Arquivos de 23 set 2025

A confident Beijing and a pragmatic Washington can get along.

A nimbler navy can deny China.

What Washington can do to stop starvation.

Sanctions constitute a tried and true part of the US foreign–policy toolkit, with the central role America enjoys in the global financial system according it immense coercive power over the behaviour of both friend and foe. The future of US sanctions against Russia may have some role to play in the newly revitalised negotiations over […]

On September 4, 2026, the Valdai Discussion Club hosted a presentation of the report in Moscow titled “Middle Powers in a Polycentric World: The Quest for Strategic Autonomy?”, prepared jointly with the TRENDS Research & Advisory think tank. Anton Bespalov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, moderated the discussion.

This paper examines the strategic behavior of middle powers in an emerging polycentric international order, using Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as primary cases. It argues that polycentrism, understood as the coexistence of multiple differentiated centers of power across overlapping domains, offers a more precise framework than bipolarity or multipolarity for explaining […]