L. Klepatskii Lev Klepatskii is Deputy Director of the Department of Foreign Political Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. International relations today offer numerous development options determined by the internal logic of international relations propelled by national interests and worldwide trends. In the world free of opposing blocs the latter became unprecedentedly prominent. This was the 26th summit for the G-7, the 10th for Moscow, and the first for V. Putin. Universality, if it is to have a meaning nowadays, must be perceived as the expression of the commitment by the members of the international community to work together to build a system which, over and above politics and the economy, would have ethics as its cornerstone.
Globalization is first and foremost an economic and financial process.
It is also a scientific and technological process, whose new information and communication technologies, by networking the world through links that are as dense as they are flexible, create a striking image. But it is also, and above all, a cultural process. For globalization is spreading and imposing a new economy, and hence a new form of social organization, based on knowledge. A. Bessmertnykh, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, A. Dzasokhov, Baroness Elizabeth Smith, V. Kislov Prominent British and Russian politicians selected Windsor, outside London, a place rich in historic associations, to set up a public organization, a discussion bridge between the two countries. The first session seems encouraging.