On Monday, September 29, 2025, the 22nd Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club began in Sochi. The first day featured a traditional presentation of the Club's annual report, titled "Dr. Chaos or: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Disorder?"
Timofei Bordachev, moderator and co-author of the report, noted, that the optimistic tone reflected in the title contrasts with the tone of works published in the West. However, the authors are convinced that despite the current upheavals, there is reason to hope that the world is not sliding into catastrophe, but is demonstrating resilience and the ability to self-organise.
The central thesis of the report is that revolutionary potential is absent in the modern world. All countries are both satisfied and dissatisfied with the world in which we live, but the incentives and preconditions for a radical overhaul of the international order by force are absent. Even if societies fail to resolve fundamental domestic political problems, they prove resilient enough to avoid descending into chaos. In the international arena, mediation is replacing international institutions, and bilateral ties support globalisation where it benefits a narrow group of players, Bordachev emphasised. All of this, in one way or another, contributes to the democratisation of the international system.
The old system is irrevocably disappearing—all participants in the ensuing discussion agreed with this thesis. But this does not mean that all its elements will be destroyed. As Anil Trigunayat, Distinguished Fellow of the Vivekananda International Foundation, noted, the system’s imperfections, no matter how profound, are not a reason to abandon it entirely. The central element of the international order as we know it is the United Nations, and the panellists are convinced that it will remain viable. According to Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Kent, the UN system is the first truly international system in history, to which there is no alternative. It can even be said that, after eighty years, it has yet to realise its full potential.
The first session, dedicated to multipolarity, was a logical continuation of the report's presentation. According to Andrey Sushentsov, Dean of the Faculty of International Relations at MGIMO University, any hegemony is irrational and ahistorical. Multipolarity, on the contrary, is a natural state of the international system, maintaining its balance. Venkatesh Varma, former Indian Ambassador to Russia and now a member of the National Security Council, agreed with him. The movement toward multipolarity, an integral element of independence, has always been inherent in India, he noted.
Nevertheless, at the current stage, multipolarity is not a given, but a direction of development, as Taha Özhan, Research Director at the Ankara Institute, pointed out. From Turkey's perspective, the Pax Americana also had its advantages, setting certain boundaries, but the main question now is: what comes after the hegemon? The expert emphasised that the United States is becoming politically unstable, creating problems for the entire world.
In this transitional state, elements of chaos are inevitable, according to John Gong, Vice President for Research and Strategic Studies at the University of International Business and Economics and an expert at the China Forum. He proposed a tripolar scenario with China, Russia, and the United States as the pillars of global order as a way to maintain global security.
The remaining three sessions on the first day of the annual meeting were held behind closed doors. The second session focused on regional conflicts and ways of resolving them in a multipolar world. One of the panellists argued that the majority of armed conflicts in the world are local in nature, meaning their solutions must also be local. Globalisation should be replaced by the principle of subsidiarity: problems should be resolved at the lowest possible level. The task of global institutions, including the UN and its Security Council, is to set general principles for interaction between states and act as resource depositories, rather than engage in micromanagement.
In this context, criticism of the Western approach to international order was voiced. According to one expert, the key Western mistake is to view international laws and order as analogous to domestic laws and order. In reality, international order is much more akin to a traditional tribal order, where there is no ruler or written laws, but rather a collection of powerful cultural and social norms and rules for containing conflict and restoring peace.
In international relations, it is essential to respect the vital interests of other actors as they define them. On a practical level, a vital interest is what a country will fight for. This is why strategic communication and understanding the concerns of other actors are so important—something that is clearly lacking in our world.
War itself was the subject of discussion in the third session. Participants noted that today, military force is increasingly being used as a means of asserting political influence. The question, however, is what political goals it serves. US interventions in the post-Cold War era, aimed at regime change and the imposition of democracy, have typically resulted in chaos and destruction. The reason is obvious: military force cannot accomplish such goals.
However, as Clausewitz taught, war is effective as a tool of political influence. Its goal may not be to defeat the enemy, but to push him toward compromise during future negotiations. It is the military's job to prepare the negotiating platform, and it is the politicians' job to conduct them.
The session also touched on specific issues related to the conduct of modern warfare. Battlefield lethality has increased dramatically, primarily due to FPV drones, which account for 80% of personnel casualties. Today, the FPV drone plays the same role that the three-inch gun did during World War I, and for effective combat, several million of them must be produced annually. Since only China is capable of independently producing this type of ammunition in significant quantities, it is becoming the only military power capable of winning any conventional conflict against any adversary, one expert emphasised.
All of this has far-reaching economic consequences. Ensuring national security in today's world requires a massive industrialisation programme, the costs of which must be borne by the entire economy. This means a new level of government intervention and protectionism, which we see both in Russia and the West.
The first day of the annual meeting concluded with a session devoted to the fate of democracy. A common theme among the speeches by participants representing most countries was a refusal to equate democracy as such with its Western liberal form. This is especially true given that in the countries where liberal democracy originated, questions about its implementation are increasingly emerging. This particularly concerns the very concept of “the will of the people”. Increasingly, elites dissatisfied with the popular will believe it is necessary to adjust its results, resulting in governments that don't reflect the electoral preferences of their citizens, but represent the "right" forces, as perceived by the elites, and take corresponding positions.
The session demonstrated that non-Western countries value their forms of popular sovereignty and are proud of them, but they do not want the quality of democracy to be judged by Western standards that ignore value differences. The most important of these is their attitude toward individualism, which underlies Western liberal democracy. Perceiving the individual as the fundamental unit of society and elevating individual rights to absolutes is characteristic only of modern Western European civilisation, one panellist noted. In most cultures, this fundamental unit is the community, the family, and rights are not perceived in isolation from responsibilities. Each country must find its own balance between human rights and responsibilities, as well as the interests of the majority and the minority, without imposing its own point of view on others – this is how the discussions during the session can be summarised.
