The Valdai Discussion Club will hold its 12th Annual Meeting in Sochi on October 19-22. The topic of this year's conference is "Societies Between War and Peace: Overcoming the Logic of Conflict in Tomorrow's World."
The dialectics of war and peace are a perennially topical problem for discussions. The situation in the modern world, when the old rules and standards become obsolete, new actors emerge while the old ones leave the stage, is not a unique phenomenon: The world went through a grand-scale crisis in the system of international relations at the beginning of the 19th century. The magnum opus of Russian literature, Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, is dedicated to this crisis in the context of historical development. We are currently undergoing similar revolutionary changes in the world order, akin to the ones that happened 200 years ago, when the great powers built a new system of international relations after a series of devastating wars and upheavals in Europe. The mounting conflictogenity in the modern world stems from the beginning of a new era: The old world order collapsed on the cusp of the 1990s, the unipolar world has never been created, and outlines of the new world architecture remain vague. The number and severity of conflicts is on the rise; great powers with differing interests are pulled into them. No one holds the monopoly on the "correct” interpretation, so there are no universal recipes for resolution of conflicts. Analogies and precedents no longer bear fruit.
The Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club serves to play a crucial role in the context of the world intellectual and political elite's demand for insight into the future of the system of international relations, for forecasting of key trends in the formation of the world order of the 21st century.
Participants of the conference will analyze the frequency and forms of the use of military force in the upcoming decades, as well as risks of a new great war. The issues raised will include the role of diplomacy, communications and economic interdependence in the modern world. The conference will be concluded by a plenary session entitled "Together Against Threats: Overcoming Strife for the Sake of General Progress." Moreover, several special sessions will be held during the conference. In particular, one of them will be dedicated to the situation in the Middle East. In line with the established tradition, the conference participants will meet with the Russian leaders.
The Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club will be attended by political and public figures, distinguished international and Russian experts.
