New global challenges

By Vestnik Kavkaza

The events of recent years and especially of 2014 force experts to consider the challenges and threats to the international community in a different way. Many other issues have joined the nuclear, terrorist, and environmental threats. Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of Rossotrudnichestvo, presented his vision of the challenges and threats to the international community at the Global University Forum in Moscow. According to him, the main global problem of modern times is the absence of an answer to three questions or three problems which compete with each other, but exist within a single framework.

The first problem

It is the balance between principles of territorial integrity and the right of people to self-determination. “We witness the events in Ukraine and over Ukraine, in Crimea and Sevastopol. And this is only one example of how destabilization of the problem leads to serious tensions in the international situation and intergovernmental conflicts. And humanity will have to find an optimal answer to the question,” Kosachyov thinks.

The second problem

It is a conflict between the sovereignty of states and value dimensions, values of modern humanity – where does sovereignty end and the right to humanitarian intervention of the international community start? And humanity has no answer to this question either.

The third problem

What should win in the world – the power of law or the rights of power? “Is the modern system of international relations subject to the consent of parties, i.e. subject to a collective treaty and agreed rules of behaviour? Or is it a consequence of showing their will by the superpowers which form the system, according to their interests?” Kosachyov asks.

According to him, considering these three problems, humanity has to arrive at a global existence within the framework of peaceful settlement of current global problems or continue to clash with each other about their views on settlement of these problems, achieving no progress in the settlement.