What do American professors owe their country when democracy and the rule of law are under threat? Why is it crucial to study law not merely as a craft for practicing lawyers, but as a liberal art—akin to history or religious studies? In what ways does the crisis of the death penalty expose deeper fractures in society? T-Invariant sat down to discuss these questions with Austin Sarat. Over a half-century-long career at a prominent American college, he has pioneered the transformation of legal studies into a vital humanistic discipline, emerging as one of today’s most formidable critics of the abuse of law in America.

ABOUT AUSTIN SARAT

Born in 1947. He holds a B.A. from Providence College (1969), a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1973), and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1988). Since the mid-1970s he has taught at Amherst College, where he holds the William Nelson Cromwell chair as Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science. Sarat is widely regarded as one of the architects of the modern study of law in the humanities. He founded Amherst’s Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought (1992), co-founded the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, launched several scholarly book series, and served as president of the Law and Society Association, which named an early-career prize in his honor. He is the author or editor of more than ninety books, chiefly on capital punishment, law and violence, and the cultural life of law, and writes regularly for Verdict, The Contrarian, and Inside Higher Ed.

T-invariant: I would like to start with the 1960s as a formative period of your life.  You finished college in 1969 and then went straight into graduate school at Wisconsin, which at that time was one of the epicenters of the era. What did those years mean for you — as a scholar, as a person, as a public intellectual? What thinkers, what movements, what events shaped you most?

Austin Sarat: Life in college in the 1960s in the United States was complicated, to say the least. Alongside doing the work you were supposed to do, you also had to deal with events in the world which seemed at that time to be quite unspeakably bad — in this case, the war in Vietnam.

I went to a Catholic school, where the college did not want the world to penetrate. When I arrived at Providence College in the 1960s, it had a dress code. It regulated the length of your hair. That was the kind of environment I experienced in college.

I loved my college experience. I fell in love with my teachers and imagined myself at some point doing what they were doing. A couple of them took a special interest in me and really mentored me and wanted me to go on to graduate school and get a PhD. Their ambition was that I should go to Yale to get a PhD. Alas, Yale didn’t want me. So I went to the University of Wisconsin, largely drawn by the presence of Michael Lipsky, who at that time was a leading figure in the study of cities and urban politics. I arrived in Madison in the fall of 1969. 

Madison was the opposite of Providence College. Where Providence College wanted to keep the world at bay, at Madison you couldn’t follow this principle. There were frequent demonstrations. The University’s Arts and Sciences campus was built on a hill and there were frequent demonstrations there. The presence of the National Guard, the use of tear gas — those things marked my experience as a graduate student. Looking back, as bad as the situation was with the war in Vietnam and the political situation, it was for me a time of hope — I thought people like me could make a difference in the academy and maybe in the world. But truth be told, my heart was more in the academy at that point than it was in the world. I loved political science and imagined that my greatest contribution would be from inside the academy, leading the career of a teacher and a scholar.

Amherst College Professor Austin Sarat Celebration of 50 Years Teaching. Photo: from Austin Sarat’s personal archive

T-i: As far as I understand, you came to your study of law “sideways”: you first became a political scientist, and only much later earned your degree in law. How did that background and that path shape the way you see law?

AS: When I did a postdoctoral year at Yale Law School, I saw a broader vision of what the study of law could entail. But I was still very much in the thrall of the way political scientists studied law: they took the blood and flesh off the subject. And I was quite comfortable with that at the time.

I came to Amherst to teach American politics and only had the idea of going to law school a decade after I started to teach. I went off to law school in 1985, and only there my vision broadened and changed.

My intellectual life turned because of an article written by a Yale law professor named Robert Cover. The title of the article was “Violence and the Word.” And from then till now, I’ve been imagining a conversation between myself and that article.

To study law, to be involved with law, is to have an opportunity to confront those two realities: the reality of language and its meanings, and the reality of violence and its uses.

T-i: In some of your courses and publications you say law consists of three components: moral argument, interpretive traditions, and the social organization of violence. For a reader who does not specialize in law, how could you explain how these three elements hold together?

AS: Most legal systems seek to articulate and reflect the moral values and political beliefs of the culture and country in which they are situated. And in most countries, legal disputes are developed on the terrain of arguments about what is right or just in accordance with the law.

But legal systems and legal institutions are not simply philosophical debating societies. Law is always articulated in language — codes, statutes, court decisions, orders. That means both citizens and scholars are called to attend to the way in which words are used and meanings are assigned in the articulation of laws and judgments. And in the United States and in the Anglo-American world, the way in which language is used in law is governed by its own set of rules.

There is no law without the possibility of enforcement. Otherwise, law is like a birthday card: it carries no more weight than a wish or a greeting. What gives law its weight is the deployment of violence. And legal systems deploy violence in a variety of ways. They punish people and authorize others to use violence.

To make sense of the world of law that surrounds us, we have to understand that we’re going to make arguments about what is right and fair. Those arguments should be made in ways that are recognizable to legal officials. We have to speak this language and follow these distinct traditions and to be aware that there is a lot at stake. When the poets are finished with their argument about what things mean, they go home. When the legal arguments are done, people lose their property, liberty, or in some cases even life.

T-i: For many years, the problem of capital punishment has been the focus of your research. Why has it held you for so long? And what do you think about the development of attitudes toward the whole issue in the United States — do you see it as part of a slow abolition, or of entrenchment?

AS: To study capital punishment is to have an opportunity to see the way in which the legal system — in my case, in the United States — seeks to legitimize the right to take the lives of citizens.

When I started to study capital punishment, I was less interested in its survival than in seeing through capital punishment to broader issues in the culture and the society. I thought this practice crystallizes our attitudes toward justice and mercy, our beliefs about deservedness, our horror at the crimes that in theory warrant capital punishment.

Over time, and somewhat to my surprise, I’ve come to live in two different worlds. One is the old world, where I studied the death penalty not to advance the cause of abolition. I am publishing a new book, and that’s not going to help abolish the death penalty.

But then I have this more public side. I write, and I’m now on the board of Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty.

And I think the practice of capital punishment is a moral horror. The United States is in a period of national reconsideration of capital punishment. I believe that the United States is on the road to abolition of the death penalty. The abolition is not going to come smoothly — there’ll be ups and downs.

But maybe not in my lifetime — certainly not in my lifetime — but in the lifetime of my thirty-year-old son, I would not be surprised if the death penalty died in the United States.

T-i: Why is it so important to study the new methods of capital punishment and to assess them?

AS: For the last several decades, arguments about the death penalty have shifted a little bit away from its morality and toward an examination of the way it works. You can be in favor of the death penalty in the abstract but against executing the innocent or against executing people because of their race or the race of their victim.

It’s my belief that the death penalty system in the United States is broken from beginning to end. Innocent people get convicted and sentenced to death row. You’re more likely to get a death sentence if you kill a white person than if you kill a person of color. Those are, in my view, easier problems than the cruelty of the method itself.

Because in theory the innocent who are condemned are innocent — they’re like you and me, they haven’t done anything — and people who get death sentences because of the race of their victim are clearly the subjects of injustice. But when we’re inside the execution chamber, we’re mostly dealing with people who “deserve to die,” if anyone ever deserves to die. It’s harder — and, in my view, more important — to focus on the fate of the guilty than on the fate of the innocent.

I don’t think there’s any method of execution, or any practice of execution, that can be considered anything other than cruel. I want to focus attention not just on the suffering of the people being condemned, but on the question of who we want to be. The way we punish is as much about those who punish as about those who are punished. What animates the people who do this?

The United States has been on this quest for a method of execution that would be safe, reliable, and humane. I think it’s a fool’s errand. There’s no method of execution that is going to be humane, even if we could find one that is “safe and reliable” — and we haven’t been able to, and we’re not going to be able to.

T-i: You created something unusual at Amherst — one of America’s most selective liberal-arts colleges. The department you founded there, Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, was among the first programs anywhere to teach undergraduates to study law as one of the humanities rather than as pre-law training. I know that when the college formally reviewed the program, an outside committee of experts judged it “superior to every other undergraduate program of its kind in the country.” How did the idea first emerge, and who stood with you as you built it?

AS: I’m going to mention Robert Cover again — “Violence and the Word.” I went to law school and had this intellectual revelation with Robert Cover; it was like deciphering the Rosetta Stone. I came back to the college, and soon the Mellon Foundation was soliciting grants from liberal arts colleges under the theme of “fresh combinations.” I picked up the phone and called my colleague Thomas Kearns from the philosophy department. I said, “Tom, we’re a fresh combination. Let’s see whether we can put together a program at the undergraduate level in law that’s the equivalent of studying religion. We have theology schools — that doesn’t mean we don’t teach undergraduates about religion. We have law schools — why can’t we teach undergraduates about law?”

Kearns and I got support through this Mellon initiative. We developed new courses that didn’t fit comfortably in political science or philosophy or history or anywhere else. And we were doing jazz more than symphony, because there were few, if any, models for us. The first course taught was called “The Fate of Law.” We didn’t want to do “legal studies”; we wanted to do what people had done in the study of religion — to study this thing in its social, intellectual, and cultural context.

