About the benefits of discomfort

Africa is facing a geopolitical upheaval whose effects will be felt throughout the world. Sudan, the largest country on the continent, is on the brink of a new civil war between the Arab North and the black South.1 In three months, the South will hold a referendum, almost certainly declare independence, and the country will fall apart. All hopes of Salva Kiir, the South Sudanese president, are on UN peacekeepers. But who in Russia cares about Sudan now? Are some politicians talking about an impending African catastrophe? The impression is that only Mikhail Margelov, the special envoy of the President of the Russian Federation for the long-suffering Sudan, is interested in this. Come on, only Sudan - Russia is practically not worried about the Balkans, for the sake of which so many copies were broken in the 1990s. And what kind of routine work is Russia doing in the Middle East dossier - who will explain? (Ceremonial initiatives like convening a conference on the Middle East in Moscow do not count.) Yes, there is an armchair with a sign “Russian Federation”, but what else?

For all the difference between the USA and the USSR, they had one thing in common that allowed them to be called “superpowers”: both largely lived for some “super ideas” - communism and democracy, as well as for the sake of maintaining world order based on the balance between the two poles. Modern Russia does not have the ambitions of a superpower, it is guided by its own interests, pushing with its weight the decisions it needs at the international level. But at the same time, he prefers not to take on an extra burden of responsibility. This is ordinary national egoism.

The trouble is that on the basis of pragmatics alone it is impossible to build not only the “global center of influence” that Moscow dreams of, but also simply a modern great power. The difference between the great powers of the past and the present is that the former were measured by their destructive abilities (who has more divisions or nuclear weapons), the latter by their creative abilities (who is able to produce advanced technologies, generate ideas, become an example to follow). The former were supposed to intimidate, the latter were supposed to attract. The second one is more difficult.

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Yes, there is a chair with a sign "Russian Federation", but what else?

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Moscow, of course, has recently ceased to intimidate with flights and trips along the routes of the Cold War, but until recently it was convinced that money decides everything. Russia spent almost all of the 2000s enjoying the comforts of being a great power paid for by hydrocarbons. It looked like the highest manifestation of post-Soviet wisdom that buried ideology: look, we began to live for ourselves, counting money and thinking about nothing else. Or, to put it another way, we think precisely and only when we count money. All talk beyond that is for the benefit of the poor, the humiliated and the offended.

The crisis brought the Russian ruling class out of its usual state. The country began to "fail" - even in comparison with the states of the former third world, which in the USSR-Russia was always looked down upon. The result was discomfort. He is very helpful. It was the feeling of discomfort that forced President Medvedev to proclaim a course towards modernization, along the way identifying the main international dilemma for Russia in 2010: either modernization or marginalization. The problem, however, is that the chosen format of modernization - technology and innovation - is too narrow for it to succeed. So another dilemma arises: either the format will be expanded, which implies serious social and political transformations, or modernization will win only on the scale of Skolkovo. Officially it will be filed as a success. But in fact it will be another step towards the marginalization of the country.