Global television broadcasts, the tidal waves of speculative capital that sweeps away or erects national economies, the cyberspace and interactive media – are all part of the omnipotent financial and information global system that is based on novel, above all computer technologies.

The broad impact of its outward signs must not hide the main feature of this reality – the impact of information technologies on society and humankind. It was the use of these technologies that transformed human consciousness, at the individual and collective levels, into a well-connected money-making enterprise. Mankind has gone from transforming the outside world, which it did throughout its long history, to transforming itself (which occurred in just the past ten years at most). This is a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the development of the human race. One of the results is the spread of new technologies, which is predetermined by the quickly growing volumes of information. This places huge obstacles in the way of social institutions and governance systems: they simply are losing the ability to keep up with the changes.

It is worthwhile to recall that humanity – at least the part known as Western civilization – had gotten itself into a similar predicament on at least one occasion in the past. It was after the advent of book-printing in the 15th century when a real information boom began. The quantities of information multiplied, together with the people’s access to it, and there arose a growing propensity for abstract thinking.

The governance systems of that time proved to be incapable of accommodating themselves to this information revolution, nor of digesting the problems that it had borne out. As a result, there arose the Reformation and a chain of brutal religious wars which produced massive devastation, on a scale comparatively larger than the impact of World War II. Take, for example, the Thirty Years War in Europe in the first half of the 17th century, when the population of Germany fell from sixteen million to four million people. Against the backdrop of those huge losses, the fact that contemporary Western civilization was molded from the harsh events of those times is small comfort.

Today, there are strong similarities with those disruptive events which occurred 500 years ago. The present information explosion exceeds the capabilities of government structures and puts humankind in the face of new systemic risks. This does not mean that the second ‘Gutenberg crisis’ will inevitably cause disarrays akin to the medieval religious wars, but many of modern society’s painful problems underline a general tendency, namely, the ineptitude of governance systems to adjust themselves to new information and advances in communication. The consequential crises are all-embracing and their handling requires much caution and patience, as well as the constant redoubling of efforts. A painstaking search for ways to solve these problems is a must, as the alternative consequences of this crisis are all too predictable.

CRISIS OF GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS

Modern governance systems were created before the technologies of mass consciousness formation became widespread. The global use of these technologies has now driven governance systems into a deep crisis, where mistakes in governance are increasing exponentially, while leading to ever more serious consequences.

Self-programming is the prime factor behind the crisis of our traditional governance systems. Governance and control through consciousness formation can solely be founded on powerful convictions. Interestingly, the one who vehemently convinces others of something may eventually himself become absolutely convinced of the truths he is promulgating and lose the sense of objectivity. This is a case when, contrary to a popular Uzbek saying, “a sweet taste will not develop in the mouth if you say the word ‘halva’ [a traditional Uzbek candy] one thousand times,” one does get the result.

There is another factor concerning the crisis of governance that goes hand-in-hand with self-programming – a desire to transform the perception of reality, as opposed to changing the reality itself. This seems especially odd since “remaking reality” seems to be the easier option. This type of approach may be efficacious on a limited scale, but its domination in governance strategies pushes the latter into a corner. A good example is to be found in the policies of the Russian president’s administration which has, to all appearances, given up any attempts to steer the real processes of social development. Instead, it has shifted its activity to the sphere of information.

Factor number three involves the escalation of irresponsibility. A CEO or government official manipulating televised images loses the realization that his activities affect the lives of real people. And decreasing responsibility, together with deteriorating quality, may produce catastrophic effects.

Finally, a distinct feature of this crisis of governance is the degradation of democracy. It does not boil down simply to the dilapidation of the state, the major pillar of modern democracy, since a government can definitely form society’s consciousness by exerting influence on a relatively small social segment – the elite that takes part in making crucial decisions and sets an example for the rest of the nation. Planned efforts to enhance the consciousness of the elite produces a situation where it will alienate itself from society, while letting its own efficiency slip. While this is happening, the original idea of democracy wanes, as the elite becomes steadily incapable of assimilating ideas born from the rank-and-file citizens. Russia witnessed such a scenario in the recent past – by 1998, or a mere seven years after coming to power, the country’s democratic governors had drifted away from the rest of the nation much farther than the Communists had done in their 70 years at the helm.