LJST was founded on a kind of conceit: that we were going to revolutionize the study of law. We were going to set a model, not just for Amherst, but for the world of undergraduate education. We started a book series. I created new professional associations — all inspired by the idea that law is a subject in the liberal arts. And you don’t have to do it our way; you can have your own church. But at least recognize that law is a subject in the liberal arts: you can look into the way moral argument plays out, understand the play of language, confront the reality that people’s lives are on the line.

And our little college was a perfectly hospitable place to do it, because it’s a liberal arts college. It was easy intellectually and hard logistically, because this was not something the college needed to do, and people in political science were very threatened by this; in part, I think, because they thought it was going to kill the discipline of political science — everyone was going to go study law. The program was voted by the faculty in 1992. We did it differently than I think anybody else has ever done. Generally, when you adopt a new program, you first adopt the program and then the program articulates its curriculum. We did the reverse: we had a whole curriculum lined up, so that people knew what they were buying, so to speak, if they voted for the creation of LJST. The curriculum has changed since, but there it was.

T-i: If you were founding this program today, in the current political climate, would you do it differently? 

AS: Throughout most of my career as an intellectual, I have not wanted students to know what I think.

I don’t go in and try to persuade them. If they want to be in favor of the death penalty, then I would leave them to be in favor of the death penalty. But the present moment — the last decade or so in the United States — has occasioned in me a little bit of a rethinking. I still don’t want students to know what I think about most subjects, but I want them to understand the depth of my commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

So, in the face of the current moment — we can disagree about abortion, or environmental policy, or whatever, and that’s fine; I’m not going to tell you what I think about those things. But the ground norm for the work that we do, you and I, is democracy and the rule of law.

The original impulse of LJST was critical of the rule of law — as ideology, as mystification. And it’s a nightmare, in a way, to look back at all the things we wrote, and to hear similar lines now being articulated by the current President of the United States — “Oh, it’s just political.” In fact, just yesterday we were drafting a job description for a visiting professor, and I said, “How about we include in the job description someone who’s interested in the virtues of the rule of law?”

If I were founding it today, the three pillars would still be the same. But I think the orientation would be to a different kind of relationship to the practices of law in the world. Eighty million Americans voted for the current President of the United States knowing who he was. If you’re going to save democracy and the rule of law in the United States, you need to connect those things to what people care about — how they live, how their children live. Otherwise, why should they care?

T-i: In the recent year and a half, you have written a lot about what you call the weaponization of law against the rule of law. Where, for you, is the line between aggressive but still lawful executive action and what you would define as an actual assault on the rule of law? Has the American state already crossed that line?

AS: The answer to your last question is “yes.” We’ve had many powerful executives; we’ve had many presidents who stretched the limits of presidential power. Franklin Roosevelt used the power of the presidency, but I don’t think it was in the name of aggrandizing himself. This one is different. It’s not just that he’s a powerful executive. His conception of politics is messianic. It’s not just that he’s corrupt or egotistical. What’s his slogan? “Make America great again.” What did he say? “I alone can fix it.”

That’s what we must understand: whatever the peculiarities of his psyche, the politics is illiberal because it’s so personalistic. Whenever I talk about Trump, here’s what I try to say: you can call him names, but my guess is that when he looks in the mirror in the morning, he says to himself, “I’m going to save this country. And anything that gets in my way — what do I care about? Law? A few legal niceties? I’m on a mission from God.” And that’s what I think we need to understand.

We — the American academy — have spent too much time patting each other on the back and making sure we were using the right pronouns. We, the American academy, at a time when we are reviled, need to look outside, to try to understand why millions of people say, “I don’t care about any of that; he’s going to reduce inflation,” or “I don’t care about any of that; he’s going to put a stop to political correctness.”

I used to criticize public intellectuals for fancying themselves of some significance. Now, every day when I come into the office, what I’m likely to do is write something that has no audience in the academy. Every week for the last year and a half I’ve organized a protest — we stand on the corner and stand up for democracy. I’ve organized a network of alumni called the “Stand Up for Democracy Network.” I’ve organized things on campus and helped create a student organization called “Amherst Students for Democracy.”

Students from Amherst College at a rally in support of democracy. Photo: Alejandra Chavez-Flores / The Amherst Student

I don’t write, or demonstrate, or organize, imagining that I’m going to convert the hardcore Trump supporters. I don’t have time to do that. When I was complaining, “Oh, I’m not converting anybody,” one of my former students said, “You don’t understand how much it means to people who are on the front lines that people like you are writing.” I regard my writing as cheering on my side. I regard my writing as bearing witness. I regard my public activity as exemplifying what someone can do when they are terrified all the time. Fear is my friend, and it gets me out on the street — not because I’m courageous, and not because I think they care about me, but because if I don’t stand up, who will?

T-i: At this moment, what is the role of a scholar of law? What can such an expert do to help prevent the abuse of law?

AS: As an expert, I can claim the attention of legislators developing legislation. I can claim the attention of judges, if I’m asked to testify. When I write something for the public, I can do it as an expert: I know these things, and I want to tell you these things. But the real question is: what is the demand for my expertise, and to whom am I lending it? As a person who thinks for a living, do I see things that others might not see, or see them differently than others might?

I think our obligation emerges from our privilege — to be an intellectual, to be able to teach and write. I regard that as a privilege; I just mean, I’m glad I have a job. And with privilege, according to John Kennedy when he spoke at Amherst College in 1963, comes responsibility.

I tell everybody that if you ask the following question — namely, “What will work? What will work to preserve the rule of law? What will work to preserve a constitution?” — it’s the wrong question, because no one knows what will work.

Nevertheless, we need to do three things. The first thing we as citizens and residents of the United States need to do is put out the fire, in whatever way we can: demonstrate, protest, write, organize. The second thing is that we need to commit ourselves to a program of reform that is really oriented to dealing with the despair among large segments of the population.

Go to the emergency room at a public hospital and wait for seven hours. Call your cell phone provider and try to get decent service. Go to Stop & Shop and pick up feta cheese and look at the price: “It’s ten dollars?” Do I need to be an expert to know about those experiences? No, I don’t. Even if you can put out the fire, it’s only going to reignite if we don’t attend to the desperation that leads people to say, “I’ll choose him.”

The third thing is that we need to practice what I call thinking democratically. It means that I should tell the truth as I know it, but I need to tell it in a way that can be heard by someone who doesn’t already agree with me. It’s not enough to say, “You’re a racist, you’re a sexist” — nobody’s mind is going to be changed. To think democratically, you must speak less and listen more. American democracy in many ways failed long before Trump. Trump is a symptom.

You must be curious. You must practice empathy before judgment. You can do that alone; you don’t need to be part of a movement to do it. We not only need to rebuild the infrastructure of democracy — we need to rebuild a culture of democracy.

I’m committed to a program of reform when the time comes — and that will mean people like me live a little less well, so that others can live a little better.

T-i: What’s happening to American higher education under Trump’s presidency, in your view?

AS: American higher education was in trouble long before Donald Trump came on the scene. Now, to talk about American higher education is to talk about apples and oranges and tomatoes and broccoli — the community colleges, the state universities, the research universities; it’s a different thing in each case. What I know best is Amherst College and similar liberal arts colleges.

Amherst College. Photo: amherst.edu

In many ways, places like Amherst had lost their way, but they didn’t know it. If you wanted to talk about racism, Amherst was a fine place for you, long before Trump. If you wanted to denounce capitalism, Amherst was a fine place for you, long before Trump. If you wanted to talk about the white working class, Amherst was not such a fine place for you — because you’d have to look long and hard for people who cared about the white working class.

American higher education, even small colleges, is hierarchical. Colleges and universities in the United States were much more collegial than they are now. I’m not talking about a golden age when everything was great, but let’s be honest — teaching is undervalued in most places. You want to get a job offer? No one’s going to give you a job because you’re a terrific teacher. They’re going to give you a job because you wrote something. That’s fine, but it speaks to a certain kind of values.

So, we were ripe for the picking. And then Trump comes along. What could be better to have as a target? His brand of politics is so interesting, because he targets the powerless — immigrants — and the powerful — he goes after law firms and prestigious universities. What he’s done to American higher education is both dreadful and a kind of slap in the face that may have helped higher education in the United States.

The horrors are unspeakable. But before Trump, if I asked most of my colleagues to explain the difference between academic freedom and freedom of speech, they could not do it. Now, at least, there’s a conversation about what academic freedom is and how to protect it. My hope is that out of the crisis will come something good — a renewal, a regeneration, a recommitment, a recentering of values. How’s that for optimism?

T-i: What can be done, at both the national and the local level, to minimize this harm?

AS: We need alliances, not enclaves.

I’ll give you an example. I was very involved in getting the college to add something to its commitment to academic freedom. The commitment to academic freedom has been, in effect, “The institution won’t punish me.” I said, “That’s fine, but I’m not worried about the institution. I’m worried about threats from the outside.” And the college changed its statement on academic freedom.

