On October 1, 2026, Russian President Vladimir Putin participated in the plenary session of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, held under the theme “Responsibility for the Future: Limits of the Possible, or Limitless Possibilities?” The session was moderated by Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs and Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club.

 

Read the transcript of the plenary session of the Valdai Annual Meeting here.

The Club’s flagship conference brought together 120 participants from 40 countries, including Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Participants addressed a wide range of issues, including the transformation of the world order, states’ responsibility for the future, prospects for international dialogue, nuclear deterrence, and the militarisation of public consciousness. Discussions also focused on the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence and unmanned systems in armed conflicts, as well as the resilience of the global economy amid military and political upheaval. Particular attention was paid to Asia’s growing role, the outlook for the Middle East, and Europe’s future.

The annual Valdai report, “Keep Calm: The State and Responsibility for the Future”, was presented on the opening day of the meeting.

Details about the Valdai Club’s Annual Meeting can be found here.

For citation, please use:
Yenikeyeff, Sh.M., 2026. The Global Energy Order – 2040: Contours of an Emerging System. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(4), pp. 10–41. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-4-10-41

Will the new energy order emerge from a managed reconfiguration or a systemic rupture? The answer will be determined largely by three powers: the U.S., China, and Russia. Their decisions over the coming years—reactive and structurally formative—will define the framework within which every other actor in the world system will operate by 2040.

Introduction: The Structural Conditions of Transformation

“If a single flap of a butterfly’s wing can be instrumental in generating a tornado,  so also can all the previous and subsequent flaps of its wings…”

Edward Lorenz, Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas? 1972

By 2040, the world’s energy system will have undergone changes comparable in depth only to the post-war reordering of the mid-20th century. The present transformation, however, is fundamentally different: it cannot be reduced to a single technological transition or a single geopolitical shift. We are witnessing several distinct yet interconnected processes, and it is precisely their interaction that may produce a non-linear outcome. 

The first process is the transition to a low-carbon economy, proceeding unevenly and marked by reversals: the phase-out of coal has slowed, while nuclear power is experiencing a renaissance. The second is the securitization of energy flows: wars and trade conflicts are turning supplies of energy and raw materials into instruments of strategic coercion, making price a secondary consideration. The third is the fragmentation of the international monetary and financial architecture, which is driving the first significant shift of energy trade away from the dollar. The fourth, marginal until recently, is the ‘last wave of decolonization’: demands by Global South states for reparations, greater retention of value added from raw-material extraction, revised resource rights, and redistribution of climate finance. All four processes interact, alternately reinforcing and constraining one another.

The escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 catalyzed but did not cause them. The breakdown of the ‘unipolar energy order of 1991–2014’ was driven in part by the U.S.’s use of the dollar as an instrument of pressure, including its mounting technological rivalry with Beijing.

The Ukraine conflict laid bare the accumulated contradictions and made them undeniable. The 2026 escalation in the Persian Gulf accelerated processes that had been developing since the mid-2010s.

According to Gopinath et al. (2024), the world economy is dividing into a U.S.-leaning bloc, a China-leaning bloc, and nonaligned connector countries that preserve ties with both. The notion of a ‘new energy order’—one in which governments, rather than markets alone, actively reshape energy flows—was articulated by Bordoff and O’Sullivan (2022) in their essay of that name. The present analysis extends that framework into 2040. Within this framework, energy ceases to be a neutral commodity: it becomes, simultaneously, an arena of rivalry, its instrument, and its prize.

Logistics Hubs as an Arena of Competition

For half a century, the strategic importance of maritime chokepoints appeared to recede as free trade expanded. They have now re-emerged as instruments of strategic coercion. Roughly 20% of global oil flows pass through the Strait of Hormuz (EIA, 2026a), while roughly two-thirds of China’s oil imports transit through the Strait of Malacca (Ovannisyan, 2019; Collins, 2018). The ability to disrupt these routes confers leverage not only over prices, but also over the political alignment of importers and producers, adversaries and allies. Political constraints on whom states may buy from can become as binding as a physical blockade.

The U.S.–Iran escalation, which began in late February 2026 and soon left the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to commercial shipping, has exceeded the 1970s oil shocks in the scale of its disruption to supply chains (IEA, 2026e). Around 1.5 million tons of LNG per week—19% of global exports—were removed from the market (Petroleum Australia, 2026). Spot prices in Asia rose above US$20 per MMBtu, reversing their discount to European benchmarks (Wood Mackenzie, 2026a). Infrastructure vulnerability was stark: the inventories of Japan’s major power utilities amounted to roughly 22 days of supply (Petroleum Australia, 2026). South Korea, with more than 20% spot-market exposure, moved to increase coal and nuclear generation (Seoul Economic Daily, 2026).

The logical response to this ‘southern vulnerability’ has been a reorientation towards northern routes. The strategic potential of the Northern Sea Route—its capacity to cut distances between Northern Europe and Northeast Asia by up to 40%, and to open Arctic hydrocarbons to world markets—was already set out nearly two decades ago (Yenikeyeff and Krysiek, 2007). What was then a forecast for 2025–2030 is now being realized: the route is becoming a strategic hedging instrument (Mishchenko, 2026; Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026). For China, it offers a way out of the ‘Malacca dilemma’—Beijing’s long-standing strategic vulnerability arising from the concentration of its seaborne oil imports through a single chokepoint exposed to potential U.S. naval interdiction (Ovannisyan, 2019). For Japan and South Korea, it could offer access to Russian Arctic LNG that bypasses Middle Eastern instability. Yet the Northern Sea Route is largely controlled by Russia, amid a growing Chinese presence: in April 2023, the two countries’ coast guards signed a memorandum of cooperation against the backdrop of NATO enlargement and the breakdown of wider Arctic cooperation (Nilsen, 2023; Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026).

The Arctic has thus become a new arena of geo-economic competition with a fundamentally different geometry, in which icebreaker technologies, navigational systems, and control over ports of refuge matter alongside naval power.

The present phase differs from the oil crises of the 1970s less in the scale of price increases than in the mechanisms of coercion: power now operates through control over energy corridors and chokepoints, not only through restrictions on commodity supply.

Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Transformation of Energy

AI and energy have become interdependent, and neither can be optimized in isolation.

AI sharply improves the efficiency of energy systems: it forecasts demand more accurately, balances load more effectively, and integrates intermittent renewable generation. Yet it also creates new vulnerabilities: attacks on algorithms could trigger cascading outages impossible in classical infrastructure. This is not a side-effect but a structural feature of the ‘smart grid’: every increment of efficiency comes at the cost of systemic fragility.

At the same time, global electricity consumption by data centers—driven increasingly by AI workloads—has grown by roughly 12% a year since 2017. In 2025 alone, it rose by 17%, compared with about 3% growth in total global electricity demand (IEA, 2025c; IEA, 2026d). In the United States, flexible gas-fired generation currently plays a central role in balancing the power system, ramping up when wind and solar output falls and helping to meet data centers’ demand for reliable, round-the-clock electricity. U.S. gas is now pulled in three competing directions: towards European importers replacing Russian supply, towards Asian buyers competing for flexible cargoes, and towards a fast-growing domestic technology sector, exemplified by the Stargate AI-infrastructure program. Where a given export shipment goes is determined not by a White House directive, but by private companies holding the cargo, whose destination-flexible contracts let them redirect volumes between markets on the basis of price arbitrage rather than state policy (Bordoff, 2025).

The emergence of the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek-R1 raised the possibility that algorithmic and architectural improvements could reduce the energy intensity of some AI workloads. Yet lower unit costs may stimulate greater use, leaving total AI electricity demand uncertain.

The AI boom’s most significant effect on the energy order, however, has been felt in a different domain altogether: it has driven the largest technology corporations towards nuclear generation. 2024 marked a turning point that some analysts already rank in importance alongside the energy-policy decisions of the 1970s. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta (recognized as extremist and banned in Russia), and Oracle signed or announced agreements with nuclear energy companies—from the planned restart of Three Mile Island to small modular reactors—together supporting several gigawatts of low-carbon capacity for their data centers (Mitchell, 2026; DOE, 2025). According to IEA estimates cited by Pew, nuclear power accounted for roughly 20% of the electricity consumed by U.S. data centers in 2024 (Leppert, 2025), a share that could grow.

The logic here turns on a single fundamental constraint: solar and wind generation are, for physical reasons, unable on their own to provide the continuous baseload required by hyperscalers; gas-fired generation is vulnerable to market volatility and competes with export demand. Nuclear power, whether in the form of large plants or small modular reactors, is one of the few sources combining continuity, a low carbon footprint, and the potential for predictable costs over a horizon of decades (DOE, 2025).

Russia, too, has entered the race: in November 2025, President Vladimir Putin presented the country’s small modular reactors as a potential solution for powering data centers (Putin, 2025). This broader approach is already being realized on the ground: one of Russia’s largest data centers has operated alongside the Kalinin nuclear plant at Udomlya since 2019.

By 2040, several competing digital-energy systems for AI are likely to emerge—Western, Chinese, and possibly Indian—each with its own configuration of generation, hardware, AI models, efficiency rules, and power-price benchmarks. The advantage will go to whoever can generate electricity, direct it into computation, and convert computational capacity into economic and political influence.

This implies a structural shift to a new era in which the kilowatt-hour becomes the fundamental unit of value, and the petrodollar may give way to the electrodollar, as discussed below.

The AI boom has reinforced nuclear generation’s status as a strategic resource. Access to reliable low-carbon electricity near data centers is becoming one of the determining factors in the pace of technological development.

Nuclear Power’s Quiet Return

The AI-driven demand described above is the latest and most visible catalyst of the nuclear renaissance, but the renaissance itself has deeper roots. Three pressures are converging: the Hormuz crisis exposed the limits of relying on variable renewable generation alone; energy imports remain vulnerable; and digital infrastructure demands unprecedented amounts of power. Nuclear power addresses all three at once; it is one of the few sources that combine stability, scalability, low carbon intensity, and relative insulation from fuel-imported disruptions.

One caveat, however, is decisive: many advanced reactor designs require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU): uranium with U-235 content of 5–20%, well above the 3–5% used in conventional reactor fuel (World Nuclear Association, 2026; Atomnaya energiya 2.0, 2026). At-scale HALEU production infrastructure exists today only in Russia and China, while Russia remains the only commercial supplier. The U.S. began demonstration-scale production only in late 2023. Until Centrus and other producers reach industrial scale, Western reactor programs requiring HALEU remain constrained by the lack of a viable non-Russian source.

According to the IAEA high-case projection, global nuclear capacity could more than double by 2050; in 2024–2025 new units were commissioned in the UAE, France, the U.S., India, and China, and by mid-2026, 72 reactors were under construction worldwide (IAEA, 2026; Atomnaya energiya 2.0, 2026).

China has become the leader of the nuclear renaissance. By April 2025, China had 102 reactors in operation, under construction, or approved, with a combined 113 GW (CNEA, 2025), while its nuclear capacity under construction had ranked first globally for eighteen consecutive years. Yet nuclear power accounted for only 4.72% of its electricity generation in 2024—leaving considerable room for further growth. The strategic rationale is straightforward: in a maritime-blockade scenario, nuclear power and domestically supplied coal would provide firm generation relatively insulated from short-term disruptions in seaborne fuel imports (Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026). For China, the nuclear renaissance supports industrial modernization and strategic autonomy.

Russia retains its position as the world’s leading exporter of nuclear power plant technology.

Rosatom holds the industry’s largest foreign nuclear order book in the industry, comprising 39 units in ten countries, 22 of them under construction in seven (Chaban, 2025); various estimates place its share of the global reactor export market at roughly 70–80% (Siddi and Silvan, 2024; Rosatom, n.d.). The Build-Own-Operate model is especially significant here: where it is used, as at Türkiye’s Akkuyu plant, the state corporation does not merely build a plant but retains ownership, operates it, and supplies its fuel. Such arrangements can turn an export project into an instrument of long-term geopolitical influence, binding the host state to Russian fuel supplies, servicing, and technical expertise for decades.

Alongside this, small modular reactors—compact units that can serve small grids and, in some designs, operate off-grid—are advancing quickly. Their capabilities make them attractive to two very different markets: hyperscalers in the developed world (DOE, 2025) and Global South states with underdeveloped electricity infrastructure. Rosatom poured first concrete for its inaugural overseas small reactor project—a RITM-200N in Uzbekistan—in June 2026 (Rosatom, 2026). The U.S., Canada, South Korea, China, and the UK (with Rolls-Royce SMR) are developing their own competitors (World Nuclear Association, 2026). As noted above, such choices can bind the client to a supplier for the plant’s decades-long lifetime; the decisive contest of 2030–2040 will thus be for the Global South’s emerging nuclear markets.

Renewable Energy: The Limits of the Current Phase

Over two decades, renewable energy has become one of the central stories of global transformation. However, solar and wind power have now encountered two structural constraints that investment alone has yet to overcome at scale: low power density and the lack of economically viable long-duration storage. Lithium-ion batteries are designed primarily for hours, not days; pumped-storage plants and hydrogen remain geographically and economically constrained. Bridging this storage gap would require a leap akin to that from an early-1990s floppy disk to a modern flash drive—reflecting decades of advances in architecture, materials, and manufacturing. No equivalent leap has yet occurred in electricity storage.

The energy transition rests on a tacit assumption that fluctuations in solar and wind generation can be reliably balanced. In practice this remains difficult during prolonged periods of low output. Germany and California, with some of the world’s highest shares of renewable generation, already experience multi-day stretches of very low solar and wind output. The Germans call this Dunkelflaute, the “dark doldrums.” In November–December 2024, such episodes drove German wholesale electricity prices to an 18-year high, peaking above €900 per megawatt-hour (Fortune, 2024). Under such conditions, backup gas- and coal-fired capacity appears not merely as a temporary transitional measure, but as a persistent component of the system where sufficient storage or other dispatchable capacity is unavailable. This sustains long-term demand for fossil fuels (IEA, 2025a). The Hormuz crisis of 2026 confirmed this logic: Japan and South Korea temporarily subordinated their decarbonization commitments to immediate security-of-supply concerns (Seoul Economic Daily, 2026).

By the mid-2020s, no breakthrough had yet delivered a widely deployable, affordable, and scalable means of storing energy over long periods—whether through solid-state batteries, flow batteries, or superconducting magnetic systems. This is a techno-economic constraint, not an ideological verdict on renewables. Long-duration storage (LDES) accounted for only about 6% of global energy-storage installations in 2025, while global venture-capital investment in LDES fell by 72%—a sign that, despite expanding deployment, many of these technologies remained far from broad commercial maturity (Wood Mackenzie, 2026). The decline does not prove technological impossibility—markets respond to capital costs, regulation, and payback horizons—but it does mark a gap between early-2020s expectations and the actual pace of commercialization.

Whether the breakthrough comes by 2040 belongs as much to technological forecasting as to strategic planning. Until it does, the transition will remain slow and uneven, while gas and, in some markets, coal will continue to provide backup for decades.

A principal obstacle to the energy transition is therefore technological, not merely political. Until scalable long-duration storage becomes widely available, demand for dispatchable hydrocarbons will remain structurally embedded—regardless of political declarations.

The Last Wave of Decolonization and Resource redistribution

What a decade ago was largely an academic and activist argument—compensation for the colonial extraction of resources—had acquired a practical dimension by the mid-2020s. Developing countries—above all in Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania—are increasingly conditioning their participation in the climate agenda, and access to their critical minerals, on concrete concessions: direct payments, debt forgiveness, technology transfer, a greater share of the value generated by resource extraction and processing, and revised rights over natural resources (UNCTAD, 2023). The shift reflects resource geography: many key inputs of the energy transition—including cobalt, lithium, graphite, rare-earth elements—are found in developing countries, many of them former colonies (UNCTAD, 2023; USGS, 2025a). The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) supplies roughly 70% of the world’s mined cobalt; Jamaica and Guinea hold some of the world’s largest bauxite reserves. In the absence of systematic Western engagement with demands for reparations, resource-rich states have the alternative of turning towards China or, potentially, Russia. China is already building a ‘resource network’ in the DRC, Chinese-owned or controlled companies account for most of the country’s cobalt production, while ‘infrastructure-for-resources’ agreements have further strengthened Beijing’s position (USGS, 2025a; IMF, 2024).

If several large reparations agreements were nonetheless reached—through, say, an international fund financed by a levy on ‘carbon-intensive jurisdictions’—climate-finance payments could flow directly to former colonies rather than through Western corporate intermediaries.

The energy transition is thus, paradoxically, becoming a catalyst of economic decolonization: by increasing the strategic importance of critical minerals, many of which are found in the Global South, it is strengthening producer states’ bargaining power and reshaping established channels of Western influence—two effects that strategic analysis often treats separately.

Old Institutions, New Alignments

By 2040, the 20th-century energy institutions will have been recast.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), created after the 1973 oil shock to coordinate cooperation among consuming countries, was built around oil security. Most recently, it coordinated the largest release of emergency oil stocks in its history: 400 million barrels during the Hormuz crisis, with the U.S. contributing 172 million (IEA, 2026f). Separately, its mandate has expanded beyond oil security to gas, electricity, the energy transition, and critical minerals (Hart, 2025). As its mandate has widened, so has criticism—from U.S. Republican lawmakers and the fossil fuel interests—of the IEA as an ‘advocate for the energy transition.’ The organization remains limited by the fact that the largest developing consumers—China and India as Association countries and Brazil as an accession country—do not have votes on its Governing Board.

OPEC+ faces slowing oil-demand growth and a widening divergence among its members’ interests: the Gulf states, with production costs in some fields below five dollars per barrel, have greater scope to compete for market share, whereas producers with higher costs or greater fiscal constraints, including Russia, Nigeria rely more heavily on quotas to sustain acceptable prices. Production agreements are becoming increasingly fragile as their economic basis weakens.

