Fifteenth International Sakharov Conference

Introduction

At the turn of the century, globally a majority of states had embraced the system of parliamentary democracy, and dictatorship and authoritarianism seemed to be on the wane. The security structure in Europe, built after the end of the Second World War and based on the 1975 Helsinki Accords on Security and Cooperation in Europe, had become an unchallenged dogma. Political and territorial disputes in Europe would be solved at the negotiating table and not on the battlefield. A last reminder that this was an absolute necessity had been the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, that led to a large number of deaths and the mass murder in Srebrenica. In the Middle East a certain balance had been established in the relations between Israel and the Arab countries, with a two-state solution as the most probably and realistic outcome, while in the Pacific the United States remained the dominant force, and the increasing importance of the People’s Republic of China seemed mostly economic of nature.

How different is the world today, almost a quarter of a century later. The Helsinki Accords have been shattered by Russian aggression, first in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukraine in 2014 and eventually by the full-scale invasion of 2022. In 2025, at the fiftieth anniversary, there will be nothing of the Helsinki Accords left to celebrate. The Middle East is in turmoil, with an ongoing destructive war between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah potentially leading to a regional multi-state war in the Middle East. China is gradually implementing it’s long term development plan, using its own model of colonialism to establish economic control not only in the Pacific region but also Central Asia and Africa, ever so expanding its economic dominance followed by military measures threatening the dominant position of the United States. And in the United States the Presidential elections are not only an extreme challenge to democracy in the country as such, but also to the trans-Atlantic bonds that are essential for security and freedom in Europe. The possibility that the United States will sink back into pre-WW1 isolationism is more than realistic.

In politics, crude and often authoritarian forms of governance have become mainstream. When in the late 1990s and the beginning of this century the Italian media tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi seemed to be an exception, his style has now been copied and even surpassed by many. The combination of hubris syndrome, extreme narcissism and psychopathology is now a regular feature in national and international politics, as a result deepening the global political crisis and increasing the risk of a global meltdown. While at the end of the twentieth century a quarter of the countries were considered to be not free, that percentage has now risen to almost thirty percent, while the number of free countries simultaneously gradually decreased.

The Fifteenth International Sakharov Conference in Vilnius will focus on these themes and will bring together top experts who will shed their light over these momentous challenges ahead.