It’s the same thing as we think about rebuilding democracy. If you say, “Oh yes, we’re the pure, we’re the just, we’re the righteous.” Why should anybody come to the rescue of American higher education if the attitude is, “Well, what have you done for me?” The next thing I wanted to do was to get the faculty to vote on a democracy resolution. It’s not that we stand for something only when it benefits us. Democracy is essential to education, but our commitment to standing up for democracy is not just so that we’ll live more comfortably. The more that all of us can be seen to be committed to things that don’t just benefit us, the better off we’ll be.

T-i: Why do you think the motivation toward building alliances is still so low?

AS: In the United States this has been going on for a decade, and many people are just beaten down. Others are afraid. Others just want to turn off the noise and take their kids to the skating rink or the library. We know the way this works, and Trump has been pretty good at it. It’s like when your roof is leaking — but it’s leaking from nineteen different places. You put a bucket over here, and then it leaks over there: you are tired of moving your bucket around the house.

I think politics at this moment requires navigating between fear and faith: fear in what I see, faith in what I cannot yet see.

The post Austin Sarat: “Fear Is My Friend” appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has turned quarter a century in June, and, significantly, it has grown to counter Western hegemony in the global political and financial systems. Throughout the SCO’s history, Russia has viewed it primarily as a platform to utilize in order to remain influential in Central Asia at an affordable cost and never lose it to China, and establish multipolarity in the face of the Western-led order which it sees as threatening. During the first 15 years, the SCO was only secondary for Russia after to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Subsequently, the platform has become more important in Moscow’s diplomatic bag. After 2014 and particularly after 2022, it has become one of the last institutions where Russia can act as a normal member of the international community, rather than an isolated pariah state.

Russia’s multilateralism is of a broader pattern: international institutions are important to it primarily as a means to affirm its status and overcome Western constraints, and less as a means of profound integration.

The Founding Logic: Border Security and a Secondary Track

The SCO is the successor to the Shanghai Five formed in 1996. The latter was born out of a technical issue: demarcating and demilitarizing the Sino-Soviet border with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. As Moscow’s politics at the time was recovering from the collapse of the Soviet administrative structures, its main concern was preventing an institutional vacuum rather than establishing a new supranational mechanism. For Russia, it was beneficial but not imperative. Moscow’s focus during the post-Soviet era was on its own post-Soviet arrangements, particularly the CSTO as a military alliance, rather than the SCO, which is more of a bridge to China. This hierarchy has hardly changed following the SCO’s formalization as an organization with counter-terrorism ambitions in 2001. In the 2000s, Russia’s Central Asia policy shifted to bilateral agreements and the CSTO’s collective-defense provisions, deliberately not in the SCO’s repertoire. What the CSTO could not provide was a framework involving China, while the SCO offered a way to handle Beijing’s regional agenda without granting it sole authority over it.

A Division of Labor, Not a Partnership of Equals

In the 2010s, a working division emerged. After the 2018 Qingdao Summit, the International Institute for Strategic Studies stated: “Russia leads in politico-military affairs, communications, and culture, whereas China leads in economic development, investment, and infrastructure.” The comparative advantage was not accidental: Russia was not able to compete with China for capital. Yet Russia possessed cultural and military capabilities with which it could dominate a region with a Soviet-trained population: the Russian language was relatively accessible and many Central Asian officers had been trained in Russia. Russia’s relevance to the SCO has payed its way in the Peace Mission joint exercises, in which Russia typically takes the lead while China is comparatively inexperienced in training military forces’ interoperability. This “division of labor” allows Moscow to maintain presence in the security field where Beijing becomes less significant.

The SCO was obviously never intended to be the real driver of Russia’s regional agenda, as its parallel institution-building reveals.

The Eurasian Union proposed by Vladimir Putin in 2011 and realized as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015 was a Russian-led alternative to Chinese-led economic integration. It duplicated, rather than complemented, the SCO’s long-awaited free-trade aspirations. With Russia and China coordinating the projects, it became a forum that all SCO members could attend, once the terms were agreed between the two countries. As the pattern suggests, when Russia controls the terms, it builds its own structures and joins the SCO only as a cheap move.

Guarding against Chinese Primacy through Enlargement

Russia has been pushing for India’s SCO membership (along with Pakistan’s) as a strategy to reduce Chinese influence in the region, not as a sincere effort to strengthen regional order. The growth of the SCO, in which China backs Pakistan and Russia backs India, was also a point of difference between the two powers. By 2018, both South Asian states had become full-fledged members, and the SCO’s promotional numbers—80% of Eurasia’s landmass, 43% of the world’s population, a quarter of the global GDP—proved useful not because they indicated a functional integration of the states under the club’s influence, but because they reduced China’s share in the bloc. It is in keeping with what the preface of Marochkin and Bezborodov’s book[1] says about the SCO’s value: “a new experience of reference within intergovernmental regional organizations which would be appropriate to a new international world of growing attempts to establish a unipolar world to the detriment of a multipolar one.” The preface, written mostly by Russian university scholars, reflects Russian official discourse and speaks of mistrust between “world powers,” a “crisis of the geopolitical paradigm,” and a “post-COVID world of turbulence and uncertainty” in which the SCO’s chief utility lies in proving that it is possible to live in a world without Western tutelage.

Sovereignty as a Design Principle, Not Accident

This symbolic function accounts for Russia’s lack of aspirations towards the SCO’s supranational authority, unlike its rhetorical flirting, at times, with the EAEU’s deeper integration—a tool in which Moscow has the edge.

The organization’s initial pledges of “mutual trust, mutual respect, equality, ... respect for diverse civilizations” are appropriate for Russia twice over: they preclude the organization from permitting the outside world to examine its own policies and practices, and they set the SCO apart from the European Union model that the Kremlin has always seen as a tool for exporting Western values.

The same is evident in Naarajärvi’s conceptual framework of new-regionalism, where the SCO is ranked low in “political integration” and Central Asian regionalization is characterized as being “tightly in the hands of the state administrations”[2]—an aspect the researcher considers to be somewhat old. For Russia, it is not a failure but the essence: inscribing itself as the center of the forum simultaneously shields its rulers’ sovereignty from external criticism.

Conclusion: Dependency without Deference

Russian policy towards the SCO has always been that of measured instrumentalism—with little investment where it had other options, with symbolic emphasis when it needed a stage, and with a constant opposition to any institutional depth that might limit its capacity for action.

The SCO has become more integral to Russia’s interests in the last few years: following the imposition of Western sanctions its search for alternative venues for diplomatic negotiations and non-Western political forums has grown, as well as the need to rely on China as an economic partner of last resort.

Also, the SCO has become more important to Russia as Beijing has strengthened its influence within the SCO while Russia has weakened its own.

Russian multilateralism has one obvious core contradiction: institutions become more valuable to Moscow when its role in fashioning them decreases. Rather than a keystone of Russian grand strategy, the SCO is a reflection of its limitations; and the more it remains the only choice for posturing, the more useful it is.

The abridged version of this text has been published in Russian in the newspaper Kommersant as part of the project Contours of the Future.

Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap has become a fatalistic narrative in Western policy circles, asserting that a rising power and an established hegemon are bound to clash. This article rejects such determinism while acknowledging genuine bilateral risks. Great-power war is a political choice shaped by institutional guardrails, economic ties, strategic doctrines, and domestic politics. Structural frictions between the U.S.-led alliance system and the emerging multipolar order are manageable through reciprocal transparency, balanced crisis mechanisms, and mutual respect for sovereign equality under the UN Charter. Drawing on the May 2026 Trump-Xi Summit and recent defense shifts, this analysis outlines a pragmatic path towards managed coexistence—contingent on parallel adjustments by Washington and Beijing.

The Trap Is a Warning, not a Verdict

Twelve of sixteen historical power transitions ended in war, yet these statistics are a historical correlation, not an unbreakable law. The Thucydides framework ignores modern constraints absent in ancient Athens and Sparta: nuclear deterrence, the UN Charter’s prohibition on aggressive war, over $1 trillion in bilateral economic integration, and global public aversion to great-power conflicts. A 2023 Pew survey shows that most people in both countries view war as an existential threat, which creates shared political incentives for de-escalation.

Conflict erupts only when three conditions converge: mutual security anxieties calcify into paranoid misperception, domestic hawkish voices override war’s catastrophic costs, and crisis communication collapses. All three are amenable to policy intervention.

The question is not whether war is inevitable, but whether the leaders on both sides possess the political will to keep these triggers in check, and whether Washington can abandon its zero-sum framing of China’s rise.

Structural Tensions: Asymmetric Postures and Divergent Interests

The current frictions arise from a structural mismatch: the U.S.-centered alliance order built for bipolar confrontation struggles to accommodate a multipolar world. China does not seek to overturn the international system but to reform its inequitable elements—a legitimate aspiration shared by many developing nations.

Washington’s perspective: U.S. strategists cite China’s military modernization, South China Sea infrastructure, and Taiwan Strait drills as sources of regional instability. These concerns are understandable but must diregard the context: China’s naval buildup is defensive, with over 80% of its energy imports traversing vulnerable sea lanes.

Beijing’s perspective: The U.S. maintains 375 military installations across the Indo-Pacific, has expanded exclusive blocs like AUKUS, enforces unilateral technology containment, and repeatedly passes legislation interfering in China’s internal affairs—most egregiously on the Taiwan question. This constitutes strategic encirclement that no sovereign state could tolerate.