The most striking confirmation of this trend was the UAE’s decision of 28 April 2026 to leave OPEC and OPEC+ on 1 May 2026 (Al Jazeera, 2026a), which Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei described as a “sovereign national decision” (Al Jazeera, 2026b). This move has several dimensions. Materially, the UAE is OPEC’s third-largest producer, with stated capacity of 4.85 million barrels a day against a production quota of roughly 3.5 million, and plans to reach 5 million by 2027 (Al Jazeera, 2026b). Institutionally, the departure of a member since 1967, without prior consultation with Riyadh (Reuters, 2026a), breaks the unwritten rule that OPEC’s most important decisions are settled by agreement among its leading members. Politically, the move may indirectly align with U.S. interests, since additional Emirati production after Hormuz reopens would lower world oil prices and directly serve the Trump administration’s aims. The UAE’s exit came as the seven remaining participants in the voluntary production cuts agreed in early May 2026 to unwind them by a further 188,000 barrels a day (OPEC, 2026). A key member’s unilateral departure nevertheless risks eroding the organization, especially if others conclude that Abu Dhabi can benefit from their efforts to prop up prices without accepting comparable constraints.

In the short term, the decision’s market impact is limited. The UAE’s export capacity is currently physically constrained: most of its export terminals lie inside the blocked Strait of Hormuz, while the bypass pipeline to Fujairah is already operating at its limit. In the medium term, however, the result may be a “structurally weakened OPEC” (Reuters, 2026a). The main risk lies not in the UAE’s immediate volumes, but in the precedent: if a major member leaves, persistent overproducers may eventually reconsider their participation—Iraq within OPEC, Kazakhstan within OPEC+. Collective management of supply, backed by formal monitoring but ultimately dependent on reputational and diplomatic pressure, risks being eroded.

For Russia, the immediate physical consequences are limited by the closure of Hormuz, but additional Emirati supply, no longer constrained by quotas, may reach the market just as regional flows normalize. Discounts on Russian crude could swiftly revert towards pre-crisis as it competes more intensely with Emirati grades for Asian buyers. This would weaken Moscow’s pricing leverage, currently bolstered by the Hormuz-driven oil-price rally.

The SCO and BRICS+ may evolve into alternative platforms of coordination—not yet as counterweights to Western institutions, but as parallel mechanisms for settlements in national currencies, commodity pricing, and development finance. According to the IMF, the world economy is showing signs of fragmenting into U.S.- and China-aligned blocs, with a special role for non-aligned ‘connector’ countries (Gopinath et al., 2024). In energy, India is the paradigmatic case: it increased imports of Russian oil 22-fold in 2022, to 41 million tons (RBC, 2023) while emerging as a major exporter to Europe of petroleum products from refineries processing Russian crude (Reilly, Yenikeyeff, and Paik, 2026).

It acts as a safety valve, helping to prevent fragmentation from causing a full rupture; in doing so, it captures substantial commercial gains.

By 2040, the Western bloc may be shaped by IEA norms and coordination, the EU emissions-trading system, the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism, and broader climate standards. A looser Eurasian–Global South bloc may coalesce around BRICS, the SCO, bilateral settlements in national currencies, and competing technological standards. Neither bloc would necessarily be internally cohesive: the Gulf Arab monarchies, for instance, might form a pole of their own. Between the two blocs, a buffer of intermediary states may gain economic and political weight as fragmentation deepens.

The two blocs securitize energy according to fundamentally different logics.

In Europe, securitization is built on the perception of Russia as an existential threat, which makes the severing of energy ties an end in itself: the REPowerEU initiative, launched by Brussels in May 2022, and followed by the Commission’s 2025 roadmap, envisaged a complete phase-out of Russian hydrocarbons by 2027 (European Commission, 2022; European Commission, 2025). In effect, price and technology cease to be the deciding criteria: Brussels will accept more expensive and riskier supply, so long as it is politically homogeneous.

China’s energy strategy is built on supply diversification. In 2023, Xue Li of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences proposed capping each country’s share of Chinese oil imports at 20%, with a lower ceiling of 5% for the United States and each of its allies or close partners, while keeping Russia’s combined share of China’s pipeline-gas and LNG imports below one-third (Xue Li, 2023). Though never adopted as official policy, these thresholds capture the logic underlying Beijing’s negotiations over the Power of Siberia 2 project: no single supplier, however close, should become indispensable.

 By 2024, Russia already accounted for roughly 20% of China’s oil imports—the very ceiling Xue Li had prescribed. The same diversification principle explains Beijing’s caution towards Russian pipeline gas, and its markedly different posture on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Xue Li’s framework specified no comparable caps on LNG imports from the U.S. or Australia; indeed, it recommended increasing them. The logic is structural rather than political: a wider supplier network and larger traded volumes reinforce China’s bargaining position in the Asian gas market, giving Beijing leverage over regional pricing and a broader base for yuan-denominated settlements (Shi, 2024).

By 2040, Europe’s push for ‘geopolitically acceptable’ supply, and China’s model of ‘diversified leverage,’ may redefine the global gas market.

In the energy sector, global fragmentation is unfolding along two parallel tracks: the securitization of supply, where geopolitical acceptability takes priority over price, as in Europe; and an intensifying contest for low-cost resources as a source of competitive advantage, as in the U.S., China, and India.

From the Petrodollar to the Kilowatt-Hour

The linkage of oil to the dollar—the ‘petrodollar’ system, reinforced by U.S.–Saudi financial and security arrangements of the 1970s—underpinned demand for the American currency for nearly half a century. But the mechanism is now being progressively eroded. Some Gulf states have begun accepting yuan and rupees in payment for oil, and central-bank digital currencies (CBDCs) may accelerate the trend. Their momentum, however, slowed in 2025–2026, partly under competitive pressure from dollar-linked stablecoins: in 2025, the U.S. opted against a state CBDC, and instead promoted privately issued digital tokens backed by the dollar (White House, 2025).

The petroyuan has a genuine chance of becoming a partial alternative: China is the world’s largest oil importer, and yuan-denominated oil transactions involving Russia, Iran, and Venezuela as well as LNG deals, already occur. The institutional groundwork is already in place: yuan-denominated crude-oil futures have traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange since March 2018 (INE, n.d.). Should Beijing succeed in creating a Northeast Asian gas hub with yuan-denominated pricing, the dollar’s dominance in energy trading would be substantially undermined.

Behind the CBDC and the petroyuan, however, lies what several analysts already call the transition from the petrodollar to the electrodollar (Jakati, 2025; Kim, 2026). This transition reflects a deeper structural change in the global economy: in an increasingly electric, AI-driven system, the kilowatt-hour is becoming a fundamental measure of productive capacity, displacing the barrel of oil from its former central position. Every computation, performed by a neural network, has an energy cost. Unlike fiat money, which can be issued at will, and unlike cryptocurrencies, which are detached from the real economy, the kilowatt-hour is tied directly to productivity—measurable, divisible, universal, and resistant to politically-driven inflation: its value is set by physics, not politics (Kim, 2026).

The electrodollar does not require the wholesale electrification of transport and industry, where hydrocarbons will play a supporting role for decades. Rather, it relies on powering the ‘compute economy’ with electricity from stable nuclear, gas, hydrological, and geothermal sources, and thus does not hinge on breakthroughs in renewables or battery storage.

China was the first to begin building the state architecture of this system (Jakati, 2025; Girishankar, 2025). The average industrial power price in China is about $0.09 per kilowatt-hour—lower than in most major economies (China Briefing, 2025). Yet Beijing’s real advantage lies not in absolute price, but in differentiated pricing and subsidies that make electricity an instrument of industrial policy. Some energy-intensive, low-technology industries pay elevated rates, while data centers running domestic AI chips (Huawei, Cambricon) receive electricity-cost subsidies of up to 50%. In late 2025, these subsidies were expanded to help technology giants, such as Alibaba and Tencent, offset the higher power draw of still-less-efficient domestic accelerators (Wu, 2025). In effect, China spends its ‘electro-currency’ to fund its own AI industry and cut its dependence on foreign technology. By end-2025, China’s installed wind and solar capacity had reached 1.84 TW (NEA, 2026). It has created the infrastructure for an ‘electro-currency mint’ at an unprecedented pace.

The emerging Compute-Energy Standard is the AI era’s functional counterpart to Bretton Woods (Kim, 2026). In this scheme, the strategic reserves of states will be measured not in gold and Treasury bonds, but in gigawatts of constant, dispatchable-at-will generating capacity. The next step could be energy-backed stablecoins, in which the tokenized kilowatt-hour—produced by small reactors sited next to data centers—replaces Treasury bonds as the low-risk anchor of digital liquidity. McKinsey puts investment in data centers at $6.7 trillion by 2030, $5.2 trillion for capacity supporting AI workloads (McKinsey, 2025). This is no longer infrastructure spending in the classical sense but the construction of new electricity-intensive computational infrastructure as the material basis of economic power.

The geopolitical consequences invert those of the petrodollar. Petro-states exported dependence on the U.S.: to pay for oil, importers had to accumulate dollars. Electro-states offer the opposite: China already exports solar panels and wind turbines that turn buyers into ‘mini electro-states,’ reducing their dependence on imported fuels. The result is a contest among three models: an Atlantic ‘electrodollar,’ built on AI infrastructure and the prospective deployment of American SMRs; a Eurasian system coalescing around Russian nuclear projects, pipeline supply, and the Chinese market; and a Chinese model of ‘electro-states’ that exports above all the technological capacity to generate power. Which prevails remains open.

Global energy flows will follow this new monetary geography, reinforcing the fragmentation of the international financial system.

This is not a rhetorical flourish but a structural shift: in the AI economy, the kilowatt-hour becomes the real base currency, because it is a measurable input directly underpinning productivity. Whoever shapes the cost of electricity for global computation will hold leverage comparable to OPEC’s in the oil era. States that control cheap, reliable electricity gain monetary sovereignty of a new kind, whether or not they possess hydrocarbon resources.

Control over Critical Minerals

By 2040, the geopolitics of the energy transition will be determined primarily by access to lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and rare-earth elements. Such access is already highly concentrated. China dominates the global supply chain, controlling roughly 60% of rare-earth mining and 91% of the processing of magnet-grade rare earths—essential for EVs, wind turbines, and precision weapons. It also leads the processing of nineteen of the twenty critical minerals (IEA, 2026a; 2025b; USGS, 2025b). While the DRC supplies roughly 70% of global cobalt (USGS, 2025a), most of it is still processed in China (Kholodov, 2025). The West, in other words, has steadily exchanged oil dependence on OPEC for mineral dependence on Beijing; the new dependence is concentrated in a single power and spans the entire value chain, not merely the raw-material segment.

Arctic Gas and the Northern Sea Route

A new resource frontier is also opening: Arctic natural gas. Russia produced roughly 33 million tons of LNG in 2022 (OSW, 2023); a 2021 target had envisaged up to 140 million tons by 2035 (PortNews, 2021), but the Energy Strategy to 2050, approved in April 2025, revised the target down to a range of 110–130 million tons by 2036 (Interfax, 2025). The EU’s twentieth sanctions package went further than any one before it: for the first time, it barred the servicing of LNG tankers and icebreakers, targeting the existing fleet rather than merely future construction (Gijs, 2026). This compounded existing constraints. The South Korean shipyard Hanwha Ocean (formerly DSME) canceled its ice-class carrier contract for ‘Arctic LNG 2’, and fleet construction at the Zvezda shipyard has stalled due to shortages of key components (Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026). By mid-2026, sanctions and technical problems kept Arctic LNG 2’s annualized commercial deliveries near one-sixth of its full 19.8 mtpa design capacity; two trains had been completed, while the third was on hold (IEA, 2026b; Reuters, 2026b).

Russian Arctic LNG continues to flow to China, which is investing in Northern Sea Route infrastructure and seeking access to icebreaker technologies and Arctic navigation expertise as part of an emerging Russia–China Arctic axis. The White House’s high-profile 2025 effort to acquire Greenland attests to Washington’s understanding of the strategic value of Arctic positions.

Greater American control over Greenland would strengthen Washington’s position along emerging Arctic shipping routes and its ability to counter China’s growing role as Russia’s principal Arctic partner.

Taken together, these trends point to a broader American effort to shape China’s access to energy along key overland and maritime routes through pressure applied across multiple theatres below the threshold of open conflict—an effort visible less in public declarations than in force posture and defense planning (The White House, 2025; DoD, 2026). The underlying blockade scenario remains contested in American strategic literature: Collins argues that such an operation would have to be sustained for at least a year, while disruption to world trade and pressure from allies and neutrals would force Washington to lift it long before then (Collins, 2018).

With a comprehensive blockade difficult to sustain, pressure shifts to specific corridors.

The first corridor is the Northern Sea Route (Mishchenko, 2026; Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026). Following the 2014 sanctions, ExxonMobil suspended its Arctic offshore cooperation with Rosneft and withdrew from the joint projects in 2018, depriving the United States of a channel for applying its engineering expertise and influencing shelf-development standards. Although Beijing did not automatically fill the vacuum, the Western withdrawal made China a more important source of financing and equipment for Russian Arctic projects, as well as a market for their oil and gas; in 2018, Beijing also incorporated Arctic routes into its ‘Polar Silk Road’ concept. The second node is the Kuril Islands: an escalation of the dispute over them would threaten access routes from the Sea of Okhotsk. The third is the Baltic region, whose ports provide an alternative maritime route for trade with China, easing pressure on the overburdened Far Eastern railways. The fourth is Central Asia, where vulnerability lies less in infrastructure than in the stability of the transit states: destabilization in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan could severely disrupt pipelines flows to China without a direct blockade.

In response to such distributed pressure, Beijing and Moscow are already expanding their maritime security cooperation in the Arctic and their joint naval activity in the western Pacific. Should the Northern Sea Route become the principal corridor of the Sino-Russian energy axis, the U.S. would likely extend its strategic focus to the Russian Arctic theatre—a direction in which NATO is already moving by strengthening its presence in the High North.

Paradoxically, pressure meant to restrict China’s energy access may instead accelerate the militarization of the Arctic and the securitization of Central Asian routes. These routes are critical to the contest for the Northeast Asian gas market.

The Battle for the Northeast Asian Gas Market

The Northeast Asian gas market illustrates all the trends described above. Here four leading suppliers—the U.S., Qatar, Australia, and Russia—compete for sales to Japan, China, and South Korea, which together account for almost half of the world’s LNG (Petroleum Australia, 2026; Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026). The market is large enough to support a regional gas hub of a new type, with pricing decoupled from oil and some settlements conducted in yuan. Whoever establishes leadership in this market will acquire energy leverage over the world’s largest manufacturing economies, as well as substantial regional influence.

China’s position is twofold. On the one hand, Beijing is seeking to reduce its dependence on seaborne supplies through Malacca and Hormuz, to which end it needs gas from Central Asia, Russian pipeline gas, and Arctic LNG. On the other hand, China views Russian and Central Asian gas both as a benchmark for LNG contract negotiations and as a basis for establishing itself as a regional pricing and trading hub, potentially intermediating LNG sales to Japan and South Korea. For Moscow, such intermediation may weaken its direct access to these markets and risk relegating it to second-tier supplier status.

Despite the memorandum signed by Gazprom and CNPC in September 2025, the key commercial parameters of Power of Siberia 2, above all, the pricing formula, remain unsettled (Wong, 2026). Having lost most of its European market, Gazprom can no longer leverage competition between European and Asian buyers, sharply weakening its negotiating position. Even so, in March 2026, the draft of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) called for “preparatory work” on the central route of the China–Russian pipeline—widely interpreted as Power of Siberia 2—signaling political will to move forward, but not to pay any price.

Since the start of the Hormuz crisis, Japan and South Korea, key U.S. allies in urgent need of cheap gas, have faced a choice between alternative LNG at substantially higher prices and arrangements involving Russian Arctic LNG supplied via the Northern Sea Route, potentially through Chinese intermediaries. Despite pressure from Washington, Tokyo retains the Mitsui and Mitsubishi stakes in Sakhalin-2 and continues to import its LNG under a U.S. sanctions waiver that the Treasury renews every six months (The Japan Times, 2025). The situation exposes a genuine conflict of interests and could strain U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korea and complicate their cooperation with the Quad and AUKUS (Reilly, Yenikeyeff and Paik, 2026).

As recently as early 2025, the market outlook to 2040 appeared benign: a wave of new U.S. and Qatari liquefaction capacity by 2030 suggested moderate oversupply, lower prices, and a gradual globalization of gas trade following the oil-market model, with regional price indices converging (IEA, 2026g; PwC, 2025).

Two events of 2025–2026 radically altered that trajectory. First, sanctions led the IEA to exclude Arctic LNG 2’s 27 bcm of annual capacity from its baseline global supply forecast (IEA, 2026c).

Second, Iran’s 2 March 2026 attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan terminal prompted QatarEnergy to declare force majeure and suspend loadings. Further strikes on 18–19 March seriously damaged two of its fourteen liquefaction trains, with a combined annual capacity of 12.8 million tons, or 17.4 bcm. Repairs may take three to five years, while the North Field East expansion is expected to be delayed by more than a year (IEA, 2026c). The IEA now puts Middle East crisis-related supply losses in 2026–2030 at roughly 140 bcm—excluding constrained Arctic LNG 2 volumes and with the estimate still being revised upward. Together, these shocks have delayed the global LNG supply wave by at least two years.

The shift has structural geo-economic consequences. As of 12 June 2026, all LNG liquefaction FIDs taken that year were for U.S. projects (IEA, 2026b). The U.S. is moving from supplier of last resort to systemically important exporter, with all the political leverage that entails. Constraints on Russian and Qatari supply create a window of opportunity for producers in Canada, Mozambique, and Australia, yet none can compensate for the shortfall in the foreseeable future. American dominance brings its own tension: Henry Hub prices rose by more than half in a single year, to $3.52 per MMBtu in 2025, and the EIA expects a further rise from 2027 as domestic demand for data-center power climbs (EIA, 2026b).

