US academia and policy have traded rigorous area scholarship, languages and geography for ideological advocacy, leaving America strategically blind to global realities.
When it comes to Russia, the CIA and State lost their actual experts decades ago.
The current crop of “Russia experts” for the most part don’t even speak Russian, but rely on reports and translations from other “experts”.
(One can only wonder if the many intelligence failures on Russia has anything to do with “outsourcing” the expertise to countries like Ukraine.)
The system of political appointees, where the winds of politics decide who’s an expert and who’s not, likely also has an influence on the degeneration of “experts”.
Very interesting analysis. You can definitely see the decline of regional studies programs (specifically Russian/Eurasian studies) at US universities over the last 15-20 years. Funding for the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships Program has been in a steady decline, and I believe the office that administers FLAS programs was dissolved earlier this year. I know the funding for the US State Department’s Title VIII Research and Training program for former Soviet states is also on the chopping block. It’s a shame. Thanks for drawing attention to it.
The key reason of USA’s failure to understand how any other country thinks and therefore reacts is American hubris and exceptionalism. After all, why seek to understand others when you believe that you are all that matters and all that others want is to become like you? The consequence of this inability to understand others not only causes misunderstanding but is actually deadly when there is any confrontation, be it militarily, economically or otherwise. Why worry about others’ military prowess when you’ve already the most powerful and unstoppable military? Why worry about their economic gravity when you are the economic centre of the universe and they can’t possibly survive without you? American exceptionalism seems to believe that while pride comes before the fall, it can’t possibly apply to USA because USA is exceptional even to that adage.
That’s a very sharp and eloquent observation. Thank you. I agree that American exceptionalism has become both a lens and a blindfold. It convinces policymakers that others think like them, while insulating them from the consequences when they don’t. The belief that the US is immune to historical laws, that “pride comes before the fall” applies to everyone but America, is precisely what makes its strategic misjudgments so repetitive and dangerous.
This is an excellent and informative description of the “why” America has lost the ability to navigate smartly the changing geopolitical world in which we are now living. Thank you.
With there intellectual decline on other Nation's , a dangerous backlash is happening around the world as can be seen in there bullying attempts at China , Iran , Russia , Venezuela and possible Nigeria ( for now ) Hypocrisy and Blatant false alligations to mention a few and as for Europe the Dying Colonists and theft of Russian state assets is obvious too the new Multipolary world that there is going to be a bumpy road ahead for all of us . Also do not forget the the City of London and Chatham house are very much active in all of this so Buckle up , they wont go down without a fight.
I agree very much with your thesis, and I am glad that you highlighted the importance of Professor Cohen's role in understanding Russia, free of ideological blinders and cant. Professor Stephen Cohen was guided by a towering academic rigor and an intellectual honesty to match. To most Americans, including the current crop of "Russian specialists", this combo is so alien to them they don't even recognize it, let alone appreciate it as the essential, foundational qualification for truth-seeking. Instead, like most Americans, they reflexively retreat to an interpretive filter entirely comprised of simple-minded biases, heavily biased towards the erroneous and unfair, all twisted by the delusion of American exceptionalism.
The interconnectedness of learning and implementation remains a perpetual problem within foreign policy circles across the world.
The chasm between academia and pracitioners has always been problematic, despite the fact that when combined they elevate each other respectively.
I think the issues you allude to here are symptomatic and emblematic of the question of efficiency and speed over depth and understanding, resulting partially from the accelrated pace of events and engagements as the rate of information outpaces the ability to process and understand it.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection and I am in agreement. The widening gap between academia and practitioners is indeed one of the central problems. In the rush to respond to events at “real-time” speed, depth and historical understanding have become luxuries rather than foundations. The result is a policy culture optimized for reaction, not comprehension, where efficiency substitutes for insight, and data replaces wisdom. As you point out, reconnecting learning with implementation is essential if strategy is ever to recover its analytical depth.
