A large delegation from the CSDS attended a major conference for Young IR scholars at IMEMO RAS

The CSDS participation at the submission stage prompted the organizing committee to adjust the focus of one of the sections and give it the following title: “Tools and Implications of the Western Influence on the Non-Western World: Promoting Sustainable Development”. Five of seven presentations at the section were made by the CSDS experts, who presented the results of their research carried out mainly in the framework of the research project “Dilemmas of Assistance to Strengthening Statehood in the Countries of the Middle East and North Africa” (the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project №17-37-01018, 2017-2019).

The section was moderated by Aleksey Davydov – Research Fellow, Center for the Middle East Studies, IMEMO - and Andrei Evseenko - PhD, Secretary of the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies.

The section was opened by the CSDS Director Vladimir Bartenev. He devoted his presentation to the specifics of the US use of development assistance to ensure US national interests under the Donald Trump administration. Vladimir Bartenev outlined some changes in the volume and structure of the US assistance over the past two years in comparison with the long-term trends. He also focused on examining the logic behind the establishment of a new agency, the International Development Finance Corporation, with the help of multi-level analysis.

The CSDS Deputy Director for International and Public Affairs Luiza Khlebnikova presented the key results of her research on the role of the United States in securing development of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after the Arab Awakening. Luiza Khlebnikova emphasized that the United States, guided by its own national interests, has been striving to strengthen the domestic positions of King Abdullah II with its assistance. However, the monarchy’s survival in a turbulent environment remains in the hands of the King and his government and depends less on the effective use of the large support provided by external actors, including the United States than on improving a complex relationship between various segments of Jordanian society that see not only dividends but also risks in dependence on Washington.

Lecturer at the Chair of International Organizations and World Political Processes, the CSDS expert, Lida Oganisyan demonstrated that after the Arab Awakening, the EU initially promoted  democratization, freedom and citizen rights in the Southern Mediterranean. However, a subsequent destabilization in the Arab world made Brussels face a familiar  dilemma - either to concentrate on short-term stabilization while risking to create structural conditions for a new period of turbulence or to be more persistent in promoting the democratization to ensure prosperity and stability in the long run.

Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Russian-African Relations and Africa's Foreign Policy at the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the CSDS expert Olga Kulkova presented the results of her research on the dynamics of relations between the EU and Morocco. Olga Kulkova explored the logic behind a significant increase in the EU assistance to the Kingdom after the Arab Awakening. The EU new regional priorities are institutional support, promoting democratization and civil society development. However, a further intensification of political dialogue and economic interactions between the EU and Morocco depends largely on the Kingdom’s willingness to follow the path of political reforms and democratization.

Secretary of the Chair of International Organizations and World Political Processes, the CSDS expert Oxana Popova devoted her presentation to the German practice of using development assistance as a foreign policy tool in the Middle East and North Africa. She drew a conclusion that in the MENA region Germany has been focusing lately more on the provision of humanitarian assistance with the tasks of eliminating the root causes of regional tensions being sidelined.