Following the post-2022 pivot to Europe, 2026 brought Europe and Asia into direct competition for flexible U.S. cargoes.

However, U.S. energy-intensive industries and consumer groups are pressuring the White House to limit exports—through supply restrictions, political conditions on buyers, or direct quotas. In January 2024, the Biden Administration suspended decisions on new licenses for LNG export authorizations to countries lacking free-trade agreements with the U.S., citing climate and economic concerns. Trump rescinded the pause in January 2025, but the precedent showed how swiftly politics can redirect the export model. Such intervention risks undermining the American market model—and the buyer trust on which U.S. energy dominance rests. For Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan the emerging outcome is not a ‘surplus of cheap LNG’ but ‘expensive, predominantly U.S.-origin LNG,’ with Washington’s bargaining power over all three buyers sharply increased.

It is in this context that China’s strategy of establishing its own gas hub in Northeast Asia takes on particular weight. The contest is already intense: after China imposed a 15% tariff in February 2025, U.S. LNG deliveries to China fell to zero in March; the tariff rose to 125% in April (Bloomberg, 2025).

If the global supply architecture shifts decisively towards American dominance by 2030 while the Russian and Qatari alternatives remain constrained, a regional hub with yuan-denominated pricing could become increasingly important. It would serve not merely as a means of currency diversification, but as a channel through which Asian consumers could preserve some market autonomy from a U.S.-centered Henry Hub system.

By 2040, competition in Northeast Asia will therefore be not only among suppliers, but also between pricing models: the American ‘globalized’ model and the Chinese ‘regionally yuanized’ one.

On balance, the market may split into an Atlantic basin centered on Henry Hub and Europe, and a China-centered Asian bloc combining Russian pipeline gas, Arctic LNG, and settlements in yuan.

Scenarios for the Energy Order of 2040

“If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me.”

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1605

Based on the trends set out above, four scenarios for 2040 may be distinguished, using the established two-axis tradition of energy-order scenario analysis: the degree of international cooperation and the role of the state in markets (Andrews-Speed, van der Linde and Keramidas, 2014). The axes derive from the POLINARES model; the names and content of the scenarios, and the probability estimates, are the author’s own. The four quadrants are recast here in the terms of the 2020s—the electrodollar, AI, the nuclear renaissance, critical minerals—and each is assigned a probability of becoming the dominant configuration as of early August 2026 (Table 1). Elements of the scenarios are not mutually exclusive: reality will likely combine features of several.

Scenario 1: Managed Renewal. The major powers agree on a new architecture encompassing standards for critical minerals, climate finance, rules for trade in clean-energy technologies. Its probability of becoming dominant is low, around 10–15%, given U.S.–China mistrust and persistent hybrid pressure; only repeated large-scale crises might bring the major powers back to the negotiating table.

Scenario 2: A Chinese Energy Order. China consolidates its dominance in critical-mineral processing and the manufacture of clean-energy technologies, including nuclear reactors, while most developing countries become dependent on Chinese standards and finance. Unlike Scenario 3, this is a single, China-centered order rather than a balance among competing blocs. Western countermeasures reduce its probability of becoming dominant, but China’s structural advantage in key value chains keeps it significant, at around 25-30%.

Scenario 3: Fragmentation into Regional Blocs. The world fragments into competing energy blocs—a Western bloc comprising the U.S., Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and an Eastern one comprising Russia, China, Iran, and parts of Central Asia—with the transitions proceeding at different paces and by different rules. Between them lies a buffer perimeter of India, Türkiye, the Gulf states, and others that retain ties with both sides and extract rent by mediating between them, distinguishing this order from a bipolar ‘Cold War 2.0’. This currently appears the most probable outcome, with a 35–40% probability of becoming dominant: it requires neither a grand compromise nor systemic rupture, but represents the inertial continuation of current trends. India exports to Europe petroleum products refined from Russian crude; Türkiye buys Russian gas and nuclear technology alongside American LNG.

Scenario 4: Systemic Rupture. Overlapping crises—the closure of Hormuz, a clash over Taiwan, sabotage on the Northern Sea Route, destabilization in Central Asia, the cascading disintegration of both OPEC and OPEC+ after the UAE’s departure—fracture global energy supply chains. The low-carbon transition initially slows, even as highly exposed fossil-fuel importers gain a strong incentive to accelerate it later, and the international system enters a period of extreme uncertainty. The scenario’s probability of becoming dominant—around 25–30%, significantly higher than in early 2025—will rise further if hybrid pressure persists: each individual crisis may remain below the threshold of rupture, their cumulative effect may cross it. So far, however, the Gulf conflict has done more to accelerate fragmentation than to bring systemic rupture closer.

Which of the four prevails will depend less on technology, markets, or climate than on a handful of decisions made in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington over the next three to five years—above all, the pricing formula agreed for Power of Siberia 2, how assertively Beijing uses its critical-minerals leverage, and whether Washington politicizes its LNG exports.

Conclusion: An Order in the Making

Technology alone will not determine the global energy order of 2040: many of the necessary technologies already exist, while others may emerge in the foreseeable future. The order will be shaped by political decisions made today. Which states will be able to build an icebreaker fleet; through which straits tankers will pass; whether a gas hub with settlements in non-Western currencies can be launched; which nuclear platform will assume a dominant position in the Global South; whether an industrially scalable solution for long-duration energy storage will be found—these questions will be decided not only in technological laboratories but also in the offices of policymakers. The key question is how far the parties are prepared to go: whether they will use blockades of energy routes as an instrument of coercion or refrain from such escalation.

Energy has become one of the central arenas of strategic rivalry. Each principal player now operates under a constraint examined by this article. Russia, having lost Europe, relies on Asian markets even as the UAE’s exit from OPEC and OPEC+ threatens direct competition for the same buyers by 2027–2030. The U.S. must balance LNG exports against its own compute economy, as no previous administration has had to. China remains dependent on seaborne imports through Malacca despite gains in Arctic infrastructure, mineral processing, and nuclear construction. Japan and South Korea balance their alliance commitments and energy security. Africa and Latin America wield their resource leverage as the last wave of decolonization gathers force.

Restricting China’s access to energy resources may backfire, prompting Beijing to securitize its energy routes: expand its icebreaker fleet, strengthen its security presence in Central Asia, increase joint patrols with Russia in the Arctic, and deepen strategic ties with countries purchasing nuclear technology from Rosatom. This will not immediately terminate globalization, but it may consolidate a new Cold War with potential flashpoints in the Arctic, the Baltic, and Central Asia.

Ultimately, the outcome of this confrontation will be determined not by military force or volume of resources alone, but by countries’ capacity to build durable institutions, alliances, technological systems, and, above all, trust.

Today, trust is becoming scarcer than any mineral or energy source.

Every major player must find points of accommodation that make the new energy order viable rather than allow it to be fractured by conflict. The contours of this order are already emerging—unevenly and in fragments, but clearly enough to reveal the principal fault lines.

This article presents the main arguments of the author’s book, Глобальный энергетический порядок — 2040, forthcoming in December 2026.

For citation, please use:
Safranchuk, I.A., 2026. Diplomacy of Inequality and Imbalance. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(4), pp. 62–71. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-4-62-71

War and diplomacy are often contrasted as mutually exclusive alternatives, implying that military force’s growing importance presumes diplomacy’s systemic failure. This is hardly what we see today, when military force does not disrupt international communication, but rather triggers the explosive growth thereof, involving a wide range of parties. Recent events point to a collapse of the traditional model of diplomacy and—more broadly—to a transformation of the intellectual framework of military and diplomatic actions in international relations.

The End of Globalization-Era Diplomacy

By the end of the 20th century, the long-standing historical trend towards a common world system had gained incredible momentum. For several centuries, the most significant political, economic, and social phenomena—colonialism, major wars, even the post-1945 inter-bloc confrontation—led to a more intertwined world. Throughout the 20th century, the international environment grew richer and more complex. Various professional spheres were internationalized: ever more spheres of life acquired an international dimension. Interaction with the external environment (the international system) became a crucial task for all states.

Diplomats, as professionals in international communication, thus began to focus on shaping common norms and institutions so as to maximize practical benefits. Diplomats effectively found themselves in the same company as transnational businesses and NGOs, which might remain closely linked to certain jurisdictions, but whose interests were no longer determined by those of individual states.

The diplomacy of globalization focused on the international order’s normative and institutional codification.

Historically, this approach was contrasted with diplomacy pursuant of the balance of power or situational advantage. It existed among the ancient Greeks, who “recognized that the relations between states could not be managed merely by ruse and violence, and that there was some implicit ‘law’ which was superior to immediate national interests or momentary expediency” (Nicolson, 1941, p. 23). Yet its formation is attributed more to the Romans.

Today, the world order tradition is associated with the neo-liberal school of IR, which holds that the order should be based on widely accepted norms that reduce chaos and make interstate competition nonviolent. Although military force remains sometimes needed to maintain the order and impose it upon revisionists.

In recent years, the states, once regarded as guarantors of the world order, have come to be seen as its main revisionists. The crumbling of the international order has been widely discussed (see, e.g., Barabanov et al., 2018), but even though the world order’s recovery appeared unlikely, its degradation was expected to be gradual, as many of its elements were still observed, at least ritually.

Rules were increasingly manipulated to justify actions, and competition over ‘compromise’ wordings in international documents became a major sphere of ​​diplomacy. The question became: which is better—hypocrisy regarding norms, or their open rejection. The latter predominated by 2026, when taboos ceased to be observed even formally (Lukyanov, 2026), marking the collapse of the diplomatic paradigm that had prevailed for decades.

A New Version of Balance-of-Power Diplomacy

Despite states’ increasingly opportunistic behavior,[1] globalization- and order-based diplomacy is actually receding in favor of another historical model: the balance of power, characteristic of Medieval and modern Europe, where it was “aimed at preventing any single state from dominating others, influencing alliances and conflicts throughout history” (Debidour, 1891).

About a century ago, this diplomacy was considered discredited. Intellectuals perceived the First World War as a failure of the balance-of-power doctrine and the diplomatic maneuvering inherent to it. But there was a second argument for replacing balance with order: “there is no power which threatens Europe with domination… Russian communist domination… ended, I believe, when the Bolshevik hordes were defeated before the gates of Warsaw in August 1920” (Hoard, 1925, p. 264).

The balance-of-power doctrine gave rise to the realist school of IR, and neorealism developed intensively in 1975-2000, in deep opposition to ascendant neoliberalism. From the ‘opposition’, neorealists criticized the liberal order and predicted its failure. Now the time has come to test their own proposals.

Balance-of-power’s proponents have developed two main approaches. Kenneth Waltz’s defensive neorealism posits that most states seek a status quo and limit themselves to maintaining the balance of power. John Mearsheimer’s offensive realism asserts that nations seek regional hegemony. They share a disagreement with the neoliberal view of interdependence.

Neoliberalism’s founders initially drew attention to the conflictual elements of interdependence, but by the 21st century the paradigm saw it as facilitating cooperation.

Neorealists, in contrast, insist that interdependence exacerbates competition. Material interconnectedness obscures the balance of power, which must be understood similarly by all parties in order to reach agreement. The internationalization of many spheres of life makes them vulnerable to adversaries’ influence.

Defensive neorealism echoes Kant’s maxim on freedom: one state’s security ends where another’s begins. Implementing this maxim in a materially globalized world, where all interconnections can be drawn into a competitive struggle, is likely to yield a protracted and violent competition, not a balance.

Interest in securing stability within regional spaces may be growing in reaction to lengthy uncertainty. Offensive realism prescribes that a major power maximize power in its vicinity. This becomes only more pressing when a balance with other major powers cannot be struck. For their part, small and middle states may seek to mitigate risk by accepting a greater power’s patronage.

Such theoretical expectations appear logical, but are contradicted by recent events. Extensive international cooperation has granted small and middle states significant opportunities, which they are reluctant to give up, despite mounting risks.

In various parts of the world, large powers, economically and militarily dominant in their regions, are seeking regional hegemony (Safranchuk et al., 2025), but their striving for regional hegemony may be actively or latently disputed by smaller neighbors. Such neighbors fear that the more powerful states could use hegemony, if attained, to impose resolutions on various local disputes. Most small and middle states thus fear a regional hegemon more than a global one. For them, engaging with an extra-regional player is rational, as they can use its economic and military power to balance the regional hegemon. In exchange, small and middles states may be drawn into supporting the extra-regional power.

Forming regional systems, on the basis of something other than confrontation, may be slow, complex, and costly for the regional leader. It can be sped up by force, but this often enflames areas bordering the major power, worsening its position in the context of confrontation with other major powers.

The world’s still materially globalized nature also intensifies competition, making it more complex and multilayered, and obscuring the balance of power. Yet it also limits the use of force, making it impossible to achieve maximalist goals solely by military means. Both large-scale conflicts and prolonged limited-scale conflicts become too costly. Therefore, despite the growing role of military force, states’ default objective is still agreement, rather than a victory parade in the defeated enemy’s capital.

Today, agreement based on the balance of power is rarer than it was in previous periods when the balance of power dominated, since the balance has become more difficult to identify.

This means the likelihood of a protracted confrontation with the use of military force, sometimes fading, sometimes flaring up, but never completely stopping, as well as constant negotiations without achieving major agreements. A state’s mobilization potential (broadly defined) is still important in the event of an escalation, but its resilience is even more important, as the confrontation may drag on without any decisive battle demanding the short-term concentration of all resources.

The Nexus of International and Domestic Transformations

The international environment’s fundamental changes are intersecting with those underway in all large societies.

First. The balance between the internal and external is shifting. As the external environment’s importance for many years only grew, exploiting and reshaping it required maximal engagement with it. Now, the task is enhancing resilience to it (without isolating from it). The shift is from maximizing one’s influence on it to minimizing its impact on oneself. Whereas internal affairs were greatly influenced by the external, now foreign policy is becoming a natural extension of domestic affairs.

More fundamentally, in major powers, tension is growing between contemporary internal identities (which, if not abandoning traditional values, are significantly transforming them to meet the demands of modernity) and traditional geopolitical attitudes (fundamentally unchanged for centuries). This tension is heightened when states search for public support in lengthy standoffs that may look fruitless to nonprofessionals. Winning such support may prove to be a great challenge for major powers’ elite.

Second. Inequality and anarchy are more intractable internationally than domestically, as they are the default form of interaction between materially variegated actors. The doctrine of international order explicitly seeks to overcome inequality through collective work in the common rational interest. The balance-of-power doctrine is less explicit, but similarly seeks countries’ coexistence under conditions where they cannot force anything upon one another, and must respect each other’s treaties, borders, and interests (rights).

For more than two centuries since the French Revolution, democratization has proceeded both domestically and internationally. With it, inequality, of course, was not completely overcome, but equality became the indisputable benchmark. Societies built on codified inequality (the U.S. with racial segregation, South Africa with apartheid, and more) came to be seen as anomalies.

The liberal world order failed to achieve equality and stability as intended. Violent rivalry (now effectively permanent), without a fixed balance of power, can generate inequality and normalize its open manifestation: an actor’s acquisition and demonstration of superiority over others.

Domestically, inequality has long been associated with authoritarianism and been opposed by the human-rights movement (with its bias towards political rights and individual self-expression). However, technological developments are transforming issues of (in)equality and raising their importance in ostensibly democratic countries. Tech visionaries are trying to impose moral standards that normalize inequality, and are building technological-economic models to facilitate this (Varoufakis, 2023a, 2023b).

Perceptions of equality as the norm called for an order mandating it. Moreover, it was thought that equality begets stability. But the triumph (in principle) of equality not only reduced dissatisfaction and resistance, but also increased diversity (heterogeneity) as the circle of actors expanded. (Domestically, with the abolition of property, race, education, and other qualifications. Internationally, with decolonization and the growing ambitions of small and middle states.) As (domestic and international) society became both more equal and more heterogeneous, friction increased.

Limiting diversity is one way of establishing and maintaining order. It is not openly acceptable, but has nevertheless been employed, and not only by illiberal autocratic systems. At the turn of the 21st century, even the liberal thinker Fareed Zakaria noted that liberalism and democracy no longer go hand in hand, and that, if forced to choose, liberals would have to abandon democracy.

“Techno-feudal lords” now pose the question more directly, able to revive practices—at a new level of technological development—previously considered unacceptably unequal.

Equality as a basic value is deeply rooted in contemporary minds, and codified inequality seems downright archaic. But equality, originally an unconditional and permanent right, is evolving into a privilege to be acquired and maintained through interaction with others in the domestic and international systems.

This promises increasing differentiation of diplomatic practices depending on actors’ size and resources. Bilateral and multilateral agreements will also be more diversified, relying less on international law’s common denominator, but not rejecting it entirely. Modern diplomacy within international institutions (particularly the UN Security Council), where one must remain within the dogma of international law, is becoming formalistic and hollow, like the medieval practice of buying and selling indulgences.

Third. The international sphere is traditionally viewed as a battlefield of competition for relative advantages. But these are difficult to maintain in an unstable and unpredictable environment of confrontation, unclear balance of power, and powerless norms and institutions. Thus, to have a clear advantage on the international arena, states may need to obtain absolute advantages based on solid internal foundations: resources, technologies, ideologies, intellectual potential, and other assets that are completely controlled and that ensure greater efficiency compared to rivals.

These advantages must be kept under control, including through their basic physical protection from destruction or theft. Then one can decide whether they are better kept for oneself, or shared with the international community on one’s own terms.