Acknowledging legal contestation: Beijing regards activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea as sovereign rights under its interpretation of international law, though it acknowledges that the U.S. and its allies hold a different legal interpretation, yet such differences cannot serve as grounds for repeated military provocations near China’s territorial waters.

The disproportionateness is clear: U.S. forces operate globally; China’s posture is regionally defensive. Yet Washington demands Chinese transparency while reserving its own opacity—an imbalance that fuels rather than reduces mistrust.

Strategic Doctrine, Not Cultural Stereotypes

Many Western analysts invoke Confucian or Tianxia tropes to label China as inherently non-expansionist—a flawed civilizational essentialism that explains little. Pre-modern dynasties conducted frontier expansions; culture alone does not determine a state’s behavior.

China’s official defense White Papers (2019, 2022) offer a clearer framework: Beijing rejects hegemonism and expansionism, prioritizes homeland defense, and follows Sun Tzu’s logic of deterrence over offensive warfare. Military strength exists to counter external threats, as confrontation would derail China’s core goal of high-quality development. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embodies this orientation, prioritizing developmental influence through economic interdependence rather than military conquest. While critics have raised debt concerns, China has implemented meaningful reforms: restructured repayment timelines, expanded grant financing and independent third-party audits in partner countries. Implementation remains a work in progress, but the trajectory reflects a strategic choice for cooperation over coercion.

The Decoupling Paradox: Eroding Economic Guardrails

Bilateral trade reached $664 billion in 2025, with total commercial activity exceeding $1 trillion. The Peterson Institute estimates full-scale conflict would reduce global GDP by 10–15% within two years. Yet economic integration alone cannot prevent war, as pre-1914 Europe tragically demonstrated.

Today’s critical paradox is that the U.S. actively enforces decoupling in strategically vital sectors—semiconductors, AI, quantum computing—via export controls and industrial subsidies, while low-stakes sectors like consumer goods provide limited stabilizing effect. The economic buffer is being eroded where it matters most. The 2026 summit’s Trade and Investment Boards offer some relief, but their impact is undermined by Washington’s unilateral technology containment. While China has consistently advocated for open, rules-based trade, Washington’s export controls and industrial subsidies have increasingly weaponised economic interdependence. China maintains that such unilateral measures are counterproductive but also recognizes that strategic competition in dual-use technologies will likely persist, making it all the more urgent to preserve cooperation in non-strategic sectors.

The May 2026 Summit: Partial Progress, Unresolved Contradictions

The May 2026 summit yielded tangible results: joint trade boards, expanded agricultural cooperation, resumed military dialogue, and a ‘strategic stability’ framework. The U.S. Defense Secretary softened adversarial rhetoric at the Shangri-La Dialogue—a positive but insufficient step.

Yet severe risks persist. China’s decision to send scholarly rather than ministerial defense delegates reflected Beijing’s assessment that U.S. congressional actions on Taiwan undercut the Summit’s positive momentum. While this was a diplomatic signal of displeasure, it also highlighted a mutual problem: neither side has fully insulated crisis communication from domestic political interference. The two sides have not established clear, symmetrical red lines distinguishing routine operations from provocations. The summit built a dialogue framework but failed to resolve distrust rooted in U.S. containment strategy. Above all, Washington must stop repeatedly damaging China’s core interests such as the Taiwan question to create necessary preconditions for sustained high-level military exchanges.

Domestic Politics: Reactive Pressures on Both Sides

Domestic hawkishness in both nations is largely reactive to the other’s strategic moves. In the U.S., Congress consistently outflanks the executive on China policy, with partisan incentives pushing presidential candidates towards anti-China rhetoric and legislative interference in Taiwan affairs.

In China, public sentiment on the Taiwan question constrains unilateral concessions when citizens regard territorial integrity as an inviolable bottom line. This nationalist sentiment arises from decades of external pressure, not inherent aggression. For China, sovereignty, particularly over Taiwan, is non-negotiable, a position rooted in domestic consensus.

For the U.S., alliance commitments and democratic values are similarly non-negotiable domestic imperatives. Recognizing each other’s domestic red lines, rather than testing them, is essential to prevent domestic pressures from driving escalation.

Three Symmetrical De-escalation Mechanisms for Consideration

To translate the summit’s diplomatic momentum into durable stability, policymakers on both sides may wish to consider several equal, verifiable operational rules to prevent accidental escalation:

First, a 72-hour advance notification mechanism for missile tests, large-scale coastal naval exercises, and strategic bomber deployments, modelled on the 1988 U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement, with identical obligations for both sides. Such transparency would reduce the information asymmetry that fuels worst-case assumptions.

Second, a dual-site joint crisis communication center in Hawaii and Beijing, staffed with dedicated language officers and enabling real-time, symmetrical data sharing on maritime and aerial activity, transforming crisis response from hours to minutes.

Third, mutual annual disclosure of military exercise schedules: China publishing South China Sea and Taiwan Strait drill plans and the U.S. publishing its Freedom of Navigation Operations and allied exercise plans near Chinese waters. This would normalize activities currently interpreted as provocative.

These measures are technically feasible and low-cost. Their adoption depends on political willingness, particularly whether Washington can accept symmetric transparency rather than demanding Chinese concessions while reserving its own prerogatives. China has consistently supported balanced confidence-building; the question is whether the U.S. is prepared to reciprocate.

Reciprocal Adjustments, Differentiated Responsibilities

Sustainable stability demands reciprocal but differentiated adjustments based on each side’s structural position.

For the U.S.: Washington must accept China’s legitimate aspiration for fair global governance reform, scale back provocative close-in patrols, end blanket industrial suppression disguised under tech security safeguards, and cease legislative interference in Taiwan. The U.S. alliance system was built for a bipolar era; its expansion now destabilizes rather than secures the region.

For China: Beijing will continue enhancing UN-aligned military spending transparency, strengthen multilateral BRI oversight, and publish defensive drill schedules on a reciprocal basis, without compromising sovereignty over Taiwan and adjacent waters.

U.S. adjustments require reconsidering military deployments and technology controls that Beijing views as hostile; China’s adjustments require deepening transparency measures that Washington views as essential. Both carry domestic political costs. The challenge is not determining who moves first but designing a parallel framework where both sides’ adjustments are sequenced and verifiable, building trust through simultaneous, reciprocal action.

*   *   *

The Thucydides Trap is a cautionary tale, not an inevitable prophecy. Managed coexistence requires symmetrical crisis rules, balanced domestic narratives, and guardrails separating global collaborative issues from geopolitical competition. Climate action, pandemic response, and nuclear non-proliferation can anchor bilateral ties if insulated from rivalry.

The 2026 Summit established the foundation for dialogue. The task ahead is to populate it with equal, reciprocal operational rules. In a nuclear multipolar world, coexistence is not idealism, it is the only rational path. Long-term stability hinges on both capitals: Washington acknowledging China’s legitimate aspirations for global governance reform and security, and Beijing continuing to provide the transparency and reassurance that addresses allied concerns. Neither side can demand the other move first; both must move together sequencing their adjustments through the institutional framework established at the 2026 Summit. Fundamentally, enduring stability cannot be achieved unless the U.S. abandons its outdated hegemonic mindset of containing China’s peaceful development.

Since the second decade of the 21st century the world has been living in a situation of disorder, which has now transformed into the most dangerous geopolitical turmoil since World War II. Its main characteristics are:

1) The emergence and consolidation of a multipolar world triggered by the rapid rise of China and other East Asian nations.

2) The relative decline of the West, accelerated by the United States’ highly problematic strategic choices: a three-front war against Russia, China, and Iran and, since 2025, an unprecedented fragmentation of the West.

3) The West’s frantic efforts to reverse its gradual decline, stopping short at nothing, including violation of international rules, use of violence, and piracy. To preserve their dominance, the U.S. and its allies are resorting to military operations and even wars.  

4) This notwithstanding, the West, and especially the U.S., remain powerful to cause—and are causing—great damage urbi et orbi. This fact should not be underestimated.

An important facet of the West’s decline is its moral decay and intellectual degradation. This is clearly seen in the low morals of current European leaders, with few exceptions, and of U.S. presidents; as well as the electoral fraud and manipulations (e.g., used to elect George W. Bush and then Donald J. Trump twice as presidents).

Few could have imagined the scope of corruption, debauchery, and pedophilia among politicians, businessmen and intellectuals as the disclosed sex offence scheme of Jeffrey Epstein and his high-profile circle has shown.

The Intensification of Racism in the West: Geopolitical Implications

All of this is well known in general outlines. Less recognized and often overlooked is the racial underpinning of the current tense geopolitical situation. The widespread ingrained racism of structural nature adds a particularly perverse connotation to the current geopolitical picture.

For purposes of analysis, today’s world can be divided into two parts—the Collective West and the Global South. The Collective West is normally understood as comprising the U.S.-led states: Canada, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and some other high-income countries. The population of the West, excluding Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, accounts for merely 12% of the world’s population, with a tendency to decrease. The Global South is usually understood to correspond to the Rest (to recall Niall Ferguson’s book The West and the Rest), i.e., the emerging and developing countries of Eurasia, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The central point is that approximately 3/4 of the people residing in the West are white, with non-white minorities mainly employed in low-skilled jobs that whites are no longer willing to do.

