Valdai Club

Randa Slim

Dmitry Sychev

Denis Sekirinsky

Vyacheslav Sutyrin

Michael Stürmer

Andrei Serbin Pont

Alexander Shokhin

Murad Sadygzade

Oksana Sinyavskaya

Richard Sakwa

United Kingdom

Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Kent; Honorary Professor of the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University.

Materials

Multipolarity and the Charter International System

The Ukraine conflict brought into sharper focus the emergence of competing alignments, which in broad terms can be conceptualised as the US-led political West against a nascent political East. The Sino-Russian alignment is at the core of the latter, along with a host of non- and weakly-aligned powers in the Global South. A new era of multipolarity is evident, with a new constellation of actors in international politics, writes Richard Sakwa especially for the 22nd Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

The Great Unravelling: The Political West and the Erosion of the Charter International System

An international system endows an era with the normative framework for the conduct of international politics. An international system is a combination of norms, procedures and institutions, with the latter not necessarily formalised; whereas in the sphere of international politics, constellations of states create distinctive world orders, reflecting their vision of how states should be governed and interact. In 1945, following a second catastrophic world war in a single generation, the world came together to create the Charter International System, with the United Nations at its heart.

Covid and Leadership Crisis in Britain

The gulf between the promise and the delivery is widening, the political distance between the devolved administrations growing, and the distrust between the government and people deepening. Ultimately, Britain is suffering not only a crisis of governance but entering into a fully-fledged crisis of the state, writes Valdai Club expert Richard Sakwa.

The Cultural Revolution of the West and World Politics

In 1945 the US agreed to compromise its unfettered freedom of action in international affairs in the belief that engagement with allies and adversaries through multilateral agencies would avoid the pitfalls of the interwar period while rendering US power more legitimate, and thereby more effective. This bargain between power and legitimacy proved remarkably effective, and helped the political West survive and triumph in the Cold War. However, the tension between the autonomy of the Charter (Yalta-Potsdam) international system and the institutions of liberal hegemony were evident, although disguised during the Cold War.

A New Concert of Powers: Another Substitution?

The Yalta-Helsinki international system is far from perfect, but rather than further undermining it through ad hoc arrangements of one sort or another, effort should be more profitably directed at devising improved ways of combining sovereignty with more effective and progressive forms of internationalism; a new synthesis adequate to meet the challenges of our times while recognising the changed balance of power in the state system, writes Valdai Club expert Richard Sakwa.

Covid: Beyond the Negative

The pandemic has once again demonstrated that it is not enough to leave fundamental decisions about the public good to technocratic elites or social identity entrepreneurs. The common good is a matter for the people to decide, and for that we require the renewal of politics as an open-ended process of public contestation.

The New Wave of Covid: A Negative Crisis?

Can the negatives of the crisis be turned into the positives by taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by the global shock to the system? In international affairs all the signals are turned to red, with the liberal international order crumbling and the 1945 international system challenged as never before. However, at the societal level the green signals are strongest, Valdai Club expert Richard Sakwa writes.

Normality: Coronavirus and State Transformation

A crisis is a moment of reflection in the life of a community. The response to a challenge is as important as the summons itself. In the case of Covid-19, the crisis is the most profound in living memory. Like a neutron bomb, it destroys people but not the physical infrastructure. It prowls unseen, and the threat of contagion pushes people apart. No less important, it undermines accustomed models of normality, the ‘common sense’ of an era, and breaks boundaries that had hitherto been sacrosanct, writes Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent.

The Brexit Saga Continues: Turning Disaster into Catastrophe

No matter if there is a deal or no deal, Britain would end up worse off than it is today. This is why there is a general consensus that Brexit itself is a type of excess, even a type of collective suicide, pursued by a hardline group of people who always considered the European Union an alien and oppressive force, which in itself is a sign of a long-term crisis of British state development.

The Skripal Affair

There is no doubt that the Skripal poisoning is a major incident that will resonate through history. The only question is whether the confrontation will dissipate, as it did over Agadir in 1911, or whether this is the Sarajevo slow-burning crisis that could explode into flame at some later point.

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