 Currently, the latter seems to be the obvious choice, but is it not a relic of the diplomacy and mindset formed under globalization (seeking comparative international advantages, not absolute advantages for one’s own development)?

Paradoxically, the new version of balance-based diplomacy—historically and theoretically focused on the struggle for comparative international advantage—may now push (sufficiently large, populous, and advanced) countries to rely more on domestic development based on fundamentally new absolute advantages.

*  *  *

Structurally, the modern world is characterized by a combination of high-level material globalization (interconnectedness) and growing ideological disunity. Efforts to universalize liberal dogma, and thereby base material interconnectedness on ideological homogeneity, have proven futile. But the neorealist approach can work only given material deglobalization, which would ease rivalries, clarify balances of power, and delineate where the security sphere of one actor ends and that of another begins. While the world is moving in this direction of deglobalization, many countries are strongly resisting it.

Theories analyze and interpret history, but history does not repeat itself. As humanity develops, the solutions to its problems do as well.

Reality does not adapt to theories. And the new version of balance-of-power diplomacy will not be a replica of the past one, just as globalization was not a copy of previous attempts to normatively formalize and maintain order. The world must learn to function with dissonance between material connectedness and ideological disunity; there are no ready-made theoretical solutions for this.

With the crisis of the globalist model that dominated over the past decades, the nexus between the internal and external is not disappearing, but changing, becoming more complex, and shaping the profound transformations of modern society as it seeks to balance security, freedom, and development. Both internal and external factors are currently pointing towards more security agenda, less equality, and more non-inclusive development. Hence, the ideological-intellectual framework for action may change radically.

For citation, please use:
Kaspe, S.I., 2026. Why China Frightens: Beyond the Realm of Western Political Forms. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(4), pp. 138–167. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-4-138-167

“Through me, like Chinese torture,

a visceral fear took root”

Andrey Tourkine

(transl. by Stanislav Lvovsky)

“Do not fear’’

The New Testament

Disclaimer I[1]. This article is not about China. I am not a sinologist, and I would never dare write about China per se. This article deals exclusively with stereotypical perceptions of China prevailing in the West and Russia; and with what they convey not about China but about the West (and Russia) itself. This article criticizes these views from the Western (and Russian) perspective itself—for my lack of any other. It is not about what makes China so frightening (whether this is true is a big question); rather, it is about whom it frightens and why. I realize that the Chinese historical, linguistic, and political realities I touch upon are far more complex and ambiguous. I offer my deepest apologies in advance for possibly angering genuine connoisseurs of China. The risk is quite high. But I believe that even a superficial and amateurish approach can raise reasonable doubts about the validity of the prevalent stereotypes. So, I think it is worth trying.

China is perceived either as one of the biggest strategic challenges or the biggest strategic threats. About a decade ago, such views—explicit or only implied, having emerged earlier and causing controversy for a long time—became commonplace in the Western (primarily American) public discourse, including official documents, politicians’ speeches, expert discussions, media, and blogs. Assessments of the intensity and severity of the China challenge and/or threat may change both ways. For example, they were somewhat toned down in the latest U.S. National Defense Strategy (The 2026 National Defense Strategy), especially compared to its earlier versions adopted under Joe Biden and during the first presidency of Donald Trump. However, one should not overestimate the significance of such fluctuations or the instructive power and predictive value of strategies and concepts. Firstly, because the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China’s military capabilities and security policy (Annual Report to Congress 2025) presented just a month earlier, had had an opposite, rather nervous tone. Secondly, the 2026 Strategy firmly stated the U.S.’s intention to focus on protecting Homeland and Hemisphere.

The Iran problem was declared largely solved, to be further settled by regional allies, primarily Israel and the Gulf states. And what of it? A month later, Operation Epic Fury began.

Occasional attempts have been made to summarize ideas about the China challenge and the China threat, sometimes for making them more convincing (Gertz, 2013; Glenn, 2017; Han and Thayer, 2023) and sometimes to dismiss them as unfounded (Broomfield, 2003; Yee and Storey, 2004; Christensen, 2015; Gezgin, 2023; Zheng, Du and Xu, 2025). Clearly, the latter position is strongly backed by China itself, which only increases the suspicions of those who advocate for the former one.

Both positions—apprehensions about China and debunking skepticism—can also be found in Russia (see Blyakher, 2004; Blyakher and Grigorichev, 2015; Gelbras, 2011; Chikhichin, 2014; Pomozova, 2020; Kulintsev et al., 2020, pp. 139-142).[2] Since its very inception, then under the name of Rus, Russia has been part of Western civilization—as a unique, yet undeniable branch of the Christian religious and imperial (i.e., Roman) political and European cultural traditions. Russia is the West (albeit the ‘eastern West’), if only because it is not the East (not even the ‘western East’). No matter how broadly this category may be used, if anyone has peremptorily included Russia in it, he clearly did so out of sheer ignorance. In fact, even Eurasianists of all times and stripes cannot do without the root ‘Eur-.’ After all, for some time now, the collective West has been poised to incorporate not only quite Christian—but Orthodox—countries like Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Romania, but also Japan and South Korea—which is utterly bizarre, but nonetheless true.

After 2014, and especially after 2022, when China became Russia’s main ‘window on the world’ (or even ‘the only light in the window’), the fear of China subsided—at least it hardly appears in the Russian public realm (or it is not allowed there, including by those frightened, because it would be out of line at the moment). However, this does not mean that it cannot revive if the situation changes, and even with renewed vigor—if only because China’s presence in the Russian economy and everyday life has increased significantly over these years. Hence my further reasoning, which concerns not only global politics as such but also Russia’s role in global politics. It should show that although the alarmist point of view may not be entirely unfounded, it still is—in a very specific sense—beyond the bounds of rationality. This is precisely why both the rational arguments of its opponents and the contemptuous ridicule by alarmists miss the point and fail to produce the soothing effect. This is because the entire discussion, from both positions, indicates that there is some real difficulty, but it lies in a different realm.

Disclaimer II. Much of what is written below is about political languages, i.e., about the complex relationship and incomplete similarity between Western and Chinese concepts and terms. Not speaking Chinese myself, in treating the latter I have to deal solely with translations from Chinese. All the more reason to take most seriously Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper’s warnings about the danger of “uncritically adopting categories of practice as categories of analysis” (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000, p. 5). Yet many analytical categories are the products of practical categories’ rationalization; they continue to exist in parallel, and this makes drawing a strict and reflexive distinction between them in each case still more important. As for categories of practice, especially those that have also become categories of analysis, I follow the principles of the Cambridge school of the history of concepts (John Pocock, Quentin Skinner, John Dunn et al.), placing them in the methodological optics of comparative politics. Words matter. Words mean something. What exactly they mean is determined by the cultural, historical, and semantic context of their emergence and subsequent transformation. Cross-temporal and especially cross-cultural comparisons disregarding these contexts are incorrect and only complicate things. One can draw analogies between categories from different contexts or seek equivalents in one context for categories from another. But there can be no complete matches, even if some practitioners or analysts think otherwise. It is even worse if they do not think about this at all.

The first category (both practical and analytical), whose applicability to modern China is discussed—and questioned—below, is the category of empire.

Not an Empire

The fear of China would be more understandable, and the discussion about it more rational, if it were about another empire looming ominously over the world. This is how, at different times and in different parts in the West, the Ottoman Empire, the Romanov Empire with its ferocious Cossacks, the Third Reich, and the Soviet ‘evil empire’ (and in the Soviet Union, ‘American imperialism’) were perceived. The latter confrontation, or at least opposition, is reproduced mutatis mutandis even today, with roughly the same quality of argumentation.

But modern China is not an empire.

That is, some people proclaim it an empire (see, e.g., Terrill, 2003; Chua, 2009; Ford, 2010; Keane and He, 2024), directly or indirectly, referring to the centuries and millennia of its history and claiming that China has always been an empire and cannot be anything else. Indeed, Europeans (and, with more than a hundred-year delay, Russians) began to refer to China as an ‘empire’ shortly after they became acquainted with it—at the beginning of the modern era, thanks to Maximilianus Transylvanus (secretary to Charles V, the head of the Holy Roman Empire) who retold and published his conversations with members of Magellan’s expedition (Maximiliani, 1523), which had neither reached China nor even come close to it.

Gradually (not right away), this definition became firmly established. As far as I can judge, by reconstructing the logic behind the naming, there were three reasons for this.

First, the size of China somehow made it difficult to call it simply a kingdom, although Europeans did so for quite a long time.

Second, they were strongly impressed by the worldview that was completely different from their own—not Western- but China-centered. The political implication was that other authorities and people (and not only contiguous ones) were—if not practically, then potentially—subordinate (albeit not without exceptions, such as for the most hopeless barbarians) to varying degrees to the Middle Country’s (中國) supreme ruler, even if they were not yet aware of this because of their regrettable ignorance, or were already resisting it because of their regrettable wickedness.[3] This obviously evoked associations with Christian empires: the Holy Roman Empire (Pennington, 1993, pp. 8-37; Monateri, 2018, pp. 39-49), the Byzantine, but also Roman, Empire (Bréhier, 1970, p. 230ff), and the Third Rome (Medvedev, 1972; Sakharov, 1995; Kaspe, 2001, pp. 86-104). They all had more or less similar intentions and ambitions, and the actual state of affairs in all of them was never ideal.

Third, the legitimacy of the ruler of China, according to the titulature, was clearly sacred—not only was it 皇帝 (Huángdì) (where the second character 帝 means ‘heavenliness and divinity,’ which Europeans might not have known at first), but it was also 天子 (Tiānzǐ) meaning ‘Son of Heaven.’ This brought the same associations.

However, finding more or less suitable analogues (later presented as equivalents) to foreign-language self-designation and self-perception is a shaky foundation for substantive conclusions and qualifications. In practical policy, referring to China as an empire did not prevent the West, including Russia, from humiliating, offending, and exploiting it in every possible way.

‘Empire’ is not just a convenient word for criticism or praise (both uses are so effective, rhetorically and polemically, that it is impossible to purge them from the public language). And it is not just a label that can be attached to anything you like (fighting this bad habit is also hopeless). Within the bounds of science and sober analysis, ‘empire’ is a term—no more and no less. And terms should be used correctly.

Empire as a category of analysis, denoting a certain nature of politically relevant values (not their specific composition, but their scope, scale, and ambition) and a fairly defined (again, not in specific details but in the most general way) structure of a domination-subordination relationship in a large (sic!) space, legitimized primarily by imperial values of interaction between centers and peripheries. Whether China has ever been an empire in this sense is a historical question, and it should be left to historians. Scholars, including Chinese ones, answer it in different ways, either with extreme caution or outright negation (Nylan, 2007; Qin, 2007; Zhu, 2008; Han, 2025). But modern China (and this article is about it, not about the “good old times”) does not meet the analytical criteria of empire, except one: Chinese space is still large (a small empire is an oxymoron or a parody). Size matters, but still there is more to it than just size.

Imperial values are, firstly, sacred—in Durkheim’s interpretation: they are not necessarily religious in the strict sense (even the most secular ideologies can function similarly to religions, and the more radically they reject God, the more sacred they appear). Secondly, they are universal, i.e., they are openly offered and sometimes imposed on all possible recipients, transcending almost any local, linguistic, cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, and other similar barriers, without eliminating or destroying them, but rather integrating them into a broader framework. Thirdly, their own structure includes the imperative of creating a relevant universal order for “the shaping and sharing of power” (Lasswell and Kaplan, 1950, p. XIV) and not just the imperative of meditation, prayer, individual or communal piety, etc.

Chinese value system is definitely not a religion: China is the least religious country in the world (Hackett et al., 2025).[4] And it is definitely not an ideology:[5] for some time (short by Chinese standards) that was the case, but now there is almost nothing left of Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, and even Maoism in Chinese ‘communism,’ except for the word itself. Whether Chinese values are sacred is harder to say because it is difficult to understand what they are actually about.

For the outside world, China projects a set of ‘all the good things’ with captivating and disarming consistency: peace, friendship, cooperation, prosperity, and things like that. Are Xi Jinping’s four Global Initiatives, along with his concept of a Community of Common Destiny for Mankind, anything more than that?

But values are not just ‘all the good things.’

Values are “various recipes or rules… which may help the actor make his choice” between different concepts of the good “either by narrowing the range of acceptable alternatives, or by helping the actor foresee the long-run consequences of the various alternatives” (Parsons and Shils, 1951, p. 71). This choice “always involves at least an implicit sacrifice, in that an actor cannot have all of what are in one sense potential gratifications, and choosing one involves a ‘cost’ in that it excludes alternatives. The payment of this cost is the disciplinary element” (Ibid, p. 73). So, for a value-based choice to be rational (which is not the same as the costs/benefits balance: after all, it also includes moral reason and value-rational action), it is necessary to clearly articulate and present alternatives that are more specific than ‘everything good’ versus ‘everything bad,’ recommended societal solutions, and the cost of following or disregarding these recommendations. Western societies address the dilemmas of freedom versus equality, freedom versus security, human rights versus state interests, individualism versus collectivism, justice versus mercy, tradition versus progress, and so on, in different ways; but they address precisely these dilemmas. There are of course original Chinese values and value alternatives—as ‘things in themselves,’ rather than ‘things for us.’ However, they can hardly be translated, if at all, into the languages of other cultures, especially Western ones.

Chinese values are to some extent intelligible for external viewers, as they are not entirely hermetic. Moreover, in the distant past, Chinese cultural models had a significant influence on many East and Southeast Asian countries (primarily those which widely used the Chinese system of writing), especially on their elite groups and upper classes. However, they never became universal. Therefore, China’s potential for inclusion, and even more so for assimilation, has always been limited to the same geographical area. Now, however, this potential is virtually exhausted (there is little progress even with the Tibetans and Uyghurs).

It is precisely these specific features of China that severely limit the possibility of its geographical, cultural, and political expansion. This is particularly true of imperial expansion, which does not eliminate cultural diversity but, on the contrary, preserves it (and sometimes even promotes it, divide et impera): within a general, umbrella framework of unconditional demand for loyalty to the empire, the combination of imperial and local identities, and participation in the imperial turnover of resources of all kinds—coercive, material, symbolic, and communicative (Lagroye, 1987; Burbank and Cooper, 2010; Kumar, 2017; Heijmans and Rose, 2023). Virtually anyone could become and becomes a Roman, a Byzantine, a Russian, a Soviet, an American, a European, etc., by meeting certain conditions and undergoing certain personal, ancestral, or group transformation. Moreover, virtually anyone could and can, albeit with greater effort, become a functionary in any of these empires, reaching the highest levels of status and power. But one cannot become a Chinese, no matter how hard one may try (and few wish to do so). Some people do make their way into the elite without being Chinese, but only for a few symbolic, propaganda-oriented, show-case positions (the current the CCP Central Committee purposely includes 10 representatives of national minorities, the CPSU Central Committee had a similar practice). But it is simply impossible to acquire real significant power this way.

Structurally, the modern Chinese political order is not imperial, either. According to Charles Tilly, an empire implies ‘indirect rule’, including: “1) retention or establishment of particular, distinct compacts for the government of each segment; 2) exercise of power through intermediaries who enjoy considerable autonomy within their own domains in return for compliance, tribute, and military collaboration with the center” (Tilly, 1997, p. 3). Moreover, the very possibility of creating and effectively operating such a system of domination and subordination on a large territory is ensured precisely by the empire’s value universality and cultural inclusiveness. The rule of the Chinese Communist Party does not meet any of Tilly’s criteria—it is as direct as it can be.

What is a Threat?

Naturally, there is no need to be an empire in order to pose a direct and explicit threat—it can be just a state. But in this case, a threat must be convincingly demonstrated and proven. What threat does China pose? True, it has significant military potential, including nuclear missile capabilities (it would be surprising if it were otherwise). But all data concerning its actual size, as well as talks about its rapid buildup in recent years, are purely speculative. Even if they are accurate (although even the most optimistic estimates suggest that China’s nuclear arsenal is 8-9 times smaller than the U.S.’s), China’s defense doctrine categorically rules out “first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances” (China’s National Defense, 2019). (It is worth noting that only India has a similar unconditional self-imposed ban).

Why, against whom, and under what circumstances can a country use its nuclear arsenal? In the case of the U.S., the UK, France, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, the answer is obvious. In the case of China, this question goes unanswered. China is not a member of any military-political blocs, whether global or regional, and is not trying to create them. As for its territorial claims, they are limited to Taiwan (which is only natural), the waters around several uninhabited islands in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, as well as a few insignificant, sparsely populated patches of lands on the borders with Bhutan and India, disputes over which have been frozen. China has no colonies, dominions, or protectorates, and it does not seek to possess any (Laos and Cambodia’s pro-Chinese orientation is a qualitatively different, much milder type of relationship).

The risk of China seizing technological leadership and, consequently, of all other countries falling irreversibly behind it, is also non-existent. True, the Chinese ability to adopt Western technologies, improve and replicate them on a colossal scale is impressive. But China has not given the world anything revolutionary new since the time of the Four Great Inventions (the compass, papermaking, printing, and gunpowder; let’s not forget the pressure cooker), i.e., since the Middle Ages. The most advanced chips are still created by American fabless firms with production facilities located anywhere, including China (mainly in Taiwan). However, these are no longer cutting-edge innovations but mass production. And the development and production of machines for manufacturing such chips (extreme ultraviolet photolithographs, EUV) have long been monopolized by Dutch ASML, not even an American company; and its monopoly will definitely hold in the foreseeable future. The situation is similar in Big Pharma, other high-tech industries, and aircraft building. China has no full technological sovereignty, and the West is doing its best to prevent Beijing from gaining it. As a matter of fact, no country, including the U.S, has such sovereignty, which is by no means equal to leadership.

