Utopia of a multipolar world
The annual Valdai Club meeting has always been positioned as absolutely essential when it comes to understanding the non-stop movement of geopolitical tectonic plates across Eurasia.
The ongoing 18th meeting in Sochi, Russia once again lived up to expectations. The overall theme was Global Shake-Up in the 21st Century: The Individual, Values, and the State. It expands on the theme of a "crumbling world" that Valdai had been analyzing since 2018: as the organizers highlight, this "has ceased to be a metaphor and turned into a palpable reality before our own eyes."
Framing the discussions in Sochi, Valdai released two intriguing reports capable of offering prime food for thought, especially for the Global South: The Age of the Pandemic: Year Two. The Future is Back, and History, to be Continued: The Utopia of a Diverse World.
The "Future is Back" concept essentially means that, after the Covid-19 shock, the notion of a linear one-sided future, complete with "progress" defined as globalized democracy enshrining the "end of history," is dead and buried.
Globalization, as framed by neoliberalism, proved to be finite.
The slide towards medical totalitarianism and the trappings of a maximum-security penitentiary are self-evident. As some Valdai participants noted, Foucault's concept of "biopower" is no longer abstract philosophy.
The first session in Sochi went a long way in terms of framing our current predicament, starting with how the current incandescent USChina clash is unfolding.
Thomas Graham, from the Council on Foreign Relations - the conceptual matrix of the US establishment - recited the proverbial "indispensable nation" platitudes and how it's "prepared to defend Taiwan," even as he admitted, "the Biden administration is still articulating its policy."
It was up to Zhou Bo, from the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, to ask the hard questions: if the US and China are in competition, "how far are we from conflict?" He stressed "cooperation" instead of a slide into confrontation, yet China "will cooperate from a position of strength."
Zhou Bo also clarified how Beijing is "not interested in bipolarity," in terms of China "replacing the USSR during the Cold War": after all, "China is not competing with the US elsewhere in the world."
Yet even as "the center of gravity is moving irreversibly to the East," he admitted the current situation "is more dangerous than during the Cold War."
Surveying the global chessboard, former Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim stressed "the absurdity of the UN Security Council deciding even matters related to the pandemic."
Amorim voiced one of the Global South's key demands: the "need for a new institutional framework. The closer we get would be the G-20 - a little more African, a little less European." This G-20 would command the authority the current UN Security Council lacks.
So Amorim had to tie it all to the centrality of inequality: his quip about "coming from a forgotten region," Latin America, was very much on point. He also had to stress, "we didn't want a Pax Americana." A real, "concrete step" towards multipolarity would be "a big conference" that could be led by this "modified G-20."
Togtbaatar Damdin, a Mongolian parliamentarian, evoked "my great, great, great grandfather," Genghis Khan, and how he built "that huge empire and called it Pax Mongolica," focused on what matters to the here and now: "peaceful trade and economic integration in Greater Eurasia." Damdin stressed, "we [Mongolians] no longer believe in war. It's much more profitable to be involved in trade."
A constant theme in this and other Valdai sessions has been "Hybrid War" and "Shadow War", the new imperial instruments deployed against parts of Latin America, the greater Middle East and Russia-China, in contrast to "a transparent system under the rule of law - and kept by international law," as noted by Oksana Sinyavskaya from the Institute for Social Policy at the Higher School of Economics.
The discussions in Sochi essentially focused on the twilight of the current hegemonic socioeconomic system - essentially neoliberalism; the crisis of alliance systems - as in the rot within NATO; and the toxic confluence of Hybrid War and the pandemic impacting billions of people.
"This G-20 would command the authority the current UN Security Council lacks. So Amorim had to tie it all to the centrality of inequality: his quip about "coming from a forgotten region," Latin America, was very much on point.”