The situation is further aggravated by the fact the elite in an information society, where technologies of mass consciousness formation are broadly used, is much smaller than the elite in an older society. The explanation for this is technological: the new society’s resources are highly mobile and highly concentrated at the same time; the stock markets provide a classic example. Changes in the consciousness of just a hundred key market players can rock through the financial sector across the world.

To sum up, a set of objective factors that will be hard to eliminate over the short term depresses the efficiency of traditional governance systems, worsening their execution of even routine daily functions.

CRISIS OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD

A threat to global stability coming from a governance systems crisis has an additional aggravating component – the gap between the advanced nations and the rest of the world has acquired technological dimensions, while the existing paradigm of global development does not offer mechanisms for overcoming it.

This situation is hinged on four factors.

In the first place, groups of people working with information technologies (IT) are keeping aloof and forming the information community, which is concentrated in the more developed nations where it gets bigger material remuneration.

In the second place, novel meta-technologies widening the technological gap have arrived, which rule out competition between technology consumers and producers. These are new weapon systems with intrinsic and inextricable friend-or-foe identification systems that deny any chances for them to be employed against the producer countries; network computers with distributed memory which gives the developer access to all the data of the user; and advanced telecom technology ensuring online analysis of telephone messages (a commercial use of such analysis caused the well-known scandal between the U.S. and Europe over the Echelon system).

Consciousness formation technology falls into the same category. It comes in the form of sophisticated dynamic combinations of different instruments capable of affecting the information field – mass media, advertising, activity of individuals and organizations having social significance, rumors, and active events. The combinations are based on the achievements of psychology and mathematics. This technology requires regular upgrading, since the popular consciousness quickly becomes accustomed to external influence and loses sensitivity. Failures in regular upgrading may bring about a loss of controllability. This is how the consumers acquire a strong dependence on the developers of technology.

Reason number three for the emergence of the technological gap is that the impact of information technologies alters the major resources of development.  They are not merely a space with fixed production relations; they have encompassed mobile finance and intellect that have dramatically changed the patterns of the relationship between the developed and developing nations. Past epochs saw the productive exploitation of one group of countries by another group. This was the essence of British colonial rule based on political domination, as well as of American neo-colonialism which manipulated economic controls. Now this productive exploitation gives way to a destructive one, which causes the alienation of finances and intellect in the developing nations. This means that, in most cases, the developed society makes gains – more often than not unconsciously – through the degradation of the developing society, and the scale of that degradation exceeds the gains of advanced countries. The latter is inherent in the “development at the cost of degradation” pattern.

A realization of the consequences of that transformation brought to life a diversity of politically correct – and hence overshadowing rather than clarifying – notions like ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ nations that are used to describe societies which have lost essential intellectual resources or the ability to generate them.

Finally, the fourth cause for the technological gap between the developed nations and the rest of the world lies in the global monopoly of the transnational corporations that have perfected their former practice of limiting or totally blocking the hand-over of technologies. They are largely assisted by the institution of intellectual property rights, which they widely use to cover up gross abuses of their monopoly positions.

The above makes it clear that the undeveloped nations do not have the necessary resources for being successful: the failure of the concept of ‘catch-up development’ is obvious (in particular, this has been proven in Vladislav Inozemtsev’s works). Competition, formerly a mechanism for developing weak societies, has degenerated into a mechanism for destroying them. While the global media are propagating the high standards of consumption of the developed nations, the intensifying competition caused by globalization convinces the masses that those standards are unattainable either for themselves or for their children and grandchildren.

The resultant despair produces global tensions. And while international terrorism is a widespread phenomenon, it is far from being the most ominous manifestation of this tension. Terrorism appears to be just another aspect of the global protest, a highly efficacious transnational business and a convenient tool of political influence.

GLOBAL MONOPOLISM CRISIS

Economically weak countries are certainly not the only places where problems are rife. Economic troubles have become universal, and the root cause of this phenomenon – which is quite in line with the teaching of Karl Marx – lies in the stagnation of the global monopolies which remain outside the domain where states and international bureaucracies have their levers of control.

At one time, national governments and international bureaucrats were unable to bridle even the traditional industrial transnational companies, while now they have come to confront largely informal, and far from always ‘visible,’ financial & information groups. Some of them, like the Silvio Berlusconi commercial empire, and the so called Texas-Saudi oil group which has merged the interests of U.S. oil giants and Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty, are less intricate than others and are hence more noticeable.