China’s religious or religiously-motivated expansion, unlike Islam and radical Islamism, is impossible because of the complete absence of inclusive and proselytizing religiosity. Massive projection of soft power through everyday practices is also impossible. Unlike the Greco-Roman, European, or American way of life, Chinese lifestyle does not exist as a single attractive whole and is not borrowed by anyone. Chinese food is popular in the Western world, but this is it (one can hardly say the same about alcohol). Chinese cinema is a niche product; music (unlike South Korean K-pop) is not in demand at all.

As for clothing, ordinary Chinese wear jeans and sneakers, and the most impressive parades of classic European suits and ties are not in Europe but at Chinese Communist Party congresses.

What remains? Only quantitative parameters: territory (fourth place, after Russia, Canada, and the U.S.), population (second in the world after India), GDP (also second in the world, a third smaller than that of the U.S.), industrial output (first place), share in global trade (third place after the European Union and the U.S.), and trade balance surplus (first place, far ahead of Germany and Russia). The figures are impressive, of course; and they clearly worry some people. However, there are still no objective grounds for panic or existential fear. Global capitalism can deal with such competitive challenges, which lie exclusively in the economic sphere, in its own way. In the 1970s and 1980s, during a period of its rapid growth, Japan also raised similar concerns in the West (manifest in mass culture of that time, particularly in cyberpunk), but they quickly died down.

The Problem of Form

So, is the irrational fear of China an inexplicable, phantasmatic delusion, or a perfectly explainable manipulative intent, a dishonest tool of global competition? Would it be more reasonable to dismiss it scornfully? Hardly so. On the contrary, it would be more reasonable to treat it with utmost attention.

Irrational fear cannot be dismissed because it always signals some deep-seated problem within the frightened person. If there is smoke outside, then something is surely burning inside. Naturally, the frightening object needs attention not only when the fear it evokes is exaggerated or has a traumatic origin, but also when it is impossible to explain why it becomes a trigger—as in the case of trypophobia (fear of any cluster of small holes) or lachanophobia (fear of any vegetables). Fortunately, this is not the case with China, and one can hypothesize about the causes of the fear of China. In fact, something prevents the West, despite all the simple observations above, from recognizing China as an ordinary state among other states, from calming down, relaxing, and possibly even enjoying interaction with it.

So, let us take a break from China and turn our attention to the West. The political history of the West is the history of political forms. It is hard to say definitively what a political form is—explicit definitions are rare.[6] However, if such different authors as Carl Schmitt (1923; 1928), Sheldon Wolin (2004 (1960)), Claude Lefort (1986), Étienne Balibar (1997; 2002), and Pierre Manent (2001) (and their numerous followers and interpreters) built their most important intellectual constructs around the concept of political form, then they surely did it for a reason. Without delving into irrelevant details and discussions, we can say that political form is an analytical category that permits working with broad ideal types, each pointing to “a particular way of being in the world expressed in corresponding cultural values and practices,” as well as a derivative “distinctive and pervasive way of life” (Wolin, 2004, p. 557). This refers, of course, to modes of political existence and images of political life. Importantly, these modes and images are believed to be essentially differentiated, i.e., having, on the analytical level, distinct shapes and clear contours.

Those who use the category of political form deal with it in different ways. Some deal with ideal types, which most often include: a tribe (with reservations, as only a proto-political proto-form), a city (polis), an empire, and a state (not always but most often equated with a nation). Others explore their numerous subvarieties, classified according to as different bases and criteria as possible: ‘forms of government’ (a concept narrower than ‘political form’), political systems, political regimes, types of legitimation of power, variations in territorial organization, the degree of homogeneity/heterogeneity, the degree of subordination/autonomy/sovereignty in relation to other polities, etc. Still others consider the outstanding ability of all these forms and sub-forms to combine, recombine and hybridize: elements of tribalism and leaderism can easily be found in the most modernized polities; sometimes states mature inside empires and then blow up the imperial shell, and “modern state … appears then to be a city that is deliberately and artificially spread out and diluted” (Manent, 2001, p. 77); sometimes empires themselves create states, both in their core and on their periphery; sometimes states build their own empires (Martin, 2001; Kaspe, 2007; Miller and Berger, 2014; Osterhammel, 2014; pp. 403-418). Some even speak of the global capitalist Empire, whose insatiable tentacles have ensnared and subjugated all states and nations around the world (Hardt and Negri, 2000, as well as their numerous epigones).

All of this is extremely important and useful. Moreover, this essentially constitutes the only way available to the West (because, this is precisely what makes it the West) for interpreting the political world and taking political action in it—a modus intelligendi, a modus operandi, and ultimately a modus vivendi.[7] Moreover, in the course of Westernization (which is just another but less correct name for modernization and globalization), all non-Western polities, which underwent a deep internal transformation in the process, were placed in the same categorial framework, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes forcibly, but always painfully. It is quite telling that the most representative global organization, conceived as an unquestionable supreme authority for resolving any disputes (what has become of it is another question) is called the United Nations, not any other way. This means that, to be its member, one must be a nation or at least present oneself as such. A nation (equated with a state) is—genetically and exclusively—Western political form. This process has produced countless and most bizarre artifacts and mutations.

Not a State?

China has also gone through several dramatic waves of Westernization. However, attempts to define the political form of modern China by fitting it into the generally accepted categorial framework have proved futile. Well, since almost anything can be called a ‘state,’ then let China be one, too. After all, in European languages, the words state, государство, държава, państwo, stato, Etat, Staat, állam, valtio, etc., acquired their current meaning only after long semantic adventures (Skinner, 1989; Harding, 1994; Kharkhordin, 2002). Against this backdrop, the history of the Chinese 國 (guó) is no less, but also no more, surprising. But what kind of state is this? The simple answer is a republic, of course—the People’s Republic of China. But what about the fact that the literal translation (which comes with its own flaws but is nonetheless not entirely useless) of “中华人民共和国 (Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó)” is “Central Splendid People’s Shared Harmony Country”?[8] Is this really a res publica?

Modern China is not a democracy, no matter how one tries to fit it into this category, interpreting in the minimalist or the broadest way. And it is not a dictatorship or totalitarianism—let bygones be bygones. It is neither a monarchy, nor a tyranny, nor an aristocracy, nor an oligarchy, nor a polity (stricto sensu, as an ideal of balance and moderation achieved through the rule of the middle strata and classes, and not as a receptacle of all possible political forms), and it does not fit into the Aristotelian matrix. The ideal of a ‘mixed government,’ which inspired Polybius, Cicero, and Niccolò Machiavelli, does not apply to it either.

One may probably say that the Chinese regime is authoritarian (out of desperation and simply because all other options have proved wrong). But that would mean saying nothing—the concept of authoritarianism is so broad that in addition to the classic, more or less obvious monarchies, tyrannies, dictatorships, and totalitarian regimes, it can also encompass the Roman principate, Bonapartism, Kemalism, Peronism, Chavismo, Orbanism, Erdoganism, and whatever else one might name. Moreover, modern China cannot be classified as a personalist regime either. Xi Jinping’s heading China for the third time (in 2022-2023), despite the supposedly traditional limitation of two five-year terms, gives no reason for such conclusions. This is not a tradition; on the contrary, it is a novelty and an incipient trend: such a limit existed de jure only from 1982 to 2018 (and even then only for the post of President of the PRC, not for the position of General Secretary of the CCP), and de facto it was observed only twice by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, in 1993 and 2003, respectively. The ‘hybridity’ label is also unsuitable: it is completely meaningless unless it is shown and proven what exactly has been crossed with what (which has already been identified and classified) and in what proportion in a particular regime. This will not work for China.

Turning to typologies based on other criteria is of little help, too. China is clearly not a confederation or a federation. But it cannot be unequivocally called a unitary state either, as 47% of its territory is occupied by five autonomous, albeit mostly nominally, regions (Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang Uyghur, Guangxi Zhuang, and Ningxia Hui). And there are also the special administrative regions of Hong Kong (Xiānggǎng) and Macau (Àomén), which have a special status.

Perhaps China is simply a nation-state? Well, if a ‘nation’ and a ‘state,’ as has already been noted above, have become almost synonymous, let it be so. But even if this is the case, it is no less strange as a nation than it is as a state. “Nation-states, by their very nature, strive for the ideal of cultural and linguistic homogeneity” (Kende, 1991, p. 24). In other words, in order to be considered nation-states, they must approximate (quite closely, in fact) this ideal. The ideal of homogeneity is a product of modernization, for which the necessary condition is “sustained, frequent and precise communication between strangers involving a sharing of explicit meaning, transmitted in a standard idiom and in writing when required” (Gellner, 1983, p. 34). However, there is no need to reduce modernization to the formation of industrial society, as Ernest Gellner did, since its non-economic motives can—and often are—no less significant. Incidentally, nationalism, as “a political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (Ibid, p. 1), is certainly not justified solely by economic considerations. Sometimes there is no industrial society yet, but nationalism is already there. However, the mere statement of undeniably observed facts is important.

At first glance, China matches this ideal almost completely: the Han people make up over 91% of the population, while the other 55 officially recognized ethnic groups account for less than 9%. It would take Taiwan, with its approximately 23 million inhabitants (which would add less than 2% to the total Han population) for the political and national borders (i.e., the area dominated by Han culture) to match each other. However, upon closer examination, the picture does not appear so simple.

Omitting many details and oversimplifying things: the Han language is a collective term for ten main dialects, which in turn are further divided into approximately two hundred varieties. They share a common written, hieroglyphic basis, but their phonetics, vocabulary, and in some cases even grammar are so different that verbal communication (i.e., Gellner’s “sustained, frequent and precise communication between strangers”) between residents of northern and southern regions, as well as between southerners from different areas, is often a problem. The official language is pǔtōnghuà, also known as Standard Mandarin, based on the Beijing version of the North Chinese language and classical literature and created only in 1911, after ‘the Xinhai Revolution, under the name of guoyu, literally meaning ‘state language” and renamed pǔtōnghuà (literally meaning ‘common tongue’) in 1949, after the establishment of the PRC. Pǔtōnghuà reigns supreme in the public sphere (and even beyond in the North), but in everyday life, only about 80% of Chinese on average speak it across the country, and only half of that in some rural areas in the South. The political goal of “promoting the common language—Pǔtōnghuà—used nationwide” is stated in the 1982 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (while also stipulating that “all ethnic groups shall have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages”). The Law “On Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress,” adopted in March 2026 by the National People’s Congress, adds little to the long-established approach, mainly systematizing previously introduced measures and staying in line with one of Xi Jinping’s favorite metaphors: the peoples of China should be “packed tightly together like pomegranate seeds.”

The pomegranate seeds are enclosed in a strong shell and uniformly colored red; but grinding them into homogeneous puree is neither proposed nor implied here. Therefore, the Chinese approach to the unity-plurality dilemma differs markedly from that which was practiced in most European and Europeanized nation-states.

As a rule, the latter was eliminated, while the former was imposed by all possible means, ranging from mild to quite repressive (this topic has been researched so thoroughly that, for the sake of space, let me omit references to specific studies).

Modern nation-building cases are structured in a similar way. The Chinese authorities would probably like to do something of the kind at the “software” level; one can harbor any suspicions and make any assumptions on that score. But the “hardware” does not permit it. Pǔtōnghuà functions more as an oral extension of the traditionally written lingua franca, which Chinese characters have always been since ancient times: today, its role is comparable to that of Latin, Greek, Russian, English, and to some extent Spanish and French (in certain ways Arabic) in some empires. And at the same time, as shown above, modern China is not an empire.

There are, however, more nuanced ideas about the nation and the nation-state. For example, Alfred Stepan proposed distinguishing between a ‘state-nation’ and a ‘nation-state.’ He uses the term ‘nation-state’ for what Paul Kende and other representatives of the French tradition refer to as ‘état-nations’—it is not hard to get used to it, especially since he defines this political sub-form strictly in line with Gellner. Per Stepan, a ‘state-nation’ is a combination of “attachment to more than one cultural civilizational tradition within the existing boundaries,” “recognition and support of more than one cultural identity, even more than one cultural nation,” “two or more official languages are allowed,” “federal system… de jure, or de facto, asymmetrical,” “salient and are recognized and democratically managed ethno-cultural-territorial cleavages,” “autonomist parties [that] can govern in federal units and are ‘coalitionable’ at the center. Non-violent secessionist parties can sometimes participate in democratic politics,” “multiple but complementary (political) identities,” “obedience to the state and identification with institutions, neither based on a single national identity” (Stepan, 2008, p. 4). Obviously, this model is irrelevant to Chinese realities. And it is clear why: Stepan associates it exclusively with democracies, classifying India, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium, and Spain as ‘state-nations.’ However, he does the same with ‘nation-states’ (Brazil, Austria, U.S., Germany, Australia, Argentina) (Ibid, p. 13). There are no non-democracies in his sample, simply because he did not deal with them. So, China does not fit this category, either.

The last attempt. China undoubtedly belongs to the category of one-party systems. The fact that, in addition to the Communist Party of China, there are officially eight other parties (and Hong Kong has its own party subsystem) should not mislead anyone: this well-known tactic has been used more than once by other one-party regimes, and the leading role of the CCP has been repeatedly declared in the Constitution. But what kind of party is this—中国共产党 (Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng)? Resorting once again to a literal translation and keeping in mind its flaws, it is the Party of the Common Property/Joint Production of the Middle Country.[9] ‘Dǎng’ can be considered a fairly accurate equivalent of the word ‘party’—in ancient China this term was used for court political factions vying for influence and power. The history of many European political parties and those shaped along European lines also began with various factions, groups, and cliques, and it took time for them to turn from partes (Lat.) of the elite into parts of a politically organized society in toto and per se. But is ‘common property/joint production’ really the same kind of communism that was visualized in its birthplace, i.e., in the West, by its apologists, adherents, and advocates? Or was it, and still is, a “dream of something greater” which is not reducible solely to the ownership-production relationship? And, most importantly, what kind of state does this party rule? Under Mao, the answer was clear—totalitarian, of course. Now, there is no totalitarianism in China.[10] Incidentally, there is no common property/joint production either. Once again, this makes it obscure for us.

The Problem of the Formless

Hence the first part of the hypothesis.

In fog, as we know, all objects lose the clarity of their outlines and the discernibility of their size; they become shapeless and unrecognizable. This is what makes fog frightening—we cannot understand what is happening around us, properly determine the nature of an object, the distance to it, or the nature and scale of a potential threat. This is why the formless frightens us.

The formless rarely becomes a subject of individual reflections. And it is easy to understand why: How can it be an object, and how can one think about it separately from other objects? This question puzzled even Plato: “And would you feel… about… such things as hair, mud, dirt, or anything else which is vile and paltry; would you suppose that each of these has an idea…? Certainly not, said Socrates; …I am afraid that there would be an absurdity in assuming any idea of them, although I sometimes get disturbed, and begin to think that there is nothing without an idea; but then again, when I have taken up this position, I run away, because I am afraid that I may fall into a bottomless pit of nonsense, and perish” (Παρµενίδης 130c, 130d).

Aristotle simply dismissed this question, thinking that (to put it bluntly) everything has a form, and formlessness is nothing more than an abstraction. So, Georges Bataille’s diagnosis is quite accurate: “Formless is… a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit” (Bataille, 1929, p. 382).

It is noteworthy that both Plato and Bataille, as well as the authors inspired by Bataille, describe the formless as something repulsive, dirty, and vile (see Bois and Krauss, 1996; Woodard, 2011; Alliez and Gordon, 2016). The dirty and vile, in turn, not only repel but can also frighten: “There are evil and impure powers, productive of disorders, causes of death and sickness, instigators of sacrilege. The only sentiments which men have for them are a fear into which horror generally enters” (Durkheim, 1964, p. 409; see also Caillois, 1988 and many other studies). The opposite is also possible—something that for some reason is frightening is also believed to be inherently repulsive, which further legitimizes its isolation, sanitation, and elimination. In any case, there is a connection between disgust and fear, whatever its direction may be. After all, it is no coincidence that the Abrahamic tradition says so much about the “unclean, or impure spirit,” one of whose favorite tactics is to poison and weaken the souls of the tempted with fear.

Statements about the formless are, to put it mildly, interdisciplinary in nature. Again, this is not surprising: it is formless precisely because it does not fit into any disciplinary framework, not even a psychological one. Psychologists do not analyze the fear of formlessness, but it is treated as a symptom of generalized anxiety disorder (van Hoyer, der Heiden and Portman 2011). This kind of fear is irrational, structureless, and absurd; it is not caused by any specific object. It is something else. However, it seems reasonable to assume that anxiety and horror instilled by the formless may themselves turn out to be formless.

Wolin is perhaps the only one who tried to talk about the formless in the language of political theory. Unfortunately, his attempt can hardly be considered satisfactory. Some twenty years ago he made vague (and it is precisely this vagueness that is most frightening) warnings about the threat of “formless forms” looming over the world (Wolin, 2004, p. 559). But he never explained what this oxymoron means and what the formless is in his examples—the American superpower and Islamic terrorism. And that is a pity. Because the second part of the hypothesis suggests that China is frightening not so much because it cannot be fitted into any of the known political forms, but because the West itself is becoming increasingly formless.

For several decades now, the West has been experiencing a growing sense of uncertainty about itself, about the stability and legitimacy of its political forms, about its own right to not just impose something on anyone but even to have any kind of political form, let alone defend it, about its own right to be the West, and ultimately, about its own right to be. It was the Left who spread this uncertainty, which is now turning into a sense of guilt. The Right seek to bring the West back to its roots, but they do so, firstly, rather clumsily, and secondly, instead of treating the disorder they demand a crude, unanesthetized amputation of the affected organs and tissues, often failing to notice that by doing so they call for cutting away what was generated by the West itself in the course of its own natural and legitimate evolution, rather by an exogenous infection.

