Моя любимая нейроаушечка, то самое "Если бы Муранди из КВ было африканской страной":

If we transplant Murandy’s essential DNA — tiny, internally fractured, strategically located, economically parasitic, militarily negligible but impossible to ignore — into the 20th-century Cold War world...

The Perfect Post-Colonial Frankenstein 1960: Independence from the collapsing Hawkwing Empire (→ Belgium/France/Portugal rolled into one).
Colonial power deliberately drew the borders to include four mutually hostile ethnic groups and eight rival kingdoms so that the territory could never threaten anyone after independence.
Result: a country that was born failed.
Political History in Six Acts

1960–1965: First Republic
Westminster-style democracy that lasts exactly 39 months. Six prime ministers, four coups, one queen-in-exile.

1966–1972: Socialist People’s Republic (pro-Soviet phase)
Young Major (later self-promoted Field Marshal) Roedran seizes power, declares scientific socialism, nationalises the two hotels that accept foreigners.
East German and Cuban advisors arrive in Lugard; promptly realise there is nothing to advise.

1973–1979: Swiss-bank Socialism
Roedran quietly switches sides after a night of drinking palm wine with the French ambassador. Cuban advisors are asked to leave (politely, at gunpoint). French paratroopers now guard the airport.

1980–1985: Civil War Lite
Soviet-backed southern hill rebels (“Murandian People’s Liberation Front”) vs. French-backed northern river clans vs. completely independent central highland smugglers.
Fighting is intense but strangely profitable for all sides.

1986–1990: Narco-Kleptocracy in Designer Sunglasses
Roedran discovers cocaine trans-shipment. Lugard becomes the only African capital with mirror-glass nightclubs, Ray-Ban-wearing roadblocks, and a national airline (Air Murandy — two Boeing 727s) that only flies at night and never files flight plans.

Economy – Pure Rentier Parasitism
Only three real sources of money:Transit fees on the only tarred road linking the copper/oil south to the markets of the north
Overflight fees for mysterious DC-8s and Boeing 707s that land at 3 a.m. with no questions asked
“Customs facilitation” rackets run by "aristocratic" families who still use colonial titles GDP statistics are whatever the finance minister feels like writing that week.

Military
Armed Forces: 8,000 men on paper,
Equipment: whatever was left behind by departing Belgians, French, Cubans, East Germans, North Koreans, Israelis, and a single South African arms dealer who married a local princess.
Elite unit: the “President’s Own Horse Guards” — 300 men in mirrored sunglasses and Adidas tracksuits mounted on Chinese motorbikes.

Lugard — Bangui meets Kinshasa meets Tijuana
Reputation across Africa: the place you go when Brazzaville is too strict and Mogadishu too dangerous.
Hotels: the Intercontinental has no windows on the east side (shot out in 1979 and never replaced).
Nightlife: legendary. Even Mobutu supposedly flew in just to see the floor show at the “Hawkwing Palace” cabaret.

International Game
Every Cold War player has a stake:
France keeps a battalion of Légion étrangère 40 km away “to protect nationals”.
CIA and KGB stations share the same building (different floors, same landlord).
Israel sells Uzi sub-machine guns to the presidential guard.
East Germany trains the traffic police (the only unit that actually does their job and directs traffic).
Libya’s Gaddafi funds a “Pan-African Liberation Academy” that mostly teaches how to print fake passports.

End of the Cold War (1989–1992)
When the Soviets stop paying, the southern rebels lay down arms and open discothèques instead.
Roedran throws one last independence-day party that lasts 11 days, empties the treasury, and then boards a mysterious Learjet to Paris with 27 suitcases and Miss Murandy 1989, 1990 and 1991.
The country staggers on exactly as before — only now the nightclubs play house music instead of rumba, and the soldiers want dollars instead of CFA francs.

Murandy: the African state that was never ideological, only transactional — and therefore outlasted the entire Cold War without ever changing at all.