The first sign of stagnation in the global monopolies emerged in the 1990s when, for the first time since World War II, the accumulated riches stopped alleviating many humanitarian problems, like environmental degradation, shortages of water, illiteracy, disease, poverty, women’s inequality, exploitation of children, etc., which testifies to the exhaustion of the traditional mechanism of mankind’s development, and to the obvious necessity for changing its paradigm.

The second sign is the structural crisis of the developed economies. Their domineering positions push the entire world economy completely off balance. The high efficiency of IT has suddenly generated a global crisis involving the overproduction of products that are manufactured on this relationship. The crisis is aggravated by two barriers impeding the sales of such products. The first one is commonly known: the spread of new technologies has slowed because of their complexity, excessively high quality and unaffordable prices. This factor deprives the developed nations of the resources needed in order to maintain technological progress on the market principles. Then comes the so called ‘digital inequality’ that restricts the future prospects for the developing and developed nations alike.

The second barrier pertains to the targeting of information technologies at human consciousness. If the target individual belongs to a different culture, the IT efficiency goes down and the demand for them weakens. As a result, the cultural barrier does not obstruct the promotion of products from companies like Ford, but turns out to be an almost insurmountable challenge for CNN products.

In light of the situation, the struggle for expanding IT markets turns automatically into a struggle for Westernizing traditional societies, thus causing a collapse of statehood in weak countries (even in Russia, which has a thick Western cultural layer, attempts to enforce a swift Westernization produced a national catastrophe in 1991 and a financial and ideological default in 1998) and fueling tensions between relatively strong non-Western societies and the West.

Western countries are using these tensions to procure finances for further technological progress: an increase of global tensions, sometimes in the wake of mounting international terrorist activity, induces greater defense spending, which, in turn, reanimates the national economy in what may be seen as an instance of ‘military Keynesianism.’ Furthermore, it is an efficacious tool for promoting technological breakthroughs.

But this method of accelerating progress can only be efficacious over the short term. When prescribed as a remedy, it has more risks than the disease itself: apart from stimulating conflicts between the developed and developing nations, it breeds tensions between countries belonging to different civilizations.

CRISIS OF INTER-CIVILIZATIONAL COMPETITION

Socialism and capitalism at one time competed in the format of a single cultural and civilizational paradigm, and the power field created by that bipolar standoff placed the rest of the world within a circumscribed framework, exerting a strong transforming influence on it. When the bipolar system collapsed the power field dissipated. At this point, two civilizational entities, the Islamic and the Chinese, came into the limelight.

World competition is now swiftly taking the form of competition between civilizations, and mankind is just beginning to realize its terrifying sense. The easiest way to understand that horror is to draw an analogy with inter-ethnic conflicts, particularly shocking because of their irrationality – the warring parties abide by different systems of values, and bringing them to agreement is quite difficult.

Inter-civilizational competition produces a much deeper split between the sides. The parties involved have different methods in pursuing their goals. In most cases, they are totally unable to fully understand each other’s values, purposes, or methods. Financial and technological expansionism of the West, China’s ethnic expansion, and Islam’s social and religious expansion are unfolding on three different planes. But there is more to it: these three sources of expansion regard one another as alien phenomena. Their hostility does not stem from a natural struggle for power; it indicates a difference of lifestyles.

Unlike intra-civilizational conflicts, the understanding by the parties to inter-civilizational conflicts of their positions does not provide a clue for reaching compromises. Morever, it can annihilate the very possibility of compromise solutions – trying to understand each other may only convince the sides of their mutual incompatibility. Each of the three currently expansionist civilizations fail to enrich the other civilizations as it penetrates them – actually, they degrade and destroy each other. Take, for example, the ethnic divide inside American society, or the consistently faltering pro-Western regimes in the Islamic countries. A compromise is possible only if the opposing side totally changes its way of life, that is to say, if it is destroyed as a civilization. This is fighting without compromise which gets more intense even when there is a seeming balance of forces and no chances for success on any one side.

This is happening in step with an incipient civilizational (as opposed to economic) transatlantic split in the West, which is proving to be more dramatic than the divide between the Western and Islamic civilizations. The rift between the U.S. and the European Union does not make it possible for them to act as a united force in combating threats, such as drug abuse. In 2002, the U.S. administration declined to introduce sanctions against Afghanistan, for reasons that this might hamper America’s interests. Meanwhile, after the Americans had driven the Talibs out of power, the output of drugs in Afghanistan grew by many dozens of times. Illegal drug exports to Europe and Russia have increased dramatically as a consequence. But the mirage of Afghan stability that is weakly hinged on a fragile agreement between the field commanders (synonymous with drug barons) and the U.S. forces appears to be more important for Washington than Europe’s problems. In other words, the interests of individual global competitors apparently outdo the interests of solving global threats.

