Nov. 2—Could a “Big Three” meeting of China, Russia, and the USA this month, dubbed “Yalta 2.0,” become a turning point away from war and toward a secure future for all mankind? Academician Sergei Glazyev, the eminent Russian economist, thinks there is hope for such an outcome. “There is now a historical necessity for a new ‘Yalta,’ whose historical agenda should not be carving up the world among a few powers. Its task, rather, is to agree upon rules for peaceful coexistence in the polycentric world that is taking shape…. Such a meeting could provide a significant impetus for a negotiation process in which the interests of the world’s leading civilizational centers are brought into accordance with shared rules for security and development.”
On Oct. 21, Kremlin official Yuri Ushakov had said that a trilateral summit of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, if it took place on the sidelines of the Nov. 18-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, would be organized by the Chinese hosts, and that Russia has already made some “practical suggestions” for its agenda. The Wall Street Journal, London’s Telegraph, and an array of publications in East Central Europe promptly named the prospective meeting a “Yalta 2.0,” at which three “authoritarian” leaders would carve up Ukraine, or even the whole world. In Russia, meanwhile, some commentators on the trilateral summit have objected that an analogy with the February 1945 Yalta conference of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin does not hold, because the three powers they led were allies in the anti-fascist coalition, whereas the USA has lately been an adversary of both China and Russia.
Academician Glazyev turned both arguments on their heads, in the commentary quoted above. It was published Oct. 27 in the business daily Vedomosti under the headline “Yalta 2.0: Why Russia, the US, and China Need to Agree on New Rules for the World Order.” Today he posted the full text on his Telegram channel, adding the subhead: “Hope for a Peaceful Transition to a New World Economic Order.” A full English translation is available on EIR’s website.
The setting for the trilateral summit could not be more dramatic, Glazyev wrote: “The contemporary world order is undergoing a systemic crisis, driven by the shift in technological and world economic paradigms. Not only is the old architecture of international security collapsing; the economic centers of power, the financial system, the technological leaders, and the very principles of international engagement are all changing…. The old international institutions are no longer capable of providing stability, while new ones are taking shape amidst a struggle between the old and the new centers of power.” At any moment, he warned, flare-ups of this struggle, this “hybrid war,” could lead “to the conflagration of a nuclear war.”
