutions, norms of practice and projects implemented, the scale will not be quite comparable with the alarmism of observers, writes Valdai Club expert Julia Melnikova. 

Changes in the position of Germany are largely due to external factors. The growth of the PRC’s role in international affairs in itself stimulates the involvement of geopolitical arguments in the statements on China and its departure from a pragmatic discourse, writes Valdai Club expert Julia Melnikova.

The picture of the alliance's world formulated for the Madrid summit is fundamentally different from the one presented in 2010, when, amid conditions of peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region, NATO could afford the luxury of formulating threats in a general matter. However, it differs both from the communiqué and from the report of the 2021 expert group in which the main mega-trend in the development of the external environment of the alliance is the revival of great power competition as a challenge to the “rules-based order”. The new document more sharply and frankly captures the features of the present, which should determine the policy of the alliance in the future, writes Julia Melnikova, RIAC Program Coordinator.

In conditions where the information field is heated to the limit, alternative points of view are subject to “cancel culture”, leaving two options – support for a common course or cautious silence. Both help rather than hinder NATO’s focus on deterring Russia in the short term, writes Julia Melnikova, RIAC Program Coordinator.

Emmanuel Macron’s stakes are high. The mobilisation of the Élysée Palace’s foreign policy is one of the most interesting subjects to watch in the year 2022, writes Julia Melnikova, Program Assistant at the Russian International Affairs Council.

We can talk about the firm intention of the ruling party to maintain the leadership and course of the outgoing chancellor. However, it is controversial whether this stake will work in the long term: coalition negotiations will be difficult, and there are few backup options, writes Julia Melnikova, Program Assistant at the Russian International Affairs Council.