Another thing that the three civilizations are competing for is the right to draw up the agenda, i.e. to map out specific areas and principles for the standoff. The U.S. remains in a privileged position here. It has the most universal set of financial and economic goals, while its ‘burden’ of humanitarian values is less great than that of the Europeans. Unlike ideological, religious or ethnic expansionism, financial expansion does not produce an a priori repulsion, and the circle of their potential proponents is always at the highest maximum level, as is the opportunity to choose the best human and organizational resources.

Any market player can promote financial expansionism, which naturally follows from the very nature of market activity. A proponent of one civilization or another (rather than some of its aspects) would insist that the only correct way to live is the one stipulated by this civilization. That is why an analysis of the orientation of the countries’ elite – a key component of global competition – must necessarily consider the universality and convenience of Western values.

THE ROLE OF THE ELITE’S CONSCIOUSNESS

While the state stands for society’s brain and hands, the elite are the central nervous system of society. It identifies the impelling impulses – mitigating some and amplifying others – and then concentrates and transmits them to the corresponding muscle groups in society. The motivation and will of society expressed by the elite determines the long-term competitiveness of a nation. In this age of globalization, competition has shifted into the area where consciousness is formed, and the people giving shape to the consciousness of the elite take on a crucial role concerning society’s competitiveness. It frequently occurs that the elite’s mentality is molded from the outside. This is a veiled form of outside administration. If this administration is created by the strategic competitors of a given society it will become inadequate, and the elite’s goals will be ruinous for the social organism.

Yet, the forming of the elite’s mentality by its own society does not guarantee that it will have nationally oriented interests. The elitist quarters have a natural tendency for liberalization, as it may furnish them with new opportunities, albeit undermining the competitiveness of their own country and pushing the people into a whirlpool of grievances. Globalization opens up tremendous opportunities for the powerful, while it generally brings mischief to the powerless. Plainly speaking, it divides the insufficiently developed societies: it gives advantages to the elite and problems to the average citizen.

There is one more factor concerning the separation of the elite from society. Relatively underdeveloped societies have traditionalist cultures and conservative bureaucracies. Traditionalism combined with bureaucratic pressures forces energetic people into a sort of alienation and shocks their senses in a natural way. These individuals cannot rid themselves of feeling estranged from their society, even if they overpower the resistance of the social strata and become part of the elite. This provokes a hostility on the part of the elites toward their own society, which they begin considering to be a mob of ugly and dangerous people. This type of thinking has a deep-rooted tradition in Russia and is also widespread in many other countries. This tendency has been getting more pronounced with the spread of Western standards of education and a reorientation of a part of the young elites in insufficiently developed, and mostly non-Western countries; it occurs as civilizations lean toward Western values. Their attempts to revitalize their native countries – even though motivated by lofty desires – through a mechanical replication of Western realities and values on native soil are prone to devastating that society. This occurs because the society may be unprepared to accept alien values, or it finds them inimical from the civilizational point of view. The erosion of a society’s system of values and, subsequently, the society itself, begins in the elitist quarters and its younger members.

An instrumental criterion by which to measure the patriotism of the elite is by its method of handling assets. As a corporation, the elite is destined to safekeeping and boosting its own material and immaterial assets, the latter notion embracing influences, status, reputations in the crucially important milieu, information, etc. In a situation where a critical part of those assets is controlled by strategic competitors – this may happen if the elites are seeking some sort of approval by the leaders of competitor societies, rather than from their own nation – the elite will be implementing foreign interests and thus committing an act of collective treachery.

RUSSIA: SOLVING GLOBAL PROBLEMS AS DOMESTIC ONES

Russia is going through a very deep crisis, which is a continuation of the national catastrophe that began during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The country’s population is declining and is not demonstrating any willingness for self-organization, while the state administration is remarkably losing its efficiency.

