On March 28, the Valdai Club hosted the presentation of the new report "In Search of National Interests: How Diplomatic Training Affects the Sovereignty of Countries Around the World". The event was attended by InteRussia program interns in international relations.
Speakers:
Ilya Dyachkov, Associate Professor of the Department of Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Mongolian Languages, MGIMO
Alexander Kuznetsov, Professor of the Department of Diplomacy, MGIMO
Nikita Neklyudov, Expert at the Institute for International Studies, MGIMO
Moderator:
Andrey Sushentsov, Program Director of the Valdai International Discussion Club
The Valdai report is a preliminary result of a large-scale study of the global experience in training diplomats. The authors proceed from the hypothesis that the diplomatic training of different countries is developed to an unequal degree. At the same time, its importance is only growing against the background of the erosion of institutions and practices of international relations in the post-bipolar period.
According to the authors of the report, in the emerging polycentric world, the training of diplomats can play a decisive role in the aspiration of nation-states for sovereignty. The study examined the diplomatic training systems of both Western countries (USA, Germany, France, Finland, and Poland) and the countries of the global majority (India, Brazil, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Turkey).
During the presentation, the speakers tried to answer a number of key questions: how ready are Western countries to come out of "strategic vacations" and return to competition? What traditions of training diplomats have the states of the global majority acquired during the post-colonial period?