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Jan Oberg

TFF director

Historian Jeff Rich of “Burning Archive” has developed what woefully few have even thought of: Constructive thoughts and concrete elements of a peace-first-then-security plan concerning Ukraine.

Read it here and share it as widely as you can.

It is such an important piece of good thinking, and I say this while disagreeing with parts of his approach and some of his proposals.

This is how he starts out:

“After four and a half years - or twelve years (depending on your perspective) - of the NATO-Russia-Ukraine War, some proposals for a peace process are emerging.

It is way, way past time.

Here on Substack in late 2025 TFF Transnational Foundation made a proposal, based on deep expertise in conflict resolution and peace studies. But the proposal made no headway, even in the alternative media. German MEP Michael von der Schulenburg has bravely and cautiously proposed “an initial rapprochement through a civil‑society initiative involving respected and influential figures,” but been greeted with stony silence.”

[JO: Here is the correct link to TFF’s peace ideas and portfolio for Ukraine - we do ideas, mediation proposals/mitigation, etc but no plans because that implies snatching the conflict from the parties].

Very true, and your text will be met with silence too, dear Jeff - I can only say with a smile. You point to a large extent to one of the reasons: the omnipresent geopolitical punditry that never leads to constructive proposals (my words). It has nothing to do with peace plans or ideas not being needed; they certainly are. But it has to do with what I have, years ago, written: Peace has been disappeared from research, politics and media.

Militarism means conflict + resolution + peace illiteracy.

Such are the times of rampant, kakistocratic militarist thinking characterised by equally rampant intellectual and moral disarmament.

Constructive thinking. Conflict-resolution. The UN Charter norm that peace shall be established by peaceful means (Art 1) and dialogue with the people about their security - they have all been disappeared.

Even the so-called peace movements do not aim at exploring constructive, future-oriented peace and conflict-resolution and nonviolent methods, let alone peace culture; they are - existentially necessary but insufficient - movements against violence, wars, genocides and armament, but regrettably few focus on peace - and peace is quite a bit more and different from just being anti; it is to be pro. It is not to be in the past and present; it is to outline the future with new thinking and concepts different from those that have led to the violence.

Add to that that social democracies and whatever is left of them - and left to them - if the right/left perspective can still be applied (1) - that used to be at least armament-skeptical and stood up when small countries and people were bullied by the bigger ones, have turned politically correct and advocated no diplomacy but arming Ukraine to “defeat” Russia, chosen to believe in NATO’s influencer narrative that the invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked” and “full-scale,” and that NATO cannot possibly be seen as a threat to anyone - despite the fact that since its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 it has violated its own Treaty provisions 24/7 (and has nothing to do in Ukraine either where it set up its first office just a few month after that country’s independence and when max 12% of the people wanted NATO membership - thus the Obama administration’s criminal regime change in Kiev in 2014 that Western omits).

So are those of us thinking peace irrelevant? Of course not.

We’re just militarism’s dissidents, and dissidents have turned out before to have been right in the longer perspective. When empires go militarist and have nothing to offer the world but threats, armament, bases, tariffs, confrontations, wars, absurdities and limitless arrogance without one rational thought, vision or plan - they are bound to fall.

Peace doesn’t fall.

Peace is eternally relevant, a constant struggle, a quality that can always be improved on - like health, beauty, convivality and art. It has a huge majority behind it - whereas warmongers may have less than 1% of humanity behind them. That is why I recommend everyone to study and discuss Jeff Rich’s peace plan and also study other intellectuals including, if I may, TFF’s Associates (and Gandhi, MLK and…), who have something life-wise and realistic to say, while the Realists and doomsayers ran out of steam decades ago - and militarism only accelerates the last-ever empire’s decline and fall.

You, dear reader, might like to read both Jeff Rich’s and TFF’s portfolio of thoughts on how to create peaceful coexistence with and for Ukraine and its people: See the similarities and differences in approach and proposals - and come up with more ideas and improvement…

As dissidents, let’s dialogue and have friendly quarrels. Let’s accelerate peace research, peace journalism, peace politics, peace dialogue and peace culture and education. True peace can be learnt. Militarism can be stopped and scrapped.

Note
1) Remember the old joke of a man who says to a friend that there must be something wrong with his brain because on the right side, nothing is left, and on the left side, nothing is right… 😊

INTERVIEW BY MARC BEBENROTH

This personal interview with Dr Pascal Lottaz of Neutrality Studies, Kyoto University and TFF’s Board was published in German by Junge Welt on July 25, 2026.

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As a neutrality researcher, surely Switzerland would be the ideal place to work - especially since you were born and raised there. What brought you to Kyoto?

It was more or less a matter of chance. I studied philosophy and history at the University of Fribourg, but before that I had spent an exchange year in Japan while I was at secondary school. I liked it so much that I wanted to return during my university studies. My university did not have an exchange programme, however, so I looked around and found a master’s programme in Tokyo. That enabled me to complete a master’s degree at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in 2011-12, followed by my doctorate from 2014 to 2018. It was only then that I began researching neutrality at all. Here in Kyoto, I now have a research position that above all gives me time for my studies, as well as an office, research funding and a great deal of academic freedom.

Do you remember what sparked your interest in neutrality?

While working on my dissertation and researching the Second World War, I realised that until then I had completely misunderstood a good deal of what neutrality entails. What interested me most was that Switzerland and Sweden were two established neutral states, while Spain also remained neutral during the war under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. That led me to understand that being a democracy is not a requirement for neutrality. Nor does a state have to remain neutral all the time.

From Kyoto, you also regularly interview analysts, journalists and dissidents. You publish those conversations, along with your own reflections, as part of your Neutrality Studies project. How did you become an explicitly non-neutral YouTuber?

Well, you do not have to be what you study. I do not know any cancer researcher who is a cancer. I am a neutrality researcher, and I am not neutral. I see myself as a ‘neutralist’ who wants to make neutrality respectable again as an instrument of international politics. I simply began doing interviews four years ago because I had questions. By coincidence, that was in February 2022, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when it was still a crisis rather than a war. I thought: why not talk about it with Jack Matlock, the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union? After finding his email address online, I wrote to tell him that I had a YouTube channel. When I asked whether he would give me an interview, he agreed immediately. That is how I still do it today: when I find someone interesting, we simply talk for an hour. Many listeners appreciate that because they are, as it were, taken along on the journey.

You also write and edit books. In a volume published in 2025 on neutral Europe and the non-proliferation regime from 1958 to 1968, you wrote about ‘neutrality, neutralism and non-alignment’. How do you distinguish between these terms?

Between 1945 and 1955, the neutral world divided into two parts. On one side were states that invoked the traditional law of neutrality: Switzerland, Austria after 1955, Ireland and, later, others. This law of neutrality was an achievement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but for the most part it was a European affair. On the other side were countries that gained their independence after the war and after centuries of brutal European colonial rule. States such as Indonesia and Malaysia, together with many African countries, met in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955 for the first major international conference held outside the West. This developed into the Non-Aligned Movement, which saw itself as a third force independent of both NATO and the state-socialist bloc. The non-aligned states never called themselves neutral, partly because the word was often equated with passivity and, ultimately, because neutrality was a concept inherited from the colonial powers.

The finest definition of neutrality in the sociological sense that I have found comes from Thucydides - the fifth-century BCE Athenian general - in his Melian Dialogue, which is famous among realists in international relations. According to Thucydides, the Athenians said that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. In other words, one should not be naive, appeal to the gods, and so forth; ultimately, what mattered was how many weapons one possessed. But the dialogue is also about the inhabitants of Melos defending their right to neutrality. They ask the Athenians: ‘Would it not be better for you if we were friends with you, but enemies of no one?’ To me, that principle is the perfect way to see the world from a neutral perspective: friends with everyone, enemies of no one. Neutral actors often suffer from the primary conflict as well, but they try to maintain this balance.

‘Neutralism’ is a third term. It arose primarily in the West after the Second World War and refers to political movements that try to make states neutral, although they do not necessarily succeed. Such movements existed in Japan, Germany and various European political parties. The United States sometimes actively opposed them.

Regarding neutral parties as profoundly suspicious reminds me of an episode of the animated series Futurama. In it, a warmongering and extraordinarily foolish space-fleet officer expresses his disgust with the ‘Neutral People’: ‘With enemies, you know where they stand. But with neutrals - who knows? It sickens me.’

It is a wonderful clip, and I sometimes show it to younger students as an introduction to the subject. Incidentally, the question ‘Where do they stand?’ is not new to our age. Similar remarks have been attributed to Hitler, but they also occur in Christian mythology. The deepest circles of hell are supposedly reserved for those who failed to choose a side in the struggle between good and evil. At least, that idea was invoked repeatedly during the twentieth century.

Or take the war with Iran: anyone who is not against the ‘mullah regime’ is said to support it. That is a typical feature of conflicts. In such framing, there is no place for neutrality.

What neutral actors want is to maintain their friendship with both sides. That is never neutral in its outcomes. One side or the other will benefit more from an actor’s neutrality. Take China and India: the Americans and Europeans lecture them and accuse them of financing Putin’s war chest by trading with Russia. The Chinese and Indians say that they do not want this war and have also told the Russians to stop it. But the war is not significant enough for India and China to say that they will now end all relations with Russia. This form of Chinese and Indian neutrality does benefit Russia, yes. But they do not accept the West’s framing.

Especially since that framing leaves out the fact that China and India continue to trade extensively with the United States and the EU.

Exactly. That part is always missing, even though Europeans and Americans take it for granted that other countries will continue trading with them despite the war.

On your institute’s website, you have argued that the engagement of neutral actors is directed not towards the parties to a conflict, but towards the conflict itself. What does that mean?

It means that I am not neutral towards a party to the conflict, but I am at peace with it. International law essentially distinguishes only between the law of peace and the law of war.

It does not recognise a Cold War?

Not according to the classical conception. ‘Cold War’ is the antithesis of what international lawyers in the nineteenth century and into the 1920s or 1930s were trying to achieve: precise definitions of war and peace. If everything is somehow war, then nothing is truly war and anything would be permitted. The law of neutrality, in turn, is a special legal domain. It was developed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century around the idea that every state is neutral from time to time - namely, when war breaks out between other states. The law of neutrality then applies automatically to those that do not participate. It was therefore not designed specifically for states such as Switzerland and Austria today, but more for states such as India and China now, or the Americans, British and Russians at various points in history.

Karl Kautsky wrote in his 1917 book Serbia and Belgium in History: ‘Every state can declare itself neutral in a conflict between other powers; this does not preclude it from taking sides on another occasion or even later in the same conflict.’ Yet in an article with Heinz Gärtner of the University of Vienna in Foreign Policy, you emphasised that neutrality also always depends on credibility in the eyes of others. Which model prevailed: temporary or permanent neutrality?

Permanent neutrality should not initially be understood as something that lasts for all eternity, but as something that outlasts the war itself. This contrasts with the situational neutrality I have just described, which applies only during wars between other states. As an idea, permanent neutrality is only about 200 years old. The first state to make an official promise of this kind, have it recognised internationally and maintain it to this day is my little Switzerland. In 1815, the great powers promised Switzerland this status even though it was not officially represented at the negotiations following the Napoleonic Wars. Fortunately, however, we had a good diplomat working with the Russians, Charles Pictet de Rochemont, who was able to introduce the matter at the Congress of Vienna. Until then, neutrality had always been situational.

For great powers, the question of credibility is quite different. My favourite example is the powers that remained neutral towards one another during the Second World War. The most important relationship here was between the Soviet Union and Japan, which signed a neutrality pact on 13 April 1941. The Japanese had originally wanted a non-aggression pact like the one they had with Germany. Stalin rejected that, however, because the Soviet Union wanted to continue sending weapons to Chiang Kai-shek in China. He was prepared to accept a weaker neutrality pact.

Austria and Switzerland have both been moving closer to NATO for some time. Can they still be described as genuinely neutral?

Our Swiss foreign minister once summed it up with the euphemism ‘cooperative neutrality’. Cooperation with Russia or China remains out of the question, of course. Unfortunately, neutrality is therefore leaving Europe today. At the same time, however, it is moving into the Global South. We have lost Finland and Sweden; the Republic of Moldova essentially no longer wishes to remain neutral either. That leaves Ireland, Switzerland, Austria and Malta, along with Serbia, which has declared military neutrality. There are also efforts towards neutrality in Georgia, which is interesting. But for the moment, the high point of neutral European states appears to be over.

What is happening in Georgia?

