The relationship between Europe and Russia after the end of the Cold War emerged within the rules and practices of the Liberal World Order. This order was based on certain universal freedoms and global American leadership and ultimate power dominance. Recently it has been under stress, and now there are serious reasons to believe that it is coming to an end, under pressure from a change in the global composition of powers. Both Russia and Europe are looking for new roles within changing international politics.
The idea of incorporating Russia into Europe’s internal balance of power, embodied nowadays by the EU institutional structure, is not on the agenda any more. The European order was established after the Cold War without Russian participation. However, Europe and Russia’s geographic proximity will demand that they develop new approaches to their relations. The goal of today is to explore what the possible alternative scenarios might be, of the relations between Europe and Russia, in a world which is not bound by the common rules of the game, and after the previous, 300-year-old paradigm is finally over.
Timofei Bordachev is Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, and Academic Supervisor of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE). He has a PhD in political sciences from Saint Petersburg State University (1999) and a Master of Arts in European Politics and Administration (Bruges, 1997). As a researcher he specializes in international relations theory and contemporary issues of world politics, Russian-European relations, European Union foreign policy, Eurasian economic integration, and European, Eurasian and international security. He is the author of several books and research papers published in Russia and abroad.
Ivan Krastev, IWM Permanent Fellow, provided comments for the evening.
The event was moderated by Clemena Antonova, IWM Research Director, Eurasia in Global Dialogue