You might be interested to see the abomination that is the new Kennan Institute…all Russophobes and some real hardline Ukrainians. https://www.facebook.com/Kennan.Institute/
I asked ChatGPT to analyze this excellent essay. The I asked Chat to re-write the essay using its critique to strengthen your argument.Here's the re-write. I think it is stronger while using your primary insights effectively. I hope you like it.******************
Below is a fully rewritten essay, not an outline, designed to address the original’s weaknesses while preserving its core insight. I have:
• Removed unnecessary polemics and personal targeting
• Tightened causal claims and made them more defensible
• Clarified what “civilizational understanding” means operationally
• Balanced empathy with agency and responsibility
• Reduced asymmetry and nostalgia
• Strengthened the argument as analysis rather than indictment
The length is slightly shorter than the original, but comparable in scope and ambition.
________________________________________
The Erosion of Understanding: How America Weakened Its Capacity to Study the World
For much of the twentieth century, the United States maintained a foreign policy ecosystem that—however imperfect—recognized a basic truth: effective strategy requires serious knowledge of other societies. During the Cold War, universities, foundations, and government agencies invested heavily in foreign languages, regional history, and area-based expertise. The result was a cadre of analysts, diplomats, and scholars who could read adversaries’ documents, follow internal debates, and situate contemporary behavior within longer historical trajectories.
That capacity has eroded. While expertise has not vanished, the institutional conditions that once sustained deep, regionally grounded understanding have weakened. Language training has declined, area studies programs have lost status and funding, and policy influence increasingly flows to analysts whose authority derives from methodological sophistication, media fluency, or ideological alignment rather than prolonged engagement with particular societies. The consequence is not ignorance in a crude sense, but a narrowing of how the world is understood—one that increases the risk of miscalculation in an increasingly multipolar system.
From Area Knowledge to Abstract Expertise
Cold War–era area studies were never politically neutral, nor were they free from state influence. Yet they shared a defining feature: linguistic and historical competence was a prerequisite for authority. Scholars of the Soviet Union, China, or the Middle East were expected to read primary sources, follow internal elite debates, and understand how historical memory shaped strategic perception. This grounding did not dictate policy conclusions, but it disciplined analysis.
After the Cold War, that model weakened. The perceived ideological triumph of liberal democracy reduced the urgency of studying other societies as distinct historical entities. Universities redirected resources toward globally oriented international studies programs that emphasized theory, quantitative methods, and universal categories such as governance, norms, and institutions. These approaches generated valuable insights, but often at the cost of depth. Language requirements loosened, long-term fieldwork became rarer, and engagement with archives and vernacular sources declined.
The result has been a shift from scholarship grounded in regions to analysis conducted about them. Increasingly, analysts rely on translated materials, secondary literature, datasets, and models to interpret societies they do not directly study in their original languages. This does not make their work invalid—but it does constrain what they can see.
Incentives and the Policy Knowledge Economy
These academic trends interact with the political economy of policy expertise. Think tanks, advisory bodies, and media platforms operate in environments that reward speed, clarity, and normative alignment. Funding often comes from government programs, defense-related industries, or philanthropic actors with defined strategic priorities. Within such systems, analysts quickly learn which interpretations travel and which do not.
This does not require overt censorship. Rather, it produces a subtler form of epistemic filtering. Arguments that challenge prevailing assumptions—particularly those emphasizing historical context, security dilemmas, or alternative strategic logics—face higher barriers to influence. Over time, the range of perspectives entering policy debate narrows, even as the volume of commentary increases.
The problem is not that values such as human rights or alliance solidarity shape analysis; these are legitimate interests of U.S. policy. The problem arises when normative commitments substitute for empirical inquiry, or when understanding an adversary’s worldview is conflated with endorsing it. In such conditions, empathy becomes suspect, and interpretation gives way to moralized categorization.
