Double standards, money, and elites

How Western management technologies facilitate the format of modern neocolonialism

How are goals, value systems, and priorities formed for individuals and entire societies? How can they be manipulated? And how can one recognise such manipulations and effectively resist them? Answers to these questions are sought by many, including trade corporations and political technologists.

Voices of giant rot

Recently, US President Donald Trump ordered the liquidation of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) — a government organisation that includes the broadcasting companies Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Over 1,300 employees of the former have already been placed ‘on leave’.
According to a congressional report, the USAGM’s budget for the past year amounted to $886m. Politician Kari Lake has already stated that USAGM is a ‘giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer’. Businessman Elon Musk, Head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has expressed a clear opinion about Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty stating that they are ‘crazy radical leftists talking to themselves while burning $1bn a year of American taxpayers’ money’.
However, it is unlikely that the world will ever truly know how much of US taxpayers’ money has been spent — and continues to be spent — on creating an American worldview in the global information space. Lilia Ananich, media expert and deputy of the seventh convocation of the House of Representatives, and former Belarus’ Information Minister, believes that the White House’s decision to close USAGM only touches the tip of the iceberg, “The US information agency in host countries and homegrown freelancers of the so-called free press have been painting an American picture of the world for years, using advanced technologies to influence mass consciousness.  Will there now be a complete shutdown of American international broadcasting? Lilia Ananich shared her opinion, “My prediction is no, and once again, no. It is just that the dead tentacles, which inefficiently siphon finances from the American information machine or do not serve the right interests, are being cut off. After all, ambitions have not gone away.”

Source code

It is premature to hope for cleansing of the global information space. However, there are ways to counter cognitive influence. Some of these are brilliantly described in the new book Source Code, presented in Belarus by its author — our compatriot Kirill Koktysh, professor at MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Doctor of Political Science. According to him, the book is aimed at a wide audience, “It is written in very simple language, but it teaches important things. It is one thing to be an unconscious object of someone else’s influence, and quite another to understand this, make a conscious choice, and clearly realise the game that the counterparty is playing against you.” 
It is worth noting that the preface to this publication was written by Igor Buzovsky, Rector at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of Belarus. He emphasised the main point,

“This work represents a significant step towards the sovereignisation of social sciences. It is also important to note that this process is being carried out without the provincialisation of knowledge and practices. Western political science retains its significance and authority but ceases to be an unconditional model for imitation by countries that the West considers as ‘catching up’, demonstrating its success largely achieved at the expense of plundering the resources of countries integrated into the Western model.”

When victory is guaranteed

In voicing one of the main conclusions of his book, Kirill Koktysh arrived at a seemingly paradoxical truth, “Democracy is a decision-making process that blocks the production of any innovations. Therefore, democracy is promoted as the norm of colonial governance. This reality began after the Second World War, when the United States started promoting democracy as a tool for global governance.”  
The book elaborates on this in more detail: ‘The Marshall Plan was, in fact, largely a business plan that assumed the existence of democracy as a criterion for receiving American money for post-war reconstruction. However, of all possible criteria for democracy, the US prioritised the presence of elections, which is quite understandable: any elections require resources… In a situation where you can ensure a legal flow of funds into the country for the benefit of the right candidate, you can, with high certainty, lead to the victory of the person you want. Two systems were established for this — the IMF and the World Bank’.
A vivid illustration of this is the Belarusian ‘civil society’ as it existed before 2020: a corrupt opposition, numerous NGOs and NPOs of various orientations, but invariably linked by external financing and a firm ‘commitment to democracy’.
All of the above once again confirms the validity of the Belarusian course to strengthen electoral security as a vital factor for the national security of the state as a whole.

Hypocrisy as part of ‘good upbringing’

Kirill Koktysh provides a comprehensive evaluation of the phenomenon of the collective West with its double standards, which outrage many political scientists in the post-Soviet space. He notes that the deep states of the United Kingdom and the United States are ideologically quite similar, “In Britain, the foundation is aristocracy, which relies on unconditional conservatism within the country.  
The presence of a distinct ethical system within the country and the absence of such when it comes to overseas activities implies double standards as the only possible norm, where, according to Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), hypocrisy is an integral part of good upbringing.”
The American variant, however, suggests a lesser degree of sophistication in its politics, as remarked by the MGIMO professor, “The same double standards are openly declared as a norm based on the concept of the ‘city upon a hill’. 

Privatised state institutions are viewed as instruments that are entirely controllable and manageable, while the financial tools are considered necessary and sufficient. Therefore, in the USA, the structure of interests related to foreign policy is highly mobile: the core of the political system is large banking business, which sees the whole world as an object for its investments.”

ACTING PREEMPTIVELY

Kirill Koktysh also highlights the rational sovereignisation of science. Noting its modern modification — club science that generates breakthroughs in the scientific field — the scholar has expressed his conviction, “Innovations must concern not only the content but also the structure of science to ensure that the scientific branch does not merely copy but is ahead of the West. Achieving ontological sovereignty and freeing oneself from a sense of provincialism is imperative for securing the future of our society and state.”

DIRECT SPEECH

Igor Buzovsky, Rector at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of Belarus,
“This is a fundamentally new and bold approach. For various reasons, we had previously been unwilling to develop knowledge in this direction: the strategy of liberalisation, democratisation, and the standards that dominated many processes — this is the reason. But today, having declared that we are seeking our own path and strategy, we have the opportunity to write and publish such books. They are extremely relevant for new-format managers.” 

By Maksim Osipov