Vladimir Putin speaks at Valdai Club in October 2023. PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Commentaries A MULTIPOLAR WORLD? On the ideological conflict between the individual and the collective in our time

There are many things Vladimir Putin can be faulted for, but lacking a geopolitical vision is not one. A “new world system” is to come, he declared in a programmatic speech at the Valdai Club in Moscow in October 2023. The world will be divided up between “civilization-states” with an age-old identity, “large spaces, communities identifying as such”, for example Russia, China and India. Based on equality and diversity, this new world system will replace the “soulless universalism of a new globalization” that the West has been trying to impose through “dictatorship and violence”. Then “a multipolar world will be established”, a “synergy of civilization-states”, leading to “lasting peace” that will benefit all, he proclaimed in his speech. This was not the first time Putin has promoted this vision of multipolarity. Nor is it only his vision.

Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2025:1 pages 45-48
Published on balticworlds.com on April 16, 2025

There are many things Vladimir Putin can be faulted for, but lacking a geopolitical vision is not one. A “new world system” is to come, he declared in a programmatic speech at the Valdai Club in Moscow in October 2023. The world will be divided up between “civilization-states” with an age-old identity, “large spaces, communities identifying as such”, for example Russia, China and India. Based on equality and diversity, this new world system will replace the “soulless universalism of a new globalization” that the West has been trying to impose through “dictatorship and violence”. Then “a multipolar world will be established”, a “synergy of civilization-states”, leading to “lasting peace” that will benefit all, he proclaimed in his speech.

This was not the first time Putin has promoted this vision of multipolarity. Nor is it only his vision. […]

The full text commentary can be downloaded as a pdf in the upper right corner

Edward Kanterian