In a slightly different set of circumstances, the natural world leaders of a new generation could be French President Emmanuel Macron or, say, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But they still are no leaders of the global revolution. Perhaps they were just unlucky, or they entered politics at the wrong time. Certain hopes for the beginning of the renewal can be associated with the upcoming parliamentary elections in Germany this fall. But, most likely, the time for a new global agenda has not yet come - the world is still at the end of an old era, and not at the start of a new one.
Let's not forget that the main issues of the new agenda will be fundamentally different not only from the current issues, but also from the Globalisation 1.0 era. Which ones - we can only guess so far. For example, if the victorious march of globalisation at the beginning of the century was marked by the strengthening of the conditional East, the weakening of the conditional West, then the fundamental issue of Globalisation 2.0 will most likely be the issue of a large-scale redistribution of resources between North and South in favour of the latter.
If the “old” globalisation was associated with accelerated economic growth and with an increase in personal and public consumption, then in the course of the “new” globalisation, most likely, the main criterion for success will be to ensure the transition to sustainable development models, both at the national and global levels.
If the global processes at the beginning of the century reflected a universal public demand for freedom, then in the second quarter of the century we will most likely see a more articulated and more insistent demand for justice.
In all likelihood, many familiar algorithms of foreign policy will also change. Major international organisations, hopefully, will still remain by the end of the 20s. In any event, a significant part of international activity will not boil around or within rigid bureaucratised institutions, but around specific problems: political, social, environmental and so on. To solve these specific problems, mobile situational coalitions of participants will be formed - and not only by nation-states, but also with the involvement of the private sector, civil society institutions, and other participants in international affairs. Old hierarchies will gradually lose their meaning, the terms "superpower" and even "great power" will increasingly be perceived as archaic, with no sense in modern life.
What does all this mean for Russia? In a sense, Moscow was very lucky: the crisis of the globalisation model at the beginning of the century actually nullified numerous Russian failures on the path towards integrating the country into the global economic and political system. Yes, Russian foreign policy over the past thirty years has made some mistakes and miscalculations, but what can we say about it now, if there is practically nowhere to integrate?
But it is unlikely that Russian politicians should rejoice in the epoch of deglobalisation that has come and stand in solidarity with the triumphant antiglobalists. Yes, Russian foreign policy feels comfortable amid the conditions of de-globalisation; properly in these conditions, the comparative advantages of Russia’s foreign policy style are most clearly manifested and its disadvantages are least noticeable. But if the assumption about the probable timing of the next change in the vector of world development is in principle correct, and if globalisation in its new embodiment returns to the world on the horizon of five to eight years, then even today Russia needs to actively prepare for this change.
The country must be able to demonstrate results that exceed those in its attempts to integrate into Globalisation 1.0 at the beginning of the century, especially considering that Globalisation 2.0 will inevitably turn out to be a more complex, more contradictory, and in some ways even more competitive environment than its previous incarnation.
Russia, like the other countries of the world, has several years to rebuild its system of foreign policy institutions, master the new rules of multilateral diplomacy, get rid of "bad assets" and find its place in the coming world order. As the current Russian president likes to repeat on other occasions, "there is no time for reflection".