It is one thing to recognize the impending death of the imperial financial arrangements of the Western world. It is another to know that there are objective solutions that are ‘win-win’ for both more developed and less developed nations. While both subjects have been deliberated at the Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), the opening of their 23rd Annual Meeting properly took matters a necessary step further, echoing a crucial theme of the Schiller Institute conferences. VDC entitled their report of the first day, “How to Stay Optimistic Amid the Ruins of the Old World”—that is, how to take in the monumental dangers without flinching or freezing up, and to act with a solid basis for optimism.

The VDC’s annual report “abandoned any attempt to describe the future world order, concentrating instead on the main threats and challenges facing humanity today and trying to show why they should not dishearten us.” It was entitled, “Keep Calm: The State and Responsibility for the Future.” Co-author Timofei Bordachev, VDC’s Program Director, in his opening address, explained “three reasons not to give in to despondency”:

“First, the world has learnt to live with the dynamic state into which it passed as the old world order crumbled. Instead of shock and apathy, we are seeing creative ways of interacting. Second, the liberal utopia of the ‘last man’ [a reference to Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man] has failed to materialize... Third, in today’s conditions the state is not part of the problem but part of the solution, because no other institution that claims power over the individual is accountable to citizens or cares about their well-being.”

Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, responded that the 1945 “international system built around the UN” had “two main principles... sovereignty (a legacy of the Westphalian system)” with the 20th century’s added “internationalism.” But “liberal globalism, which existed alongside it and, after the end of the Cold War, began to lay claim to universality.” It has failed, but “the UN system... will never be the same again... New institutions—the SCO and BRICS—have emerged, and they are taking part in shaping the new world order. It will not resemble the previous one, but sovereignty and internationalism must remain at its foundation.”