The theme of this year’s XI International Forum Primakov Readings over June 23-24 in Moscow was the issue of “Global Turbulence.” The war in Southwest Asia, the attack on Iran’s nuclear program, and the growing skepticism about the neutrality of the IAEA have all led to increasing disarray, particularly with regard to the regulation and limitation of nuclear weapons in the world. The general consensus was that Israel and the United States, in starting their bombing of Iran, grossly violated international law and dealt a colossal blow to the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
At the beginning of the Reading, Kremlin presidential adviser Yury Ushakov read out the greetings from President Putin, who spoke of “the current tragic escalation of the conflict in the Middle East,” warning that the attempts by the “Western attempts to obstruct the emergence of a just, multipolar world order and to preserve the globalization model that benefits only themselves have led to a considerable destabilization around the world and a sharp increase in security threats at both regional and global levels.”
Anton Khlopkov warned of some of the consequences of the new situation. “Now a number of countries are seriously considering what will happen next, which country will be the next to be attacked, how to ensure their sovereignty and whether the non-proliferation regime will be used again as a pretext to influence someone’s domestic and foreign policy or even to change some ‘undesirable’ regime.” He also warned that other countries may follow Iran’s example in leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), not in order to create their own nuclear weapons, but in order to avoid the fate of Iran.
