TODAY, it is clear that the beginning of Russia’s special military operation on the territory of Ukraine on February 24 this year was a landmark moment in the modern stage of world history.

Regardless of the evaluation of this operation, its objectives and legitimacy, one thing is clear today — it has already become the watershed that separates the old stage of world development from the new, which will apparently mark the beginning of a new era in human history.

Today astrologers and esoterics talk a lot about the arrival of the ‘Age of Aquarius’, the beginning of a new astronomical year, the next precession cycle of the Earth and any other astronomical reason for the change of epochs on our planet. But before talking about heavenly things, it seems important to understand what are the earthly reasons for the unprecedented exacerbation of contradictions between countries, peoples and nations in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and what might be the difference between the outgoing and the incoming phase of world development?

In order to answer this question, one must first assess the outgoing period of development and understand what it was about and why it ended so abruptly?

It is clear that this concluding phase of world development and the brief era of dominance of the unipolar model were born out of the destruction of the USSR. Ideologists of the new world, such as Z Brzezinski and S Huntington saw it as the ‘end of history’, a complete victory of liberalism and the corresponding architecture of democracy, which should be universal for the entire planet. However, a priori, the case was presented in such a way that the US was the paragon of democracy and that everyone should follow its example, ‘city upon a hill’, obey its orders and implement the set of ‘recommendations’ to be formulated in Washington and in the international institutions it controls.

On the surface, this political model looked attractive to many, with Washington assuming the role of ‘world gendarme’ and overseer of a ‘rules-based’ peace. But when it came to its implementation, many unpleasant circumstances for its recipients came to light. First, it appeared that the concept of human rights inherent in the basis of this model implies the primacy of individual interests over public and state interests, as well as family, tribal and other ones. That is, it is based on extreme forms of Protestant ethics and morality that are alien to most human communities.

Second, it became clear that even the human person within this individualist model is thought of as a sexless being, a bearer of consciousness, and the choice of sex or, as they now say, gender, must be made by human consciousness. It must also choose the form of its coexistence with others — within the family, outside the family, or in general as it sees fit, without regard for the mores, traditions, customs of certain societies and classes, strata — whatever you want to call them. In other words, all collective rights are placed below the rights of the individual, not even of the individual, but of the individual mind. Any other frames of reference are declared authoritarian or totalitarian (although exceptions have been made for US allies such as the Gulf monarchies).

Third, as the model has been introduced into human society, it has emerged that it still has the character of a multi-headed hydra. One of the heads of liberalism is the LGBT community with its child free slogans, then cognitivism and transhumanism with their utopian and misanthropic ideas of transferring consciousness to ‘another medium’, and finally, as a crowning achievement, Satanism with its Nazi and other perversions.

In other words, under the sweet slogans of liberalism and protection of human rights, a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ has been launched into human civilisation, professing the cult of death and degeneration.

Not to be accused of following Seyyid Qutb’s doctrine and labelling the western model as naked democracy, I should point out that true liberalism, its political scheme of society, going back to the ideas of Aristotle and ancient Greek democracy, has played an enormous role in human development. No one questions the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the rule of law and other principles of democratic society. On the contrary, the true ideals of democracy, such as representativeness of power, its connection to the people, and accountability to them, are more in demand than ever before. It is about using the ideology of liberalism, or more precisely neoliberalism, as a kind of disguise, a cover for the realisation of a completely different type of idea, inherently totalitarian and opposed to true liberalism. The second sin of the globalisers from liberalism is that they absolutised the rigid model of liberal society and offered it as the only option. It is as if a sick person is always being prescribed one medicine for all ailments.

Finally, every ideology has an expiry date. As president Vladimir Putin said, ‘liberalism has exhausted itself.’ In other words, it has become irrelevant, has perverted its own principles and, in accordance with the laws of dialectics, has become the opposite of itself. And this is recognised in the west as well, even by prominent American figures from the conservative camp, such as Patrick Buchanan and many others.