Understanding Is Not Excusing
To understand another state’s strategic behavior is not to justify it. Historical context explains actions; it does not absolve responsibility. Yet without such context, policy risks mistaking symptom for cause. Russian security policy, Chinese statecraft, and Indian strategic autonomy are often interpreted primarily through universal templates—aggression, revisionism, hedging—rather than through the historical experiences, institutional legacies, and strategic vocabularies that shape how these states perceive their options.
This matters because states do not respond to abstract categories; they respond to perceived threats, opportunities, and constraints as they understand them. Misreading those perceptions increases the likelihood of escalation, surprise, and ineffective deterrence. Several U.S. policy assumptions of the past three decades—regarding political convergence in Russia and China, or alignment expectations toward India—proved overly optimistic not because policymakers lacked intelligence, but because structural incentives favored models and narratives that underweighted historical and cultural specificity.
Methods, Terrain, and the Limits of Abstraction
Formal models, quantitative analysis, and comparative theory remain indispensable tools. The issue is not method but sequence. When technique precedes terrain—when analytical frameworks are applied without sustained engagement with language, history, and internal discourse—precision can become illusory. Analysts may model behavior accurately in aggregate while misunderstanding the meanings actors assign to their own actions.
Other systems place different emphases. In several non-Western policy schools, including those in Russia and parts of Asia, language mastery and country-specific immersion remain central to training. These systems have their own distortions and constraints, but they underscore a basic principle: strategic analysis begins with reading societies as they read themselves.
Rebuilding Capacity Without Nostalgia
Restoring America’s capacity for global understanding does not require a return to a romanticized past or the abandonment of modern analytical tools. It requires recalibrating incentives so that deep regional knowledge complements, rather than competes with, methodological rigor.
This would entail renewed investment in language training, archival research, and long-term immersion; clearer career pathways for scholars whose work prioritizes depth over tempo; and institutional safeguards that protect analytical dissent. It would also require greater transparency in the funding structures that shape policy research, allowing consumers of expertise to better assess potential constraints.
Most importantly, it would require intellectual humility—the recognition that power does not confer omniscience, and that understanding precedes effective judgment. In a world where major powers operate according to different historical experiences and strategic traditions, ignorance is not merely a cultural failing; it is a strategic risk.
Understanding others does not mean agreeing with them. It means recognizing that durable strategy begins not with condemnation or projection, but with comprehension. Without that foundation, the United States risks navigating a complex world with extraordinary capabilities—but diminished vision.
Thinking of ideology, there is an ideological basis to all this. The rightward drift of American politics has devalued education in general, and devalued to a greater degree any education that is not of immediate instrumental value, ideally for producing profit. The idea of education for its own sake being valuable enough that the public should fund it is one that socialists and to a fair degree liberals subscribe to, but free market ideology does not believe in public funding of most things no matter what their value, since in theory the market will fund anything that is of genuine value (and with some fine circularity, what is of value is determined by the market). And what the market "values" is STEM and the business department, not history or languages or literature.
Meanwhile, most forms of more traditional, non-market-oriented conservative ideology do not much value education for the masses--the right people should have it, of course, but the lower orders are considered unable to handle it, prone to be led astray by dangerous ideas. And the proto-fascist current that has been strengthening for some time, reaching its greatest influence in the form of Trumpism, is generally anti-intellectual, fundamentally against education and knowledge in general. For this ideology, scientists and historians are "elites" (although billionaires apparently are not), and elites are to be defeated.
So I would claim the US move rightward, both in terms of more market-oriented economics and in terms of the cultural right, has led to education funding cuts and a shift away from anything that might be described as liberal arts (not that the sciences have gone unscathed). While many would represent this shift as hard-headed, practical, realist, it is the opposite, and ultimately comes from something I would call decadence--members of elite groups treating their own personal gain as primary at the cost of any real allegiance to any kind of national project.
When it comes to Russia, the CIA and State lost their actual experts decades ago.
