Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
President of Russia (en.kremlin.ru)

Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary session of the 22nd annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai International Discussion Club Fyodor Lukyanov: Ladies and gentlemen, guests of the Valdai Club!

We are beginning the plenary session of the 22nd annual forum of the Valdai International Discussion Club. It is a great honour for me to invite President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to this stage.

Mr President, thank you very much for once again finding time to join us. The Valdai Club enjoys this great privilege of meeting with you for 23 consecutive years to discuss the most topical issues. I believe that no one else is that lucky.

The 22nd meeting of the Valdai Club, which took place over the past three days, was titled “The Polycentric World: Instructions for Use.” We are attempting to move from merely understanding and describing this new world to practical matters: that is, comprehending how to live in it, since it is not yet entirely clear.

We may consider ourselves advanced users, but we are still only users of this world. You, however, are at least a mechanic and perhaps even an engineer of this very polycentric world order, so we eagerly await some guidelines for use from you.

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

This international system based on international anarchy originated with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which laid the foundation for the modern world order. The hegemonic system had broken down, and after 30 years of war, it became evident that there would be no peace through victory by a new hegemon. The Thirty-Year War thus ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which was based on the recognition that peace would depend on a balance of power between sovereign states. Security in the Westphalian system therefore entails mitigating security competition by attempting to establish formats for indivisible security. The Westphalian peace is often blamed for the international anarchy, yet this is not the crisis of our time.

What is often left out is that the Westphalian system relied on recognition of mutual security concerns as a condition for reducing mutual threats as a way to advance indivisible security. The Peace of Westphalia therefore also introduced the foundations for modern diplomacy, which entails dialogue for mutual understanding as the condition for reducing the security competition.

Our politicians and media no longer do this. They do not recognise the security concerns of our opponents, which means that they can no longer reduce the security competition and pursue indivisible security. Those who attempt to understand the opposing side, to place themselves in the shoes of the opponent and have some empathy, are labelled as Putinists, Panda-huggers and apologists for the Ayatollahs. Recognising the security concerns of the opponent has become tantamount to “legitimising” or “supporting” the policies of the opponents, which is seen as an act of treason. The result is that it becomes impossible to pursue indivisible security and peace.

Prof. Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

The deeper the belief in the righteousness of the cause, the easier it becomes to love the war that serves it.

Norway identifies itself as a model of a liberal and tolerant peace-oriented nation. Yet, a collective mindset has developed with intense distrust and loathing of anyone who deviates from the government’s official truth and war narratives.

Here is a social experiment to test the claim above. I am a professor of political science, but I am also a politician running for Parliament. My recently established political party is primarily an anti-war party, and we started a poster campaign on public transportation in Oslo. The core message was that we are for negotiations and against weapons for the war in Ukraine. This seemed like a reasonable position as Norway previously had (until 2022) a policy of not sending weapons to countries at war (as it escalates and can make us a participant), and our country used to advocate for diplomacy and negotiations as the path to peace.

Norway has abandoned these policies and unified under the new mantra that “weapons are the path to peace”, and we have boycotted basic diplomacy with Russia for more than three years at a time when hundreds of thousands of young men died in the trenches. Was our peace-oriented nation ready to at least consider the argument that we should return to our former policies of negotiating instead of fueling the war with more weapons to fight the world’s largest nuclear power?

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

Ideological fundamentalism refers to when ideology convinces the public that politics is a struggle between good and evil. People no longer assess states based on what they do in the international system but on the political identities assigned to them.

Kenneth Waltz, the godfather of neorealist theory, observed that Western democracies had a proclivity toward ideological fundamentalism. Waltz wrote:

💬 “Citizens of democratic states tend to think of their countries as good, aside from what they do, simply because they are democratic... democratic states also tend to think of undemocratic states as bad, aside from what they do, simply because they are undemocratic.”

Citizens of democracies also think of their countries as being more peaceful because they are democratic. Because it is believed that democracies are more peaceful and less likely to start wars, it has laid the foundation for “democratic wars” as invading non-democracies to make them democratic is believed to make the world more peaceful. Western democracies have subsequently committed themselves to perpetual war with the promise of delivering Kant’s perpetual peace.

