(From the series “Trump’s America in the New World Order”, Part 6)

The world has experienced a turning point. After the first round of American-Russian negotiations that took place in Saudi Arabia, the system of international relations changed radically, and the world entered a new stage of development.

Analysing the results of the first round of US-Russian negotiations, the following conclusions need to be made:

1. Donald Trump and his team continue to act, prioritizing the resolution of US domestic problems, including the fastest possible entry into a new technological level of economic development, the creation of a new financial system, and securing America’s role as a world leader.  
2. Based on his strategic goals, Trump has taken the initiative and the role of leader in the process of forming a new world order. Trump and his team see China and Russia as America’s main competitors for global leadership. China is considered the main competitor for the coming years. However, Russia is the most active member of BRICS, a power with the most developed military-industrial complex and combat-ready armed forces. At the same time, Russia is ready to cooperate with the United States in areas that are priorities for Trump’s team, including energy, – in the first place, nuclear energy, acting as the main supplier of uranium, – as well as in space and the development of natural resources, including in the Arctic, where Russia and the United States are ready to cooperate in the development of an effective transport infrastructure, as well as in the creation of a joint security system.
3. In the process of forming new relations between the USA and Russia, business started playing the most important role from the very beginning. American corporations that work in the most advanced industries, in the technological spheres of the new order, as well as in energy and space are the key players. That is why the delegations included representatives of business, including, on the Russian side, Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Dmitriev studied in the USA, graduated from Stanford University, and then in Harvard Business School. According to Russian media, he and his wife are friends with Putin’s daughter.

Photo: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, US Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev in Riyadh.

• Taking into account the above, the role of the main partner and world leader No. 2 was given to Russia. Trump and Putin are now laying the foundations of international relations in the new world. In the second stage, Xi Jinping will join them, acting according to the scheme defined by Trump and Putin, which, apparently, in its main features will suit Xi Jinping and take into account the interests of China. Then Narendra Modi will join them. As a result, a new Centre for the management of the international relations system will be formed that can successively include other leaders, who are gaining strength and influence.
• In the new technological order, the primary role is played by cultural and social capital, and human intelligence that has acquired the ability to increase tremendously its efficiency using artificial intelligence. In turn, the development of AI requires enormous capacities for the production of extremely cheap energy. It is for these reasons that the system of international relations is formed as a system of interactions not of individual countries, but of civilizational macro-regions with the self-sufficient intellectual and scientific potential, as well as the energy and resource base.
• The governing centre of the new system of international relations is being formed by a group of states, the bearers of the cultural, moral-intellectual, social heritage, as well as the military-political potential of individual civilizational macro-regions. The members of the new club of Great Civilizations, which Trump will personally name, will develop and adopt new rules of interaction and relations between macro-regions, and will also distribute responsibility for maintaining strategic stability and balance of interests. This is the work that Rubio and Lavrov’s groups have begun to do in Riyadh.
• At the initial stage, Europe was excluded from participation in the negotiations for three reasons. Firstly, the format of the meeting assumed the participation of only two parties in the dialogue. Secondly, at this stage, Europe’s problems are secondary for Trump and Putin. Thirdly, Putin does not forgive deception. The political elites of European countries participated in the development of the Minsk peace agreements on Ukraine in 2014-2015, that they did not intend to implement, which they later admitted themselves. Moscow assessed this as an outright deception that pushed Putin to start the invasion in Ukraine, and Putin is not going to forgive this. Moreover, the leaders of most European countries spoke out and acted against Trump, supporting Biden during the election campaign in the United States. Trump does not trust them and is not going to forgive them either.
• Europe will get a chance to participate in the Club of the Greats after the change of political elites in the main European states and creation of a European macro-region capable of rapidly increasing its scientific and economic potential, politically independent, self-sufficient in defence, with its own moral, cultural and socio-political code. Otherwise, Europe will stay as a peripheral part of the American macro-region, the united West. In the event of the EU disintegration into separate states and blocks, which does not contradict the long-term interests of the Kremlin and Trump’s team, some European countries will remain in the orbit of America, and some will become a “buffer” between the West and the Russian macro-region.
• During the bilateral talks in Riyadh, issues that are not of fundamental importance for the development of American-Russian relations and the principles of forming a new world order were not discussed in detail. Those issues have been entrusted to special working groups that are being formed now.
• Trump and Putin consider the war in Ukraine and a set of problems related to relations between Russia, the EU and Ukraine, Moldova, and Transcaucasia, as “peripheral” issues to be dealt with by working groups, that will deal also with BRICS, the Middle East and Africa.
• Ukraine is not considered by the current US leadership as a zone of future confrontation and clash of strategic interests of the US and Russia. Trump accepted that the current conflict is caused, first and foremost, by the erroneous decision to advance NATO to the borders of Russia, and by the overestimation of the importance of Ukraine as a military-strategic ally, a scientific, intellectual, industrial and natural resource for the future development of the US and Europe.
• The United States and Russia recognize Ukraine as an independent and sovereign state, but they believe that a civilizational split of its peoples has occurred in Ukraine. This split has become irreversible as a result of the war and has to be accepted by Ukraine and the international community.
• The United States is ready to participate jointly with Russia in the development and use of Ukraine as a state and territory linking Russia, Central and South Asia, China with Europe and the Atlantics. The conditions for cooperation in Ukraine will be developed by a separate working group with the participation of the Ukrainian leadership that will gain legitimacy as a result of the elections. The working group will include representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany, China and India.
• An effective and accelerated transition to a new technological level is possible only in conditions of peace and maintaining a balance of interests of the leading world powers. That is why Zelensky and his allies in Europe have begun to be harshly forced to peace on terms acceptable primarily to Washington, Moscow, Beijing and Delhi.
• Zelensky is not considered as a possible leader of post-war Ukraine. His desire to put the Ukrainian problem at the centre of US-Russian relations, to make the future of US-Russian relations completely dependent on the results of the war in Ukraine, Zelensky’s connections to groups in the US and Europe that oppose Trump, and his reliance on the support of European elites in opposition to Trump and Putin, and the Kiev’s “sins”, including the corruption of Ukrainian elites who have accumulated billions of dollars in banks in Europe, the US and the Middle East over three years of war, have made Zelensky and his inner circle unacceptable to the new US Administration and the US business elites.
• Zelensky’s future will be decided and agreed upon during the visits of French President Macron and British Prime Minister Starmer to Washington.
• A decision has been made for a personal meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia, according to some reports, before the end of February.