Russia, despite its specific situation, is faced with similar predicaments. It is impossible to restore the communist regime (in any form, from extremely harsh to a more moderate one). It is impossible to restore the Orthodox monarchy. It is impossible to call itself an empire for a multitude of domestic and foreign policy reasons, and also because it would simply be counterfactual. It is also impossible to position itself as an ordinary, unremarkable state ‘like all the others’ for roughly the same reasons (but also because it would be very undesirable). The centauric notion of ‘state-civilization,’ much trumpeted lately, does not solve the problem. Firstly, it is hardly suitable for external use, as it will only baffle friends and anger enemies. Secondly, it combines the incompatible: unlike ‘state,’ ‘civilization’ is not a political form, but a notion from a different realm.

It is sometimes claimed that this two-part definition was coined by Lucian Pye, and specifically in relation to China. The truth is that Pye, who was born in China, worked there, and studied it closely, did indeed write something similar. But, in fact, he wrote the following: “China is not just another nation-state in the family of nations. China is a civilization pretending to be a state. The story of modern China could be described as the effort by both Chinese and foreigners to squeeze a civilization into the arbitrary, constraining framework of the modern state, an institutional invention that came out of the fragmentation of the West’s own civilization” (Pye, 1990, p. 58). The very title of his article—China: Erratic State, Frustrated Society—makes one doubt that being a ‘state-civilization’ is such a good thing. Moreover, now, three and a half decades later, it would be wrong to describe the Chinese political order as unstable, and there is no reliable information about the actual degree of frustration in Chinese society. The term ‘civilization-state” (precisely this way, not in reversed order; recalling Stepan’s logic, we can assume that substantively these are not the same things) was popularized by Martin Jacques, the author of the ground-breaking alarmist bestseller When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (Jacques, 2009), which was met with controversy in academic circles, including Chinese ones. Unreliable ground, undesirable analogy.

China is undoubtedly exotic and enigmatic. But it is by no means marginal. In any configuration of a multipolar world, whether desirable or undesirable, regardless of how many centers it will have (in fact, it would be very useful to at least try to estimate their number in advance, even if only roughly), China will be one of them.

It cannot be ignored, and there is no point in even hoping to crush it—it is far from being a spider or a worm. The fear is rooted not in specific inconveniences caused by China, such as its economic expansion being relatively more effective than the Western one (because it lacks the value component, i.e., does not require its partners to meet additional value-based (political, humanitarian, environmental) conditions. After all, capitalism must be capable of competing even under less-than-favorable conditions, and the West has long been quite good at turning a blind eye to the antics of “its own sons of a bitch.” The fear is rooted in China’s sheer existence that defies the very notion of political form and all its variations. But from the Western perspective, only the form—and nothing but the form—can withstand the offensive of the formless.

No, China is not destroying Western political forms by exerting direct pressure from above—it lacks resources for that, and this course of action is not characteristic of it. China is sort of seeping into them from below, eroding their foundations (causing the supporting structures to shift, sway, and crack), while at the same time reconnecting their life-support systems to itself—the “Made in China” label keeps spreading around the entire material world. However, there is a limit to how long a metaphor can work, and in China’s case that limit seems to have been reached. It has played its part by indicating that it is precisely the obscurity and indeterminacy of the danger emanating from China—in the West’s political language—that makes it ontological and existential.

Mutatis mutandis draws this feeling from the well-known Yellow Peril mythologeme of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which, however, hostility, rejection and aggressive xenophobia were directed not only at the Chinese but also at the entire ‘yellow Mongoloid race,’ including the Japanese, Tibetans, Koreans, Vietnamese, the half-forgotten Mongols themselves, the hallucinatory Huns, etc., in general, any ‘slant-eyed’ people (see the multifaceted review by Kuo Wei Tchen and Yeats, 2014). The difference is that back then, the Yellow Peril, at least when associated specifically with China, was not linked to the Chinese political order at all: “The classical version of the ‘Yellow Peril’ concept viewed Chinese migration as a kind of natural disaster, a tsunami sweeping over Russian territory. The point of origin (the Qing Empire) was merely a sea—an incomprehensible, threatening, but by no means organized force” (Blyakher and Grigorichev, 2026, p. 133).[11]

Intriguing and convincing are the parallels drawn between Sinophobia and anti‑Semitism of that time, often depicted as interacting in a mutually cumulative way. Such descriptions even include the conspiracy theory claiming that Jews and Chinese “play the same game” (see Dyatlov, 2012; Renshaw, 2016). After the nearly simultaneous establishment of the State of Israel (1948) and the People’s Republic of China (1949), both anti‑Semitism and Sinophobia became largely focused on them. As for Israel, illustrative examples would be superfluous. As for China, in the early 2000s, many in Russia believed that every Chinese “is part of a single, organized, and externally controlled mechanism of secret takeover” and that a “conscious political process is unfolding, directed by forces hostile to Russia” (Blyakher and Grigorichev, 2026, p. 135).

The tall tales about countless hordes of Chinese, who had allegedly already flooded all Russian lands east of Lake Baikal and were just waiting for a signal from the center, are similar to Trump’s delusions about Chinese submarines purportedly cruising around Greenland and waiting for a signal from the center—the same center. Little has changed. Both Jews and Chinese, even not suspected of being Israel and China’s sleeper agents and fervently denying it, frighten the West by their omnipresence and ability to creep into all cracks of Western societies, economies, and political forms.

What’s Next?

Theoretically, there are several options for overcoming the fear of China (which, in fact, is coming from China at a superficial glance only).

Firstly, China might suddenly adopt a political form that the West would see as distinct. However, it is completely unclear what form exactly that would be, why China would do this, and under what circumstances anything like this might happen. Most importantly, this would in no way resolve the crisis and stop the weakening of the West’s political form (but certainly not China’s). In fact, this would make things even worse. Secondly, the West might suddenly improve and expand its own(!) political language, understand and accept China as it is, i.e., “stop worrying and start living.” But this would be very hard to do, and nothing suggests that. Thirdly, the West may suddenly perk up, regain faith in itself and its political forms, strengthen them, and prepare to repel the looming threat of the formless. This is possible but highly doubtful—what is lost is lost; you cannot put toothpaste back into the tube. Fourthly, the West may develop an entirely new political form, more resilient to challenges. It seems that present-day ‘techno-fascists’ (or rather, those accused of ‘techno-fascism’), such as Peter Thiel, Alexander Karp, and a few other lesser-known figures, are dreaming of something like that. However, there is no solid reason to expect them to be anything more than yet another sect of dreamers and eccentrics, of whom the West has already seen quite a few. And for whom, apart from freaks (and not even all of them), can this dystopia be attractive? Is there anything else on the menu? Fifthly, the degradation of Western political forms may become irreversible. This will not turn the West into China, of course, but it will no longer be the West as we know it, and there will be nothing left to talk about.

Under all scenarios, we will have to live with the fear of the formless (except for the last one, because it is not about life but about death). In the foreseeable future, this fear will remain a constant cause of stress for both the ruling elites and ordinary people in the West. The types of stress reaction are well known: “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn” (Walker, 2013). The choice is limited and not a pleasant one. Yet the heroes of bygone times, who made the West as we know it, were smart and agile enough not to get stuck in such reactions (any of them taken separately is a sure path to defeat), but to masterfully combine and alternate them. Reason, skill, and faith—has there ever been any hope for anything else? Besides, it is said: “Do not fear.”

For citation, please use:
Shlykov, P.V., 2026. Trump and Erdoğan: Pragmatic Partnership and a New Architecture of Türkiye-U.S. Relations. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(4), pp. 72–95. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-4-72-95

By the mid-2020s, Türkiye-U.S. relations had slid into a state of “chronic instability” (Taşpınar, 2024). The traditional model of strategic alliance within NATO, based on shared values and mutual obligations, had given way to a purely pragmatic, transactional model, based on personal agreements and selective cooperation. This led to the fragmentation of the bilateral agenda and the erosion of institutional trust.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 increased the importance of the leaders’ personal relationship for U.S.-Türkiye relations. Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s leadership styles appear similar in many respects, including a preference for personal diplomacy and a distrust of the traditional foreign policy bureaucracy. The Turkish authorities have even coined the concept of ‘leader diplomacy’ (lider diplomasisi) as a tool for overcoming international isolation and advancing national interests (T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Iletişim Başkanlığı, 2023). This approach has produced tactical flexibility and quick agreements, but the exclusion of the foreign policy bureaucracy has made relations highly volatile (Ovalı, 2020, pp. 23-45).

The “bromance” between Erdoğan and Trump, based on their perceptions of each other as strong leaders, had a direct impact even during Trump’s first term. Trump often publicly spoke warmly of Erdoğan, kindling Ankara’s hopes that personal agreement could lead to breakthroughs like the termination of U.S. support for the Kurdish YPG in Syria and the return of Türkiye to the F-35 program (from which it was excluded after purchasing Russian S-400 air defense systems (Atlantic Council, 2025)). However, such things often ran up against consensus, laws, and policies in the U.S. Congress and military (Tan, 2025), and personal affections did not prevent harsh U.S. sanctions after Türkiye’s detention of American Pastor Andrew Brunson.

Türkiye’s status of an “indispensable but difficult” ally (Michalski, 2026) has kept Türkiye-U.S. relations in a state of ‘managed instability’. Aware of their mutual strategic dependence, the two countries pragmatically managed their often divergent interests (Ülgül, 2019). Türkiye has NATO’s second largest army, retains critical importance on NATO’s southern flank, and is an important hub for operations in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and Middle East.

Yet Ankara, capitalizing on its strategic position, seeks to establish itself as an autonomous regional center of power. Its influence has increased significantly after the latest developments in Syria and the South Caucasus. Türkiye positions itself as an independent mediator (e.g., in the Ukraine conflict) and strives to become an energy and logistics bridge between East and West.

Ankara has used its autonomy and diversified external relations (in-deepening cooperation with Russia, application for BRICS membership) to win maximum preferences from Washington (Gisclon, 2025). Türkiye is not giving up on the alliance, but using it to ensure the country’s foreign-policy and economic interests, which often diverge from those of the U.S.

To understand the volatile relations between Türkiye and the U.S. over the past decade, it is useful to combine role theory and the concept of asymmetric alliance. These highlight the crisis’s ideological and structural causes.

The extensive literature on Türkiye-U.S. relations is dominated by chronological narratives (Oğuzlu, 2011, pp. 981-998), and by structural descriptions highlighting the allies’ unequal power and deprivation of a common (Soviet) threat (Güvenç and Özel, 2020, pp. 523-544). Constructivist studies, on the contrary, are few: works applying role theory to Türkiye and the U.S. mostly analyze individual cases and leadership styles (Çuhadar et al., 2021, pp. 1-27; Özdamar, 2024, pp. 41-59), or focus on Ankara’s role identity without comparing it to the U.S.’s (Bozdaglioglu, 2003). But it is precisely role theory that helps capture the deep ideological and identity-based factors of discord.

Role theory contends that a state’s behavior is largely determined by the role that its elite believes it plays (Holsti, 1970, pp. 233-309), its ‘appropriate’ functions and responsibilities in the international system (Breuning, 2024, pp. 233-252). The Arab Spring and especially the Syrian conflict led to the U.S. and Türkiye developing fundamentally incongruent roles.

Based on Holsti’s terminology, this article examines national role concepts (elite discourse within a state about its ‘appropriate’ functions and status), actual role performance, and role prescriptions (the expectations of allies, great powers, and regional players). Incongruity between the three leads to ‘role conflict’ and ‘altercasting’—attempts to impose a desired role upon a partner (Çuhadar et al., pp. 1-27; Valockova, 2026, pp. 1-30; Malici, 2006, pp. 127-149). This framework eschews simplistic explanations that attribute turbulence in bilateral relations solely to structural asymmetry or leaders’ ‘chemistry’, and helps avoid confusing role with function or observed behavior, as is typical in empirical research.

National role concept is not merely a state’s objective position in an international structure (e.g., Türkiye’s status as ‘NATO’s southern flank’), or the sum of its foreign policy actions; it also includes the subjective meanings ascribed by the elite to its country’s activities. Role performance, in turn, is not equated with a role as such, but is viewed as one of its manifestations, along with the elites’ discourse and external prescriptions. This paper aims not to assign a particular role to Ankara or Washington based on their behavior, but to identify discrepancies between what the elites declare, what they do, and what significant ‘Others’ expect from them—discrepancies that generate conflict.

The Barack Obama administration built its foreign policy discourse around the idea of “renewing American leadership” (Obama, 2007, pp. 2-16), intended to restore the moral authority and strategic efficiency of the U.S. after its interventions in the 2000s. In practice, this turned into selective engagement: while proclaiming its readiness to lead, the U.S. simultaneously sought to minimize its direct military presence in the Middle East, delegating regional stabilization to its allies. In terms of role theory, it would be appropriate to describe this as the position of a ‘reserved leader’ or ‘leader-manager’, diverging from the original concept of ‘energetic leadership’ due to domestic fatigue from wars. This strategy vividly manifested itself in Obama’s 2013 decision not to launch strikes punishing Assad for using chemical weapons, but instead to implement a Russia-brokered compromise by which Syria would sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy its stocks. This approach, which Obama called a triumph of common sense over political pressure, but his critics blasted as indecision, allowed the U.S. administration to use Syria’s Kurdish forces as the main proxy for fighting ISIS, thus making tactical successes without using its own troops on the ground.

At the same time, the Turkish elite, inspired by Ahmet Davutoğlu’s ‘strategic depth’ doctrine, began to define the country’s role as ‘regional leader’ and ‘defender of the region’s oppressed Muslim communities’. Ankara sought an active, leading role in the reconstruction of the Middle East, viewing the fall of the Assad regime as an opportunity to increase its influence and form a friendly government. Ankara’s proactive foreign policy stood in stark contrast to Washington’s cautious and restrained strategy (Shlykov, 2023, p. 142).

The role conflict between Türkiye and the U.S. was aggravated by the failure of ‘altercasting’. In Syria, Washington persistently guided Ankara to act as a disciplined ally, supporting the U.S.’s anti-ISIS strategy despite its use of YPG proxies. Ankara, in turn, expected its senior partner to militarily depose Assad. In defense procurement, Washington required Türkiye to act as a loyal NATO member, buying only NATO-compatible weapons. By purchasing Russia’s S-400, Türkiye instead sought to establish itself as a sovereign player, free to choose military-technical partners.

In each case, the sides’ incompatible roles and expectations deepened mutual misunderstanding.

The asymmetric alliance concept complements the analysis of the role dissonances between Türkiye and the U.S., highlighting the structural imbalance in their relationship. Historically, the alliance was based on the U.S.’s protection of Türkiye from the Soviet threat, in exchange for Ankara’s provision to Washington of its crucial strategic position (Morrow, 1991, pp. 904-933). However, after the end of the Cold War, the common threat weakened, revealing power-asymmetry and interest-divergence (Güvenç and Özel, 2020, pp. 523-544).

The bilateral alliance has undergone several phases: the classic ‘asymmetric model’ (1947-2000); a brief period of ‘exemplary partnership’ when Obama acclaimed Türkiye as a successful synthesis of Islam and democracy (2009-2012) (Shlykov, 2018, pp. 34-59); transactionalism and crisis (present day). Under Trump, relations have been reduced to one-off deals and ultimatums (Pastor Brunson, S-400), exposing the erosion of the alliance’s regulatory framework (Gürsoy, 2021, pp. 139-142).

The proposed synthesis requires a preliminary reconstruction of the roles that the parties applied to themselves and each other at different stages of interaction. For the U.S., the role concepts in the 2000s-2020s changed from a ‘global liberal leader’ (with its characteristic willingness to intervene and democratize) to a ‘reserved leader’ embodied by the Obama administration, which oscillated between ‘renewed leadership’ rhetoric and a pragmatic desire to shift the burden of regional stabilization onto allies. This eventually gave way to Trump’s blatant role of a dealer in ‘transactional nationalism’, which reduces allied commitments to one-off deals.

Türkiye’s own role conception has evolved from that of a loyal ally and a bridge between the West and Islam (early 2000s) to a much more ambitious self-identity. The doctrine of ‘strategic depth’ formalized Ankara’s claim to the status of a ‘regional leader’ and ‘defender of the oppressed’, which, along with the ideological framework of neo-Ottomanism and pan-Turkism, contributed to the adoption of the concept of a ‘strategically autonomous central power’ with its own civilizational mission.

This evolution was marked not only by rhetoric, but also by tangible steps such as the diversification of arms purchases, independent military interventions, and the institutionalization of ‘leader diplomacy’.

The crises of recent years—from the Syrian conflict and U.S. support for the YPG, to Türkiye’s acquisition of the S-400 and exclusion from the F-35 program—are symptoms, not causes, of the discord. The root causes lie in a role conflict and the asymmetry of the alliance that has lost its consolidating common threat (Özdamar, 2024, pp. 56-57). The foreign policy behavior of the two countries is largely a derivative of their elites’ new national role concepts being shaped by the changing balance of power and the regional agenda.

Türkiye-U.S. Relations in the New Millennium

The traditional foundation of Türkiye-U.S. relations, laid during the Cold War, is their military-political alliance and relatively consistent distribution of roles. The U.S. acted as a ‘leader of the free world’ guaranteeing the security of the entire Western camp, while Türkiye accepted and generally shared the role of a ‘loyal ally on NATO’s southern flank’, whose key function was to contain the USSR (Atmaca, 2014, pp. 19-34; Oğuzlu, 2025, pp. 736-752).

However, in the early 2000s, this model began to falter. In 2003, Türkiye refused to provide its territory for the invasion of Iraq, violating Washington’s role prescription (Çelikaslan, 2021, pp. 670-678) and exposing the countries’ diverging interests in the post-bipolar world.

