By Vestnik Kavkaza
Minsk is hosting the 7th European and Asian media forum to discuss integration in post-Soviet space. Over 200 heads of mass media agencies of the CIS, the Baltic states and Georgia are discussing Eurasian integration, prospects of integration projects, cooperation between the mass media and society, the structure and peculiarities of new media in the post-Soviet area.
"During recent years international experts were discussing how the switch from a bipolar to a multipolar world was changing the rules in world geopolitics and geoeconomics. Pessimistic experts feared international relations could become chaotic," Alexey Vlasov, Editor-in-Chief of Vestnik Kavkaza and Deputy Dean of the History Faculty of the Moscow State University of M.V. Lomonosov, said. "Many conflicts had not been settled since the 20th century. Yet, there are new risks and challenges arising, affecting social and information security, inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations. Global problems are especially evident in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It happens because these regions experienced a difficult period of post-Soviet transformations, states of these regions haven't gained sufficient stability to fight against foreign challenges."
The editor-in-chief reminded about the problem of religious extremism "threatening Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the latter being an oasis of stability that had had a smaller impact on the Afghan problem. But religious radicalism escalated in 2011-2012. The problem of religious radicalism is closely connected with social risks. We have watched this symbiosis beyond the post-Soviet area during Arab revolutions. Corruption and the low authority of religious leaders - these factors are reflected in protest mottos threatening escalation of Arab Spring developments to the post-Soviet space."
"There are no universal answers to global challenges, as Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev stated when discussing the world financial recession. The president proposed a switch from the G-8 and G-20 to G-global, i.e. a universal anti-crisis platform. But local conflicts, such as the water and energy conflict of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of Armenia and Azerbaijan, hinder the process," Vlasov emphasized.
Contradictions are happening in the global information space in the format of new media when the global information net is turning into an efficient mechanism of propaganda and counter-propaganda. This is why the forum should focus on merging new technologies with new content to solve the topical problems of post-Soviet space. One of such decisions is development of integration within the Eurasian project. However, realization of the idea requires consolidation of positions, joint activities by the mass experts and political analysts. We have to find solutions together. So an expert dialogue platform, such as the media forum in Belarus, can only be welcomed," Vlasov concluded.