The population of the Global South is completely different in terms of racial composition. The vast majority are blacks, browns, yellows, mestizos, etc. Whites have been a minority in Africa, Asia, and even Latin America, where European colonization had more weight.

 In the white West, structural racism has taken root, anchored in the conviction that Western civilization, more developed and sophisticated, is the product of superior people. People of much older civilizations, such as Chinese, Indian and Iranian, smile ironically at this pretension. When Mahatma Gandhi was asked by a journalist what he thought of Western civilization, the answer was: “I think it would be a good idea.”

Western racism is an old and persisting phenomenon. In the second half of the 20th century it was disguised by varying layers of hypocrisy, today the feeling of superiority over non-whites has become more transparent.

Yet the peoples who were previously colonized or semi-colonized no longer recognize the superiority of whites. They resist the colonial or neocolonial schemes of exploitation imposed by the Europeans and the Americans. They want to have their rights accepted—in practice and not just in theory. As Vladimir Putin said, “The Western elites are used to stuff their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money. That vampire’s ball is coming to an end.”

The world’s white minority adamantly resents losing world hegemony and the privileges associated with it. ‘Human, all too human,’ Nietzsche would say. Centuries of world domination are not easily forgotten and abandoned.

The Growing Resistance to Immigration and Civilizational Regression

Another phenomenon of crucial importance is the large-scale migration of Latin Americans, Africans and West Asians who flee wars (many of them unleashed by the West) or seek better living conditions in the U.S. and Europe. As migration grows, so does the revulsion in the West towards immigrants, especially Muslims. Restrictions on immigration have gained broad public support among Europeans and Americans. The barriers and—often—inhumane ways of border control, hostility against immigrants, and resentment against even migrant citizens, are indicative of the U.S. and Europe’s civilizational regression.

The popular fight against immigration, on both sides of the North Atlantic, partly reflects the desire to protect Western culture against the growing presence of people belonging to other cultures and other religions. This is understandable. However, it is mixed with deep-rooted racism—the belief in the superiority of whites. Remarkable in this respect is that white immigrants, e.g., from Ukraine, face far fewer obstacles in Europe than Arabs or black Africans. A Ukrainian immigrant or refugee is basically seen as “one of us.”

What we have, in fact, is a new form of xenophobic fascism, with the radical rejection of immigrants at its heart. On the political party level, it is manifested in the rise of the ‘new right’ discourse in Europe and the United States.

Often referred to as ‘populist’, resonating with broad anti-immigration public sentiment, it is growing—partly because the traditional parties cannot embrace it without violating their basic principles.

Like Jews in Nazi Germany and other European countries, Muslims and other non-whites have been made a convenient scapegoat for the adverse social consequences of the West’s decline and the impossibility of continuing to exploit the rest of the world. Non-white migrants are held responsible for all sorts of crimes and violence. They are accused of replacing white workers and generating unemployment among them—when, in fact, migrant workers are engaged in unautomated and low-paid jobs that the white population rejects.

The ‘new right’ discourse in Europe and America is not exactly new, it is rather a regression to the pre-Enlightenment conceptions. It can be called fascist or Nazi, as it contains elements of this worldview, with Muslims occupying the place previously reserved for Jews. Civilizational regression has acquired such a dimension that it would be appropriate to speak of an Age of Obscurantism or an Age of Endarkenment. In what other era could an absolutely crude figure like Donald Trump be at the center of the world stage? Trump is an extreme case, but the truth is that few Western leaders measure up to the positions they hold.

In short, Europe and the U.S., previously at the forefront of the Enlightenment, are vigorously sponsoring a movement in the opposite direction.  The 18th century became known as the Century of Enlightenment; the 21st century may go down in history as the Century of Endarkenment.

Palestinian Genocide

The genocide perpetrated by Israeli Jews against Palestinians is perhaps the clearest symptom of Western civilization’s shipwreck and the central ingredient of this Age of Endarkenment. Europe’s and, above all, the U.S.’s support of Israel has compromised, perhaps irreversibly, the West’s adherence to the moral values it has been preaching so vigorously.

Importantly, Israel is far from an isolated case. Israel’s settler colonialism and genocide in Palestine have many precedents. In fact, Israel’s criminal behavior is part of the centuries-old European tradition.

 What is happening in Gaza is the latest colonial genocide practiced by white Europeans against non-whites. Beginning in the 16th century, Europeans and their descendants destroyed peoples in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania to occupy their lands with immigrants from the metropolis. In Europe itself, the Holocaust would not have had the prominence it has if it had not victimized whites. Using various forms of genocide, Europeans victimized other races in what we now call the Global South, to the point of exterminating them completely or partially, like in Australia and North and South America.

The crucial and much commented difference of the genocide in Gaza from the previous genocides is that it has got wide and instantaneous media coverage, with a planetary impact. The Germans could, with some credibility, claim that they were unaware of the atrocities committed in the Nazi concentration camps, the Israelis are not in a position to claim the same.  And they do not really try. Moreover, Zionist extremists, inside and outside the Netanyahu government, take pride in killing Palestinians, justifying it by the “fight against terrorism” and even presenting the murder of Palestinian children as the elimination of “future terrorists.”

Furthermore, Gaza is sometimes interpreted as an experiment of the decaying Western Empire—a genocide broadcast globally in real time as a warning to all. The message goes like this: look what can happen to non-white peoples who resist the imperial pretensions of the West.

Inevitably, political, economic, and military support for Israel by the U.S. and most of Europe exacts an immense political price. No one believes anymore in the existence of Western values. The image, once so strong, has been destroyed in the name of a stalwart defense of Israel’s policies and priorities.

Challenges for Brazil

In conclusion a few words about Brazil that may be partly relevant to other nations of the Global South.

How can we prepare Brazil for a new international era, very different from the one we were used to?

The first imperative for Brazilians is to abandon, as soon as possible, the belief that international differences can be resolved with goodwill, diplomacy, and soft power. Careful psychological, economic and military preparation is imperative to face the storms ahead. It is not a choice or something that can be postponed. This is the most urgent challenge facing the country.

In the psychological realm, we need to overcome the inferiority complex that downgrades the country and makes our international relations so difficult. In other words, we must throw overboard all the remnants of centuries of cultural colonization. We also need to abandon our traditional pacifism—not to attack anyone, but to remember that to live in peace one needs to prepare for war. Se vis pacem para bellum, as the Romans said.

In the economy, Brazil must seek self-sufficiency in essential areas, avoiding dependence on foreign suppliers whenever feasible, especially from countries that appear as potential aggressors. Strategic production chains must be built mostly within the national territory or in reliable countries.

Self-sufficiency generates, of course, losses in economic efficiency, but the time is gone when one could rely with some plausibility on trade and financial openness as levers for development.

The second imperative is of positive nature. Brazil is able, perhaps like no other country, to offer a new word to the world, a message of reconciliation and unity. Moreover, our historical destiny may be in starting, together with other nations, a Second Renaissance that will free us from the threats and catastrophes of the Age of Endarkenment.

Thanks to its dimensions, mix of peoples from all parts of the planet, and tradition of openness to the world, Brazilians can play a significant role in the world’s salvation.

On July 23, the U.S. Department of Defense published a new list of organizations that, according to its assessment, pose a threat to U.S. national security or are engaged in problematic activity. The list includes Moscow State University, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the Higher School of Economics, Ural Federal University, and numerous other universities and research institutes. The Pentagon believes that these organizations may aim to steal American intellectual property, research data, technologies, and scientific innovations. The Department therefore urges American universities, research institutes, and individual scholars receiving Department of Defense funding not to collaborate with them in any way, exchange data, or provide financial support. Notably, this list is not identical to existing U.S. sanctions lists (read more: “Scientific Front: Who in Russian Science Ended Up Under Western Sanctions — and Why”) and it appeared at a time when, according to Reuters, the U.S. administration has significantly reduced efforts to enforce sanctions against Russia. T-invariant explores what this new policy means for American and Russian academia, how it differs from sanctions law, and who is likely to be affected. 

T-INVARIANT BRIEFING

The restrictions certainly apply to:

• Researchers affiliated with the listed organizations and working in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, technology, and defense-related fields.
• American universities and colleges receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.

They are highly likely to affect:

• All employees of listed institutions, regardless of their academic discipline.
• Students of the listed universities when applying to conferences or submitting articles to journals affiliated with American universities or companies.
• Universities, colleges, research institutes, think tanks, and other organizations worldwide that receive funding from the U.S. government.

The restrictions might affect:

• Students and graduates of these institutions when applying to American universities.
• Universities in third countries participating in projects funded by the U.S. government.
• Researchers at other universities and institutes in Russia, Iran, and China.