Simultaneously, Türkiye’s foreign policy paradigm was undergoing a conceptual transformation. When Ahmet Davutoğlu took office as foreign minister in 2009, his concept of ‘strategic depth’ was formalized as a doctrine. Neo-Ottomanism—responsibility for the former Ottoman territories, with which a historical and civilizational legacy is shared (Mehdiev, 2016, pp. 32-39; Druzhilovskii and Avatkov, 2013, pp. 73-88)—and pan-Turkism became increasingly apparent in Ankara’s foreign policy discourse. Türkiye’s role was transforming from a ‘bridge’ between East and West, and junior partner in the global system, into an active independent ‘central power’ and ‘regional leader’ with its own civilizational mission and multi-vector foreign policy (Shlykov, 2023, pp. 140-141). Initially, this shift did not antagonize the U.S.: President Barack Obama’s 2009 visit to Ankara and rhetoric of ‘exemplary partnership’ (The White House, 2009) reflected Washington’s hopes that Türkiye’s combination of Islamic identity, democracy, and market economy could make it a ‘bridge’ and a positive example for its neighbors (Shlykov, 2018, pp. 34-59). Nevertheless, the unconditional alliance, based on a common Cold War threat, was over.

The Arab Spring and especially the Syrian Civil War widened the Washington-Ankara divide. The U.S., ‘leading from behind,’ sought to combat ISIS and avoid a large-scale military intervention (Shlykov, 2019a, pp. 184-229). Washington thus allied with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), made up mainly of YPG (Gürçay, 2019), regarded by Türkiye as the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Türkiye, in contrast, sought to overthrow Assad, prevent the strengthening of Kurdish autonomous entities near its borders, and support Sunni rebel groups (Eksi & Erol, 2018, pp. 15-45). The year 2014 became the tipping point, following the start of the U.S.’s open military cooperation with the YPG, which Ankara considered a direct threat and a betrayal of allied obligations. Mutual trust had been undermined earlier—by the Obama administration’s abandonment of its own ‘red lines’ after the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack, which Ankara viewed as weakness and indecision (Anadolu Ajansı, 2017).

The domestic political situation in Türkiye also added to rising tensions. Official Ankara blamed Fethullah Gülen’s movement for a coup attempt in July 2016, and persistently demanded his extradition from the U.S.. Washington’s refusal, and support for Kurdish forces, sparked strong anti-American sentiment in Turkish society and elites.

Another factor contributing to the crisis was the arrest of American pastor Andrew Brunson on charges of espionage, links to the Gülenist movement, and participation in plotting the failed 2016 coup (Anadolu Ajansı, 2018). The U.S. viewed this as hostage-taking for the purpose of political bargaining. Despite Washington’s diplomatic demarches, the Turkish authorities were in no hurry to release him. In August 2018, Trump admitted the failure of diplomatic efforts, imposed tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum to 50% and 20%, respectively, and threatened to “destroy” the Turkish economy if the U.S. demands were not met. Within a day, the Turkish lira lost 20% of its value (The Financial Times, 2018), and Ankara was forced to give in. On 12 October 2018, the Izmir High Criminal Court released Brunson. Although the conflict was formally resolved, it had profound and long-lasting consequences. Türkiye faced severe economic problems. Inflation, which had already been quite high, exceeded 20% by the end of 2018, and continued to rise in subsequent years, reaching its peak in the fall of 2022: over 85.5% per official data (TÜİK, 2022), and over 185% per independent expert estimates (DİKEN, 2022). The lira’s collapse triggered a recession, devalued citizens’ savings, and ushered in economic instability that has persisted throughout the 2020s.

But the most significant transformations were geopolitical. Despite Washington’s warnings and threats of sanctions, Ankara held to its decision to buy the S-400, the first batch of which was delivered in July 2019, and thus proved willing to bear significant material and strategic costs for the sake of independence in security matters (Shlykov, 2023, pp. 134-158). Washington viewed this as a threat to NATO’s security, expelling Türkiye from the F-35 program and imposing CAATSA sanctions against it in 2020. This was the prologue to Türkiye’s shift towards an increasingly multi-vector policy featuring rapprochement with Russia and the pursuit of strategic autonomy. It also exposed accumulated grievances and discordant priorities.

Sanctioning a NATO ally achieved its immediate goal but had a strategic cost, eroding the bilateral alliance and pushing Türkiye towards alternative partners, thus radically changing the balance of power in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.

The fragility and volatility of Türkiye-U.S. relations were also vividly highlighted by Türkiye’s autumn 2019 Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria, aimed at creating a “safe zone” and neutralizing the YPG threat (Akturk, 2020). This was made possible by Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria’s border areas, made after a 6 October conversation with Erdoğan (T24, 2019). The American troops deployed in the region together with the Syrian Kurdish forces as part of the fight against ISIS actually served as a deterrent. Ankara interpreted their withdrawal as the removal of a key obstacle to its planned military operation. For the Turkish leadership the designation of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (in their eyes synonymous with YPG) as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and the EU created specific role expectations of the U.S. (Aktürk, 2020). However, in the U.S., this was criticized as a strategic mistake and a moral betrayal: the YPG had been the Pentagon’s main ally on the ground in the lengthy, successful campaign against ISIS. Under criticism from influential Congressmen of both parties, diplomats, military experts, and key European allies, the Trump administration named the Turkish operation a “bad idea” that Washington “does not support” (AP News, 2019). On 14 October 2019, Trump imposed “targeted sanctions” (USDT, 2019a) against Türkiye’s Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, and against Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, and Energy Minister Fatih Dönmez. Trump also (again) raised tariffs on Turkish steel to 50%, threatening to “swiftly destroy” Türkiye’s economy if it continued its fighting in Syria (Hürriyet, 2019b).

The sanctions proved to be short-lived. On 17 October 2019, a U.S. delegation, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, secured Turkish agreement to a 120-hour pause in hostilities, allowing Kurdish forces to withdraw from a 30-km strip along the Turkish-Syrian border (TRT Haber, 2019). Once Ankara confirmed a “permanent ceasefire,” the 2019 sanctions were lifted almost instantly. Speaking at the White House on 23 October 2019, Donald Trump lauded the Turks for their efforts and “instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to lift all sanctions imposed” on Türkiye (Hürriyet, 2019a). On the same day, the U.S. Treasury officially removed the agencies and ministers from the sanctions list (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2019b). Such a rapid removal of sanctions, accompanied by Trump’s public thanks to Erdoğan and even SDF Commander Mazloum Kobani highlighted the pragmatic underlying motives for the American actions: the strategic goal was not to punish Türkiye but to achieve a quick, media-acceptable settlement that would allow the U.S. administration to proclaim its mission to “end the endless wars” successful.

Per role theory, such dynamics was not just a manifestation of pragmatism but a natural result of interaction between two incompatible national role concepts. The Trump administration, acting within the framework of ‘transactional nationalism’, was not interested in altercasting Türkiye and returning it to the role of ‘disciplined ally.’ Rather, Washington permitted a one-off exchange: regional autonomy for Türkiye in exchange for Trump’s proclaiming a quick victory and putting an “end to the endless wars.” This confirmed the bilateral relationship’s normative erosion, and revealed that when the roles of ‘transactional nationalism’ and ‘autonomous central power’ conceptually collide, interaction degenerates into a series of ad hoc agreements that defer the crisis but do not resolve the fundamental role conflict.

All this led Ankara to realize, by the end of the 2010s, that its choice of strategic autonomy was correct. This manifested itself not only in rapprochement with Russia (S-400, cooperation within the Astana format on Syria), but also in independent military and diplomatic interventions in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh (Shlykov, 2023, pp. 134-158). The good personal relationship between Erdoğan and Trump could not overcome structural contradictions. Their relationship was clearly transactional and inconsistent: short-term detente (as in Syria in 2019) was followed by new sanctions and mutual recriminations.

Biden’s administration marked a new period of disaffection. Washington returned to value-oriented rhetoric, criticizing democratic regression and human rights violations in Türkiye. The U.S. officially recognized the Armenian Genocide and barred Ankara from the Summit for Democracy (Kirişçi, 2021). Bilateral relations hit the lowest point in decades, with disagreements over Syria and the S-400 remaining unresolved.

Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine provided a new context for the deterioration of Türkiye-U.S. relations. Despite its NATO membership, Türkiye assumed a position of non-binary balancing: it rendered military assistance to Kiev (supplying Bayraktar combat drones), mediated a grain deal and POW exchanges, but refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow, maintaining important economic ties with Russia. The role of direct intermediary increased Türkiye’s strategic importance to the West’s eyes and paved the way for selective pragmatic cooperation.

In the early 2020s, Türkiye pursued rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, indirectly aligning itself with U.S. interests in regional stability (İnat & Duran, 2023, pp. 79-101). And it pragmatically used Sweden’s application for NATO membership to force the U.S. Congress to approve the sale of modernized F-16s.

The evolution of Türkiye-U.S. relations over the past two decades has been determined by a set of interconnected factors: fundamentally changed role concepts, a new balance of power in the Middle East, authoritarian trends in Türkiye, and the shifting alignment of non-regional actors. The main cause of disagreements was the changing perception of the two countries’ elites about the role of their countries in the international system.

Türkiye evolved from a ‘loyal ally’ within the transatlantic system to a ‘strategically autonomous regional power’ pursuing an independent policy and seeking a leadership position in its neighborhood. The U.S. moved towards ‘selective engagement’ after the interventions of the 2000s, seeking to minimize direct military commitments in the Middle East and refocus on strategic rivalry with China.

The weakening of direct American influence in the Middle East after 2011 created a vacuum into which regional powers, including Türkiye, eagerly plunged. Using its military and diplomacy, Ankara became a key player in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. This new position clashed with Washington’s traditional model of relations, in which Türkiye was subordinate.

Türkiye’s post-2016 authoritarian drift provoked systemic criticism by the American establishment, especially Congress, which made bilateral relations hostage to the domestic human rights agenda (Cumhuriyet, 2021). On the other hand, growing polarization in the U.S. led to inconsistent foreign policy: the Trump and Biden administrations often steered opposite courses. Türkiye thus turned towards non-Western partners. Russia became Ankara’s alternative partner in security and energy, and co-guarantor in the Syrian settlement (The “Asian Turn”, 2024). Türkiye began to view China as an important source of investment and a potential partner in multilateral formats (Koldunova et al., 2023), raising concern in Washington (Süsler, 2025, pp. 175-196; Öğütçü, 2025). The European Union, despite Türkiye’s frozen accession process, continued to be its key economic partner (Bashirov, 2020, pp. 165-184), creating a complex system of checks and balances in Turkish foreign policy.

Trump’s Second Term

Trump’s 2024 reelection led to a radical revision of Türkiye-U.S. relations. The return of Trump’s ‘America First’ pragmatism coincided with fundamental changes in the Middle East, primarily the fall of Assad. This combination allowed Ankara and Washington to restart their dialogue, moving from confrontation on many key issues to a pragmatic, if complex, partnership. In 2025-2026, their relations transformed along four main vectors: Syria, defense cooperation, Türkiye’s strategic mediation in regional conflicts, and economic ties.

The key factor that determined the new dynamics was the completely new situation in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime at the end of 2024. Türkiye had established itself as the dominant power, exercising control over key territories through loyal Syrian armed groups (Strategic Comments, 2025). The Trump administration, seeking to further reduce its direct involvement in the region, by mid-2025, had almost completely ended its support for the SDF, and instead begun mediating the SDF’s integration into the Turkish-influenced Syrian state structures (Lister, 2026), along with the militant prisons that had been under SDF control (FDD, 2026).  In northern Syria, the Turkish army and Ankara-influenced local administrations were left in charge of security and the fight against ISIS. The focus of U.S.-Türkiye cooperation shifted to humanitarian aid, return of refugees, and post-war reconstruction, with Türkiye playing a leading role. Washington de facto recognized Ankara’s sphere of influence in exchange for Ankara taking full responsible for stabilizing.

Türkiye showed flexibility on the most difficult and symbolic issue—the S-400s. Ankara jumped at the American idea that the S-400 systems were “inoperable.” The main option, discussed since September 2024, was the systems’ non-operational storage under joint control, presumably at the Incirlik airbase (Gazete Duvar, 2024). (In December 2025, Erdoğan even offered Putin the S-400s’ return in exchange for compensation (Bloomberg, 2025b).) Washington showed readiness to make a deal: U.S. envoy Tom Barrack said that “Trump and Erdogan’s close relationship has led to the most fruitful conversations on this topic in nearly a decade” (Bloomberg, 2025a). Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that Trump had already ordered the lifting of the CAATSA sanctions (Haberturk, 2025). And yet, in the summer of 2026, the U.S. Congress cast this gambit into doubt, insisting on the S-400s’ total removal from Turkish territory. Ankara then began seeking to resell the S-400s to a third party: either the UAE or Qatar, as obliquely confirmed by Russian and U.S. officials (Kommersant, 2026). But Moscow’s ability to veto any resale, and the risk of secondary sanctions for any third-party buyer, have seemingly derailed this option, too. Now Türkiye has hired a U.S. consulting firm for $2.4 million to lobby for its readmission to the F-35 program (Sözcü, 2026).        

Trump’s second term has been marked by even greater U.S. recognition of Türkiye’s unique mediating role, transforming it from a problematic ally into an indispensable partner.Trump publicly commended Erdoğan as one of the few leaders capable of constructive dialogue with both Moscow and Kiev (Yeni Şafak, 2025). Türkiye brokered a new round of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in 2025, leading to a large POW exchange and lay the groundwork for ceasefire discussions. Türkiye proposed an ‘Istanbul 2.0’ format, coordinated with Washington (Özdemir, 2024).

Even more revealing was the invitation of Türkiye to join Trump’s Board of Peace (Anadolu Ajansı, 2026), which has a UN mandate to manage Gaza after the war. Türkiye joined as a founding member with a seat on the Executive Board, and views the BoP as a chance to end the humanitarian catastrophe and strengthen its own influence (Yeni Şafak, 2026).

This symbolized Washington’s willingness to include Türkiye among the key architects of the Middle East’s new order, despite Ankara’s historically strained relations with Israel.

Economic issues also underlie the new stage of Türkiye-U.S. relations. At their meetings in 2025, Trump and Erdoğan repeated an ambitious goal of bringing bilateral trade to $100 billion (Anadolu Ajansı, 2025b). Its actual volume reached $35 billion in 2024 and continues to grow. Turkish Trade Minister Ömer Bolat, in December 2025, noted that the two countries are working on a roadmap to achieve the $100 billion goal, focusing on energy and defense (Anadolu Ajansı, 2025a). Türkiye’s accession to the Minerals Security Partnership (aimed at diversifying critical mineral supplies away from China) further integrates Ankara into Western economic alliances. And the U.S.’s increased LNG exports to Türkiye have improved the latter’s energy security by diversifying its supplies and suppliers (Dost, 2025).

Yet enhanced cooperation in some areas has not ended structural competition in all others, producing ‘competitive cooperation’. In post-Assad Syria, despite Washington’s recognition of Ankara’s leading role, the two sides continue indirect struggle over the configuration of new institutions. Türkiye seeks to ensure the dominance of loyal forces, while the U.S. is trying to retain some of its influence through the Arab tribes and NGOs that formerly comprised the SDF, pushing for the transition to be more inclusive.

The U.S. remains skeptical of Türkiye’s strategic autonomy vis-à-vis non-Western countries. Although Ankara does not view BRICS+ or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to the U.S., Washington views Turkish cooperation with such organizations through the lens of its global rivalry with China and Russia. Türkiye’s application to become a BRICS+ Partner, its conduct of settlements in national currencies, and its expansion of energy cooperation with Moscow (including in its role as a gas hub) have repeatedly raised concern in the U.S. Congress and various agencies, notwithstanding Trump’s personal attitude.

A latent conflict has also emerged over Türkiye’s position in parallel imports and financial transactions that circumvent U.S. sanctions against Russia. The U.S. Treasury’s institutional logic has sometimes clashed with Trump’s pragmatism and personal promises. This has not upset the overall rapprochement, but has limited it to a situational partnership.

In general, Trump’s second term has seen a reset of Türkiye-U.S. relations, driven by Trump’s pragmatism and Türkiye’s increased regional weight. Their ties have evolved from a transactional relationship and crisis management to more complex cooperation. Seeking to minimize its own obligations and costs, Washington delegated key powers to Ankara to stabilize the situation in Syria, and recognized Türkiye’s indispensable role as a mediator in conflict resolution. Türkiye demonstrated flexibility in solving the S-400 problem and joined U.S. economic initiatives. This pragmatic personal partnership has allowed the two countries to resolve numerous institutional and ideological contradictions, leading to a more sustainable dialogue between the two NATO members.

*  *  *

The analysis of Türkiye-U.S. relations during Donald Trump’s presidency permits drawing a number of conclusions that are important both for understanding the current state of relations between Ankara and Washington, and for conceptualizing the transformation of allied ties in a polycentric world.

The transformation of Türkiye‑U.S. relations over the past decade can be described as a change in the nature of interaction within an increasingly fragmented asymmetric alliance. A key factor in this transformation was the change in the parties’ role prescriptions and corresponding expectations regarding the ally’s permissible behavior. Türkiye moved away from a predominantly instrumental role in the U.S.‑centric security system and consistently asserted itself as an autonomous regional actor capable of utilizing its position within the alliance to pursue its own interests. The U.S., while continuing to view Türkiye as a strategically important partner, demanded allied solidarity from Ankara and urged it to limit its autonomous behavior whenever it ran counter to American strategic objectives.

During Trump’s first and second terms, the sets of mechanisms used by Washington in relations with Türkiye differed: in 2017–2021, personal partnership went along with U.S. Congress’s attempts to block agreements and the imposition of sanctions on Ankara, whereas after 2025, Washington partially recognized Türkiye’s regional autonomy and the need to redistribute responsibilities, primarily on the Syrian and mediation tracks.