The global community and Russian businesses are developing this country’s natural resources by following a simple looting principle that does not envision the regeneration of the economy in the future. The developed countries are acting toward the ex-Soviet property on the territory of the Russian Federation in a way that resembles a popular saying about “cooking a hare that has not yet been killed.” The hare is getting weak and has lost the ability to walk without support, but it continues talking about its role in world history and about mutually beneficial cooperation with hostile groups of hunters and marauders.

While Russia is weak, it nonetheless continues to maintain control over a range of unique resources, vital in our modern world – it has a territory for transits between Europe and Asia, unparalleled resources of Siberia and the Far East, and skills in creating novel technologies. All of these factors make it a prime target of the civilizational expansions, and the sources of that expansionism are sheltered in close vicinity with its borders.

That is why the major problem of the day – the clash of civilizations – will turn Russia into a place where the scene will be set for critical action in the next fifteen years or so. It will be the place where humanity will be forging a destiny for itself. The contest of civilizations is likely to take the form of an overt clash – a clash where everyone struggles against everyone else – on Russian territory, with the clashing sides focused on control over Russia’s resources. What is more, the frontline of the civilizational struggle will lie not along the perimeters of Russia’s geographic borders but within the sections of Russian society as such. Under such conditions, Russian society becomes a key, or even the backbone, factor of humanity’s further development.

The fact that our country and our homes are going to become the arenas for solving global problems is our weakness and our strength at the same time. On the one hand, we have perfect knowledge of the battlefield and we can influence the development of the entire human race. On the other hand, the kind of “power borne out of weakness” can make life itself the price that we will have to pay, as any error may prove fatal for us. On the practical plane, Russia is facing the challenge of harmonizing the interests and balancing the efforts of different civilizations which are trying to expand into its territory.

So, regardless of our wishes, Russia’s domestic policy will become an instrument of solving global – not simply international – problems. However, its mission should not be directed outward under any circumstances. Society must develop for its own benefit rather than for the benefit of external forces. The reason is simple: neither Russia of today nor Russia of tomorrow will have enough strength to bring benefits to anyone but itself.

That forcible self-restriction rooted in our weakness – hopefully a surmountable one – should not be regarded as a virtue or made a basis for isolationism (or the so called constructive isolationism, which has become popular of late). In essence, it means ignoring the West in a style similar to that offered by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Chinese emperors of the mid-19th century.

Russia must attract any external forces that are capable of offering it assistance, but the ones whom we attract should understand that such engagements are possible only if the participants have a genuine community of interests: our weakness makes any payment for assistance (including concessions) simply impossible. We must exert energetic influence on those civilizations presently expanding on Russian territory. While pursuing these efforts, however, let us bear in mind the relative shortage of our resources and concentrate our energies on the solution of these problems, not abstract geopolitical schemes.

One idea pertaining to the search for our common role in the progress of mankind – the so called ‘liberal imperialism’ – has been clearly formulated of late. It is built on the idea that Russia will turn into a regional power while U.S. interests — totally alien to the Russians as well as to other former Soviet republics – will be implemented into the Commonwealth of Independent States. This concept is doomed to failure, and differences in Moscow’s and Washington’s positions on a long range of issues or the presence of contending (European in the first place) interests are not the only explanations for it. The main reason is Russia’s weakness, and we must realize that a more or less weighty outward policy will only be possible when Russia has the tangible resources to support it, i.e. when we put things in order at home. Russia is able to work out the models and algorithms for solving global problems at the level of its domestic policy. By organizing our own house, we will bring harmony into this world.

Most likely, the revitalization of the Russian economy will require some steps that do not fit into the stereotypes of liberal fundamentalism. It may be necessary to intensify protectionism (a global tendency these days) and to issue state guarantees for investment projects that are beyond the possibilities of the business community, yet critical for the economy (the International Monetary Fund gave its consent to Russia for such an investment in April 1999). These should not be considered intimidating measures, as long as they are necessitated by pragmatic, rather than ideological, approaches and with the realization that they must be transparent. As the economy starts rejuvenating and regains its competitiveness, the country must be opened for external competition. But the intensity of that competition must not be destructive for the economy. Rather, it must be proportionate to stimulate economic efficiency.

Russia has a long-term strategic goal of re-establishing itself as an independently powerful civilization with the role of an equal player in global competition. But the road to this achievement has several transitional stages. Russia is presently on the battlefield, and it will require some time before it reaches the next stage. That new level will demand a bridge that links the economically and politically powerful civilizations.