Ther Anti-Festschrift Festschrift: “Reflecting and Disordering. Writing Ten Years of Völkerrechtsblog into History”

 

Against this background, now already some three or four years ago, a team of Völkerrechtsblog editors started thinking about how to celebrate the blog’s first decade of existence while continuing the blog’s mission of challenging established ways of doing legal academic publishing. After much discussion, the idea for a daring experiment was born: Can we take the concept of a Festschrift – and turn it on its head? Can we celebrate an idea and a community instead of individuals and practice inclusion instead of exclusion? Can we take the physical book, a medium we have little experience with, and play with its form to make it our own? Can we translate the blog’s commitment to a diversity of voices to this space? * * * The result are over a dozen contributions by nine editors and sixteen authors spanning well over 250 pages and featuring, among other things, a podcast, interviews, and, in lieu of a preface, an assemblage of e-mails, chat conversations, and internal planning documents chronicling the process of bringing the Festschrift into being. (A Canon Event: Publishing a Völkerrechtsblog Festschrift)

It is of course something of an irony--though one repeated often enough in history--that the movements toward the opposition to or challenge of an "established canon" often seek to displace canon rather than upend the notion of the canon itself. These oppositional forces have no problem with canon, just with the conclusion that they are not a driving force within them. And so, as is often the case, when one is confronted with a closed canon one creates an alternative  and then seeks to substitute itself as a new orthodoxy, whether by invitation into the old canon or by displacement. But maybe not. We will see. And always the echo of Audre Lorde. 

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.(Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, 1979)

As long as one deals with community; as long as communities insist on houses of cognitive solidarity,the cycle of canon like this one will remain inevitable. 

The essays that form this retrospective are quite interesting, whether one agrees with them or not, and whether one agrees with the politics of this project or not.  The explanatory text of the announcing this Festschrift follows below and can be accessed in the original here. 

Text of Charles III Speech to a Joint Meeting of Congress 28 April 2026

 

 

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King Charles III highlighted the friendly relations between the United States and the United Kingdom during the first address of a joint meeting to Congress by a British monarch in 35 years. Charles spoke in front of Congress on April 28 as part of his first official state visit in the U.S. since he became Britain's reigning monarch in 2022.Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, began their visit on April 27 in Washington, D.C. Following his speech, the royal couple are scheduled to enjoy a state dinner at the White House and lay flowers in honor of fallen soldiers to symbolize the military alliance between the U.S. and U.K. (King Charles Addresses Congress During State Visit: Read His Speech In Full)

 The text of the remarks follows below in their entirety.

The remarks are worth a read. The object is not necessarily to find hidden message (Politico); the way that the press delights in finding hidden messages in the clothing of the UK Royal Family (here). Instead it serves as a quite temperate version of a form of messaging that some within European circles might wish the current administration to hear--not to effect a transformation of American policy initiatives and their fundamental political line, but rather to suggest the possibility of shared spaces where American interest based transactionalism might find common ground with the emerging forms of European institutional sensibilities. Those shared spaces, as Secretary Rubio and the President recently also spoke to in speeches at the Munich Security Conference and at Davos, might be built around shared values through which win-win accommodation might be possible. But that, in turn, may require both sides to adjust their communication so that, instead of posing the risk of distraction, it might facilitate mutually advantageous arrangements to the extent those are possible. 

 

All the World's a Stage and the the Secretary of State Must Perform on it. . . . . Wisdom From the U.S. Press Organs

 

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Some people just can't do anything right. By some people, the good people at the New York Tim,es might suggest, one might mean Secretary of State Rubio. By doing things right, the same good people would mean that Secretary Rubio is just not performing like a proper Secretary of State ought to perform. That, at any rate, is what a most interesting press story authored by Michael Crowley, Rubio’s Absence From Iran Talks Highlights Stay-at-Home Role, New York Times (24 April 2026).

But the criticism of Secretary of State for his failure to meet the expectations that, at least, the legacy press has constructed for him in that role--a script, really--is hardly the most interesting party of that press story. Indeed such stories are the bread and butter of a press that has grown quite accustomed to this sort of investigative and analytical reporting. That is also a performance for which American may thank Richard Nixon. Rather, the press story is useful as an example of the triumph of performativity in the operation of institutions populated by techno-bureaucratic officials.  The person--and the office--melts away; its essence absorbed within the performance of the expectations of the office. And those expectations are smelted together from a concoction of traditions, interest, and the essence of a sort of hero worship from out of which one might merge personal style with the mandatory characteristics of a proper relationship to the performance of one's role within the administrative apparatus. Within the premise of the critical role of expected performance, or of a performance that plays according to script one might encounter another fundamental principle--that a failure of adhering to the expectations of performance will produce an unsuccessful tenure in the role for which the script was ignored. 