Trump’s first term demonstrated the dual nature of personal partnership: it simultaneously enhances the parties’ ability to reach short‑term agreements and increases the dependence of bilateral relations on the political will of the leaders. During Trump’s second term, Türkiye’s increased regional autonomy and role in regional processes forced Washington to take Ankara’s position into account when determining its policy in the Middle East and in other regions. However, there was no complete alignment of the two countries’ strategic objectives.

By the mid‑2020s, the U.S.-Türkiye interaction has developed into a competitive cooperation, where structural and role‑based contradictions combine with expanded situational cooperation. Its key features are:

• Increased role of direct agreements between the top leaders in resolving bilateral disputes, with institutional mechanisms remaining important. This ensures tactical flexibility but makes relations more volatile.
• The U.S.’s partial and situational recognition of Türkiye’s increased regional autonomy and its significance in addressing regional security issues and in mediation, including in Syria, Ukraine, and the post‑conflict settlement in Gaza;
• The parties’ preparedness to seek situational compromise on contentious issues on the bilateral agenda and reduce the role of rigid ideological and institutional constraints in order to achieve a practical result;
• Managing the persisting role conflict in new ways. This helps keep the alliance afloat, but does not eliminate the fundamental contradictions.

The current phase of competitive cooperation is characterized by disagreements over regional security, relations with Russia, the U.S.’s role in Middle Eastern processes, and the international order. Partnership on specific issues coexists with competition for influence, diverging role expectations, and each country’s desire to retain the ability to independently chart its foreign policy course.

Current contradictions can be described as managed instability, in which personal partnership serves as one of the main mechanisms for solutions. Direct contacts between Trump and Erdoğan expedited political decisions, reduced the severity of certain crises, and reached situational compromises, notwithstanding significant differences in the positions of the states’ institutions. But personal partnership could not replace the institutional mechanisms of allied interaction, and thus should be viewed only as a compensatory mechanism that helps to temporarily overcome the consequences of institutional disfunction, but does not eliminate its structural causes.

Moreover, agreements reached between the leaders remain dependent on a broader institutional and political context. Syria, sanctions pressure, Türkiye’s purchase of Russian S‑400 systems, and the ensuing restrictions on military‑technical cooperation showed that personal partnership can ease a conflict but does not eliminate differences in role prescriptions and interests.

While participating in Euro‑Atlantic institutions, Türkiye at the same time expands room for foreign policy maneuvering, viewing relations with the U.S as an important, but not the only, direction of its foreign policy. This policy does not fundamentally change the asymmetric nature of bilateral relations; rather, it reveals the adaptation of interaction to the changed roles, capabilities, and expectations of the parties.

Viewing relations solely through the lens of material asymmetry or mismatching interests is insufficient. The asymmetry of opportunities imposes structural constraints on interaction; as a result, political behavior depends on the roles that the parties prescribe to themselves and to each other. As Türkiye’s role prescriptions changed, its autonomy increased, while the American expectations of its ally’s behavior continued to be guided by the previous hierarchical logic.

Personal partnership, situational agreements, and pragmatic cooperation enable the parties to maintain interaction despite remaining contradictions, but they do not make them more stable or predictable. The further evolution of Türkiye‑U.S. relations will depend on Washington and Ankara’s ability to reconcile their changed role prescriptions with their alliance’s institutional mechanisms and to consolidate political agreements.

Further research may show whether the experience of Türkiye-U.S. relations can be used for studying the transformation of other asymmetric alliances.

For citation, please use:
Frolov, A.L., 2026. Russian Arms Exports Before and After the Special Military Operation. Russia in Global Affairs, 24(4), pp. 120–132. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2026-24-4-120-132

On 4 November and 1 December 2025, Rosoboronexport and the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSVTS) marked their 25-year anniversaries, offering a good opportunity to assess Russian arms exports’ past, present, and post-SMO future.

The Overall Situation

The SMO has strengthened many of the external and internal factors influencing Russian arms exports. Sanctions pressure on Russian exports began well before 24 February 2022. During the 1990s and 2000s, U.S. sanctions were primarily aimed at preventing the export of Russian military technologies to countries seen as threating U.S. interests. After 2014, European countries joined these restrictive measures, which led to the loss of the small European market that remained as a legacy of the USSR, largely as a means for Russia to repay Soviet debts to former Warsaw Pact allies. By 2022, Russian supplies to Europe were reduced to sporadic, targeted cooperation with companies repairing Soviet-era military equipment under license.

Despite Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s ban on military and dual-use exports to Russia, some continued, albeit at much lower levels. Furthermore, despite France’s high-profile refusal to transfer two already-built Mistral-class universal landing ships (the Vladivostok and the Sevastopol), it continued to supply military equipment to Russia, worth about €152 million in 2015-2019 (Rapport, 2025). At the end of 2014, Greece signed a contract with Russia for the purchase of spare parts for the Tor-M1 and Osa-AKM air defense systems, acquired in the 1990s from Russia and in the 2000s from Germany (RIA Novosti, 2014). However, as early as 2023, the Greeks announced plans to terminate the contract (TASS, 2023a).

Yet Russian export’s main problem was not the decline in its relationship with Europe—that was in any case doomed as Soviet equipment aged and the Soviet debt was paid off. Rather, Russian export was seriously challenged by Trump’s August 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

The law targeted Russia with sanctions, including entry bans, property and asset freezes, restrictions on “special crude oil development projects,” and restrictions on doing business with companies on the sectoral sanctions list. Of relevance here, CAATSA authorizes the President to impose sanctions on entities (in the U.S. or anywhere else) conducting “significant” transactions with the Russian defense sector. This immediately affected existing contracts (e.g., S-400 air defense systems to Türkiye) and planned ones (e.g., S-400 systems to India or Su-35 fighter jets to Indonesia).

Payments were made difficult, forcing a transition to payments in national currencies that was completed in late 2021. As Rosoboronexport head Alexander Mikheyev noted at the time, “traditionally, we denominate all transactions in dollars for ease of calculation. In actual operations, Rosoboronexport has moved almost 100% away from settlements in U.S. dollars” (Kommersant, 2021). He cited deals with India, settled in rubles and rupees. “Furthermore, we are actively making use of offset agreements today. This is a normal practice now, a global market trend,” he added (Ibid).

Thus, although CAATSA created obstacles for Russian exports, it provided time to prepare for the unprecedented sanctions that followed the start of the SMO.

New difficulties emerged immediately after the start of the SMO. In February 2025, Rosoboronexport head Alexander Mikheev acknowledged that several unnamed customers had been forced to “make a pause” (Vesti, 2025).

The SMO also affected internal factors. In the 1990s, exports significantly exceeded state defense orders, effectively keeping the defense industry afloat. This began to change with the 2011-2020 State Armament Program, although exports continued to support the defense industry’s modernization in this period. And 2022 saw a sharp increase in government procurement.

In the summer of 2022, Deputy PM Yuri Borisov stated that 74% of defense output was planned for domestic needs, with only 26% for export (TASS, 2022). Statistics on state defense procurement are no longer public, but official statements indicate that it is growing. On 19 December 2023, President Putin stated that production of armored vehicles, other vehicles, basic weapons, and critically important weapons had multiplied in 2023 by factors of 3, 4.5, 2.7, and 7 (Natsionalnaya oborona, 2024).

This growth was achieved due to both production optimization and a reduction in exports: in 2023, arms exports amounted to only $6 billion, compared to $14-15 billion typical of the late 2010s (1TV, 2024).

Exports were also rendered more opaque. This trend began in the late 2010s, but since 2022, virtually all information on new contracts and deliveries (including absolute figures) has been classified. Individual transfers become known thanks to the information released by foreign partners. And this, too, is increasingly scarce, as countries importing Russian weapons and military equipment are keen to avoid EU and especially U.S. sanctions. Some key foreign customers have tightened their security. Publications have become scarce, making assessment of current Russian arms exports extremely difficult for independent experts.

Institutional and Personnel Changes

However, Russia’s arms export system has not fundamentally changed in 2022-2026. CSTO members can still buy directly (not through Rosoboronexport) and at domestic prices, while all other countries must turn to Rosoboronexport for everything other than spare parts for already delivered equipment. There has been no return to the multi-exporter system of the 1990s. Rosoboronexport’s role as an intermediary has only strengthened as the Ministry of Defense reduces its supplies to Syria, certain African countries, and Central Asia (where some countries received equipment for free).

The most significant development was the issuance of new regulations, on 11 May 2024, transferring the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation from the MoD to the Presidential Administration. (Notably, Sergei Shoigu resigned as Minister of Defense the following day.) Yet this had no apparent impact on the Service’s operations, or the career of its director, Dmitry Shugayev, who remains at the helm, having replaced Alexander Fomin in 2017. (Fomin himself was Deputy Defense Minister from then until mid-October 2025 (Vedomosti, 2025), overseeing issues of military-technical cooperation.)

The Value of Orders, Contracts, and Deliveries

One of the only things that remains publicly, albeit irregularly, available is the order book of Rosoboronexport and Russia in total (including service contracts and supplies to CSTO members). New contracts are also summarized sporadically, often for a six-month period.

As of mid-2024, Russia’s order book amounted to $60 billion (of which Rosoboronexport accounted for $55 billion). As this was stated to be a 10% increase over 2022, the figure for 2022 would have been $54 billion. By mid-February 2025, Rosoboronexport had signed additional contracts worth $4.5 billion with 15 countries, and this figure increased to $7 billion by May. For comparison, in 2023 Rosoboronexport signed contracts worth $12 billion, below the previous decade’s annual average of $13-14 billion.

Less is known about deliveries. Rosoboronexport’s deliveries equaled $5.4 billion in the first half of 2022, and were expected to reach $11 billion by the end of the year, but probably did not do so. In 2026, after a rather long period of official silence, President Putin announced that 2025 had seen the delivery of arms sold for $15 billion (Kremlin.ru, 2026) (and likely worth even more).

a https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/news/2024/08/12/1055189-portfel-eksportnih-zakazov

b https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/6a15611f9a79475d3d15e2a7

c https://www.interfax.ru/russia/856687

d https://www.interfax.ru/business/944500

e https://tass.ru/ekonomika/22794221

f https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/26302697

g https://www.interfax.ru/business/944500

h https://www.interfax.ru/russia/1071438

i https://www.interfax.ru/russia/856687

j https://www.interfax.ru/russia/994478

k https://www.alta.ru/external_news/127469/

Thus, the order book has been growing steadily, potentially due to both the signing of new contracts and the delayed fulfilment of earlier ones. The order book’s rapid growth in 2025-2026, combined with deliveries in 2025 worth at least $15 billion, indicate new contracts worth $25 billion in the last eighteen months—a near-record for Russia.

Additional information is available on miscellaneous aspects. As of November 2023, aircraft sales accounted for just over $22 billion, slightly less than half of Rosoboronexport’s total order book, including combat helicopters at approximately $5 billion (TASS, 2024). In 2023, 30% of deliveries went to Africa, with which $5.2 billion in new contracts were signed (Interfax, 2023). Pending orders from India reached $10 billion in February 2023 (TASS, 2023b).

Russia and Its Competitors

The above figures allow comparison of Russia’s arms exports with those of its competitors. The world’s traditional leading exporters are the U.S., Russia, France, Germany, and China. (South Korea and Türkiye have recently joined them, but are excluded from this analysis as their sudden growth is likely situational and will take time to consolidate.)

The U.S. is essentially unrivaled in the global arms market. In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, it signed a record $331.2 billion in sales, directly and through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program—a 3.9% increase over the 2023-2024 fiscal year (US DoS, 2026).

There has been no official report on French arms exports for 2025, but 2024 saw new contracts at €21.6 billion and deliveries at €8.2 billion (Rapport, 2025). In 2025, new contracts decreased slightly, with Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin estimating them at around €20 billion (20minutes, 2026).

According to official British data, in 2025, the British defense industry signed the largest volume of new contracts in almost 40 years: £20 billion, half from a contract with Norway for five Type 26 frigates (Gov.UK, 2025).

China does not release official export data, but SIPRI (2026) estimates Chinese exports in fifth place (SIPRI, 2026).

Thus, Russia is in fourth place  for new contracts in 2025, but second in deliveries, notwithstanding all the difficulties of recent years.

The Content of Exports

Even less is known about what is actually being exported. Open sources report:

• the transfer of two Project 11356 frigates to India (Bmpd, 2025a);
• the beginning of deliveries of Yak-130 training fighters to Iran (Irinin, 2025), and possibly of Su-35 fighters (Kommersant, 2025a) and Mi-28NE attack helicopters (LiveJournal, 2026), too;
• the beginning of deliveries of Yak-130 training fighters and Su-57E fighters to Algeria (Topwar, 2025; Valagin, 2026);
• continuing deliveries of Su-30SM/SM2 fighters (Bmpd, 2025b) and Mi-35M attack helicopters (TASS, 2025) to Belarus;
• completed deliveries of Su-30SME fighters to Myanmar (Armiya.az, 2025).

In 2022, Rosoboronexport unveiled plans to export approximately 200 helicopters. New electronic warfare and air defense systems, as well as ground forces equipment, have also turned up in foreign militaries. For example, Saudi Arabia received 39 Pantsir-S1M anti-air missile systems worth $2.3 billion under a 2021 contract (Bmpd, 2025c), and Ethiopia acquired Linza armored ambulances (Tekhnosfera Rossiya, 2026).

Information on new contracts derives mainly from publications based on leaked corporate documents of uncertain authenticity. If these documents are to be believed, a large package of contracts was concluded for the supply of aircraft to Algeria (14 Su-34E and 12 Su-57E), Iran (48 Su-35), and Ethiopia (six Su-35) (InoSMI, 2025).  A contract was signed with China for 20 Il-78MK-90A tanker aircraft (Global Defense News, 2025), and with India for 12 additional Su-30MKI fighters (Overclockers.ru, 2023). And after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in 2026, Iran ordered 21 Mi-171 helicopters (Vedomosti, 2026).

In 2025, media reported on India’s negotiations with Russia on the purchase and localized production of S-400 missiles worth $1.2 billion (Kommersant, 2025c). And in 2026, Vietnam ordered BrahMos missiles from India; though the missiles are manufactured in India, they are Russian-engineered, and most of their components are supplied to India by Russia (Interfax, 2026).

Thus, even relying exclusively on public information, it is clear that the sharp increase in domestic demand has not undermined Russia’s exports, and it has started selling new-generation equipment that was not available to foreign customers before 2022.

Paradigm Shift

By the early 2000s, Russia had established a cautious approach to arms exports, in which it carefully avoided the sharp edges of global politics, complied with disadvantageous international regimes like the Missile Technology Control Regime, and voluntarily refrained from exporting platforms that might spark undesirable concern in the West or elsewhere. For instance, sales of S-300PMU-1 air defense systems to Iran, and of Iskander-E tactical missiles and MiG-31E fighters to Syria, were canceled, as they might have provoked a negative reaction from Israel.

Exports were also limited by domestic production capacity and by the exclusion of innovative products from sale. For instance, Russia was long absent, for various reasons, from the drone market.

Since 2022, the situation has changed significantly. On the one hand, arms exporters, especially in the early years of the SMO, had to compete with state procurement and grapple with ever-growing sanctions. On the other hand, military cooperation with Iran and North Korea has sharply increased, with the former’s imports from Russia growing qualitatively and quantitatively, apparently due to the use of various payment arrangements. Additionally, Russia has become a world leader in aerial, ground, and sea-based drones. Some of these, like the Lancet loitering munition, have received export certification and are already being marketed globally.

The Missile Technology Control Regime may continue to seriously deteriorate in the future, especially given its de facto violation by Western countries’ transfer of equipment and technologies to Ukraine.

Future Prospects

The future of Russian arms exports hinges on the SMO’s course and conclusion. Clearly, the end of hostilities will lead to a reduction in state defense procurement, at least in certain sectors. This will return the defense industry to the position it held in the 1990s, when it was forced to drastically reduce capacity utilization relative to the Cold War. Exports will again become the main source of profit, especially given their typically larger profit margins. Conveniently, many delayed export orders are available to pick up capacity to be freed by reduced MoD orders.

Rosoboronexport’s unique experience in operating under severe sanctions will also be beneficial. If Western publications are to be believed, in 2025 more Russian aircraft were ordered than in any previous year—including (more expensive) next-generation aircraft. Significantly, China has returned as a major customer.

Russia’s leadership is counting on foreign customers noticing the effectiveness with which virtually all of Russia’s modern weapons are being used in the SMO. In March 2025, Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of the Security Council, stated: “After the completion of the Special Military Operation, believe me, there will be many queuing up for our weapons. They have proven reliable in combat and have been perfected.” Foreign buyers will be “interested in air defense systems, attack drones, and modernized armored vehicles, such as the S-400, S-500, and Pantsir” (Kommersant, 2025b).

Yet regaining ground in the global arms market will be difficult, given the heavy presence of traditional Russian competitors, primarily France, and the emergence of new ones like South Korea and Türkiye. China, too, will certainly increase its role in sectors traditionally filled by Russia, raising the bar which Rosobonexport and defense manufacturers will have to cross.

Nevertheless, the trends of 2022-2025 and the stability of Russia’s order book suggest that Russian exports after the SMO may reach a comfortable $13-15 billion annually, and $20 billion in the medium term. Russian exports will be supported by the obsolescence of old Soviet and NATO arms, by rising prices for Western weapons, by Ukraine’s exit from the group of significant military-industrial powers, by increased military budgets (including among Russia’s traditional partners), and especially by Russia’s unique offerings of drones, protective gear, medical equipment, electronic warfare and other systems.