Russian Scholar: Age of Western Hegemony Is Over
Sept. 5—Farhad Ibragimov, a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics at RUDN University and visiting lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, published an insightful article in RT on Sept. 1 on the SCO meeting, titled “The West Had Its Century. The Future Belongs to These Leaders Now.”
He wrote: “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in China has already emerged as one of the defining political events of 2025. It underscored the SCO’s growing role as a cornerstone of a multipolar world and highlighted the Global South’s consolidation around the principles of sovereign development, non-interference, and rejection of the Western model of globalization. What gave the gathering an added layer of symbolism was its connection to the upcoming September 3 military parade in Beijing, marking the 80th anniversary of victory in the Sino-Japanese War and the end of World War II. Such parades are a rarity in China—the last one was held in 2015—underscoring how exceptional this moment is for Beijing’s political self-identity and its bid to project both historical continuity and global ambition. The central guest at both the summit and the forthcoming parade was Russian President Vladimir Putin. His presence carried not only symbolic weight but strategic meaning as well. Moscow continues to serve as a bridge among key players across Asia and the Middle East—a role that matters all the more against the backdrop of a fractured international security order.”
The SCO Development Program, adopted at the summit, is a “roadmap meant to set the organization’s strategic course for the next decade and turn it into a full-fledged platform for coordinating economic, humanitarian, and infrastructure initiatives,” Ibragimov wrote. “Equally significant was Moscow’s support for China’s proposal to establish an SCO Development Bank. Such an institution could do more than just finance joint investment and infrastructure projects; it would also help member states reduce their dependence on Western financial mechanisms and blunt the impact of sanctions—pressures that Russia, China, Iran, India, and others all face to varying degrees.”
The event, Ibragimov asserted, “offered confirmation of a multipolar world order—a concept Putin has advanced for years. Multipolarity is no longer theoretical. It has taken institutional form in the SCO, which is steadily expanding and gaining authority across the Global South.” The broad participation of Arab nations, he added, “underscores that a new geo-economic axis linking Eurasia and the Middle East is becoming a reality, and that the SCO is emerging as an attractive alternative to Western-centric integration models.”
Further in the direction of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s view of a new era of civilization, the Russian states, the SCO “is no longer a regional structure but a strategic center of gravity in global politics. It unites countries with different political systems yet a shared determination to defend sovereignty, advance their own models of development, and demand a fairer world order.”
He concluded with the same enthusiasm: “The age of Western hegemony is over. Multipolarity is no longer theory—it is the reality of global politics, and the SCO is the engine driving it forward.”