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 And what is the script for the secretary of state? A less than positive spin might reduce it to the same expectations of grade school students--attendance. It's elementary--in every semiotic sense of that word in the U.S. That is, that he must be physically in attendance in the building. That produces not a gold star (though perhaps that might eventually be offered as a perk), but in morale (unless of course the secretary of state is despised by the rank and file in which case attendance is irrelevant and might exacerbate moral issues. And yet, one wonders whether it is the President who is the definitive arbiter of attendance. For an older view but from this century, HERE. Still, there is a semiotics to appearance--it is an act that is also object--the objectivity of which is a presumed alignment between physical presence, competence, and the successful realization of duties (as those might be defined and thus defined instrumentalized in the hands of those who find it useful to judge such things this way). 

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And the second is that in the style of the last generation or so of secretaries of State, the secretary must travel everywhere. The failure to travel, and worse, the delegation of travel and the task of initial negotiation, or final negotiation, for that matter, on the ground, constitutes a fundamental failure of performance that will doom his tenure as secretary. We should all like the fantasy. And it sop resonates Hollywood--and the sensibilities of the last century, boomer kitsch cultural expectations of glamor, intensity, and the secretary of state as high flying superhero that can only be understood as an essential part of the cultures of institutional governance. This is the archetypal "·diplomat"--and all the more so the "diplomat in Chief." Yet one wonders whether such a two dimensional and 20th century view survives into the complex context of this century. 

Still, there is something here that is also important in performance--acting onstage, performance-- is communication. And all officials must to some extent do that with others.  But is there an orthodoxy to communication? Ought there to be ?, or is that insistence little more than the assertion of power through the expectations of performance, noty for the sake of performance but for the sake of the power to command it. In that sense how the secretary is "staged" matters. But the way that it matters may better be assessed by factors other than the performance itself.

The text of the article, Rubio’s Absence From Iran Talks Highlights Stay-at-Home Role, follows below.  

 

Brief Reflections on Rahm Emanuel, "Trump's Research Cuts Play Into China's Hands"

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(Reciting, to music.) Pearls and ruby rings . . . Ah, how can worldly things; Take the place of honor lost?; Can they compensate For my fallen state,Purchased as they were at such an awful cost?  Bracelets . . . lavalieres . . . Can they dry my tears? Can they blind my eyes to shame? Can the brightest brooch Shield me from reproach? Can the purest diamond purify my name?

(Suddenly bright again; singing as she puts on enormous bracelets.) And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing, ha ha! I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star, ha ha! I rather like a twenty-carat earring, ha ha! If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are! (Candide (1956 Libretto; A Comic Operetta based on Voltaire's satire; Book by Lillian Hellman; Score by Leonard Bernstein; Lyrics by Richard Wilbur; Other lyrics by John Latouche and Dorothy Parker) Act 1, Scene 3)

American elites, especially its academic, social media and influence elites, have been cultivating a variety of Leninism envy in the United States  since the beginning of the destruction of European hegemony in 1914. It is true enough that between 1918 and 1945 these elites were divided between "left Leninism" (Marxism or the more palatable "Socialism" for the masses) and "right" Leninism (the fascism of the Italians, with or without its ethno-paranoias), and it is true enough that the discursive focus during this period was on a sort of techno-scientism that promised miracles in the form of alleviation from the stress of economic and political risk through techno-bureaucratic experts in communion with "knowledge workers" (and their apparatus and class structures, from low and middle level knowledge producers in the hard and social sciences, the blue collar workers, to elite academic knowledge mangers and theorists at the elite level) , and culture workers (to instruct the masses on the appropriate premises of the cognitive cages within which they might see the world and be better managed by the political and social "leadership"). This scientism spilled out everywhere--from the area of health and health care, to the elaboration of increasingly aspirational utopias of economics and politics, culture, religion and the like. A magic pill for everything and everything in need of a magic pill that would help propel society toward perfection under the guidance of its vanguard of social forces organized within a benign apparatus of well intentioned (and well informed) experts. 

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After 1945, of course, the fascist version of this holistic embrace of Leninist vanguardism (whether in the form of political vanguardism overseeing social, economic and cultural perfection) or of a dictatorship of the vanguard of experts that would undertaken to discover and operationalize all that was best for those under its charge) was discredited. But Leninism, in the form of vanguardism of both sorts was not. Instead it acquired a certain politics and normative basis from out of the cage of which it was quite difficult to escape--unless one thought to ""Turn on, tune in, drop out" of society (as Timothy Leary popularized around the middle 1960s, variations of which continue to resonate to suit the times, see here), 躺平 (literally laying flat/tang ping, roughly doing enough to get by) and 摆烂 (slacking off completely/bǎi làn) (as has become popular in China of this century, the former suggesting the rebellion of doing the minimum to get by the latter of doing nothing at all), or find a home in fringe sects, though all of these scrupulously avoiding the fascist label which now became a fetish, an instrument of control, and a taboo. At the same time such rebellion could now be treated as a form of psychosis, political rebellion, social disruption,  or the sort of anti social behaviors that a Leninist state of mind could "work on" to improve. Left Leninism, then, by the standards of the 1930s at least,  came to dominate  the first great global wave of cognitive convergence adherence to a variation of which was as essential to survival and success after the 1930s, as other all consuming cognitive cages had been in earlier historical epochs (religion, for example).

