The second session of the Valdai Club's 16th Annual Meeting was dedicated to the topic: "Middle East as a World Politics Lab".
Since the early 21st century, the Middle East has been in the international spotlight. It is becoming a ground for testing various, oftentimes destructive, concepts. “Humanitarian interventions,” “democracy promotion,” “Arab Spring,” “Islamic State” – all of them have undermined stability of this crucial region. In parallel, search of ways to increase resilience of states continues, experience of settling the most complicated conflicts is being accumulated. Syria has provided extensive material for analysis. Approaches, which have been developed in the Middle East, can be applied in both regional and global context. What elements of this experience would be useful to build on?