The 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone
Moscow, Russia
Programme

The 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone” will be held on October 24-27, 2022 in Moscow.

The meeting will be attended by 111 experts, politicians, diplomats and economists from 41 countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, the United States, Uzbekistan, and others. Traditionally, more than half of the participants in the Valdai Club meeting are representatives of foreign countries, and this year is no exception.

A few years ago, the Valdai Club was one of the first to talk about the acceleration of the inevitable breakdown of the current world order and the entire system of political and economic institutions. Today we can say with confidence that this entropy has occurred, the world has entered a period of fundamental changes, and there will be no return to the previous model. Russia, due to its geopolitical and resource-historical position, has been at the centre of events, the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian special operation in Ukraine have accelerated the reorganisation of the world, but Moscow did not start this process, which is of an objective nature.

Although it is impossible to accurately determine the outlines of the future world order, an attempt will be made at the upcoming Valdai Club Annual meeting.

Today, not a single country in the world is able to dictate the course of world events and is forced to reckon with the actions of other states — a post-hegemonic world has already arrived; it is already polycentric. The priority of regional non-Western powers is increasingly becoming the protection of their own national interests, providing themselves with maximum freedom of action. In his speech at the Eastern Economic Forum 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the Russian vision of multi-polarity and the world: “<...> The world should be much more just, the world should not be based on the diktat of one country <....> We should respect the interests of other countries, treat them as equals, regardless of the size of the territory, the volume of GDP, or the presence of modern weapons in one country or another. <....>This is justice, this is the stability of the world order.”

Thus, the theme of this year’s Valdai Club meeting (“justice and security for everyone”) is both a statement that the hegemony of the Western bloc led by the United States has come to an end, and a wish for the future. The former international order was neither fair nor secure, which is largely the cause of the current military-political contradictions.

The Valdai Club Annual meeting promises to be eventful: a record high of 17 sessions will take place during the working days of the meeting. This year the conference programme is divided into thematic blocks: each day will be devoted to one broad topic — politics, economics or humanitarian issues. The following items are on the agenda:


  • Russia in the confrontation with the West;
  • The causes and consequences of the current geopolitical crisis around Ukraine;
  • The end of globalisation and a new stage in the universal connectivity of the world;
  • The return of nuclear weapons in world politics;
  • Economic and technological war in new conditions;
  • Values and communications in the modern world.

Within the framework of the Annual meeting, there will be meetings with Alexander Novak, Russian Deputy Prime Minister; Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister; and Maxim Oreshkin, Aide to the Russian President. Kaliningrad Region Governor Anton Alikhanov will be a speaker at one of the meeting’s sessions.

The annual Valdai Club Report “A World Without Superpowers” will be presented at the conference. This year’s report is based on the Valdai Club’s hypothesis about the inevitable oblivion of the “superpower” concept.

Russia’s changing geopolitical position and the renewal of its partnership system could not but affect the geography of those invited to the Valdai Club Annual meeting. Much more than usual, there are participants from the Middle East and the Maghreb, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the CIS. At the same time, representatives of a number of Western countries have confirmed their participation.

The foreign participants include: Ron Carlos, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela for North American Affairs, President of the Simón Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among Peoples; Tina Jennings, Research Fellow, Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University; Jeffrey Sachs, professor, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University; Robert Legvold, Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus, and Columbia Director of the Euro-Atlantic Security Institute; Kanwal Sibal, Indian Foreign Minister (2001-2002); Rahakundini Bakri Konni, Jenderal Ahmad Yani University expert, analyst in the field of defence, military and intelligence activities of Indonesia; Nelson Wong, Vice President of the Shanghai Centre for Strategic and International Studies; Kim Heungchong, President of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP); Dayan Jayatilleka, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2018-2020) and many others.

The Russian participants include: Andrey Fursenko, aide to the President of the Russian Federation; Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre (2008-2022), Sergey Karaganov, Professor at the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Scientific Director of the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy; Vitaly Naumkin, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academic Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Alexander Dynkin, President of IMEMO RAS; Andrey Bezrukov, Professor of the Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems, MGIMO, MFA of Russia; Yana Leksyutina, Professor at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University; Tigran Sargsyan, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Development Bank; Anastasia Likhacheva, Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics, National Research University Higher School of Economics; Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club; Fyodor Lukyanov, Director for Research of the Valdai Discussion Club; Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, and others.

The Valdai Discussion Club was founded in 2004. During its work, it has become an internationally recognized platform for interaction of the world’s leading experts with Russian scholars, politicians and government officials. Today the Club focuses its activities on research in the field of global political and economic processes. Over the past years, more than 1,000 representatives of the world scientific community from 84 countries have taken part in the work of the Club.

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