None of this is bad or good. All of it is consuming in ways that make it invisible to those within the cognitive cages in which they operate. Indeed, the extent of the triumph  not only made its structures and premises, as well as its limitations and characters invisible; it also made then natural, int he sense that it might be inconceivable to think or operate and know the world any other way. While the West tends to disguise its own Leninism by pointing to its Marxist variant as a demonized heretical expression of the Leninist impulse, its own enthusiastic embrace of a centralized techno-bureaucratic managerialism grounded in the triumph of experts and knowledge  that must be applied to a population to either solve their problems or bring them closer to perfection (as all of this is understood in time, place and space),   can provide no more than a fig leaf to cover its own deep Leninist impulse.  

But, then, that may be all that is required.  And, indeed, the progeny or development of classical 1930s left Leninism, of the liberal democratic sort, can wrap itself up in the language of merit(ocracy), of the expert, and of the scientific rationalization of the good. It is as much an impulse of the sort of hyper-social (reconstruction of politics and the techno-institutional habitus of liberal democracy through an instrumental deployment of the techniques of social "deconstruction" to scientifically "prove" the structural corruption of a system they might wish to reshape to their own liking, as with it, the constitution of deviant thinking as pathological and fair game for reshaping. And it is always longing for that centralizing apparatus through which the institutionalized and hierarchically arranged tower of experts can better move social forces (including deplorables of whatever political sect they might believe they adhere to). That centralizing apparatus appears to be what connects Chinese MARXIST-Leninism (e.g., Brief Reflections on 深入学习贯彻《中国共产党思想政治工作条例》[Thoroughly study and implement the "Regulations on Ideological and Political Work of the Communist Party of China"] and links therein) with LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC Leninism (either the institutionalist techno-bureaucratic managerialism of Europe or the transactional market oriented techno-bureaucratism of the U.S.). (Consider, The American Leninist-Brain Trust Republic: Text of President Trump's Executive Order, "Launching the Genesis Mission," and the Press Release "President Trump Launches the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for Scientific Discovery").

All of this, of course, is intimately tied to notions that in the 21st century might be understood as variations on the theme of "modernization" or "development. " One does not speak here about development in its more prosaic sense, but rather as the cognitive foundation within and through which one must be brought to understand the meaning, objectives and normative foundation of all human institutions, and within that large cluster, of the central role of vanguards of leading forces as the only (or best) means of moving a population (as the term was nicely elaborated by Foucault, eventually as bio-politics, in in the sense of indistinguishable components of a collective (its "statistics) or distinguishable components  whose individual agency is useful for the collective and managed  toward collective ends).  It is, perhaps then, modernization/development, that serves as the common ground for the principal variations of post-1945 Leninism (political Leninism in China and exert tech-bureaucratic Leninism in liberal democracy).

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That brings one to a very interesting expression of that unity of conception that is, as is necessary, masked by the difference in elaboration, serving then as a basis for competition, and from it, the triumph of one or another of the variations in a very nice Opinion piece written by Rahm Emanuel for the Wall Street Journal. Its title is "Trump's Research Cuts Play Into China's Hands" and it seeks to make two larger points. The first is that the model of centralized and well managed curation of research must be situated at the apex levels of a governmental apparatus, though operated as an expression of the guiding ideology of that apparatus. The second (and perhaps for Mr. Emanuel the more important) is that President Trump, by failing to adhere to that core premise of American Leninism has failed the Nation and in so failing has provided  the President's political opponents with an opportunity to win back control of the State apparatus.  In traditional style for such arguments Mr. Emanuel focuses on the American's "Great Opponent" or Adversary--The People's Republic of China. The titles or descriptors recall what was once reserved for the religious realm and to Satan or Lucifer. There is of course irony here. Satan (שָׂטָן), the adversary, opponent or questioner was the name that evoked his status after a fall from grace; Lucifer signified is role as "light bringer" but in this sense also as tempter. Satan is the great critical force requiring an examination of oneself; Lucifer is the bringer of light but also an invitation to consider the pathways toward "enlightenment" here understood also as a reference to modernity. 