A political party has been formed there with only one objective: to put neutrality into the Georgian constitution, or rather to remove the article committing the country to NATO. In addition, the governing Georgian Dream party is not hostile to neutrality. The EU, however, disparages this as ‘pro-Putin’.

If neutrality is gaining a foothold in the Global South, where exactly is this happening - in Asia, Africa or Latin America?

In Asia, Turkmenistan is the most important and also one of the most fascinating cases. Turkmenistan has been a dreadful dictatorship since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it has made neutrality its defining cause. It obtained recognition of that status through a UN resolution on 12 December 1995. It then campaigned for another twenty years to have 12 December declared the International Day of Neutrality. The United Nations finally did so in 2017. For that, at least, I am grateful to Turkmenistan. Since then, the UN has maintained that neutrality is compatible with the UN Charter as a peace-building principle and should be promoted.

Looking further afield, one must also mention the states that form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. Indonesia was one of the five countries that launched the Non-Aligned Movement in the first place, and since the 1970s Malaysia has championed the principle of a ‘Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality’, or ZOPFAN. By now, nearly all eleven ASEAN states have, to varying degrees and under different names, embraced these concepts of neutrality. In Vietnam, for example, the government calls its foreign policy ‘bamboo diplomacy’, because it is meant to move like bamboo in the wind - flexibly turning in every direction without breaking.

In the sense of an opportunistic foreign policy?

More in the classical sense: with everyone, but against no one. Two years ago, for example, US President Joe Biden visited Vietnam. He was visibly delighted, grinning from ear to ear as he announced a strategic partnership with the country. I do not know whether he ever understood that the man whose hand he was shaking had once sat in a trench fighting the Americans (laughs). A few months later, Vladimir Putin arrived in Hanoi, shook hands with his counterpart as well, and spoke about good relations, increased trade and so forth.

Gärtner and you write that neutral states must not remain passive, but should speak out when the gravest human-rights violations or acts of genocide are committed. You also argue that neutral states must make themselves useful to others in order to preserve their status, while remaining militarily prepared enough to impose a certain cost on potential aggressors. To what extent does this offer a perspective for states such as Georgia or Ukraine?

Small neutral states in particular lack both a large stick and a large carrot with which to provide deterrence and incentives. But they do possess a small stick and a small carrot. The small stick means: if you choose to invade, you will probably win, but you will also bleed. If you do not invade, we can trade. You cannot send troops through our country, but we can allow civilian goods to pass. This approach is certainly no guarantee of survival, but it worked twice for Switzerland - although Belgium served as our lightning rod on both occasions...

Is Switzerland’s small carrot banking secrecy?

That is part of it too, yes.

The neutral trading partner that has something to offer everyone is quite often an arms dealer. Do you consider that an acceptable way to be useful?

As a dues-paying member of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, I am of course opposed to the arms trade - not for reasons of neutrality law, but on moral grounds. Incidentally, under the law of neutrality, a neutral state that wishes to export weapons may do so, but it would have to supply every belligerent. That is neither particularly moral nor practical.

That still leaves the role of humanitarian assistance - sending doctors or rescue workers.

If you have Red Cross workers or civil-protection personnel who are meant to enter war zones, they depend on both sides refraining from shooting at them. Once again, therefore, you have to provide a benefit to both sides. If a Red Cross worker rescued only Ukrainians, a Russian might eventually think: then I will shoot him in the back. But if the Red Cross worker also helps Russians, both belligerents have an interest in that worker’s safety.

But what would be the prospect for a neutral Ukraine - becoming a grain supplier to the whole world?

Grain for everyone would be best. Ukraine had already enshrined neutrality in its constitution. It was removed only after the Maidan coup of 2014 and replaced with an article on NATO. Fundamentally, it was the Russians who had demanded all along that Ukraine should be neutral - and they did so quite explicitly in 2022, following the invasion and during the initial negotiations in Istanbul. The agreement that was ready for signature was, as is well known, torpedoed by a certain Boris Johnson. It stipulated that Ukraine had to be neutral. That was the core of the entire agreement, because it would have solved Russia’s whole problem: Ukraine was to serve as a buffer between Russia and NATO. Even if this war continues for years, the most realistic scenario in my view is that Ukraine will ultimately remain outside NATO structures. And if the Europeans also recognise that a neutral Ukraine would secure peace on the continent, we would have a solution for at least a few decades.

So is neutrality a better guarantee of a peaceful order?

When neutrality benefits every side, it is a security guarantee that works through attraction. The principle is: all of you can cooperate with us, and all of you may engage economically in our country. Attacking such a ‘playing field’ would then make little sense. My argument is that neutrality should be understood as an instrument that can be applied pragmatically. We should be able to use this instrument in Europe again to build peace and defuse flashpoints. There have already been many occasions on which neutrality achieved exactly that.

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Soon 100,000 views and 850 overwhelmingly positive comments! Thanks so much, dear Lena, for what you generally do and for being one of the few these days who take a serious interest in peace. Click on the image if you did not see this conversation.

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Probably very few Westerners know that Tehran has a peace museum and that Tehran University has pioneered academic peace and conflict studies in the Muslim world, where this field is, regrettably, almost non-existent.

Tehran University is the single most developed, academically structured, and conceptually coherent centre for peace and conflict research. Nothing else in the region matches its combination of institutionalisation, curriculum depth, research output, international conferences and conceptual grounding in the broader peace‑research tradition.

Its pioneering leader for more than a decade now is Dr Ali Akbar Alikhani, a TFF Associate since 2023. We met years earlier when I was invited to give a guest lecture on peace versus security theory at the university.

Ali’s new book is just out in Persian, and - remarkably - the summary below is written by a group of his students. I congratulate my dear friend not only on his innovative peace theory developed over more than 500 pages but also on having completed it while his country is the object of US/Israeli aggression.

This pioneering work deserves to reach an English-language publisher as soon as possible.

Jan Oberg
TFF director

Warm Peace: A Theory of Transition from Cold Peace

Warm Peace: A Theory of Transition from Cold Peace is the latest research monograph by Dr Ali Akbar Alikhani, a professor at the University of Tehran and a scholar of peace and conflict resolution studies. Published in Persian by Negah-e Moaser in June 2026, this 580-page volume presents an original theory developed within the Iranian intellectual tradition to address the historical, cultural, and social conditions of Iran and other societies confronting similar challenges.

The book conceptualizes peace along a spectrum whose poles are defined by two contrasting conditions - Cold Peace and Warm Peace - and examines the distinctive features of each. It then develops a theoretical framework for understanding how societies might move from the former toward the latter.

Warm Peace Theory adopts an internally oriented perspective. It investigates the causes and conditions that shape the quality of peace within a society through an explicitly nonpartisan analytical lens. At one extreme lies Cold Peace, a condition marked by multiple forms of silent violence that frequently border on outright aggression. At the other lies Warm Peace, a state in which the structural and cultural underpinnings of peaceful coexistence have become deeply embedded. Each condition produces a distinctive pattern of consequences across virtually every domain of social life, from individual welfare and economic livelihoods to national development and state capacity. As a society moves toward one end of the spectrum, the traits and outcomes associated with that pole become more pronounced, while those of the opposite pole correspondingly diminish.

The central ambition of Warm Peace Theory is threefold.

First, it aims to diagnose the conditions that hold societies captive to Cold Peace. Second, it seeks to define the attributes of Warm Peace as an achievable and desirable social order. Third, it endeavors to articulate the theoretical foundations, guiding principles, and practical strategies necessary to facilitate -and ultimately institutionalize- the transition from Cold Peace to Warm Peace.

The book thus addresses a single overarching research question: What are the causes, defining characteristics, and consequences of Cold Peace, understood as an undesirable state, and of Warm Peace, conceived as a preferable alternative; and through what mechanisms can the passage from one to the other be accomplished and sustained?

The volume is organized into three major parts, each comprising three chapters.

Part One

Part One depicts a society in the grip of Cold Peace. Over three chapters, it examines the defining attributes of this condition, the relationships among its constituent elements, and the consequences that flow both from individual components and from the condition considered as an integrated whole.

To render Cold Peace analytically tangible, the author introduces the Persian suffix -zadegi, roughly translatable as afflictedness or a state of being stricken. He explains that when the related suffix -zadeh (”stricken”) attaches to a noun, it signals that a society or individual has fallen victim to an extraordinary calamity, the source of which is indicated by the root word. Expressions such as flood-stricken, earthquake-stricken, war-torn, plague-stricken, and famine-stricken exemplify this linguistic pattern. Floods, earthquakes, wars, diseases, and similar phenomena are natural or historical realities, each with its own causes and functions. Yet when they overstep their proper bounds—when they invade domains they ought not to enter or escalate beyond permissible limits—they become destructive, generating suffering, disorder, stagnation, and decay. Drawing on this analogy, the author deploys -zadegi to describe those situations in which preoccupation with a particular issue exceeds what might reasonably be considered normal or proportionate, thereby evolving into a persistent source of social dysfunction.

Chapter One of Part One

Chapter One establishes the conceptual architecture of the theory. It defines the principal structures, concepts, components, and micro-level phenomena that give rise to and perpetuate Cold Peace, while clarifying the causal relationships, reciprocal interactions, and feedback mechanisms that bind them together. Beyond mapping the theory’s conceptual building blocks, the chapter also examines the cultural complexities and behavioral dispositions of the actors who reproduce and sustain this condition.

The author classifies the defining features of Cold Peace societies into four broad rubrics: 1) intrinsic concepts and components, comprising thirteen characteristics; 2) incidental concepts and components, comprising nine characteristics; 3) auxiliary concepts and components, comprising seven characteristics; and 4) cultural-personality concepts and components, comprising eight characteristics.

Chapter Two of Part One

Chapter Two turns to the underlying foundations of Cold Peace, scrutinizing two complementary dimensions: the intellectual-epistemological foundations and the cultural-personality foundations of its principal actors. The chapter demonstrates how these two sets of foundations shape perceptions, inform behavior, and ultimately reinforce the structures associated with Cold Peace. In all, the author identifies eleven intellectual-epistemological foundations and thirteen cultural-personality foundations.

Chapter Three of Part One

The final chapter of Part One addresses the consequences of Cold Peace. Building on the conceptual framework elaborated in the preceding chapters, it analyzes the internal dynamics of the theory by tracing how its structures, concepts, and foundational assumptions interact to generate broader social outcomes. In this way, the chapter illustrates the practical operation of the theoretical model.

The author argues that the consequences of Cold Peace extend across six major domains: 1) the political and institutional system; 2) political culture; 3) public culture and civil society; 4) civilizational development; 5) the economy and industry; and 6) the international sphere.

Part Two

Part Two is devoted to the concept of Warm Peace and to portraying a society in which it has been realized. It identifies the principal features and constituent elements of Warm Peace, investigates the causal relationships among them, and analyzes the consequences that flow from individual components as well as from the condition in its entirety.

To conceptualize this condition, the author introduces the Persian suffix -mehvari (”centeredness” or “orientation”), which functions as what he terms an orienting construct. In his account, attaching -mehvar or -mehvari to a concept conveys three interconnected meanings. First, it signals that the concept has become a focal concern for scholars, intellectuals, and the political system alike—in both theory and practice. Second, it indicates that the concept has attained the status of a guiding principle. Third, it implies that forces or conditions incompatible with that principle have been marginalized or surmounted. More broadly, -mehvari denotes a condition in which sustained attention to a particular value is matched by a corresponding commitment to its practical realization.

Chapter One of Part Two

Chapter One constructs the conceptual framework of Warm Peace by defining the structures, concepts, components, and micro-level phenomena that generate and reinforce it. It also elucidates the causal relationships, functional interactions, and mutually reinforcing dynamics among these elements, while examining the cultural-personality traits of the actors who contribute to establishing and maintaining Warm Peace.

The author classifies the principal characteristics of Warm Peace societies into four categories: 1) intrinsic concepts and components, comprising fourteen characteristics; 2) incidental concepts and components, comprising seven characteristics; 3) auxiliary concepts and components, comprising three characteristics; and 4) cultural-personality concepts and components, likewise comprising three characteristics.

Chapter Two of Part Two

Chapter Two examines the intellectual and cultural foundations that underpin Warm Peace. It concentrates on two complementary dimensions: the intellectual-epistemological foundations that shape patterns of thought and judgment, and the cultural-personality foundations that influence the attitudes and conduct of those responsible for creating and sustaining Warm Peace. The chapter further explains the mechanisms through which these foundations contribute to consolidating a peaceful social order. In total, the author identifies six intellectual-epistemological foundations and nine cultural-personality foundations.