Ideological fundamentalism is to some extent embedded in human nature as human beings are social animals that have organised in groups for tens of thousands of years for security and meaning. Human beings instinctively organise into the in-group (us) versus the diametrically opposite out-groups (them). The out-group as our opposite reaffirms our own identity – we can only identify as white if there is black, only west if there is east, only civilised if there are barbaric, only democratic if there are authoritarians, and only good if there is evil.

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

Dramatically different versions—The Russian version of the war in Ukraine dramatically differs from the version we are presented with in Norway. One of the versions is heavily tainted with lies, deception, and propaganda. The problem is which one. Because the Western version is well covered, this post will look at the issues as seen from the East. Such an angle is not only legitimate - it is necessary.

The West did not want to help Russia.—Resentment towards Russia is old. Several of the countries in the old Soviet Union experienced economic problems when the union was dissolved and the Berlin Wall fell. Jeffrey Sachs - a well-known American economist - led the work on economic reform in Poland in the 1990s with financial support from the US. Afterward, he was asked by Russia to assist them in the same process, but this time Washington clearly said NO, helping Russia was out of the question. He has since publicly criticized the US and the IMF for letting Russia collapse, saying: "Washington wanted Russia to go under. There was no interest in a prosperous, stable Russia. The goal was control."

Even then, Russia was an enemy, and the Cold War was still hanging on.—The result for Russia in the 1990s was a massive economic crisis, hyperinflation, and a collapse in living standards. A small group of oligarchs took control of large parts of the country's resources - often with Western assistance and corruption, and Russian fortunes were invested in the West. As Putin came to power and began to re-establish state control over the energy sector (such as Gazprom, Rosneft, etc.), he was increasingly seen as an obstacle to US-style "reforms".

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

Narratives have been constructed to support a long war in Ukraine. For example, the narrative of an “unprovoked invasion” was important to criminalise diplomacy as the premise suggests negotiations would reward Russian military adventurism and embolden further Russian aggression. Meanwhile, NATO escalating the war creates costs that outweigh the benefits to Russia.

Russia’s violation of the Budapest Memorandum is a key narrative that supports a long war. It is constantly referenced as a reason why Russia cannot be trusted to abide by a peace agreement, and why the war must keep going. The argument is that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees for its territorial integrity. Russia’s breach of this agreement suggests it cannot be trusted and that the only reliable security guarantees must come from NATO membership. Furthermore, the West must continue to send weapons to Ukraine to honour the security guarantees of the Budapest Memorandum.

In February 2022, a few days before the Russian invasion, Zelensky referred to the Budapest Memorandum: “Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world's third nuclear capability. We don't have that weapon. We also have no security.” The Budapest Memorandum was again used by Zelensky in October 2024 to support the argument that Ukraine must either have NATO or nukes: “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then it will be a defence for us, or Ukraine will be in NATO”.

This article presents facts and arguments that challenge the false narrative of the Budapest Memorandum, which aims to delegitimise diplomacy. Criticising the narrative of the Budapest Memorandum does not entail “legitimising” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is a common tactic to smear and censor criticism against the narratives supporting a long war.

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

The challenge of our time is that government and corporate interests go increasingly hand-in-hand

Organisations operating under the banner of “human rights non-governmental organisations” (NGOs) have become key actors in disseminating war propaganda, intimidating academics, and corrupting civil society. These NGOs act as gatekeepers determining which voices should be elevated and which should be censored and cancelled.

Civil society is imperative to balance the power of the state, yet the state is increasingly seeking to hijack the representation of civil society through NGOs. The NGOs can be problematic on their own as they can enable a loud minority to override a silent majority. Yet, the Reagan doctrine exacerbated the problem as these “human rights NGOs” were financed by the government and staffed by people with ties to intelligence agencies to ensure civil society does not deviate significantly from government policies.

