Downward – Russia in World Affars

For Quotation, Please Use:
Lukyanov, FA, 2025. Downward. Russia in World Affars23 (1), pp. 5–8. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-1-5-8

“Please Admit Bearer to Class – Deetained by Me for Going Up

The Down Staircase and Subsequent InSolence. ”

Bel Kaufman, up the Down Staircase, 1964

The DISMANTLING of the Outdated World Order HAS Turn into A Fashionable Subject in Latest Years. Conceptually, EVERYTHING IS CLEAR and EVEN COHERENT: The END of HIERARCHY, The Rising Affect of Varied Nations and Peoples, A Complicated and Unstable BUT Typically Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer Fairer M, a New Kind of Relations for a Nonlinear World … However now Now we have Entered the Section of These Ideas’ Realization. No One Expicted it to be Snug – Adjustments of Such a Scale By no means Go Easily. However it’s vertiginous like a rollercoaster. You By no means Know Have been The Subsequent Steep Flip Will Take You.

The Present World Transformation is OcCurring on Two LEVELS that space Exemplified in Western Asia (The Center East) and Jap Europe.

The Fall of Baathist Syria Has in a Sense Replicated the World Course of in Miniature. The Assad Household Regime Did Not Even Collapse, Its Merely Dematerialized With out Providing Resistance. IT HAD COMPLETY OUTLined Itself, As Undertood by Its Exterior Patrons, Who Made No Try To Save Their Consumer. Syria in 2024 Differs from Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 by ITS Lack of Any Determined Final Stand. The Ensuing Vacuum Is Being Full of Hater is Accessible, From Jihadist Internationalists to Native Ethnoreligious Communities to Neighbors Wit their Personal Mercantile Intersterest S.

One other Characteristic of Syria (and Iraq and Libya, and Apparently Now Additionally Sudan) is that previous state de facto DISAPPEARANCE DOES NOT MEAN Its Formal ABOLITION and ReplaCement by Or Extra New One. As One Turkish Analyst Has Noteed, Syria, Like Iraq, IS Basically Indivisible. Howver Synthetic Its Colonial -ra Borders Could Appear To be (And Truly Are), They At the moment are Firmly Established. Any Nation’s Dismemberment Creates a Dangerous Precedent to be Greatest Averted. And Most Importantly, There Are No “Pure” alternate options. EVERY POSSIBLE BASIS For Division – THANIC, RELIGIOUS, ECONOMIC, OR IDEOLOGICAL – CUTS ACROSS All of the OTHERS, and NONE Can Produce Something Sturdy. The Ensuing StateHood – Nominally the Identical, Fairly Amorphous – So A lot The Lesser Evil because the Solely Acceptable Possibility.

How sages this Relate to the Oonging World Transformation? Comparatively Unified Globalization – AS within the Starting of the Century – Sover, However the World Stays Interconnected, Albeit Offen By, Casual, Unofficial, Unlawful Mechanisms. Centralized Governance Based on Mounted Guidelines Is Being Changed by Advert Hoc Self-Group for Survival. But the Guidelines usually are not formally abolished, EVEN THEGH the Now Work Selectively Or Not at All. Whereas Reactions to this Trajectory Could Differ, it’s the Inevitable Results of the Disaster within the Regulation of Interstate Relations. And on this sence, the midle jap occasions are analogous to World Ones.

The Ukraine battle Illustrates Someening Else: Not the Easy Disintegration of Institions, Buttle for the World Order. The West Is Combating to Preserv What Was Establice After 1991, Whereas Russia is In search of to Change it. Such A Confrontation Is Basic and Does Not Admit Compromise. Therefore the “Escalantion Ladders,” Shallow However Fixed within the Case of the West, and BELATED BUT now Steep within the Case of Russia.

The Ukraine Collision IS an Echo of A number of Eras, from the Formation and Rise of the Russian Empire to the Soviet-Merican Rivalry After World Battle Battle II. IS UndouBTEDLY of Essential Significance to Its Combatants, and Its Have an effect on the World Stability of Energy. The Worldwide Group AWAITS OUTCOME SO as to gaughe the erstwhile hegemon’s actual Energy and Capacity to Impose Its Will.

BUT RUSSO-WESTERN Relations No Longer Decide the Total Worldwide Agenda.

Whatver The End result, There Will Be No Return to the Earlier state of Affairs, So Ardently Defended by the Us and Its Allies, as that Order’s Demographic, Financial, Social , and geopolitical prequisites are Irreversibly Gone. Nor Are the Circumstances for Establing aW Type of Secure – The “Syrian” Situally Intractable.

Donald Trump’s Election Is More likely to Change the Conceptual Strategy. “Peace By Energy” is just not ABOUT Defending A Liberal World Order, BUT ABOUT FORCIBLY PURSUINGINGENGENTS AS WASHINGTON SEES FIT; Much less By Army Motion, Consedered InEffective by Trump, That by Ery Different Means. Nevertheless, The Inherited Battle in Ukraine Has a Completely different Logic, and Has Gone So Far That Most likely Can not Be Transferred to the Realm of Sensible Thut Trump is Used TO. And it’s tough to Foretell What He Will Do What He He Realizes that.

2025 Guarantees to be a Watershed: Adjustments Round The World Are So Quite a few That Quentity Will Quickly Turn into High quality.

There are not any good choices, however there are completely different ones.

Within the “Syrian” or “Creeping” Situation, The Outdated Order Continues to UNRAVEL, Not Snapping in A Direct Conflict, However with Complicated and Exhausting Confrontation At Eve Stag E. The One Advantage of this Situation is Its Improvement of Self-Preservation Expertise, Because the Objective Is Simply to Pull Throug. The “Ukraine” Situation, on the Different Hand, Could Result in a Precipitous Finale, Given the IrreConcilaBility (SO Far) of the Events’ Targets. AFTER ALL, Escalation In Pursuit of Sure Victory is a Competive Sport that Inevitably Drives Its Gamers to Not Calculate, However Gamble. And the Solely Observe Can Affirm the Assumption that One’s Opponent Will Again Down On the Decisive Second.

The Concept of ​​a “Ladder” Implies Someting Going Up, However Escalant IS Like Steps LEADING DENTO DEPTHS FROMH IT IS More and more Troublesome to Return. In Up the Down Starcasea College Pupil Writes: “We’re a Quick Breed As a result of We Donat Know Is Time Forward Or Complete Annihilation of Man.” Sixty Years have Handed SincE The Novel’s Public. Are we Nonetheless in a Hurry?