Chapter Three of Part Two

Chapter Three demonstrates the practical operation of the Warm Peace framework. It analyzes the theory’s internal dynamics by exploring the interplay among its conceptual structures, constituent elements, and underlying foundations, thereby translating the theoretical model into an operational scheme.

The chapter then examines the systemic and interconnected consequences of Warm Peace across the same six domains addressed in Part One: 1) the political and institutional system; 2) political culture; 3) public culture and civil society; 4) civilizational development; 5) the economy and industry; and 6) the international sphere. Through this analysis, the author shows how the institutionalization of Warm Peace reshapes each of these domains, reinforcing the stability of the broader social order.

Part Three

Part Three shifts from conceptual analysis toward normative and practical inquiry. Building on the philosophical foundations established in the preceding parts, it seeks to identify the foundations, guiding principles, and practical strategies required to move a society from Cold Peace to Warm Peace—and to secure the long-term institutionalization of that transition.

This part argues that a sustainable transition can succeed only if it accommodates the legitimate interests of all major stakeholders. Accordingly, it advances a set of theoretical foundations and practical recommendations designed to persuade competing social and political actors that accepting limited short-term compromises under conditions of Cold Peace can, in the end, yield broader, more durable, and more equitable gains through Warm Peace.

Although normative considerations permeate the entire book, they become especially prominent in this section. Here the theory moves beyond diagnosis and conceptual clarification to offer a concrete framework for political and institutional transformation.

Chapter One of Part Three

Chapter One examines the normative foundations of the transition to Warm Peace. The discussion is organized around four complementary sets of foundations: 1) rights-oriented foundations; 2) realist foundations; 3) interest-oriented foundations; and 4) elite-oriented foundations. Together, these perspectives furnish the philosophical basis on which the proposed transition rests.

Chapter Two of Part Three

Chapter Two develops the normative principles that should govern the transition from Cold Peace to Warm Peace. The author argues that the conditions associated with Warm Peace ultimately serve the interests of all members of society, irrespective of their ideological commitments, beliefs, or political preferences. Even those actors who derive advantages from the persistence of Cold Peace, he contends, would find their interests more fully realized under the conditions established by Warm Peace.

On this basis, the chapter formulates a series of principles intended to guide societies beyond Cold Peace toward a more stable and inclusive social order.

Chapter Three of Part Three

The final chapter adopts an explicitly practical orientation. It presents seven broad categories of strategy for transforming the political and administrative system, facilitating the transition to Warm Peace, and overcoming the structural conditions that perpetuate underdevelopment.

These strategies include: 1) foundational strategies for assessing the competence of public officials and institutional actors; 2) foundational structural strategies; 3) comprehensive legal strategies; 4) civic and public-participation strategies; 5) policy-making strategies; 6) educational, pedagogical, and cultural strategies; and 7) epistemological strategies directed at political leadership.

In Place of a Conclusion

Rather than ending with a conventional conclusion, the book closes with an extended synthetic discussion in which the author distinguishes among three successive societal conditions. Together, these conditions provide a dynamic framework for understanding both the obstacles to and the prospects for the transition from Cold Peace to Warm Peace.

The first is the semi-natural condition, which corresponds to Cold Peace. In this state, society has moved beyond the Hobbesian state of nature -or what the author describes as a primitive tribal order- but has not yet attained the higher level of social and political development required for a peaceful and flourishing modern society. Although this condition benefits certain individuals and groups, its social, political, and economic costs are borne primarily by the broader population and by the country’s intellectual elite. Since different actors occupy different positions within this order and derive unequal benefits from it, any successful transition requires a careful understanding of their respective roles, interests, and capacities for influence.

The second is the semi-desirable condition, an intermediate stage representing the transition from Cold Peace to Warm Peace. The author characterizes this period as a zone of transition, during which society begins to disengage from the structures and dynamics of Cold Peace and gradually moves toward the institutional foundations of Warm Peace. Progress through this transitional phase is neither linear nor assured; advances are frequently accompanied by setbacks and fluctuations.

According to the author, successful passage through this stage depends on the ability of peace-oriented political elites to overcome the resistance of entrenched actors whose interests are tied to the persistence of Cold Peace, and to dismantle the structural barriers that sustain the existing order. Should these efforts fail, the transition itself is likely to collapse, producing what the author describes as a failed transition or even a stillbirth, in which the process of transformation is interrupted before a stable new order can emerge.

The third is the desirable condition, in which society successfully moves beyond the transitional phase and enters a mature stage of Warm Peace. At this juncture, sustained investment in intellectual, cultural, artistic, legal, and institutional infrastructure becomes essential. As these foundations gradually take root, Warm Peace evolves from a provisional achievement into a durable social condition.

The author describes this final stage as one of settledness—an institutionalized, multidimensional form of Warm Peace sustained by multiple mutually reinforcing foundations. Once this level of institutional consolidation has been achieved, a return to Cold Peace becomes significantly more difficult.

Classification and Diagrammatic Model

The concluding section broadens the theoretical framework by proposing a classification of peace according to its underlying foundations. The author distinguishes thirteen ideal types: knowledge-based peace, virtue-based peace, ethics-based peace, culture-based peace, religion-based peace, denomination-based peace, development-based peace, contract-based peace, threat-based peace, interest-based peace, personality-based peace, ethnicity-based peace, and multi-foundation peace.

The book also addresses the question of institutional authority: which actors are responsible for assessing a society’s position along the Cold Peace–Warm Peace continuum, and for facilitating movement toward the desirable condition? The discussion culminates in a comprehensive diagrammatic model that illustrates the proposed pathway from Cold Peace to Warm Peace.

Appendices

The volume concludes with five appendices, each of which is referenced extensively throughout the text and serves to complement the theoretical discussions presented in the main chapters.

About the Author

Ali Akbar Alikhani is Professor of Political Thought at the University of Tehran and a leading Iranian scholar in the field of peace and conflict resolution studies. In 2018, he established the Permanent Secretariat of the International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Tehran, and has since organized six consecutive International Conferences on Peace and Conflict Resolution.

He is also the founder of the University’s doctoral program in Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies. Over the course of his academic career, he has published more than twenty scholarly articles and several scholarly books on peace studies, and about 120 articles and 15 books on Islamic political thought and related fields.

Ali is also a TFF Associate and dear friend of the founders.

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Jan Oberg
TFF director

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When this morning I saw the above new US Trump map, I came to think of Frank Zappa, The Mothers of Invention, who said that politics is the entertainment division of the Military-Industrial Complex.

That formulation beats many academic analyses - as you will have understood when you listen carefully to today’s geopolitical and geopolitical (male) experts who, most likely, the next 48 hours will be beating the above dead Trump Hormuz horse that doesn’t even qualify as a horse in the first place.

What is really dead in today’s international politics is the meaningful, experienced, knowledge-based intellectual argument.

I mean, how do you argue intellectually with people who say - for instance - that they want Greenland (and other territories), that Denmark must watch out or Hamas may come and take it, that all Russians are crazy, that armament is the only road to peace, that genocide is OK as Israeli self-defence, that the ICC is dangerous, that the UN and its Charter are ridiculous, that “we” have an exceptional right to systematically violate international law and to punish “them” if they do? And calls every attack an act of deterrence and self-defence?

How do you argue with people who believe that every alternative to the rampant, contemporary, omnipresent madness of the West is ‘unrealistic,’ ‘naive,’ ‘wishful thinking’ and that peace, by the way, is irrelevant, and that the world must instead be changed by employing more violence, whether armed revolution or nukes?

How do you argue with people who are swept off their feet by the - kakistocratic - US and EU/NATO ‘leaders’ and declare that “we” are already in the first stage of the Third World War - for which they have no theory and no historical evidence; they only deprive people of hope and the wish to do something to stop the madness?

How do you put up an argument with people who are ignorant of basic theories, concepts and facts and/or suffer from dementia, are morally and/or economically corrupt, and lie, steal and cheat without a second of hesitation? People who talk as if they never read even a small book about the subject they lecture their citizens about?

How should we feel about surgery performed by people who never opened a textbook in medicine? (Kakistocracy means governance by the least able and least good people…)

How do you communicate with media people who only produce narratives that are underpinned by lies, propaganda, one-sided threat images, loads of omissions and no longer know how to spell the word ‘journalism’?

And what do you do when there is no longer any space or need for political satire - politics having become a caricature of itself?

It is indeed no wonder there is no Tom Lehrer or Monty Python today, with Western politics having transformed itself into a self-destructive Theatre of the Absurd à la Beckett or Ionesco - with actors on the stage mistakenly believing that they have God On Their Side?

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Is there, under such perverse circumstances, still an intellectually meaningful thing to do?

I have no doubt there is.

It is to ignore this militarist and war entertainment - although people love to focus on weapons and wars - and speak up only about the fully possible alternatives, fully possible if we commit ourselves to solid knowledge, creative dissidence and vision-making and liberative dialogues way outside the doomsday self-imprisonment.

I refuse to devote more than 1% of my energy on Trump and other kakistocrats, doomsday visions. I refuse to engage in critique so utterly devoid of constructive intent it might as well have been archaeological remains.

World history has seen dark times before. The present militarist kakistocracy will fail, consuming itself in failure - and then fall. No, we cannot be sure it will not be even more destructive, but fear is a non-starter.

When that has happened, the emerging new and better world for all will unfold and gain speed.

And it is for its peace and development we must prepare ourselves.

Now.

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July 7, 2026 - reposted here on July 28, 2026

By Dmitry Trenin

Trenin is a research professor at the Higher School of Economics and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also the president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).

INTRO
I urge you to read Dmitry Trenin, who is one of Russia’s most esteemed, balanced and experienced scholars in the field of international affairs. I have enjoyed reading him and now and then also reposting him on The Transnational.
In this article, he succinctly summarises about 50 years of Russia-NATO relations. With NATO’s expansion instead of creating an all-European mutually beneficial security and peace structure and the war between Russia and Ukraine, this is not the time to just say repeat to yourself what you hear European leaders say: Oh, he is a Russian, so we don’t bother to listen to such Putin propaganda.

The first duty of all security politics is to seek to understand the other side. That does not mean love, agree with or give in to that opposite side. To seek understanding so that mistakes are not made is a mature thing to do, and it is self-protective too. Understanding the other side, increases our own security. That is what NATO and EU leaders simply do not understand. They just appoint Russia as an eternal enemy, refuse every contact and every diplomatic step and blindly believe that 5% of their GNP will increase security. It is all nothing but kakistocratic thinking.

This type of thinking represents a greater threat to Europe’s future than the official “Russian threat” does. Russia’s military expenditures are still 10% of NATO’s, and it will only fight if it feels that its existence is at stake. Trenin tells you that that is precisely how he sees NATO’s planning and politics - as existentially threatening if continued.

Therefore, it is urgently important that we read and listen carefully to what leading intellectuals in Russia have to say. They write because they are seriously concerned and want to promote dialogue. The only security there can be is one that is common and shared.

Jan Oberg
TFF director

Dmitry Trenin:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is entering its third age. When it was founded three-quarters of a century ago, it was meant to contain the spread of communism and confront the military might of the Soviet Union. In other words, to keep Western Europe capitalist and under US control. Despite the allegations of the Soviet propaganda at the time, NATO was a defensive rather than an aggressive alliance. Through all the crises of the Cold War period, it stood still.

When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union imploded, NATO gained a victory it had not won. The US-led military bloc refused to dissolve upon the completion of its original mission. Instead, it sought to become the sole security regulator for Europe. It went onto an offensive and waged war against Serbia. It went “out of area” to fight in Afghanistan. It embarked on an enlargement spree to include the former Soviet satellite countries of Eastern Europe, and some ex-republics of the USSR itself.

Yet, it miserably failed to manage relations with the former adversary, Russia. It spurned Moscow’s request for membership and proposed a partnership instead which turned out to be essentially hollow. It ignored Russia’s security interests by refusing to stop its expansion all the way toward the Russian border and turning down Moscow’s proposals for a pan-European security order. The issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which the Kremlin perceived as an intolerable threat to its national security, became the principal cause of the Ukraine war, now in its fifth year.

This ongoing war has given NATO a new lease on life. Russia once again became the enemy, with the Western alliance so much stronger and better positioned to take it on. With Ukraine on its side, NATO can use its army to physically attack Russia. The US’ and Europe’s goal in that war, as was publicly proclaimed from the start, has been to inflict a “strategic defeat on Russia.” What was deemed impossible during the Cold War has moved into the realm of the thinkable in the West’s proxy war against Russia.

