Prof. dr  Yiorghos Leventis, Director, of the International Security Forum, and INIS member, Cyprus participated in Rome Discussion on COVID, Ukraine and the Changing Global Order

It took place on the 14th of March 2023 at the Rome Campus of the latter institution.

https://news.johncabot.edu/2023/03/ronald-h-linden-changing-global-order/

 

The event was co-organized by the Guarini Institute for Public Affairs of John Cabot University and Temple University. Prof Ronald Linden provided a 45-minute speech elaborating on the perspective that whilst US hegemony continues, the world enters a new phase of Unbalanced Multipolarity.

Dr. Yiorghos Leventis offered a different perspective on the Unbalanced Multipolar World. He opened his argument with the list of military spending by the main political powers. Through these statistics, he demonstrated that the US military budget continues to be multiple times the aggregate of the corresponding budgets of China, Russia and India. Next, he discussed the US withdrawal from arms control treaties in recent years that has led to the deregulation of the regime on stockpiles of nuclear warheads and their delivery and launching systems. As a result, he stated: “we are standing at the point where weapons of mass destruction and the nuclear threat have come to the floor.” He discussed the hard truth of the total absence of any credible multilateral security organization that would on one hand enforce nuclear Non-Proliferation/Disarmament and on the other promote a worldwide regime of indivisible security. On the contrary, he explained that we see an increase in nuclear arms held majorly by the United States and Russia. These pressing matters deepen the chasm between the West and the politically weaker China and Russia. This has put both rising nations in a position of defense that Dr. Yiorghos Leventis warns has put them on a path toward extreme countermeasures.

Dr. Yiorghos Leventis ended with his insights on the Ukrainian War. He argued that compromise would have to be the solution. As the top two great nuclear powers, the United States and the Russian Federation, clash in these modern times, the international community has to find a peaceful resolution as a violent extreme one is not an option. Whether we like it or not, Dr. Yiorghos Leventis argued, the Russian elite mentality is that regions of Ukraine belong to them and that this is something we may never be able to convince them of otherwise. This hard truth, he argued, maybe the only peaceful resolution the West has to offer.