The famous political scientist Sergei Kurginyan, in a new book, analyzes the background of a number of major international conflicts, including the war in Iraq and the current Iranian tensions. This specific analysis is combined with a discussion of a number of theoretical issues. These include the sociocultural specifics of modern capitalism, the structure of the modern elite, and methods of modern global governance. Theoretical optics allows us to take a different look at modern political drama. The author examines the plots of this drama from an unusual angle. The opacity of the analyzed plots does not lead to common (compromising or conspiracy) forms of their description. Kurginyan is simultaneously developing a new apparatus for analytical system description and demonstrating the specific possibilities of its application to so-called “undercover conflicts.”