From 2025, US President Donald Trump’s policies have kick-started a process of NATO’s internal transformation. The US National Defense Strategy clearly makes Europe responsible for “handling” Russia. Thus, with Washington revising its global strategic priorities, European members of the alliance are being ordered to carry more financial and military burden. Under conditions of the ongoing war, this means much greater involvement in the conflict. The European elites, long reluctant to increase defense spending and fearful of being drawn into wars, have changed their minds and eagerly embraced the new responsibilities and risks as an opportunity.

There are reasons for that change. Militarization is now thought to be a driver for relaunching the EU’s flagging economies. A militarily stronger Europe would be more autonomous strategically in a world where America is reducing its commitments to allies. Adding a military dimension to the EU could cement the union in the face of the many mounting challenges. Politically, rearmament and mobilization in the face of the “enemy at the gates” makes it easier for the ruling elites to brand their opponents “Kremlin stooges,” and thus protect their hold on power. For now via Ukraine) has become a new unifying idea for Europe.

For Russia, this NATO 3.0 means, above all, that for the first time since the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in 1945, Europe is again becoming a clear and immediate enemy of Russia. People in Moscow entertain no illusions about the adversarial attitude of the United States toward Russia, but Washington now is a back seat driver when it comes to the conflict with Russia. Whereas in the days of the Cold War NATO appeared to Russians as “America in Europe,” now when they look at NATO, they see Europe backed by America.

What is even more important is that NATO 3.0 is clearly on the offensive, with most decisive goals. The European elites’ strategy toward Russia is no longer deterrence as in the days of the Cold War; the goal is Russia’s destruction as a major power. This is what “strategic defeat” is all about. The Europeans dream of eliminating Russia as a serious factor in the geopolitics of Eurasia: to them, this would mean the “final solution” of the long-dreaded “Russia problem.”

Long sulky as a result of Russia’s advances on the Ukraine battlefield, the European politicians and media outlets are now triumphant, hoping that long-range drones they have helped Ukraine to produce and send to their targets across Russia are the wonder weapon of this war. They are seeking to strengthen their punch by similarly providing Kiev with long-range cruise missiles and then ballistic missiles. These weapons, it is hoped, will seal the fate of Russia, once and for all.

This, however, will not happen. The fundamental flaw of European thinking is their belief that Russia would rather accept defeat, degradation and disintegration than use the arsenal which it currently possesses. This arsenal is not limited to nuclear weapons, although point may be reached when they will have to be used. The Kremlin, so far, has been exceedingly restrained in using its more powerful conventional capabilities, or engaging some high-value, high-visibility targets. There are many explanations for such restraint, but it is foolhardy – actually, fatal – to believe that either the Russian leadership or the Russian people would ever surrender to NATO.

The European NATO leaders’ enormous deficit of modern strategic culture – unsurprising after the eight decades of having delegated their security to the United States – and their blind Russophobia, a result of deep-seated vintage European racism and the real or perceived grudges against Russia piled over the last five centuries, have put Europe on a direct collision course with Russia. NATO 3.0 means war. Should it actually come to that, there will be no more NATO.

Keep getting alerted to quality research and debat by TFF who has always believed that many others express important views and that we should not only promote our own. This applies in particular to helping Russian analyses and arguments reach Western audiences when, against all human rights provisions, NATO/EU governments have censored your free access to leaading Russian media.

I am truly happy and honoured to have been invited by Lena to her unique channel, World Affairs In Context where she has over 600,000 subscriber. She covers a very wide range of global themes based not the least on her own deep and broad knowledge about economics. I want to thank her warmly for her immense contribution to global public education about the most important issues.

In our conversation, we focus a number of European trends of our time, among them the conversion to a war economy that she herself has also analysed in depth here. We basically focus on diagnosis and some prognosis, but not how to solve problems. That may be our next focus.

As you know, I am very opposed to every doomsday attitude and prediction - as I have repeatedly written and said over decades, latest “Doomsayers and Possibility Explorers.”

Undoubtedly, the wildly counterproductive policies of NATO and the EU are dangerous and self-destructive, but I do not see them as necessarily having to end in a war with Russia - or China. On the contrary, many things can still be done to avoid that.

It is just that most commentators, media and scholars are:

a) focused on direct military and not on structural and cultural violence and they look at military affairs, not the underlying conflicts - and that

b) most people do only diagnosis and some - dystopian - prognosis instead of concentrating on what is important: How could these problems be solved - and how could peace by created by mainly peaceful means - as the most important Article 1 of the UN Charter states - and all UN members have put their name under.

As a peace and future researcher at TFF, I see that peace-making, not military geopolitics, as my “mission.”

I have always been - and promise to remain - a Possibility Explorer… 😊

I mean, what else is science for but trying to find solutions?

When you have watched the conversation, please write your comments among the many hundreds already there…

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Those of us who are for true peace, law and justice and all marginalised shoestring operations must do more to support each other and not just publish to promote our own stuff. That’s how we build the critical mass to - nonviolently - explode the old militarist system.

Today I want to recommend the Swiss “Current Concerns” that continues year after year to publish articles of high relevance and quality both online and as PDFs you can share in your circles. Just click that link and see for yourself.

Just read those word on the red background above: Independent thought! Ethical standards! Moral responsibility!

How outdated! And how relevant!

You will naturally get some things about Switzerland, and that is important, not least in these times when the unique Swiss neutrality - and peace - model is up for discussion. And because Switzerland is, still, importantly “different” in a Western world that is getting more and more uniform and therefore boring.

But you’ll also be better informed about the wider world. Each contribution is thoughtful, well-written, well-edited, and the kind of analysis you store in your digital archive because it has lasting value.

It is so relevant and serious that you have probably never seen a mainstream media referring to an article there or to Current Concerns as a whole.

Like I have recommended Transcend Media Service, TMS, I recommend this - somewhat similar - quality publication. Both deserve thousands of times more followers.

Jan Oberg
TFF

Sajid Farid Shapoo

Excerpts

“Ask most diplomats, and they’ll tell you that they simply haven’t been tough enough or clever enough. The more uncomfortable explanation is that they never really understood the country they were trying to pressure in the first place.

A vocabulary problem

For two decades, the standard Western vocabulary for Russia has settled on words like authoritarian, fascist and even totalitarian.

These terms, borrowed wholesale from the 20th century’s worst regimes, carry a built-in assumption: that the Russian state survives on coercion alone, that ordinary Russians are essentially a captive audience waiting to be freed and that discrediting one man would bring down the whole edifice.”

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“The Western commentary on Russia tends to critique the state: its security services, its censors, the vertical of power running from the Kremlin down to the last regional governor.

What usually gets missed is the current running the other way: society’s grip on the state, as argued by scholars like Michael Kimmage and Timothy Frye. That’s the grip likely to matter more in the long run, not the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Russians are unusually good at seeing through official messaging. It’s a skill left over from seven decades of decoding Soviet propaganda, sharpened further by a partly marketized media landscape that taught people to read state messaging with suspicion long before “media literacy” became a Western obsession.”

I recommend this analysis because, succinctly, it builds on an intelligent societal-cultural-historical framework that is totally absent in the NATO/EU discourse. It also has a predictive value. Read it in Asia Times of July 11, 2026 - and do not forget to share it if you like it.

Jan Oberg
TFF director

Very important too, Krikke emphasises dialogue - in contrast to making statements.

It makes the essential distinction between universal theorising and global theorising - which is absolutely fundamental for humanity’s future, for understanding the globalising trends and for - yes, peace. (I still assume, perhaps stubbornly, that there are some people out there who find peace and the UN norm of making peace by peaceful means relevant, important and realistic, more realistic than continues warfare and militarism.

As he expresses it brilliantly: “A universal philosophy claims to offer concepts applicable to all human experience. A global philosophy seeks to engage the world’s major philosophical traditions on genuinely reciprocal terms.”

Bravo!

Substack too needs much more of this kind of article and argument. And dialogue…

See Krikke’s Substack here with more articles relevant for constructive thinking instead of geopolitical commentarism that never discuss deeper assumptions or why we think the way we do and also never focuses on the future and possible solutions.

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By Jan Krikke

July 9, 2026

First published by Asia Times on July 6, 2026, here. The author is also on Substack.

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Every few months, another Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough makes global headlines. A Chinese AI model closes in on American rivals, a Chinese research team tops a benchmark, a Chinese factory gets smarter, a city more connected, a supply chain more predictive.

The usual explanations follow: China has more engineers, more factories, more state support, more data. While often true, they miss something deeper.

China is not simply building bigger AI systems than America. From digital twins and smart cities to predictive logistics and intelligent manufacturing, it is increasingly building systems designed less for chatting than for coordinating, less for imitation than for management.

That difference points to a larger question. Why has China put so much emphasis on AI for navigating change, while much of the Western conversation has focused on chatbots, productivity software and artificial general intelligence?

The answer lies not only in economics or industrial policy, but in a much older Chinese way of thinking about intelligence itself.

The binary and the book

More than three centuries ago, an exchange of letters between Europe and Beijing brought together two very different ideas of intelligence.

In 1701, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz sent an explanation of his newly developed binary arithmetic to Joachim Bouvet, a French Jesuit at the court of the Kangxi Emperor. Leibniz had shown that every number could be expressed using only two symbols — 0 and 1— a discovery that would become foundational to digital computing.

Bouvet’s reply surprised him. He sent a diagram of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, one of China’s oldest philosophical classics. Each hexagram consists of six broken or unbroken lines, producing exactly 64 possible combinations.

To Leibniz, the resemblance was unmistakable. He concluded that the ancient Chinese had, in effect, anticipated binary arithmetic long before Europe formalized it.

That claim is too neat to take at face value. The I Ching was never a mathematical system. But Leibniz noticed something real: the hexagrams arrange discrete symbols in a way that invites pattern, classification and transformation.

That is, the I Ching is not just a system of forms, but a guide to change. When a hexagram is cast, certain lines “move,” transforming one pattern into another. What matters is not only what appears, but what it is becoming.

Leibniz saw the hexagrams mainly as a symbolic code. What he missed is that they hold two dimensions at once: structure and transformation. Their six lines are discrete symbols, countable and classifiable.

But those symbols carry meaning only in relation to the process of change they were built to track. Remove the movement, and a hexagram is just a pattern. Restore it, and it becomes a moment inside something larger and ongoing.

This is not to claim that the I Ching somehow “predicted” modern AI, or that today’s Chinese engineers are consciously channeling ancient divination.

Rather, the I Ching exemplifies an intellectual orientation that has persisted in various forms across Chinese thought: an attention to flux, interdependence and the direction of change rather than fixed categories and static representations.

That broader orientation did not disappear from Chinese intellectual life. Although modern AI draws on global science and engineering, it is striking that some of its most prominent applications in China — digital twins, intelligent infrastructure and predictive urban management — place continuous adaptation at their center.

That orientation did not determine China’s AI strategy, but it may have made certain engineering questions seem more natural to ask — and certain kinds of systems more natural to build.

The great split

Mathematicians later gave formal names to the two dimensions at work here: discrete and continuous.

Aristotle had already separated discrete from continuous quantity, and Euclid built the distinction into the structure of the Elements. What changed in the 19th century was the rise of two rigorous traditions built around that split.

Continuous mathematics, shaped by calculus, became the language of flow, motion and change. Discrete mathematics grew alongside it, concerned with numbers, logic and symbolic operations.

Computing inherited the discrete tradition. George Boole turned logic into algebra. Claude Shannon showed how Boolean logic could be implemented through electrical circuits. Alan Turing demonstrated how symbolic operations could become computation. Once the world could be represented as bits, digital technology advanced with astonishing speed.

AI inherited the same representational logic. Every interaction with an AI system begins with translation: language becomes tokens, images become pixels, behavior becomes data. A continuous world is rendered into discrete forms that machines can manipulate.

That strategy has been extraordinarily successful. But the systems AI increasingly seeks to understand — cities, supply chains, financial markets, ecosystems — are never still. They shift while decisions are being made.

A map can become infinitely more detailed and still capture only a moment. A compass, on the other hand, serves a different purpose: it helps us navigate a landscape that is already moving beneath our feet.

The distinction between map and compass is no longer philosophical – it represents an engineering problem.

Intelligence as infrastructure

Most people meet AI today as a chatbot, a search tool, a translator or an image generator. AI appears as another app on a screen: useful, increasingly capable, but still something we consult when we need it.