It is also important to note that the ideas of this outmoded cult of pseudo-democracy, built on the supposed superiority of the West, are anti-human in nature, dating back not only to Protestantism but also to pagan traditions. And the very introduction of these ideas takes place through widespread deception of the people and the violent incorporation of these ideas into the practice of public life. We have had the ‘good fortune’ to observe all this since 2010, when a wave of so-called coloured revolutions swept the world. These technologies, tried in the Balkans back in the 1990s, then came to the Middle East and then to Ukraine. We can see the results now. Iraq, Syria, Libya have been destroyed and many other states have lost their inherent stability.

The bearers of this model — the Anglo-Saxons — unleashed a war against Islam after September 11, 2001, which was aimed at destroying the very foundations of traditional societies. And this was done in the most insidious way, as if by the hands of Muslims themselves, whose ranks were infiltrated with the most radical ideas, which led at first to the creation of Al-Qaeda, and then ISIS (both of these terrorist formations are banned in the Russian Federation). Later, these organisations launched a war of extermination against Christians in the Middle East by grossly distorting the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the economic dimension, however, this model of liberalism has resulted in a constant robbery of non-western peoples, including Russia, through the mechanisms of the Bretton Woods system, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Washington Consensus and the domination of the dollar.

Today we are witnessing the bloody agony of these anti-human ideas, which Satanic forces have tried to establish all over the planet. It is already clear that the plan to introduce these anti-values has met with strong resistance from both the peoples of Russia and the entire Islamic world. Where it is implemented, namely in western societies, we are witnessing their moral and intellectual degradation, ingeniously predicted a hundred years ago by O Spengler.

So what do globalists and transhumanists want to do now that the political, economic and social model of this unipolar world has begun to collapse?

Today, the proponents of a new global project on the wreckage of the former model of globalism are no longer hiding behind the ideas of liberalism and democracy — they have been discarded as unnecessary. Through the efforts of the World Economic Forum and its irreplaceable leader Klaus Schwab, a new, as it were, post-capitalist system is being introduced, openly totalitarian, based on the displacement of man from the productive sphere through robotics and the introduction of total control over the individual through digital technology, the creation of a ‘digital twin’ of man, which will then, in the best traditions of transhumanism, abolish man himself.

What can be set against this and who can lead the transition to a new stage of world development? What does Russia, with its two largest faiths, Orthodoxy and Islam, have to offer here? If we do not want to become victims of Satanists, the way out is to build our own civilisation project within a new, multipolar world, based on the values of the Abrahamic religions, but first and foremost the most influential of them.

Finally, here we come to the main point, we have all the historical prerequisites for forming our own centre of power, based on our original model of development. Thanks to Orthodoxy, Russia is equipped spiritually to preserve its identity and armed intellectually to form its own global vision of the future world on the basis of the ideas of its great ancestors. The Russian treasury includes LN Tolstoy, AS Pushkin, FM Dostoevsky, the much underrated NS Leskov, VI Vernadsky, LN Gumilev, NY Danilevsky, KE Tsiolkovsky, NF Fedorov, NO Lossky, NA Berdyaev and dozens of other original thinkers, writers, artists and poets. We are completely self-sufficient philosophically and intellectually and are ready to offer the world dozens and hundreds of new ideas. For example, LN Gumilev’s theory of passionarity and super-ethnoses is completely unknown in the west. And there are many other things they are unaware of.

Most importantly, there is the Russian spirit, not pretending to be God-chosen, with its universal responsiveness of the Russian soul, its plasticity, its willingness to help those in need even against its own national interests, its keen sense of justice and belief in the triumph of the good.

However, leadership is not only impossible without its own model of development, but also without putting forward its own image of the future. Its formation, in turn, implies a rejection of alien, externally imposed logic and a transition to the ideology of self-reliance, above all in terms of developing our own, based on our civilisation matrix and culture, response to the challenges of time.