The ability of academics to speak openly and honestly is restricted by these gatekeepers. Case in point, the NGOs limit dissent in academic debates about the great power rivalry in Ukraine. Well-documented and proven facts that are imperative to understanding the conflict are simply not reported in the media, and any efforts to address these facts are confronted with vague accusations of being “controversial” or “pro-Russian”, a transgression that must be punished with intimidation, censorship, and cancellation. I will outline here first my personal experiences with one of these NGOs, and second how the NGOs are hijacking civil society:

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 laid the foundation for the modern world order, which is based on a balance of power between sovereign equals to obstruct hegemonic ambitions. The Westphalian balance of power could reduce zero-sum rivalries by championing the principle of indivisible security, as enhancing adversaries' security would also improve one's security.

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been promoting a revisionist world order based on US hegemony and sovereign inequality, which is legitimized under the banner of universal liberal values. The hegemonic world order aimed to transcend international anarchy, yet it was inevitably temporary and unstable as its durability depended on obstructing the rise of potential rivals and promoting a system of sovereign inequality. The era of hegemony is already over as the world transitioned to a multipolar balance of power, and there is a need to rediscover the principle of indivisible security.

China's Global Civilisational Initiative can contribute to restoring and improving a stable Westphalian world order based on a balance of power among sovereign equals. China's Global Civilizational Initiative, organized around the principle of "the diversity of civilizations", can be interpreted as a rejection of universalism and thus support for sovereign equality. By rejecting the right to represent the values of other people, the Global Civilizational Initiative reassures the world that an intrusive US hegemony will not be replaced by an intrusive Chinese hegemony. The Global Civilization Initiative complements China's economic and security initiatives around the world, which are also organized around the principle that stability requires a multipolar world order.

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

Propaganda is a science of persuasion that commonly circumvents the rational considerations of the individual by instead appealing to the unconscious group psychology. The conscious mind tends to be rational, but human behaviour and actions are largely shaped by the unconscious, primordial instincts, and emotions. The rational individual has strong impulses to adapt to the group, thus propaganda aims to influence the irrational group psychology.

Propaganda as a Science—Sigmund Freud explored the irrationality of “group psychology” that overrides the rational and critical capacities of the individual. Freud recognised that “a group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty”.[1] Conformity to the ideas of the group is powerful exactly because it is unconscious. Freud defined group psychology as being: “concerned with the individual man as a member of a race, of a nation, of a caste, of a profession, of an institution, or as a component part of a crowd of people”, which form a collective group consciousness, social instinct, herd instinct or tribal mentality.[2]

The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, built on the work of his uncle to develop the foundational literature on political propaganda. Bernays aimed to manipulate the collective consciousness and identity of the group to control the hearts and minds of the masses without their awareness of being manipulated:

💬 “The group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?”.[3]

Glenn Diesen
Glenn’s Substack

Crossing the Line Between Proxy War & Direct War

The discussions about authorising long-range missile strikes on Russia are profoundly dishonest and misleading. The political-media elites present deeply flawed arguments to support the conclusion that attacking Russia with long-range missiles does not cross the line between proxy war and direct war. NATO may be successful in deluding itself, yet for Russia there is no doubt that this is an act of war.

1) “Ukraine has the right to defend itself”—The argument that Ukraine has the right to defend itself as a justification for NATO to authorise long-range strikes into Russia is very manipulative. The public is pulled in with a very reasonable premise, based on the universal acceptance of the right to self-defence. Once the public has accepted the premise, then it is presented as a foregone conclusion that Ukraine should be supplied with long-range missiles to attack Russia. The extent of NATO’s involvement in the war, as the main issue, is subsequently eliminated entirely from the argument.

The point of departure in an honest discussion should start with the right question: When is the line between proxy war and direct war crossed? These are US long-range missiles, their use is entirely dependent on US intelligence and targeting, they will be operated by US soldiers and guided by US satellites. Launching them from Ukrainian territory does not make it any less of a direct US attack on Russia. The US did not use these weapons against Russia for three years as it would amount to a direct attack, yet now the media is attempting to sell the narrative of this merely being uncontroversial military aid to enable Ukraine to defend itself. The US and some of its NATO allies have decided to attack Russia directly, and they should be honest about this intention. Attempts to present this as merely giving military aid to Ukraine to defend itself is an irresponsible effort to shame any dissent and avoid a serious discussion about attacking the world’s largest nuclear power.