Now imagine AI in a different role. Instead of answering questions, it adjusts traffic lights as congestion builds. It balances electricity across a grid as demand shifts. It predicts equipment failures before they occur, reroutes freight around disruptions or continuously updates a digital model of an entire city as millions of people move through it.

In that vision, AI is no longer just a tool. It becomes part of the infrastructure through which society runs.

China, unlike America, has made that vision especially visible. It has invested heavily in digital twins, smart manufacturing, predictive logistics and urban management systems. The emphasis is less on chatbots than on systems that coordinate continuous change.

Hangzhou’s City Brain is a useful example. Rather than merely collecting traffic data, the system analyzes vehicle flow, congestion, emergency routes and public transport in real time, then adjusts signals and routing accordingly.

The city is treated not as a set of separate intersections but as a single evolving system whose parts constantly affect one another. A static traffic model can describe yesterday’s congestion. A continuously updated digital twin tries to anticipate tomorrow’s.

The same orientation appears in Chinese discussions of AI itself. Yucong Duan’s DIKWP framework — Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom, and Purpose — extends the familiar hierarchy by adding purpose as a fifth element. The point is simple: intelligence is not just about processing inputs; it is about why those inputs matter and what goals they serve.

Another useful concept is “gongsheng” (共生), often translated as symbiosis or co-evolution. Rather than treating humans, machines and institutions as separate entities, it emphasizes continuing interaction and mutual adaptation. Intelligence, in this view, emerges not only from computation but from relationship.

Where the I Ching asked how to read the direction of change through moving lines, DIKWP asks how an AI system can keep its purpose as the data it processes shifts around it. Both treat stability as a dynamic relationship rather than a fixed state.

These are contemporary engineering ideas, not revivals of ancient philosophy. Still, they address an old problem with striking continuity: how should we act when the world is in motion?

Map and compass

Leibniz never fully understood what he had found. He died in 1716 still convinced that the hexagrams were an ancient Chinese version of binary arithmetic. He had the mathematics right and the larger meaning wrong. The lines were never just code – they were a record of things becoming other things.

Three centuries later, the same gap still separates many AI systems. A chatbot completes a static exchange: language in, language out, one turn at a time. A city management system does something else: it watches a city change and adjusts with it.

Neither is more intelligent in the abstract than the other, as they are built for different tasks. One asks what is being said; the other asks what is happening next.

China’s AI investments in digital twins, predictive logistics and urban management systems are not proof of a superior philosophy. Rather, they reflect different engineering priorities, shaped by a state that has long treated infrastructure and governance as closely linked, and by a longer intellectual habit of attending to direction rather than fixity.

But it would be a mistake to frame this as a civilizational contest pitting a “holistic East” versus an “analytic West.” American and European AI research is already moving toward related ground: world models, continuous control, embodied systems and agents that track a moving environment instead of describing a static one. The frameworks differ, but the underlying challenge does not.

And that challenge will only grow. Cities, power grids and supply chains do not pause while a model is trained on them. The systems meant to manage them will need to do two things at once: represent the world in discrete, computable pieces and track the continuous change that never stops running underneath those pieces.

For AI researchers and engineers alike, the challenge is becoming increasingly practical: how to combine accurate representation with continuous adaptation.

A map and a compass solve different problems, with the former fixing a place and the latter holding a direction. Neither replaces the other, and no one crossing unfamiliar terrain would carry only one. The challenge is not choosing between them, but learning to use both in tandem.

Jan Krikke

Jan Krikke is a former Japan correspondent for various media, former managing editor of Asia 2000 in Hong Kong and the author of “The Grid and the Wave: Chinese Cosmology, Modern Physics, and the Limits of AI.” More by Jan Krikke.

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Note
See also TFF’s “If You Want To Understand China” – Foreword, Intro and Content of a TFF anthology” (2024-2025) which deals with ways of thinking, however not the AI perspective.

📌

From TFF Director Jan Oberg
Lund, Sweden - July 7, 2026

Dear friend,

NATO Summit takes place right now in Ankara, July 7-8, 2026. I continue to believe and argue that this anything-but-defensive alliance must be abolished. There are much better and cheaper ways of creating security and peace - neither of which is possible with the building blocks NATO consists of. Read here.

🌹 Thanks a lot to all the brave people worldwide who continue to support TFF’s peace research and public education work. We are grateful for every donation and every Substack subscription.

And if you do not do economic support, sharing our materials is more important than you may think and a good deed for peace, too. Sharing is caring.

In our 40th year, we continue to publish factual and critical analyses as well as true peace alternatives. With our 50 Associates, you can count on our unique accumulated expertise - truly free research and education since, as a policy, we are exclusively people-financed.

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Since PressInfo # 786, we have published 16 articles and several videos on TFF Substack. See them all here.

The Transnational - our homepage soon to appear in a super modern all-encompassing edition - has these new articles. Yes, some are re-popsts because we serve different audiences:

• Are Europe’s Leaders Ignorant — or Are They Lying?

• Doomsayers and Possibility Explorers

• TFF Share Blog, News & Notes from 2021 till today

• MOU: Iran Gains Stature, Arab States Diminished, US Humiliated

• Research quality and quantity: Some aspects of doing social science today

• Advisor to the Arete Youth Academy

• NATO’s Echo Chamber: How Denmark’s Broadcasting, DR, Is a Mouthpiece for Alliance Narratives

• Nuclear Abolition Is the Only Civilised Option: Here the essential arguments you are not supposed to know

Some of the above plus others can also be found on my online home often in Swedish or Danish.

🔷

🎥 Given that TFF has been censored - and blocked - by YouTube and Vimeo, you know that we have set up a TFF Video Collection on Substack. But we have also now established ourselves at Rumble where, btw, you also have a special section with the first five Peace Pulses.

We reach fewer people there than on YouTube but TFF is anyhow for the discerning citizens who seek knowledge. We do not believe that things are better because many click Like; the quality of a piece of art is also not determined by its market price.’

🔷

🕊️ We continue to do what we feel we must do. Facts and criticism are necessary but never enough. Change requires vision, courage and creative energy — all in short supply today when everything is about military affairs.

Join TFF and peace on X/Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Telegram and on Facebook here and here. All of these media blatant political algorithm/censorship(de-ranking.

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🔷

Everything we do will be free for all, forever. But! If you can afford it and love peace, become a paying subscriber to TFF on Substack or hit the red button below. Thanks!

TFF will - also forever - remain 100% people-financed, all-volunteer and therefore able to do free research and education. We’ve done it since 1986. We’re one of the last think tanks conducting genuine peace research, not political science, international relations, geopolitics, or “security” studies.

We publish articles and videos daily, but we don’t want to feel like we’re spamming you with emails every time. Between these approximately weekly Press Infos, please visit our sites to stay up-to-date.

🔷

☮ Please be aware that peace - and TFF - are working uphill against all kinds of censorship, banning, downgrading and logarithms - on search engines and social media feeds - because we continue to criticise militarism, suggest the obvious peaceful conflict resolution and say the word ‘peace.’ So please:

Support TFF on Donorbox. It is easy, quick, and safe. You can choose any amount from US$ 5 to US$1000 and make it a one-time or recurring monthly donation. And you’ll never see ads or paywalls. So press that red peace button now. Feel good and support us today! If you prefer good ideas over doom and gloom:

EXTRAS

• TFF Portfolio for true peace in Ukraine: UNITE trust, DREAM prosperity and other constructive components. The only one of its kind.

• Resist and Build Alternatives to the Trump Regime Now - Part 1-4 - the way out of permanent warfare threatening the entire world…

• Goodbye Peace. Worldmoires Into A Peaceful Future - online book in the making

• ✅ TFF Share Blog, News & Notes from 2021 till today.

⭕ Oberg PhotoGraphics Magazine on Substack

“This magazine exists for the culturally curious - for those who feel the humanities are not simply academic relics, but a living archive of how humans think, feel, and connect. I gather essays, images, and creative reflections that speak to a shared longing for depth in an era built around speed, person-stories and dystopia."
/ Jan Oberg

Perhaps it is all about peace in another key, about a peace culture?

Give it a try!

My best!

Jan Oberg
PhD, director and co-founder

🔷

One more thing…

"Militarism & Environment"

© TFF 2026

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Jan Oberg

Here is what S-G Rutte said yesterday, previewing the Ankara Summit, July 7-8:

“We will announce tens of billions in new contracts that will provide the crucial kit we need to deter and defend”, said Mr Rutte in Ankara, “This will help grow our economies, spread innovation and support hundreds of thousands of jobs, on both sides of the Atlantic.” (my italics)

Yes - but only if you ignore that similar investment in the civilian society - industry, infrastructure, health care, education, culture, whatever - would grow the economies much more.

Furthermore, military investments reduce the resources available for civilian investments.

Either Rutte is ignorant and has no idea about military economics. Or he is deliberately deceiving the public.

I have documented the destructive effects of armament and militarism in the only analysis that exists in the NATO/EU space - the only one for a reason: State- and/or corporate-financed research institutes dare not analyse the effects of militarisation, which, even by common sense, are destructive to society and development. TFF dares because we accept no government or corporate support.

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In summary, be aware of - and disseminate - these three truths:

1. NATO is not only harmful to our security because it is built on weapons first, offensive long-range deterrence and first use of nuclear weapons, a combination that simply cannot create the peace it has promised since 1949.

2. It is also a direct threat to our societal well-being, parasiting on the civil economy of every member state.

3. Our children and grandchildren will pay the price for this madness which was created by NATO’s hubris expansion against all promises to Gorbachev, Russia’s invasion response and the NATO/EU refusal to use diplomacy and talk with the Russians after their historical expansion blunder.

Part 1 of my armament economics analysis here.

Part 2 here.

See also The TFF Abolish NATO Catalogue: Abolish NATO or Convert It To Serve Peace. 30 Arguments and 100s of Inspirations (With Ukraine as a primary case - 2022).

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Are Europe’s Leaders Ignorant — Or Are They Lying?

No study has ever shown that military spending outperforms civilian investment.

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Jan Oberg
PhD, TFF director

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Reminder of Part I

Part I demonstrated that military spending delivers lower economic returns than civilian investment, and that this is the only conclusion analyses over the last 50 years have reached. Military capital is negative, idle or destructive capital, and that opportunity costs drain talent and innovation from civilian sectors.

Part II now turns to the structural political economy behind Europe’s militarisation — and the absence of any serious economic analysis of its consequences.

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5. The monopsony problem: weapons are produced for one buyer

Weapons are produced in a unique market structure: a monopsony, where there is only one buyer — the state. Arms manufacturers do not compete for consumers; they compete for government contracts. This means that normal market mechanisms such as price competition, consumer choice, and transparent cost comparison simply do not exist.

Over the entire history of modern weapons procurement, there has never been a major weapons system that did not become dramatically more expensive during development and production after governments had made their decision. Cost overruns are not accidents; they are structural consequences of monopsony.

When Lockheed Martin, Saab, BAE Systems, or Rheinmetall exceed their budgets, the additional costs are simply passed on to the state — which means they are passed on to taxpayers. In a monopsonistic market, the seller has every incentive to underestimate initial costs and overestimate performance, knowing that the buyer cannot walk away once the project has begun.

This is why the F‑35, the Eurofighter, the Patriot system, and virtually every naval vessel built in the last 40 years have ended up costing multiples of their original estimates. In economic terms, the arms market is designed to produce inflated prices, inefficient production, and systematic cost escalation — all paid for by the public.

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6. The silence of European research institutes

Despite the largest rearmament wave since 1945, not a single major European research institute has produced a study comparing military and civilian multipliers. This silence is not limited to Scandinavia; it is continental. In the Nordic countries, institutes such as FOI in Sweden, DIIS in Denmark, NUPI and FFI in Norway, PRIO in Oslo, CMS in Copenhagen, and SIPRI in Stockholm publish threat analyses, strategic doctrine, Russia assessments, NATO capability studies, and industrial‑policy briefs. But none of them has ever published a systematic comparison of the economic effects of military versus civilian spending.

The same pattern appears across Europe. Germany’s leading economic institutes — DIW Berlin, Ifo Munich, and the Kiel Institute — have produced extensive work on fiscal policy, industrial strategy, and public investment, yet none has examined the relative multipliers of defence and civilian spending. In France, institutions such as France Stratégie and CEPII analyse competitiveness, innovation, and public‑finance sustainability, but they have never evaluated the economic consequences of rearmament. Brussels‑based think tanks like Bruegel, which routinely assess EU‑level industrial and fiscal policy, have not addressed the economic trade‑offs of large‑scale defence expansion. The Netherlands’ CPB, one of Europe’s most respected policy‑analysis bodies, has never modelled the opportunity costs of shifting resources from civilian to military sectors. The same silence extends to Oxford Economics and Chatham House in the UK, to Istituto Affari Internazionali in Italy, to the Polish Institute of International Affairs, and to the major economics departments of European universities.