The current crop of “Russia experts” for the most part don’t even speak Russian, but rely on reports and translations from other “experts”.
(One can only wonder if the many intelligence failures on Russia has anything to do with “outsourcing” the expertise to countries like Ukraine.)
The system of political appointees, where the winds of politics decide who’s an expert and who’s not, likely also has an influence on the degeneration of “experts”.
Very interesting analysis. You can definitely see the decline of regional studies programs (specifically Russian/Eurasian studies) at US universities over the last 15-20 years. Funding for the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships Program has been in a steady decline, and I believe the office that administers FLAS programs was dissolved earlier this year. I know the funding for the US State Department’s Title VIII Research and Training program for former Soviet states is also on the chopping block. It’s a shame. Thanks for drawing attention to it.
The key reason of USA’s failure to understand how any other country thinks and therefore reacts is American hubris and exceptionalism. After all, why seek to understand others when you believe that you are all that matters and all that others want is to become like you? The consequence of this inability to understand others not only causes misunderstanding but is actually deadly when there is any confrontation, be it militarily, economically or otherwise. Why worry about others’ military prowess when you’ve already the most powerful and unstoppable military? Why worry about their economic gravity when you are the economic centre of the universe and they can’t possibly survive without you? American exceptionalism seems to believe that while pride comes before the fall, it can’t possibly apply to USA because USA is exceptional even to that adage.
That’s a very sharp and eloquent observation. Thank you. I agree that American exceptionalism has become both a lens and a blindfold. It convinces policymakers that others think like them, while insulating them from the consequences when they don’t. The belief that the US is immune to historical laws, that “pride comes before the fall” applies to everyone but America, is precisely what makes its strategic misjudgments so repetitive and dangerous.
This is an excellent and informative description of the “why” America has lost the ability to navigate smartly the changing geopolitical world in which we are now living. Thank you.
With there intellectual decline on other Nation's , a dangerous backlash is happening around the world as can be seen in there bullying attempts at China , Iran , Russia , Venezuela and possible Nigeria ( for now ) Hypocrisy and Blatant false alligations to mention a few and as for Europe the Dying Colonists and theft of Russian state assets is obvious too the new Multipolary world that there is going to be a bumpy road ahead for all of us . Also do not forget the the City of London and Chatham house are very much active in all of this so Buckle up , they wont go down without a fight.
I agree very much with your thesis, and I am glad that you highlighted the importance of Professor Cohen's role in understanding Russia, free of ideological blinders and cant. Professor Stephen Cohen was guided by a towering academic rigor and an intellectual honesty to match. To most Americans, including the current crop of "Russian specialists", this combo is so alien to them they don't even recognize it, let alone appreciate it as the essential, foundational qualification for truth-seeking. Instead, like most Americans, they reflexively retreat to an interpretive filter entirely comprised of simple-minded biases, heavily biased towards the erroneous and unfair, all twisted by the delusion of American exceptionalism.
A very interesting perspective.
The interconnectedness of learning and implementation remains a perpetual problem within foreign policy circles across the world.
The chasm between academia and pracitioners has always been problematic, despite the fact that when combined they elevate each other respectively.
I think the issues you allude to here are symptomatic and emblematic of the question of efficiency and speed over depth and understanding, resulting partially from the accelrated pace of events and engagements as the rate of information outpaces the ability to process and understand it.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection and I am in agreement. The widening gap between academia and practitioners is indeed one of the central problems. In the rush to respond to events at “real-time” speed, depth and historical understanding have become luxuries rather than foundations. The result is a policy culture optimized for reaction, not comprehension, where efficiency substitutes for insight, and data replaces wisdom. As you point out, reconnecting learning with implementation is essential if strategy is ever to recover its analytical depth.
Dr. Mearsheimer interviewed in link below echoes the points made in this insightful post:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PbPQFcz7N9U
You might be interested to see the abomination that is the new Kennan Institute…all Russophobes and some real hardline Ukrainians. https://www.facebook.com/Kennan.Institute/
Their views are exactly what the eminent George F. Kennan stood against. As Professor Mearsheimer says, we really live in an upside-down world.
