Federation Council Chair Valentina Matvienko said the risk of a third world war is now higher than ever and argued that the lessons of the previous two global conflicts have failed to serve as a real warning for humanity.
Speaking during the general debate of the 152nd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Istanbul, Matvienko said the world had gathered at a deeply troubling moment. In her view, even the devastation of two world wars had not become the kind of safeguard that could prevent a third.
She also argued that the international community has still not succeeded in building a genuinely collective, universal and indivisible security system. According to Matvienko, international law and the UN Charter can function to their full extent only when their basic principles are upheld, above all sovereign equality and shared responsibility among states.
At the same time, she said that after the end of the Cold War, a number of NATO countries chose to rely on hegemony as well as economic and military power. In her assessment, alliance members then moved aggressively to advance their own interests and values across the world.
Matvienko added that the instruments of globalization were originally conceived as mechanisms meant to benefit all humanity. In practice, however, they now serve primarily the interests of a single center of power. She said that was precisely why the issue had become one of the two central themes of the current assembly.