What is needed, in other words, is primarily a mental decolonisation; spiritual sphere and culture should abandon thoughtless copying of samples of mass western culture and the use of English terminology to describe Russian life. Without a development based on its own history and culture (archetypes and patterns) (Russia as a unique Eurasian civilisation) there will be no take-off.

What this image of the future is, based on the above, is clear. It is important for us to admit and say to ourselves that Russia is a self-valuable civilisation with a Eurasian character. This Eurasianism can be saturated with different images and meanings, constructed in different ways.

The idea that Russia is called upon to bring harmony to the world can be placed in Eurasianism. This in no way contradicts the idea of the katechon, a force that keeps the world from falling into the abyss. These ideological constructs complement each other and do not contradict V Vernadsky’s ideas about the noosphere and N Fedorov’s insights about immortal humanity. We can speak of Russia as an ‘alternative Europe’ and as Noah’s ark for European civilisation, saving its cultural and spiritual (Christian) heritage from the invasion of new barbarians, but being an independent civilisation and a centre of military, economic and spiritual power based on orthodoxy and ideas of social justice.

Russia can and must remain a ‘retort’ in which, as a result of complex cultural reactions and the intertwining of pagan, Hellenic and Christian traditions, the acquired values of other civilisations are melted down and saturated with new colours and overtones. This was the case with ballet, painting, literature and music. All of these meanings can become elements of the supporting structure of the image of the future.

And generally speaking, leadership does not mean isolation. On the contrary, it assumes that everything new and advanced is taken on board, including from the West, such as management, the ability to promote its products and technologies, the skill to become integrators in the production of complex systems, and to encourage invention and innovation. This should not be done mechanically, but through rethinking it within our cultural and civilisational discourse.

We, on the other hand, can now offer the world carbon-free nuclear technology and much more in terms of innovation. Finally, we have a pool of Russian scientists working around the world who will come to us themselves if they see the national will to revive and transform the country, concrete steps to implement the plans already announced.

How will our choice to build our own civilisation, or rather to return to this work of creating and in some ways recreating it, affect foreign policy? The foundations of this new course have already been laid and are reflected in Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept, which sets out a fairly broad framework for protecting our national interests. Russia can form its own centre of power on the basis of this Concept, and it is already doing so. It consists of three rings: the EAEU, SCO and BRICS countries.

It is clear, however, that the transition to a multipolar world, as envisaged in Russia’s current Concept, is only a phase that is limited in time. Most likely, given the current trends of increasing confrontation between the west and China, the world will evolve towards a bipolar scheme and a return to the classic land-sea confrontation, but through ‘locking’ and multilateral alliances. Obviously, the geopolitical reality itself will push us, while remaining independent and sovereign in every sense, to move towards a deeper alliance with China, perhaps even a military alliance with it, should circumstances and Western policy compel it.

In relation to other states that do not belong to the old or emerging centres of power, Russia can act as a provider, or a supplier of sovereignty, as in the case of Syria. The most preferable option is not the provision of direct military assistance, but rather the provision of technologies and methods, including not only military and security, to other states that will help them to withstand the dictates of the West and stop the trend towards the weakening and disintegration of nation states and the erosion of their sovereignty under the onslaught of liberal financial elites.

But the special military operation in Ukraine provided a powerful new platform for the unity of the Russian peoples: the unity of the Orthodox and Muslims, as well as all the peoples of Russia, in the struggle against Nazism, based on the occult and Satanism. In practice, this resulted in the active participation of Chechens, Dagestanis, Tatars, Bashkirs, Buryats, Tuvans, Laks and representatives of other peoples in this operation. We saw, in an almost pure form, a confrontation between good and evil. The new phase of world development and the civilisational rift that accompanies it will therefore inevitably take place under the slogan of the victory of good over evil and the creation of a new, fairer and brighter world.

New Eastern Outlook, May 26. Pavel Nastin is a political observer on Asia and Africa.