I asked ChatGPT to analyze this excellent essay. The I asked Chat to re-write the essay using its critique to strengthen your argument.Here's the re-write. I think it is stronger while using your primary insights effectively. I hope you like it.******************
Below is a fully rewritten essay, not an outline, designed to address the original’s weaknesses while preserving its core insight. I have:
• Removed unnecessary polemics and personal targeting
• Tightened causal claims and made them more defensible
• Clarified what “civilizational understanding” means operationally
• Balanced empathy with agency and responsibility
• Reduced asymmetry and nostalgia
• Strengthened the argument as analysis rather than indictment
The length is slightly shorter than the original, but comparable in scope and ambition.
________________________________________
The Erosion of Understanding: How America Weakened Its Capacity to Study the World
For much of the twentieth century, the United States maintained a foreign policy ecosystem that—however imperfect—recognized a basic truth: effective strategy requires serious knowledge of other societies. During the Cold War, universities, foundations, and government agencies invested heavily in foreign languages, regional history, and area-based expertise. The result was a cadre of analysts, diplomats, and scholars who could read adversaries’ documents, follow internal debates, and situate contemporary behavior within longer historical trajectories.
That capacity has eroded. While expertise has not vanished, the institutional conditions that once sustained deep, regionally grounded understanding have weakened. Language training has declined, area studies programs have lost status and funding, and policy influence increasingly flows to analysts whose authority derives from methodological sophistication, media fluency, or ideological alignment rather than prolonged engagement with particular societies. The consequence is not ignorance in a crude sense, but a narrowing of how the world is understood—one that increases the risk of miscalculation in an increasingly multipolar system.
From Area Knowledge to Abstract Expertise
Cold War–era area studies were never politically neutral, nor were they free from state influence. Yet they shared a defining feature: linguistic and historical competence was a prerequisite for authority. Scholars of the Soviet Union, China, or the Middle East were expected to read primary sources, follow internal elite debates, and understand how historical memory shaped strategic perception. This grounding did not dictate policy conclusions, but it disciplined analysis.
After the Cold War, that model weakened. The perceived ideological triumph of liberal democracy reduced the urgency of studying other societies as distinct historical entities. Universities redirected resources toward globally oriented international studies programs that emphasized theory, quantitative methods, and universal categories such as governance, norms, and institutions. These approaches generated valuable insights, but often at the cost of depth. Language requirements loosened, long-term fieldwork became rarer, and engagement with archives and vernacular sources declined.
The result has been a shift from scholarship grounded in regions to analysis conducted about them. Increasingly, analysts rely on translated materials, secondary literature, datasets, and models to interpret societies they do not directly study in their original languages. This does not make their work invalid—but it does constrain what they can see.
Incentives and the Policy Knowledge Economy
These academic trends interact with the political economy of policy expertise. Think tanks, advisory bodies, and media platforms operate in environments that reward speed, clarity, and normative alignment. Funding often comes from government programs, defense-related industries, or philanthropic actors with defined strategic priorities. Within such systems, analysts quickly learn which interpretations travel and which do not.
This does not require overt censorship. Rather, it produces a subtler form of epistemic filtering. Arguments that challenge prevailing assumptions—particularly those emphasizing historical context, security dilemmas, or alternative strategic logics—face higher barriers to influence. Over time, the range of perspectives entering policy debate narrows, even as the volume of commentary increases.
The problem is not that values such as human rights or alliance solidarity shape analysis; these are legitimate interests of U.S. policy. The problem arises when normative commitments substitute for empirical inquiry, or when understanding an adversary’s worldview is conflated with endorsing it. In such conditions, empathy becomes suspect, and interpretation gives way to moralized categorization.