The list was issued as an implementation of Section 1286 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2019. The NDAA is a law that is issued every year and that determines the structure and budget of the U.S. military, including troop numbers, defense spending, modernization programs, and other issues. However, alongside military provisions, Congress also includes neighboring measures, such as foreign policy objectives, and funding allocation. The 2019 NDAA received broad bipartisan support and was signed by President Donald Trump. Compared with previous versions, it increased the military budget, while shifting America’s strategic focus in foreign policy away from counterterrorism toward long-term competition with China and Russia, with considerably greater emphasis on China. This legislation was especially discussed in the media due to the restrictions of Section 889 targeting Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE.

As part of the same great power competition strategy, Congress included provisions designed to protect American academic research from foreign influence and intellectual property theft. Section 1286, which received the updated list of “problematic organizations,” is titled Initiative to support protection of national security academic researchers from undue influence and other security threats and it specifically addresses universities conducting defense and technology research. Although Congress passes a new NDAA every year, the Pentagon continues updating the same list of the Section 1286 of NDAA 2019 because the 2019 law explicitly requires the Department of Defense to revise it on a regular basis. The July 23 publication is therefore not a new law, but the latest update of an existing mechanism. Being published every year, these updates all have special emphasis, relevant for the moment. For instance, the 2025 version is primarily aimed at preventing foreign influence over research sponsored by the Department of Defense. 

Such activities as funding sanctioned organizations, or exchanging data, were already prohibited by sanctions laws. Also, scholars employed by those organizations could not participate in conferences, or get published in the leading journals if they maintained formal affiliations. There are three fundamental points of difference between the new Pentagon list and sanctions: who is affected, who enforces the law, and what the consequences of violations are. 

Who is affected?

Previous sanctions and earlier lists (such as the 2023 Section 1286 list) targeted a relatively small number of universities involved mainly in military technology development or, in Russia’s case, in promoting state propaganda. Moreover, the restrictions were generally limited to individual representatives or to specific institutes. Before the new list appeared, the largest Russian research center to be included in such restrictions in its entirety was Skolkovo, which was added in 2023 – and in that case, it was hardly surprising.

This time, however, the Pentagon included 13 Russian universities as whole bodies,  and those were not only institutions specializing in engineering, physics, and biology, but also several major multidisciplinary universities, including Moscow State University (MSU), the Higher School of Economics (HSE), and Ural Federal University (UrFU). Several of China’s leading multidisciplinary universities, including Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, were also added. HSE employees, speaking on condition of anonymity, told T-invariant  that until now they had been able to collaborate with Western universities as private researchers without listing their affiliation, they participated in conferences online and sometimes even in person, conducted joint research, and published articles.

HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov meeting students from Luhansk State University participating in the “special military operation.” Photo: Telegram channel “Вышка для своих (HSE for the Our Own).”

However, the wording of the new document makes it possible to extend the restrictions to employees of the listed organizations themselves. This means that concealing one’s institutional affiliation and presenting oneself as an independent researcher may no longer be sufficient to circumvent the restrictions: any collaboration between American researchers and scholars who are simply employed by universities on the list falls under Pentagon restrictions. Moreover, even though most organizations on the list conduct research in physics, technology, and such, the policy could affect physicians, historians, and even scholars of the Swahili language.

Who enforces the restrictions?

Another noteworthy aspect is that these measures operate through the National Defense Authorization Act, meaning they are administered by the Department of Defense, unlike the traditional sanctions system. Sanctions are often described as decisions made by the U.S. government as a whole, but departments matter. In reality, Sanctions legislation is passed through Congress or came in force by a presidential decree, and enforcement is typically carried out by either the Treasury Department or the Department of Commerce. But this list is neither a sanction imposed for specific actions, nor a punishment for participating in war or violating the law. Instead, it is presented as a preventive measure designed to protect American research and technology from national security threats. Meanwhile, the official sanctions lists themselves do not receive any updates, and President Trump has repeatedly signaled a willingness to improve relations with leaders of countries that remain under U.S. sanctions. 

The Department of Defense is publishing this update because it is legally required to. At the same time, it does not provide any specific evidence demonstrating that every organization included is “engaging in activities that threaten U.S. national security interests.” The use of national security and foreign influence concerns as justifications for government intervention in science, media, and business is all too familiar from the Russian experience and feels rather unsettling. That is why it is important to understand what this policy means not only for Russian science, but also for American academia.

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After taking office, President Trump began exerting significant pressure on American universities. His primary targets were campus protests and the promotion of woke ideas concerning equality and the rights of gender, racial, and sexual minorities. The principal tool was the threat of cutting off federal funding. Yet even during Trump’s first presidency, the administration had already started intervening in universities through the concerns of espionage, and in 2018, the Department of Justice launched the China Initiative. According to the MIT Technology Review, the effectiveness of the initiative is highly questionable, partly because the Department of Justice never clearly explained its concrete objectives beyond broad references to protecting American technology and combating espionage. It also failed to clarify the criteria used to initiate investigations. Information about many cases never appeared on official government websites, some records were removed following media inquiries and requests for comment, and only about one quarter of the cases received actual convictions. Moreover, many prosecutions had no obvious connection to national security. This precedent is especially significant in light of the new Section 1286 list, as a precedent. As follows from the name of the programme, approximately 90% of those prosecuted under China Initiative were scholars of Chinese origin, and members of Asian diasporas were subjected to disproportionate scrutiny by law enforcement. MIT Technology Review argues that one of the initiative’s most damaging consequences was the brain drain of highly qualified researchers from the United States. Scientists and scholars were leaving because of the discrimination and pressure from the law enforcement, and it became harmful for the American science itself.

Participants in the Stop Anti-Asian Racism & China Bashing rally in Washington, D.C., March 27, 2021. Photo: Elvert Barnes / Flickr.

During President Biden’s administration, the espionage agenda receded somewhat into the background, but it reemerged, as Trump took office again. On March 26, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce heard reports on the activities of foreign intelligence services on university campuses. Once again, the discussion focused primarily on alleged espionage involving Chinese students, the recruitment of American students on campus, and cases in which researchers were drawn into projects without being informed on the true purpose of the research. It is worth noting that in his opening remarks, the committee chair emphasized that international collaborations should benefit America rather than its rivals. This idea contradicts the traditional understanding of academia as a transnational space for free exchange of knowledge. International conferences, academic and cultural exchanges, collaborative research, and multinational projects have advanced and benefited science worldwide for decades. As with the China Initiative, extending the logic of national security into universities and scientific research challenges this principle and contributes to the isolation of American science.

At the same time, it would be wrong to deny that espionage, foreign interference in academia and business, and theft of American intellectual property do exist. Roughly one quarter of China Initiative prosecutions ended in convictions, and over the past year, several cases have emerged involving Chinese intelligence agents infiltrating American academic institutions. But these cases differ in one respect, crucial for the NDAA 2019 list: the spies concealed their connections to Chinese universities, military structures, or intelligence agencies. They would typically enter the United States as students, visiting researchers, fellows, or even professors while hiding their institutional ties. They transferred research data and intelligence to the Chinese government, smuggled research materials into or out of the country – it seems that Ksenia Petrova was detained because of this atmosphere of heightened suspicion within academia.

There were also cases of recruiting American students and professors, but it generally happened through malign foreign talent recruitment programs, in which American researchers participated without being informed who would ultimately receive the results of their work or for what purpose. The 2024 version of the Pentagon list was specifically aimed at preventing this practice.

An even more common instrument of espionage has been cyberattacks, like the case reported recently by The Insider. In this case, Microsoft uncovered a scheme that allowed hackers to gain access to data from every device connected to compromised hotel Wi-Fi networks during academic conferences.

Journalist Roman Dobrokhotov described the method for the TVRain channel: “When you try to log in, your credentials get stolen. In the worst case scenario, you’re prompted to download software or click ‘OK’ or ‘YES,’ and a real spyware virus gets onto your laptop. It steals all your passwords and captures everything you type on the keyboard. If a conference has a thousand participants, it is enough just for two or three people to download the malware for the operation to succeed.” According to The Insider, “the group primarily targets governments, diplomatic missions, NGOs, and IT companies in the United States and Europe in order to collect intelligence supporting Russian foreign policy.” 

All of these espionage cases share an important point: every time, the perpetrators concealed the affiliations with the organizations they were truly working for, they frequently used false documents, or even operated remotely. This raises a doubt as to the effectiveness of a ban on cooperation with specific universities. Such a policy is unlikely to counter the methods actually used to steal research data.

How grave are the consequences?

The third major difference between this list and sanctions packages lies in the mechanism of the restrictions: the Department of Defense does not put a ban on the activities of the listed organizations, but it is restricting its own ability to fund them. The universities included in the list, their employees, or American scholars – none of them will face prosecution by law enforcement. However, the Pentagon restricts its ability to provide funding to universities, institutes, or individual researchers who continue collaborating with listed organizations or their employees, or who use their equipment.