Even the European Union’s own institutions — the European Commission, the European Defence Agency, the European Investment Bank, the European Court of Auditors, the European Central Bank or national banks — have not produced any study comparing the economic returns of military and civilian investment.

They analyse defence procurement, industrial capacity, and budgetary compliance, but never the fundamental question: Is military spending economically inferior or superior to civilian spending?

Europe produces threat assessments, strategic doctrines, capability roadmaps, and geopolitical narratives. But it does not produce multiplier comparisons, employment‑effect studies, consumption‑effect analyses, distributional‑impact evaluations, opportunity‑cost modelling, or welfare‑economics assessments of defence spending.

The silence is not accidental. It illustrates that state (NATO/EU)-financed research institutes do not venture into anything that could be critical of the massive, uniform groupthink rearming of Europe.

In c.ontrast, truly independent, people-financed and all-volunteer TFF can do that.

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7. Europe’s ignorant move towards a war economy

Meanwhile, Europe is moving rapidly - and self-destructively - toward a wartime economy. Defence spending is rising to 2 percent of GDP as a minimum, 3 percent by 2028, 3.5 percent by 2030, and NATO’s new long‑term target of 5 percent by 2035.

This is the largest reallocation of public resources in modern European history. And yet there is no public economic debate about what this costs, what we lose by doing it, what alternative investments could achieve, who benefits, who pays, or how it affects welfare, inequality, and long‑term growth.

Furthermore, it happens at a time when a) many European economies are moving ever deeper into crisis, Germany not the least, and b) the world order is changing rapidly and there is increased competition by China and general unpredictability when it comes to US policies vis-a-vis Europe.

The strategic debate is loud. The economic debate is silent.

This is how wartime economies emerge: not through public deliberation, but through the gradual normalisation of military priorities — unexamined, uncosted, and unquestioned.

Future generations will pay the heavy price for this systematic irresponsibility, this security deception based on imagined - also not analysed - images of Russia.

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8. Conversion: what was once possible is now ignored

In the 1980s, conversion was one of the most serious topics in peace‑economics. The question was simple: could military industries be converted to civilian production if political will existed? The answer, documented in multiple studies, was yes. Conversion was technically feasible, economically rational, and socially beneficial.

One of the most important studies was commissioned by the United Nations and led by Sweden’s remarkable social-democratic disarmament minister, Inga Thorsson — a politician, diplomat, and intellectual of rare calibre. Her expert group demonstrated that military factories, engineering teams, and research units could be redirected toward civilian production with far greater economic and social returns than continued weapons manufacturing.

The obstacle was never technical capacity. It was political will.

These studies were ignored, dismissed, or ridiculed by those who opposed disarmament. Conversion threatened the interests of defence ministries, arms manufacturers, and military bureaucracies. So the research was buried, and the debate disappeared.

Today, Europe faces the opposite situation: a political will to convert from civilian production to military production — a shift toward a war economy. But now, strikingly, there are no studies examining whether this reverse conversion is feasible, what it requires, or what it will cost.

No European government, no defence ministry, no economics institute, and no EU body has produced an analysis of the structural, financial, technological, welfare or labour‑market implications of converting civilian industries into military ones, into a war economy.

There is no modelling of supply‑chain disruption, no assessment of long‑term productivity losses, no evaluation of welfare impacts, and no calculation of the opportunity costs of diverting engineers, factories, and research capacity from civilian sectors to weapons production.

In the 1980s, conversion was studied because disarmament was considered a rational possibility. In the 2020s, conversion is happening in the opposite direction — and it is not studied at all. And it is pure irrationality and emotionalism.

Those who argue that Russia is an ever-present, rising threat should ask themselves how and why it is into the fourth year of warfare in Ukraine and assess the probability that it will invade one or more NATO countries given the fact that NATO’s combined military expenditures remain 10 times larger than Russia’s. Yes, military expenditures are far from the only indicator of relative military strength, but they are also not irrelevant.

Europe is undertaking the largest economic reallocation since 1945 without analysing what it means. A shift of this magnitude would normally require industrial‑policy modelling, labour‑market forecasting, supply‑chain analysis, productivity studies, welfare‑economics evaluation, and long‑term fiscal projections. None exist. It would require public debate. None exists.

The political will to militarise is strong. The economic analysis of militarisation is absent.

This silence is not accidental. But it is dangerous.

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Conclusion: Compare their words with the facts

You have seen in Part 1 what 50 years of peace‑economics research concluded about the effects of military investment on the civilian economi compared with equally large civilian investments. You’ve seen how military capital is negative capital, how opportunity costs drain human talent and innovation, how monopsony guarantees cost overruns, how European institutes avoid multiplier studies, how Europe is drifting toward a war economy, and how conversion — once proven feasible — is now ignored when Europe converts in the opposite direction.

Now compare all of that with what Europe’s leaders told you at the beginning of Part 1.

Then draw your own conclusions:

Are they inexcusably ignorant of basic economics?
Or do they understand it perfectly — and mislead their citizens, taxpayers, and voters?

Either answer is deeply troubling.
But one of them must be true.

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Jan Oberg
TFF director, PhD

No study has ever shown that military spending outperforms civilian investment.

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What Europe’s leaders say about rearmament and the economy

“Europe must build a strong defence industrial base — it will create jobs and drive innovation.”
— Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission (2024)

“Investing in defence is investing in Europe’s economic future.”
— Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner for Internal Market (2023)

“Rearmament is an opportunity for European industry and for growth.”
— Emmanuel Macron, President of France (2022)

“The €100 billion special fund will strengthen Germany’s economy and technological base.”
— Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany (2022)

“Defence investments are also investments in Finnish industry and competitiveness.”
— Petteri Orpo, Prime Minister of Finland (2023)

“Our defence expansion is a stimulus for the Polish economy.”
— Mateusz Morawiecki, Prime Minister of Poland (2022)

“Higher defence spending strengthens our economies and our industries.”
— Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General (2023)

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European leaders repeatedly tell their citizens that rearmament is good for growth, good for jobs, good for innovation, and good for competitiveness. They present defence spending as a kind of industrial policy — a stimulus package wrapped in camouflage. These quotations are not marginal statements; they come from the highest political offices in Europe. They form the dominant narrative of Europe’s new militarisation.

This article examines that narrative against the best available economic evidence. What follows is not ideology, not opinion, not geopolitics — but economics: multipliers, opportunity costs, capital productivity, market structure, and long‑term welfare effects. And when these economic facts are placed next to the political claims above, the contrast becomes impossible to ignore.

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1. What we concluded in the 1970s and 1980s

When economists and peace researchers examined the economic effects of military spending in the 1970s and 1980s, they did so with a seriousness and intellectual independence that is almost absent today. Scholars such as Seymour Melman, Emile Benoit, Kenneth Boulding, Milton Leitenberg, Dieter Senghaas, Ruth Sivard, Mary Kaldor, and Lloyd J. Dumas produced a body of work that remains unmatched in clarity and empirical grounding. Their analyses — and the debates they inspired — shaped an entire generation of thinking about the military–industrial complex, economic conversion, and the real social costs of rearmament.

Across countries, models, and datasets, the conclusion was remarkably consistent: military expenditure did not generate higher economic or social returns than equivalent civilian investments. The only way to make military spending appear “beneficial” was to assume that no comparable civilian investment would take place. In other words, the military sector looked good only when the civilian alternative was artificially removed from the equation.

These researchers also showed that the primary beneficiaries of military production were the arms manufacturers themselves. A small number of large firms captured the bulk of the profits, while the broader civilian economy saw limited spillovers. Smaller subcontractors benefited only marginally and often only temporarily. And they demonstrated that military spending was consistently low‑employment, low‑consumption, and low‑multiplier compared with civilian alternatives. One hundred dollars invested in health care, education, infrastructure, or culture created more jobs, more income, and more domestic demand than the same amount spent on weapons systems.

These findings were robust. They were replicated across countries and time periods. They were politically inconvenient. And they were quietly ignored.

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2. Why these conclusions are even more true today

Half a century later, the empirical picture has not changed. If anything, it has become clearer. But what is striking today is that we have not been able to find any substantial reports that analyse the multiplier effects of military investments on the larger societal economy.

What is most revealing is not only what European institutes publish, but what they never publish.

No defence ministry, arms manufacturer, NATO‑affiliated think tank, or European research institute has ever produced a study comparing military and civilian multipliers. Even RAND Corporation — with unmatched modelling capacity — has never published such a comparison.

If a favourable study existed, it would be cited endlessly. Its absence is definitive.

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3. Military capital is negative capital

Weapons are not only economically sterile; they become negative capital the moment they are used. A fighter jet, a missile battery, or a tank that sits idle consumes resources without producing value. But once used, it destroys physical capital, human capital, infrastructure, and social welfare. An F‑35 that never leaves the ground is already a net drain on the economy — requiring more maintenance hours than flight hours, specialised labour, spare parts, fuel, and continuous upgrades. But an F‑35 that actually fires its weapons becomes far worse: it annihilates productive assets, kills or injures human beings who embody society’s most valuable capital, and triggers long‑term economic losses that dwarf its purchase price. In economic terms, military capital is not merely unproductive; it is structurally counterproductive. When activated, it becomes a mechanism for destroying the very foundations of economic growth.

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4. Opportunity costs: the forgotten law of economics

People generally do not understand the concept of opportunity cost, even though it is the first law of economics: you cannot eat the cake and have it too. Every krone or euro spent on weapons is a krone or euro that cannot be spent on anything else. The question is never “Can we afford the F‑35?” but “What do we give up in order to buy it?” When governments invest in military R&D, the scientists, engineers, and research capacity involved are removed from solving the problems of climate adaptation, renewable energy, cancer treatment, artificial intelligence safety — or peace. Opportunity cost is not an abstract concept; it is a concrete loss of human capital, technological innovation, and social welfare. Military spending does not merely divert money — it diverts brains, time, and talent from the civilian challenges that determine our future.

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Summary: Bridge to Part II to be published July 4.

The economic case against rearmament is overwhelming. But the structural, political, and institutional dynamics behind Europe’s militarisation make the picture even more troubling. Part II examines the market structure of weapons production, the silence of European research institutes, Europe’s drift toward a war economy, and the forgotten history of conversion — once proven feasible, now ignored.

End of Part 1

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Jan Oberg
TFF director

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Intro

Something deeply troubling is happening in Europe — and almost no one is talking about it. While European leaders speak openly about turning Europe’s economy into a war economy, not a single major research institute has examined the economic consequences of this historic shift.

Today I’m releasing a media‑kit preview of a new two‑part report that challenges the entire political narrative behind Europe’s rearmament. It shows, with evidence from fifty years of peace‑economics research and modern analyses from the ECB, IMF, and Nordic banks, that military spending delivers lower economic returns than civilian investment — and that Europe is militarising without any economic justification.

The full report will be published in two parts over the coming days. For now, here is the press‑release summary of what’s coming.

Media Kit
Two‑Part Report on Europe’s Drift Toward a War Economy

A new two‑part report from the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, presents one of the most comprehensive economic critiques of Europe’s rearmament in decades. The report argues that no economic evidence supports Europe’s rapid militarisation, and that political leaders are now openly preparing to turn Europe’s economy into a war economy without analysing the consequences.

Drawing on fifty years of peace‑economics research, the report shows that military spending consistently delivers lower economic returns than civilian investment. Weapons production is capital‑intensive, import‑heavy, and dominated by large corporate actors, with weak spillovers to the broader economy. Civilian sectors — health, education, infrastructure, green transition — outperform defence spending on employment, innovation, and domestic demand.

The report also documents a striking silence across Europe’s research landscape.

Major institutes such as PRIO in Oslo, SIPRI in Stockholm, DIIS in Copenhagen, FOI in Sweden, NUPI and FFI in Norway, DIW Berlin, Ifo Munich, France Stratégie, CEPII, Bruegel, CPB Netherlands, Chatham House, and IAI in Rome have never published a study comparing military and civilian multipliers. Even EU bodies — the European Commission, the European Defence Agency, the European Investment Bank, and the European Court of Auditors — have not examined whether military spending is economically inferior to civilian investment.