Understanding Is Not Excusing
To understand another state’s strategic behavior is not to justify it. Historical context explains actions; it does not absolve responsibility. Yet without such context, policy risks mistaking symptom for cause. Russian security policy, Chinese statecraft, and Indian strategic autonomy are often interpreted primarily through universal templates—aggression, revisionism, hedging—rather than through the historical experiences, institutional legacies, and strategic vocabularies that shape how these states perceive their options.
This matters because states do not respond to abstract categories; they respond to perceived threats, opportunities, and constraints as they understand them. Misreading those perceptions increases the likelihood of escalation, surprise, and ineffective deterrence. Several U.S. policy assumptions of the past three decades—regarding political convergence in Russia and China, or alignment expectations toward India—proved overly optimistic not because policymakers lacked intelligence, but because structural incentives favored models and narratives that underweighted historical and cultural specificity.
Methods, Terrain, and the Limits of Abstraction
Formal models, quantitative analysis, and comparative theory remain indispensable tools. The issue is not method but sequence. When technique precedes terrain—when analytical frameworks are applied without sustained engagement with language, history, and internal discourse—precision can become illusory. Analysts may model behavior accurately in aggregate while misunderstanding the meanings actors assign to their own actions.
Other systems place different emphases. In several non-Western policy schools, including those in Russia and parts of Asia, language mastery and country-specific immersion remain central to training. These systems have their own distortions and constraints, but they underscore a basic principle: strategic analysis begins with reading societies as they read themselves.
Rebuilding Capacity Without Nostalgia
Restoring America’s capacity for global understanding does not require a return to a romanticized past or the abandonment of modern analytical tools. It requires recalibrating incentives so that deep regional knowledge complements, rather than competes with, methodological rigor.
This would entail renewed investment in language training, archival research, and long-term immersion; clearer career pathways for scholars whose work prioritizes depth over tempo; and institutional safeguards that protect analytical dissent. It would also require greater transparency in the funding structures that shape policy research, allowing consumers of expertise to better assess potential constraints.
Most importantly, it would require intellectual humility—the recognition that power does not confer omniscience, and that understanding precedes effective judgment. In a world where major powers operate according to different historical experiences and strategic traditions, ignorance is not merely a cultural failing; it is a strategic risk.
Understanding others does not mean agreeing with them. It means recognizing that durable strategy begins not with condemnation or projection, but with comprehension. Without that foundation, the United States risks navigating a complex world with extraordinary capabilities—but diminished vision.
Thinking of ideology, there is an ideological basis to all this. The rightward drift of American politics has devalued education in general, and devalued to a greater degree any education that is not of immediate instrumental value, ideally for producing profit. The idea of education for its own sake being valuable enough that the public should fund it is one that socialists and to a fair degree liberals subscribe to, but free market ideology does not believe in public funding of most things no matter what their value, since in theory the market will fund anything that is of genuine value (and with some fine circularity, what is of value is determined by the market). And what the market "values" is STEM and the business department, not history or languages or literature.
Meanwhile, most forms of more traditional, non-market-oriented conservative ideology do not much value education for the masses--the right people should have it, of course, but the lower orders are considered unable to handle it, prone to be led astray by dangerous ideas. And the proto-fascist current that has been strengthening for some time, reaching its greatest influence in the form of Trumpism, is generally anti-intellectual, fundamentally against education and knowledge in general. For this ideology, scientists and historians are "elites" (although billionaires apparently are not), and elites are to be defeated.
So I would claim the US move rightward, both in terms of more market-oriented economics and in terms of the cultural right, has led to education funding cuts and a shift away from anything that might be described as liberal arts (not that the sciences have gone unscathed). While many would represent this shift as hard-headed, practical, realist, it is the opposite, and ultimately comes from something I would call decadence--members of elite groups treating their own personal gain as primary at the cost of any real allegiance to any kind of national project.
However USA is doing splendidly well in its project of global hegemony. If china goes,it is all over for the rest of non western world