ИСТИНА

America cannot afford to withdraw completely from the Middle East, Vladimir Yakunin said on the sidelines of the 12th annual international conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). A supporter of dialogue between civilizations, the Russian business leader and philanthropist was speaking about challenges facing the Middle East and the world. Yakunin is the chairman of the Dialogue of Civilizations (DOC) Research Institute supervisory board (the think tank was created in 2016) and a former president of Russian Railways. The concept of a “dialogue of civilizations” dates back to the period after 9/11, when the American academic Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, and Iranian leader Mohammad Khatami discussed such dialogue at the United Nations. But Yakunin came to INSS to speak more specifically about changes in the Middle East.