At the same time, European leaders drive Europe to “prepare for a wartime economy,” despite the absence of any modelling of its structural, fiscal, or welfare impacts. The TFF report warns that Europe is undertaking the largest reallocation of public resources since 1945 without analysing what it means for productivity, innovation, inequality, welfare or long‑term growth.

I am the author of this analysis, a sociologist and peace researcher with decades of experience analysing militarisation, security policy, and the political economy of war - and alternatives to it.

This report also revisits the forgotten history of conversion of military production into civilian use, once shown to be economically viable, now ignored as Europe converts civilian production into military production.

I can be quoted like this: “Europe’s leaders are making the most consequential economic shift in generations. Yet no one has produced the basic economic analysis required to justify it. That makes that shift politically irresponsible, economically destructive and security-politically dangerous for the 450 million EU citizens that these politicians were supposed to serve.”

Part I will be published tomorrow Friday July 3.
Part II on Saturday July 4 - Stay tuned.

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Robert Manne

“In the collection, Hannah Arendt: The Jewish Writings, I came upon a short essay whose argument I thought was worth sharing with readers. The title of the essay was “To Save the Jewish Homeland”. The date was 1948, the year in which, following a vote of the United Nations in November 1947, historic Palestine was partitioned and the State of Israel created. Here are some of its central arguments.

For Arendt, Jewish unanimity of opinion about the creation of a Jewish state before any Jewish-Arab settlement had been accomplished was certain to spell disaster in the future.”

…

“Currently, Israel’s de facto borders extend beyond the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to include the Syrian Golan Heights; southern Lebanon beyond the Litani River and towards the Zahrani River; and three-quarters of Gaza. Israel’s military campaigns are now commonly called in Israel ‘The War of Rebirth’, a description used by Netanyahu as early as March 2025. Arendt’s prophetic political imagination allowed her to foresee what has become of Israel over the past nearly 80 years.

Hannah Arendt went on to suggest an alternative to the virtually unopposed Jewish support throughout the world for the Zionist project of immediate Jewish ‘statehood’ in partitioned Palestine and not the mere ‘homeland’ of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Her alternative was…”

Please read this essay from June 19, 2026, in full at Pearls & Irritations here…

• Although small, people-financed and all-volunteer, TFF is proud to have published thousands of essential analyses by other eminent scholars than those who are TFF Associates. We believe that this is an important contribution to public education and dialogue, and a vital means of promoting true peace. We shall continue to do so and hope you will help us:

Jan Oberg

June 27, 2026

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We live in a time saturated with negative energy. Accidents dominate headlines, bad news is good news, and social media are full of outrage and empty of public education. Public debate has become a theatre of suspicion: one flaw is enough to condemn an entire achievement, one misstep enough to erase a lifetime of work. Commentators compete to predict catastrophe, and geopolitics and war talk of have disappeared every mention of peace.

It has become easier to do criticism and destroy than to appreciate, easier to promote fear than understanding, focus on the present and never the possible future. And who bothers about alternatives and possible solutions anymore?

In such an atmosphere, insisting on constructive thinking is an act of rebellion.

Any fool can start a fight in a bar — or start a war. But not every fool can do conflict resolution, mediation, or peacemaking. These require educated skills, imagination, empathy and a neutral focus on the issue, not the actors. Yet our public sphere has become dominated by those who offer only diagnosis and despair. The militarised geopolitical mindset — now deeply embedded in Western media, think tanks, and political commentary — has elevated the Doomsayer to a position of authority. The louder the prediction of catastrophe, the more “realistic” it is assumed to be.

This is not realism. It is a fatalist failure of knowledge and imagination.

The dominating debate in the West is about military security, not about possible roads to peace in specific and a better world in general. While China hosts vibrant discussions about future global structures, governance, peace, conflict resolution, and a reformed UN fit for the 21st century, the West remains locked in an outdated military‑first worldview.

Offensive deterrence, armament, and ever‑larger military budgets are presented as the road to peace. But if weapons could create peace, we would have been living in peace decades ago.

Even peace research institutes have drifted into military‑security thinking, financed by governments whose policies they dare not challenge. SIPRI in Stockholm is a leading, tragic example – as I have argued for years. Peace – even the word – has disappeared from science, politics and media. I mean true peace – not ceasefire agreements or ‘deal’ that ignorant people call peace negotiations.

The civilisational malaise is that “security” has come to mean military security alone — not human security, not common security, not the security of communities or ecosystems. All – more or less invented threat perceptions are about military threat, not about what challenges we have as societies. It all holds little, if any, relevance for civilian society and welfare. Sadly, it rests on a documented wrongheaded assumption: that militarisation will somehow lead us to a peaceful world or at least make us safer. In reality it serves only the Miliary-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex’s elites.

This causality is backwards. It must be reversed. There are much better roads to peace.

Peace does not emerge from weapons. Weapons may, at best, help secure a peace that has already been created. Peace is made by addressing the underlying conflicts — every single time, without exception. That requires knowledge, dialogue, empathy, and the ability to imagine a better future. The reason peace has been “disappeared” from Western discourse is simple: it demands a forgotten competence. It demands theoretical knowledge, understanding and human experience. It demands the hard work of conflict transformation. Focusing on weapons, battlefields and actors is easier — but it only prolongs militarism until, God forbid, a major war erupts.

The peace paradigm is the major perspective for the future: address the conflict that made the parties take to war; help them see a better future through creative futures thinking; and implement it with the support of those who know their trade, e.g. the UN and other peace‑oriented organisations. Not governments who, woujldwide without one exception, have no advisers on conflict-resolution and peacemakers.

Only then — then — can the world reduce its weapons, let wars fade, and redirect resources toward building the better world that is eminently possible. Weapons cannot do this. The addiction to them is humanity’s single greatest curse, as much of a curse as drug addiction or alchohol is to the individual. It can be remedied only by a new thinking for peace.

And here the contrast becomes decisive.

Possibility Explorers do not underestimate dangers, risks, or the seriousness of the present. They see the same crises the Doomsayers see. But they refuse to stop at diagnosis and false prognoses. They refuse the false comfort of fatalism. They reject the intellectually lazy slide from “this is dangerous” to “this is hopeless.” Instead of closing down imagination, they open it — outlining potentials, sketching pathways, and inviting dialogue about what could be built rather than what must be feared.

They challenge narrow perspectives and inherited assumptions. They insist that alternatives exist even when institutions claim otherwise. They are not utopians; they are practitioners of foresight – eutopians in contratst to geopolitical dystopians.

In a time of militarised fatalism, foresight is intellectual resistance.

Doomsayers speak with the heavy certainty of people who have stopped imagining. Their attention is locked onto the immediate moment — the crisis of the day, the threat of the hour, the spectacle of decline. They present the present as destiny, as if today’s turbulence were the only horizon available. Doom is easy. Doom requires no creativity, no responsibility, no proposals. It is the intellectual equivalent of shrugging.

Unfortunately, doom has a very counterproductive political function.

A population convinced that the future is already lost is a population that will not demand alternatives. Fear narrows the imagination, and narrow imagination serves those in power who prefer resignation over reflection and alternatives. Doom becomes a quiet ally of the status quo: if nothing can be changed, then nothing must be changed. And, worse, they deprive people of hope and the will to take action.

Possibility Explorers take a different stance.

They do not deny risks or difficulties, but they refuse to let the present exhaust the future. They outline potentials and invite dialogue about possible solutions. They challenge narrow perspectives, question inherited assumptions, and insist that alternatives exist even when institutions claim otherwise.

In this sense, they practice a civic duty similar to that of a good doctor. Diagnosis is necessary, but diagnosis alone is malpractice – and doom prognosis is irresponsible unless you tell what might be done to avoid it, heal the patient. Responsible professionals do not merely describe what is wrong; they propose treatments, healing, and care. Likewise, responsible citizens — and responsible thinkers — must offer more than doom. They must offer dialogue, hope and direction.

Where Doomsayers end the conversation, Possibility Explorers begin it.

There are those who think that working with constructive alternatives is ‘naive’ or ‘idealistic.’ They are stuck in the negative and militaristic thinking of our dark times. Power elites will love them for taking their side and for being totally harmless.

Peace is an alternative, eminently possible through education, radical re-thinking, good ideas and vision.

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Farhang Jahanpour, TFF Associate

June 23, 2026

Berkshire (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The MoU agreed by Iran and the United States has stunned the world. Oil prices have dropped from a high of $120 at the beginning of the Israeli-US war against Iran to $77 per barrel, slightly above their level before the war. Stock markets have reached new heights, and the possibility of a global recession or even an economic meltdown has been averted, though choppy waters remain ahead.

It is still too early to assess the full implications of what is, without doubt, a major Iranian win and a humiliating US and Israeli defeat. Its ramifications will not only affect the US’s standing and relations in the Middle East, but may well affect its global power and its rivalry with Russia and China. It has totally transformed the public view of the GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) as islands of stability and prosperity in a turbulent region, but as vulnerable small states at the mercy of bigger neighbours.

It has enhanced Iran’s position as the only state in the Middle East which has stood up not only to Israel, but also to the greatest superpower in the world and has emerged undefeated, although sustaining great losses. It has opened a major rift between Israel and its greatest patron, the United States, has diminished the power of the Israeli lobby and has greatly weakened public opinion of Israel in the United States and in the world as a whole.

With its criminal genocide in Gaza, massacres and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Lebanon and its attacks on most of its neighbours, implicating the United States in those crimes and pushing America to two unpopular and illegal wars of aggression against Iran, Netanyahu’s Israel has done great disservice to the United States and its global reputation. The prime minister has made Israel totally dependent on American power and has revealed its vulnerability, turning the world against the Zionist state.

Practically the entire world has breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the US-Iran war and has backed the deal, which was revealed for full effect by President Trump at the G7 summit in France. However, the Israeli government and its powerful lobby in the United States are up in arms and trying to sabotage the deal by any means possible.

It should be pointed out that both wars of aggression against Iran last June and on 28 February 2026 were launched at Israeli instigation. Immediately after the start of the June war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dissociated the United States from the war, saying that it was launched by Israel without US involvement, although President Trump later joined the war and bombed the Iranian nuclear sites.

After the start of the second war, again Marco Rubio said that Israel had informed the United States that it was going to attack Iran, and knowing that Iran would attack US forces in return, the United States decided to pre-emptively bomb Iran. So, the main responsibility for both wars rests squarely on Netanyahu’s shoulders. It is now clear why Israel is so unhappy about the miserable failure of the two wars that it pushed the United States to join against Iran.

To appreciate the importance of what has happened, we must look back to the start of the recent conflict. After the landmark nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) reached between Iran and the Obama Administration in 2015, Netanyahu and his cronies in the United States went wild. In an unprecedented move, Netanyahu addressed an AIPAC-dominated Congress, called the deal the worst deal ever and vowed to crush it. With President Trump’s election, Netanyahu found his opportunity and persuaded Trump to withdraw from the deal in 2018 and to reimpose crippling sanctions on Iran. During President Trunps’s second term, Netanyahu even went further to achieve what he called his 40-year dream and involve the United States in a war with Iran.

According to The New York Times, Netanyahu and the head of MOSSAD persuaded President Trump that by decapitating the Iranian leadership, the Iranian people would rise up and the Iranian government would collapse like a house of cards within a few days, and America could repeat its venture in Venezuela. (1)

President Trump called on the Iranian people to rise up and topple the regime, assuring them that the United States was behind them. He boasted that he would appoint the next Iranian Supreme Leader. He even threatened to obliterate Iranian civilisation, which would never return, to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, and demanded unconditional surrender. The MoU has, in fact, represented the US’s unconditional surrender to Iranian demands. It represents all the 14 points that Iran put forward as a basis of negotiations, which, allegedly, President Trump tore up and threw in the dustbin. Here is the text of the MoU signed by President Masoud Pezeshkian and US President Donald Trump separately on Wednesday.

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Continue reading the points and Dr Jahanpour’s comments here

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A written interview with China Social Science Today, which is published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Here is the Chinese version of May 29, 2026.

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Subject: An interview on the topic of “research productivity” from Chinese Social Sciences Today

Dear Professor Jan Oberg:
Last time I interviewed you about the topic of peace studies and the future of humankind. Thank you again for your nice cooperation!
I’m currently conducting an interview about the topic “research productivity,” and I think of you again, and I guess you are the suitable person for this interview. Please check the following interview-questions, and see if you would like to accept this interview. If so, please send me back the answers by email. I believe you will offer insightful ideas.

