MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/. The world community should redefine the role of international law and the mission of international institutions in a multipolar world, the Federation Council’s Deputy Speaker Konstantin Kosachev said on Thursday. He was speaking during a discussion on the platform of the international discussion club Valdai, devoted to the changes the world has seen in the wake of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.
"Now we are at a very interesting point, where the task of institutionalizing multilateralism and a multipolar world should acquire a practical dimension. If you wish, this is an intellectual challenge to humanity. We must redefine the role of international law and of the mission of international institutions in a new way, we must revise all three classic ‘baskets’ that are usually associated with the OSCE, regarding military security, economic security and humanitarian security," the senator said.
Kosachev stressed that the proponents of the unipolar world had been institutionalizing this concept for the past 30-35 years.
"They were systematically creating institutions that served this model. They were taking over multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the OSCE, and creating their own. NATO is a classic example. They were institutionalizing unipolarity, including in theory, for example, trying to replace international law with the concept of a rules-based order," Kosachev said.
He believes that it is necessary to start discussing the institutionalization of a multipolar world on platforms that are not associated with the West.
"The SCO and BRICS seem to be the most interesting in this sense. It is necessary to involve in these discussions the healthy part of the Western world, which certainly exists. I am sure that we will eventually be able to propose an architecture of a multipolar world equally comfortable for everyone, including the West, which, before our eyes, has now disastrously failed with its concept of unipolarity," Kosachev stressed.
Speaking about the changes in the world following the special military operation in Ukraine Kosachev said that only one thing was clear at the moment: there can be no return to where the world was six months ago.
"Russia's former focus on exclusive relations with the West as represented by united Europe is definitely a thing of the past. From my point of view, firstly, there is nothing bad about this. And secondly, this is not Russia’s fault, because the West and Europe that Russia had been so eager to join from the very moment they emerged in their current form, has failed the test of time," Kosachev said.
"Now we are at a much more realistic stage of our development - a stage of maximum distancing from each other," Kosachev said. He added that the task of modern thinkers who were reflecting on what the world would be like in the future "is not to determine its contours, but to create institutions that will provide the freedom of choice for those whose right is to make this choice."