At first glance, it might seem that losing such a niche source of funding would hardly affect fields unrelated to the military. For instance, professor of Russian literature Oleg Lekmanov, who taught at Princeton University, expressed precisely this view: “As I see it, this is not relevant to the humanities, because no one from the military sector offers us funding in the first place.” However, the Pentagon has numerous programs and foundations that finance research, and not only in fields related to defense, but also in biology, psychology, medicine, linguistics, the social sciences, and area studies. For instance, Natalia Korbo, a former targeting analyst for the U.S. State Department Economic Bureau, confirmed to T-invariant that the Department of Defense supports an exceptionally broad range of projects, particularly in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Moreover, funding extends well beyond STEM disciplines. For example, the Minerva Initiative distributes long- and short-term grants for research intended to help the Department of Defense better understand future challenges and prepare for them. Thus, the participating projects cover a range of disciplines. According to Science, Minerva allocated $24.8 million in 2024 alone to projects involving artificial intelligence, climate change, and migration. Yet, the Science reports that the initiative had already begun drastically reducing its funding, even for projects that appeared directly relevant to defense interests. Among those unexpectedly terminated were studies examining the factors that motivate military personnel to remain in service and the conditions that prevent the collapse of international alliances. And now, it might become even more difficult to obtain Pentagon funding, since applicants will have to demonstrate that no member of a project is affiliated with any organization on the list of “the undesirables.”

Apart from research, the Department of Defense provides funding for educational purposes. It awards scholarships to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students studying languages and regions considered “critical to America’s security,” and it sponsors academic centers devoted to these fields.

Judging by the Trump administration’s foreign-policy priorities, particular attention is currently being drawn to South America and the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia remain areas of strategic interest as well. Consequently, the publication of the NDAA 2019 list will affect not only researchers in biochemistry, physics, engineering, and technology, but potentially also scholars studying Latin American music or Chinese dance if their academic center receives Pentagon funding.

Moreover, it is unclear whether the funding will be lost only by a project or an institute who maintains ties with a banned organization, or the research of the whole university will be considered compromised in case one body continues collaborations. It is entirely possible that if even one department within a university depends on Department of Defense funding, restrictions on collaboration with listed organizations could apply to the university as a whole.

Furthermore, the preamble to the document contains another provision that may substantially broaden its practical impact. Formally, the list applies only to Department of Defense grants, scholarships, contracts, and other financial support. However, it also warns that cooperation with listed organizations may negatively impact scholars’ eligibility for federal funding. And that is a much more serious prospect. The U.S. federal government finances roughly half of all research and maintenance expenditures at American universities and colleges. Federal money also supports countless scholarships, research grants, and academic conferences. In this light, universities will hardly risk losing access to federal funding, even if the document merely warns of possible consequences rather than imposing an explicit prohibition.

Denis Simon. Photo: CCG Update — Center for China and Globalization.

Denis Simon, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, argues that the U.S. government has effectively stopped distinguishing between leading civilian universities and institutions engaged in security-related research. He also believes American organizations will most likely interpret the conditions of the NDAA 2019 list very broadly. Simon further suggests that universities may begin limiting interaction not only with the organizations explicitly named on the list, but also with other research institutes in Russia, China, and Iran.

A similar concern is expressed by Evgeny Roshchin, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Policy of the SAIS School of Advanced International Studies: “On the one hand, the document concerns the research funded through Department of Defense grants. On the other hand, the disciplinary boundaries are not specified. That means it could apply to virtually any field of research, including economics, if it is financed through Pentagon grants. Researchers applying for federal grant competitions will also have to disclose all of their connections with people affiliated with organizations on the list. The existence of such connections may reduce their chances of receiving funding. I believe this will become the main deterrent. Of course, everything will depend on how the rules are applied, but the policy could seriously damage academic cooperation, because some researchers might choose to abandon perfectly legitimate collaborations simply to avoid the risk.”

According to research data, international collaboration is a significant driver of scientific progress. Natalia Korbo believes that while some restrictions are understandable, a blanket prohibition is deeply misguided:

“I understand the logic behind banning joint research in fields like bioengineering or physics, although spies are smart enough not to be affiliated with problematic institutions. But prohibiting all collaboration is simply foolish. It will harm both American science and scientific research worldwide. The restrictions will absolutely affect cultural studies as well. Even the closure of the Confucius Institutes had negative consequences for Americans themselves. Yes, those institutes promoted the Chinese government’s propaganda, but in most American cities they were also the only places where people could learn Chinese. These kinds of bans, like the TikTok ban, are often poorly thought out and produce enormous collateral damage.”

A similar view is shared by Anton Kapustin, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology: “First, I believe these are serious restrictions, and they extend well beyond defense-related research. Originally, they applied only to projects sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. But similar restrictions have since been introduced for grants from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies. In practice, they now affect almost all federal grants. Second, the list of proscribed entities grows every year. Now it includes MIPT, HSE, and Moscow State University. If a student has co-authored publications with researchers from these institutions, any American university will think twice before admitting that student to a PhD program, because it will most likely be unable to pay their stipend using federal grant money. There are still many uncertainties, of course, but I think universities will prefer to be overcautious. And obtaining visas will also become more difficult for such students. So the consequences could be very serious.”

Anton Kapustin. Photo: Simons Foundation.

Thus, for Russian researchers, the publication of the list may result in profound professional difficulties. But how capable are these restrictions of protecting American interests? And is the loss of cooperation with Russian, Iranian, and Chinese colleagues truly significant for U.S. science?

Entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov argued in an interview with journalist Mikhail Fishman on TV Rain,  that Russian universities continue to produce exceptionally strong specialists: “Whatever we may say about Putin’s Russia, or Russia in general, its universities and education – especially in mathematics, computer science, physics, and chemistry – remain exceptionally strong, even compared with the United States. I still think Russian education firmly belongs among the world’s top five, and specialists from Russia are highly valued.”

Academic collaborations with China seem to be even more important for American science. Over the past decade, Chinese science has dramatically strengthened its global position. China ranks second in the world in the number of scientific publications. In 2024, for the first time, Chinese researchers published more papers in leading natural science journals than American scientists did, exceeding the US by 17%. Niccolò Pisani et al. emphasize that China’s success has been driven largely by international collaboration and sustained government investment. Consequently, the restriction of scientific cooperation with China can also have an objective of slowing China’s scientific progress. But such a strategy is likely to have limited effectiveness as long as other leading countries continue collaborating with Chinese researchers. Meanwhile, American science itself risks losing specialists and forfeiting one of its greatest competitive advantages: participation in the global scientific community.

As Denis Simon argues, “the policy is likely to accelerate the fragmentation of the US-China scientific relationship, including in fields that have traditionally relied on open exchanges and multinational research teams. It could also limit US researchers’ access to some of the world’s most productive scientific institutions.” Simon also questions whether the policy is genuinely capable of slowing China’s scientific development.

The publication of the 2025 Section 1286 list may therefore substantially limit cooperation between American researchers and colleagues from Russia, Iran, and China. Although at first glance, the restrictions appear to apply only to defense-related research, they are likely to affect a much broader range of academic disciplines. The precedent of prosecuting cases unrelated to security topics, set by the China Initiative, demonstrated that a program announced with narrow security objectives could, in practice, be applied much more broadly. Meanwhile, the threat of losing Pentagon funding and risk of losing eligibility for other forms of federal support are sufficiently serious that many universities are likely to abandon collaborations with listed institutions simply to avoid the risk. The inclusion of major civilian universities such as Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics potentially affects thousands of scholars who have no connection to military research. It will be harder if possible to participate in American conferences, conduct joint research, or publish in academic journals, even if they present themselves as independent researchers and do not list their institutional affiliation. Even the students from these universities, even though the restrictions do not formally prohibit them from applying to American colleges or universities, may face indirect consequences if institutions, fearing the loss of federal funding, begin extending these restrictions to graduates of listed universities as well. The policy may also affect universities outside the United States that are closely integrated into the American academic system, particularly those receiving U.S. funding. Such institutions may likewise begin limiting cooperation with researchers affiliated with organizations on the list.

Ultimately, the measures intended to protect American science may not only create serious obstacles for researchers from Russia, China, and Iran, but they may also undermine one of the fundamental strengths of American academia itself – international collaboration and the free exchange of knowledge.

The post New “Undesirables”: Why the Pentagon Is Restricting Cooperation with Moscow State University and Higher School of Economics appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.

The meeting between the Russian and US presidents in Alaska last year caused a sensation in both form and substance. Expectations were so high, whether expressed as hope or alarm, that the Anchorage summit was almost certain to disappoint.

The conflict surrounding Ukraine is too deep and complex to be resolved at a single meeting, even one involving the leaders of Russia and the United States. Negotiations to end the Vietnam War dragged on for years, despite both sides understanding from the beginning that the conflict would eventually have to end.

The real question was whether Anchorage could provide the starting point for a peace process; it didn’t. Much has since been said about why, although the conditions for such a breakthrough probably didn’t exist in the first place. Yet rather than dismissing the summit with the usual sarcasm about the “spirit of Anchorage,” it’s worth considering what the meeting did achieve.

First, it exposed the widening divergence between the United States and Western Europe as the old world’s leaders remain committed to seeking a military victory over Russia, but Washington, by contrast, doesn’t want to become directly involved in pursuing that objective.

Donald Trump’s claim that the United States is merely a mediator rather than a participant is plainly disingenuous, given that Washington remains deeply involved, but American involvement could be far greater, even allowing for the apparent limits on its resources and its growing obligations elsewhere.