INTRODUCTION
I served as the director of the Lund University Peace Research Institute, LUPRI, from 1983 to 1989. Then the social science faculty decided to close it down, together with a series of other studies, including environmental studies and human rights studies. The astonishing reason was that the university did not want interdisciplinary studies, and peace research, for instance, was squeezed into the Department of Sociology and later into Political Science. That was when I left the university for good.

Since then, I have been the co-founder and director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, and served as visiting professor in peace and conflict research in several countries such as Japan (four universities), Yugoslavia, Italy, Austria, Burundi, and numerous guest lectures elsewhere.

As part of TFF’s activity, I have been doing on-the-ground conflict analyses and peace training in a series of war zones. Thus, I am not a typical university professor, but may have developed views which have been shaped by my work on-the-ground, the academic teaching and my consistent writing and speaking, also for non-academic audiences.

1. In your opinion, how should we define high-quality, superior research productivity? What should be the correct criteria for this?

ANSWER
Scholarship needs productivity — without steady writing, reading, and thinking, nothing accumulates. But when productivity becomes the measure rather than the by-product, it turns into a toxin.

High-quality scholarship requires long, uninterrupted cognitive stretches; industrial productivity models fragment attention and tend to reduce depth. Many breakthroughs have come from slow trial and error, not rapid output; quantified productivity undermines the very slowness that can produce originality.

When scholars are judged by output volume, they avoid risky, long-term projects and exploration into the unknown. The system instead rewards “safe” incrementalism.

Scholarship is an art or a craft, not a factory assembly line. Craftsmanship requires revision, reflection, and rethinking, all of which may look like “low productivity” from the outside.

Hence, every science-producing institution must be very cautious not to mix mindful intrinsic motivation and the search for truths with external quantification. Quantified productivity often prioritises extrinsic motivators such as points, rankings, counts, citation indexes, grant-defined agendas and publication quotas.

In my own experience, these extrinsic factors get stronger when bureaucrats and ‘managers’ take over research institutions and external utility, such as the needs of a political and/or economic market, become domineering.

All that said, I tend to believe that productivity is largely a product of the researcher’s personality. We know that there are brilliant scholars who wrote rather little over their lifetime but are revered as trend-setting and as having written “classical” works that have stood the test of time. And there are scholars who – like, say, peace and future researcher Johan Galtung – wrote 160 books and thousands of articles, lectured all over the world, started institutes and journals that left an everlasting impression on social science in general and peace and conflict studies in particular.

The same type of low- and high-productivity personalities can be found in the arts and in politics. The interaction between high and low productivity and high/low quality makes a four-fold table. Where individual scholars fit will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

2. Many scholars have pointed out that the current academia is overly competitive, and there is insufficient policy support, incomplete incentive mechanisms, and fast pace of research, not-relaxing-enough atmosphere. This makes it difficult for some outstanding scholars to devote themselves to academic research, or lack the willingness and motivation for long-term dedication. Can you comment on these problems?

ANSWER
Competition is best when it is competition with oneself rather than others. The scholar who is eternally curious, improves old research results, tries new methods and, more or less restlessly, explores new ideas and subjects is, in my view, infinitely more interesting than the one who stays within the competition – which by definition is about competition in a field defined by the competitors.

Staying in the competitive ‘race’ means being guided by extra-intellectual factors. It develops a one-dimensional capacity to compete, but only within the particular field of competition, or issue, defined collectively by those who compete – which may not be the same as what is important to pursue.

Often the competition is measured in quantities – which can be devastating for quality. My main problem with it is that it limits the scope and curiosity to a one-dimensional field where free scholarly research and exploration by definition is about curiosity and searching – and re-searching – in many directions, sometimes totally unplanned.

If I had to choose between employing someone who is superb in one-dimensional competition and one who explores the world through competing with her- or himself, I would definitely choose the latter because that scholar is not limited to the field of competition but is likely to have a more open, curious attitude to the world and to what research is about.

3. Discussions about the relationship between the quantity and quality of papers have never ceased. Especially today, many research institutions have included quantity as an indicator into the whole evaluation system. However, overly pursuing quantity will make it difficult to ensure the sustainable development of quality. Papers of poor quality will further have a negative impact on an individual’s reputation and the entire academia. Can you talk about how to ensure a balance between the quality and quantity of paper publishing?

ANSWER
I wish I knew! Both research quality and good productivity can be seen as what philosophers call ”essentially contested concepts.” Both are qualities rather than quantities and trying to quantify one or both can become toxic, as I said in the beginning.

As I also said above, we are talking about a fourfold table. There are scholars who are both brilliant and innovative and very productive; there are scholars who are neither – and the majority, perhaps, in the two other folds. I think it is very much a personality issue, but then it is also a matter of the scholarly community, what the leadership of an institute or other research institution attempts to cultivate and stimulate in its members – what ‘culture’ or ‘ethos’ is found in the milieu.

Emphasising quantity only is very dangerous, in my view.

Here I would like to employ a concept that indicates a ‘disease’ in modern society, namely Goodheart’s Law, which states that the more we measure productivity, the more we produce what is measurable — not what is meaningful. Good scholarship becomes a rank-ordered performance rather than a deeply motivated pursuit.

This comes from economist Charles Goodhart, who observed that once policymakers fixate on a particular indicator (inflation, money supply, productivity, etc.), people begin to optimise for the indicator itself, not for the underlying reality – or quality activity – it was meant to represent and measure.

Two illustrative examples: Journal rankings are meant to signal quality. Once they became targets, scholars began writing for the journal rather than for the problem. Grant funding was meant to indicate research capacity and stimulate creative new thinking. Once it became a target, scholars spent more time applying for money than doing research, and they often have to define the expected outcome of the research in their application rather than keeping the exploration open; this means that if the scholar detects something non-expected, she or he is likely to run into problems with the grant-maker.

This has another problematic consequence: truly free research may disappear over time and most of it turns into commissioned results. Related to my own field, I have seen how security research financed by the state tend to churn out results that confirm rather than ask questions about the state’s security policies. This is also a basic motivation why The Transnational Foundation is people-financed and, as a policy, refuses to seek or get government- or corporate funding.

Motivational depth, a life-long commitment to exploring issues, is incompatible with a focus on quantitative output. Such a depth is ‘organic’ while quantitative criteria easily becomes ‘mechanic’ or purely ‘metric.’

Many people seem to believe in quantity over quality – because it help comparison and serves rank-ordering. Like these studies of which country is the most happy, the most democratic, or the most peaceful. There are even analyses that rank universities worldwide according to a set of quantified criteria.

Philosophically, I believe that qualities cannot be turned into measurable quantities and ranked. But it fits an economistic worldview, the market, competition and rapid computerisation. And it makes it easier to evaluate Scholar A versus Scholar B at the exam table or when A or B is to be hired as a new professor.

But imagine for minute that we look to the world of art, say painting? How would we rank – quantify – a Leonardo da Vinci, a Rembrandt, a Picasso or a Rauschenberg? To me such a parallel is highly relevant because I believe a good scholar embodies rather much the same qualities as a good artist.

To put it crudely: Curiosity, creativity and constant re-invention is much more important than quantity.

I wonder whether we would have had the great classical thinkers in the Orient and the Occident, how we could have had an Einstein, or humanity’s finest people of cultural expression, if only, or mainly, quantifiable productivity had been the primary criterion.

In summary, there are no limits to quality, but there are limits to quantity. That is, in my view, an essential – if not existential – reason we should be very cautious about quantitative measurements of productivity in research and science.

There exists actually a higher-level danger to what I have said above concerning Charles Goodheart, and that is the McNamara Fallacy, named after the US Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War. He took his quantity/metric-based management philosophy from General Motors with him to the Pentagon. It goes like this:

1) Measure whatever can be easily measured.
2) Disregard what cannot be easily measured.
3) Assume what cannot be measured is unimportant.
4) Conclude that what cannot be measured does not exist.

In the world of research, this would mean that, over time, only research that leads to measurable results on a market will receive funding, and that every other type of research – good creative thinking will be ignored, considered non-existing on non-productive in a societal perspective.

My own best students over the decades have been young people with a deep devotion to a field with an intention to contribute to making the world a better place. They read more books – i.e. the long argument fitting a complex world – and they did not study mainly to pass the next exam, accumulate more points (quantity/metrics) and step out into the capitalist marketplace to get a job. They studied out of curiosity and a deep personal motivation. It is extremely important to keep basic research and keep it free – free from the constraints of ‘what society needs’ because that tends to fragment and potentially destroy basic research, the free exploration, the lifelong curiosity – and instead make everything short-term and purpose-driven to serve society’s immediate elite-defined needs.

When the measurement rod becomes the main goal, the original meaning of research will die out, and universities and other places of learning will become factories. Goal-oriented research is needed, of course, but free basic research is essential for a good, balanced society.

4. The importance of research productivity for scholars’ career development is obvious. The quantity and quality of paper publications determine whether a scholar can become an academic star in a certain field or struggle on the verge of leaving academia. Can you comment on this?

ANSWER
I believe some parts of my answers to this question have been touched upon above. Over the last few decades, the Western world has phased out university studies and programs that were basic and not adaptable to the needs of God’s invisible hand in the capitalist marketplace. The humanities have suffered significantly in the competition for large sums of money for natural science, technological innovation, and corporate development.

Society tends to become a science park instead of a social community with cultural and other non-metric qualities.

Art too has been vandalised by the market – Wall Street billionaires competing at auctions and big corporations paying outrageous sums for an oil painting that is no longer judged by its inherent quality but by its price: If expensive, it is supposed to be a great piece of art that also increases the status of its owner. The old loving collector of art now belongs to a tiny minority; art has become a commodity. The artist begins to produce for the market, for selling and earning money – rather than for making art as such.

In my view, that spells the end – over time – of civilisation. Everything shall not and can not be put on a quantifiable market formula, be it science or the arts. Life is not a set of commodities.

If the ‘industrial’ mode of research production goes the same way, it will lose every relevance and become a commodity. And that will squeeze out serious scholarly talents. It is happening in the West where lots of knowledge and innovation is taking place outside the universities – some of which have turned into commercial science parks devoid of social science and the humanities – while real and free scholarly development takes place in smaller communities in which the community of like-minded creative people gather and find truly creative synergy.

Governments that allocate funds for education and research should be more aware of these long-term trends and dangers and see it as their role to support those types of research that corporate commercialisation and commodification ignore. Or we shall end up with a very unbalanced society with little human welfare and happiness – a high-tech desert with little civilisation.

Goodheart and McNamara should be known to decision-makers – also those who seriously but foolishly believe that setting off 5% of the GNP for weapons has anything to do with security and will make the world a more peaceful place.

5. High-quality research productivity depends on the passion and enthusiasm of researchers for their work. Independent thinking is also crucial. However, this is difficult to find in today’s fast-paced academic environment where almost everyone feels anxious and even pessimistic, or seek quick solutions. Can you talk about this?

ANSWER
Yes, much of the academic world has become a ‘rat race’ in which production is more important than creativity and where there is a long distance between the moment of tremendous joys of seeing new things and perspectives emerge. This rather tragic situation would hardly have happened if quality had been placed consistently over and above quantity.

The personal dissatisfaction with this development seems to be mitigated by high salaries, but I for one would not trade that. If bored, stressed out, walking into the wall – feeling that the fantastic profession of being a scholar does not give you daily joys and make you a happier human being: Leave!

There will always be other milieus that reward true masters of innovation. Unfortunately, they exist more in the corporate-connected natural science world than in the humanities and social science world – but this could well change when the society becomes too un-balanced or one-dimensional. Our world needs holism, not compartmentalisation.

In a good society, the philosopher or artist should be as important and socially esteemed as the chip inventor or nuclear physicist.

6. Research productivity requires continuous academic output and discovery. This not only demands excellent academic abilities and research potential, but also requires extraordinary perseverance. The way to successful research is a long and narrow path that requires a great deal of effort and energy. “Patience is particularly required.” There is a Chinese saying that “ten-year cold sitting on chairs is needed.” How do you view this?

ANSWER
Well, sitting on a chair is one good thing but perhaps also lying on the sofa, taking walks, writing poems, playing the piano – or listening to music – get an idea when visiting a museum and, not the least in the social sciences, having dinner with good food and wine with colleagues and dialogue freely and let associations roll.

Everyone knows that new ideas may turn up at the most unexpected places and moments and often when you are doing something totally un-related to your research, for instance tending your garden or taking a bath. So, always have your phone or a notebook and pen with you – you never know when that genius idea strikes, and get it jotted down while you remember it.

So, patience, yes – perhaps high-temperature restless patience…? Good ideas come from doing something; I never believed in silent meditation as a creativity booster.

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