This divergence doesn’t mean the transatlantic alliance is about to collapse; however, it does suggest that the Atlanticism established during the second half of the 20th century will not survive in its old form. Whether its replacement will prove more advantageous to Russia remains unclear, but, nevertheless, Moscow has long wished to see the end of NATO as we have known it, and the chances of that happening are increasing.

Anchorage also demonstrated that the United States isn’t all-powerful, as Trump was unable to secure from Western Europe and Ukraine what he wanted at the time. In that instance, Washington’s failure worked against Moscow, but the broader recognition that American power has limits should be regarded as a positive development.

Taken together, these lessons show that the West is becoming more diverse and internally divided, so its remaining unity must increasingly be maintained by political pressure and institutional inertia. Russia must therefore develop a more sophisticated and flexible policy towards Western countries, exploiting their growing differences rather than continuing to treat them as a single bloc.

Anchorage offered a revealing model of modern diplomacy, in which personalities increasingly matter more than institutions, and character more than principles. There are no longer any “magic” agreements and a gentleman’s agreement lasts only until another gentleman arrives with different priorities.

What retains value is composure and reliance on one’s own capabilities, combined with a sober assessment of their limits. Russia’s mistake before Anchorage was to imagine Trump as an external force capable of fundamentally changing the situation, but he didn’t play that role, nor could he have done so.

That disappointment returned everyone to the reality of the conflict in that no outside power can impose its resolution. During the year since Alaska, the Russian-Western European military confrontation has acquired a clearer direction and an internal logic of its own and it’s within that logic that Russia must seek a way to end the present war and prevent the next one, without waiting for magical solutions or grand bargains imposed from abroad.

This article was first published by Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.

As recently as 26 July this year, Ursula von der Leyen appeared full of confidence in victory during her visit to Kyiv: she claimed the tide of the war had turned, that Ukraine had regained the initiative, and that Russia was on the defensive. The cause of this supposed turnaround, after four and a half years of a devastating war, is said to be a new ‘wonder weapon’: drones which, with the help of AI provided by Palantir and others, can carry the war deep into the Russian hinterland and precisely destroy oil refineries and other critical infrastructure there. The Russian economy – particularly the energy sector – is said to be severely weakened, and the war Russia started has now hit the country itself “with full force”.

On the battlefield too, according to these accounts, Ukraine has achieved considerable success with autonomously operating “killer drones”. These drones are said to be capable of automatically detecting and destroying all life at a distance of 30 kilometres on the front line. Technology, it is claimed, has thus more than compensated for the shortage of Ukrainian soldiers. Russian soldiers, by contrast, are now said paying a heavy price in lives without being able to demonstrate any military successes. This must be wearing down the aggressors and forcing Putin to acknowledge that he is going to lose the war.

These accounts were accompanied by media-effective drone attacks on Moscow and St Petersburg. No wonder, then, that the mainstream Western media have been full of victory reports over the past two months. Some even speculated that Russia could only hold out for another six months; a coup in Moscow was deemed possible. The strategically important Crimea was said to have been largely cut off from Russia by Ukrainian attacks. Putin would now be forced to the negotiating table as the loser – and on the terms of the European NATO states, which would amount to a Russian surrender. Their policy of providing massive military, political and financial support to Ukraine, whilst at the same time refusing any talks until Russia was ‘brought to its knees’, seemed to have paid off.

But is that really the case? Or may the tide actually have turned in Russia’s favour?

It is striking that for the past week there have been hardly any reports on the course of the war, and the victory announcements have largely fallen silent. This is because doubts are mounting, both in the US and in Ukraine itself, about the success of the drone war deep within the Russian hinterland.

One need only heed the warnings of General Zaluzhnyi: the drone war is not very successful and far too expensive. As a former Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and current ambassador to London, he should know. According to the pro-Ukrainian war monitors ‘Dron-Bomber’, the Russians are now reportedly achieving a high shoot-down rate of Ukrainian drones. The dismissal of Ukrainian Defence Minister Fedorov is also likely to be linked to the looming failure of the drone war. Is the realisation taking hold that this conflict cannot be won by a drone warfare alone?

This means that developments on the battlefield remain decisive. However, there can be no question of the military stalemate claimed by the Western media. According to a report by the Ukrainian ‘Telegram Channel’: “in July this year, the armed forces of the Russian Federation occupied 728.45 km² of territory in the SVO (Special Operation) zone, which represents the best result since October 2024 … The pace of the Russian armed forces’ offensive is increasing”. Russian territorial gains are said to have occurred not only in the Donbas but also around Kharkiv and in Zaporizhzhia. This is still proceeding slowly, but it is a war of attrition whose primary aim is the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces. Could this objective be achieved by capturing the last remaining fortified defensive positions around the Donbas cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk?

Even more serious for Ukraine is the fact that its drone attacks have led to a hardening of the Russian position. The Russian leadership is now openly speaking of a war – including a war by NATO against Russia – and has significantly intensified the conflict. In the cruel logic of war, the destruction in Ukraine now far exceeds that in Russia. Another crucial factor is that Ukraine has no air defences to speak of and is barely able to defend itself against massive Russian drone and missile attacks, whilst the intensity of Ukrainian attacks is reportedly waning.

This is already having consequences. The Ukrainian Black Sea ports in and around Odessa are said to have been bombed so heavily that Ukraine has effectively become a ‘landlocked country’. If these reports are accurate, this would be a severe blow: to date, around 70 per cent of all Ukrainian imports and exports, as well as 90 per cent of agricultural exports, have been handled via these ports. Key bridges, such as the Zatoka Bridge, which connects Odessa with the Romanian Black Sea ports, have also been destroyed. Furthermore, rail and road links, petrol stations, the power grid, industrial facilities and warehouses are being systematically destroyed.

The European NATO member states can do little to change this – they lack the military capabilities. Plans to station a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Poland or even to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine are completely unrealistic. The United States has recently announced that it will hand over the leadership of the NATO centre in Wiesbaden, which coordinates military support for Ukraine, entirely to European NATO member states. There is even talk of disbanding this NATO facility, which is crucial for Ukraine. Further, with the Iran war ranging, the US has hardly any weapons left to spare. There can therefore be little question of renewed US military involvement in the war in Ukraine.

Even before the latest escalation of the war, there were clear indications that the Ukrainian army was in considerable difficulty. Upon taking office in January, Minister Fedorov spoke of around 200,000 deserters; other MPs even cited significantly higher figures. Furthermore, some two million Ukrainian men are said to have evaded conscription orders. Whichever figures are accurate, they point to an alarming state of affairs within the Ukrainian armed forces – a situation that cannot be remedied either by forced recruitment on the streets or, as is now becoming apparent, by drones controlled by artificial intelligence. Similarly, a proposal now being discussed by the EU – to withdraw refugee status from Ukrainian men who have fled, in breach of international law, and to send them back to Ukraine to face the war – is further evidence of the hopelessness of the situation.

In May, the Ukrainian Minister for Social Affairs, Denys Ulyutin, stated that the population in the government-controlled part of the country had shrunk from 52 million (at the time of independence in 1991) to possibly 22 million. Of these, around 11 million are on social security, predominantly pensioners and war invalids. He expects the population to continue to fall after the war ends, as young men – once exempt from military service – would follow their families to the West. He does not expect any significant return of Ukrainians living abroad. Added to this demographic decline are increasing impoverishment, deep social inequalities, pervasive corruption, astronomical public debt and the country’s economic collapse.

This is hardly a state – let alone an army – to which the media could realistically attribute an imminent military turnaround or even victory.

Of course, such forecasts must be treated with caution. Yet the apparent failure of the drone war to bring about a strategic turning point should make it clear to the European NATO member states that, at the end of this escalation which we have accompanied with such fanfare, Ukraine may not emerge as the victor, but is instead sliding into an increasingly devastated, depopulated and bled-dry country. This should give us cause for great concern for the suffering people in Ukraine. European NATO-states must ask themselves whether a continuation of the war – which they have demanded and supported – can still be morally justified at all.

The European NATO member states are only harming Ukraine with their illusions of victory and wonder weapons, and must finally base their policy on a more realistic assessment of how the war is unfolding. It is therefore time to consider what would happen if the Ukrainian army’s resistance were to collapse one day and Russia were to capture Kharkiv and Odessa as well. Any remnant of Ukraine that remained would scarcely be viable. It must be in the top interest not only of Ukraine but also of its western backers to prevent such a scenario to develop. But how?

Certainly, this cannot be prevented through direct military intervention by NATO. This would make the situation only much worse – also for Ukraine – as such a course of action would inevitably entail the risk of a nuclear war, which nobody can win. Diplomacy therefore remains the only realistic option. After almost five years of war, it is high time that the European NATO member states actively sought dialogue with Russia. Germany – given its role as the strongest country in the EU, its geographical location and its historical responsibility – should take the first step.

To move beyond the entrenched positions of both governments, an initial rapprochement through a civil‑society initiative involving respected and influential figures may be advisable. Such an approach could open a first, cautious pathway toward renewed understanding after years of silence and mutual demonisation. Europe needs peace, and lasting peace can only be achieved with Russia, not against it.

There is not much time left for this.