As is usual for these sorts of discursive exercises, Mr. Emanuel starts with the Luciferian dilemma for American liberal democracy--China envy. That envy is not of its systems, as such, but of what its system appears to be producing--things that Americans want but can't get. "America has long been envious of China’s advanced trains and factories. The high-speed train zipping from Shanghai to Beijing puts to shame the Amtrak Acela running half as fast between New York and Washington."   That, he suggests, misses the point--"The real threat lies in other economic sectors." (Emanuel Essay).  It lies in what Mr.Emanuel call's General Secretary Xi's "gutsy and perhaps counterintuitive decision  to invest massively in an area of American strength--basic research." (Id.) Mr. Emanuel proffers a reason--one very similar to the "space race rationalization of the 1950s: China could not bear to accept the reality that American (or Western) researchers were able to develop a COVID vaccine faster "and with higher efficiency rates" than the Chinese from out of the bits and pieces of basic research scattered about at the time (Id.).  

Yet that is also not Mr. Emanuel's point. Rather it is not that China is directing "significant money to quantum computing, fusion energy, military technology, artificial intelligence and other areas of  research and development" (Id.), it is that this infusion of R&D funds are coming from and managed by the State for State purposes. In contrast, Mr. Emanuel mourns the actions of the Trump Administration that, to his way of thinking  has cut public money, managed by and through a complex R&D bureaucracy, one tightly intertwined with the hierarchies of expertness in universities eager for the funds and willing to take direction (see here for core premises). That failure--the retreat of the State from the business of funding (and directing/managing R&D toward its own ends) that Mr. Emanuel mourns. "Mr. Trump's policy of cutting R&D funding endangers America's competitiveness, imperiling the likelihood that the next Apple, Google or Angen will be funded here." 

The problem, then, with America, in the context of R&D, is that it is not longer true to its fundamental political line: that the State must serve as the vanguard  under the leadership of which R&D can be undertaken in ways that suit whatever political objectives are compatible with the desires and interpretations of the current political leadership core. It doesn't matter whether are members of the Republican or Democratic faction, it only matters that both adhere to the fundamental political line.  The problem, though, is deeper than that according to Mr. Emanuel. In a political normative order grounded in the leading role of the State and the embodiment and centralized organ of vanguard expert scientism about national life and its objectives (especially vis a vis competing vanguards), the key failing is with the vanguards provincial officials. Thus, Mr. Emanuel suggests, President Trump "isn't the only one to blame. Business leaders have watched  this disaster unfold largely without speaking out, in most cases because they do not want to jeopardize the tax breaks and regulatory relief Mr. Trump was offering deep pocketed firms" (id.). And not just them

A rectification campaign, then, is in order. And it is to sketching out that rectification project that the bulk of the remainder of Mr. Emanuel's essay is devoted.  "First, to keep pace with the Chinese, Washington needs to finance a new public investment fund devoted exclusively to science and research" (Id.). Mr. Emanuel proposes a new sort of "sin" tax, this time on virtual gambling businesses. And he posits the research finds as a sort of national investment in R&D of utility to the State. In that sense the proposal aligns with Chinese Leninism, though not its Marxist normative framework. 

Second, Mr. Emanuel would "tighten the existing R&D  credit, a benefit that is being gamed by forms that are no longer on the cutting edge" (id).  Perhaps here Mr. Emanuel is evidencing concern that the credit can be used to develop video games (see here)--and yet the development of video game technologies, forms, and actions may indeed serve as basic research that substantially transforms tech innovation in unforeseen ways (see, e.g., here ("Military gaming isn’t just about soldiers playing commercial video games during their free time. It’s about utilizing advanced simulation technologies to create realistic training environments that are too complex or too expensive to reproduce physically. The Army’s Synthetic Training Environment  and CAE’s Naval Combat Systems Simulator for tactical training already demonstrate this concept")).

Third, the idea Mr. Emanuel is quite consciously political ("For Democrats, this plan doesn't only represent good policy..it's an opportunity to practice good politics (Id.)).The "good politics" turns out to be populist in a class oriented sort f way. The premise is simple, only the State is in the position to serve the best interests of the "little person"  the content of which is best known to the state apparatus and its political leaders. The problem, as Mr. Emanuel sees it is that the leading forces of the industrial ¡sector, unlike the leading forces of the political sector, are bot incapable and uninterested in the best interests of the "little person". Borrowing from the "soft Marxism" of Anglo-European discourse of the last century, his unstated premise is that the interests of the proletariat and the capitalist class are not just not aligned bur are opposed. Only (again embracing the premises of and within the soft Marxism" Euro and classical American "democratic socialism" of the last century (perhaps not the current variation which is essential incoherent in its effort to please contradictory forces)) only the State can advance the interests of the masses and control the "selfish" power of the capitalist classes who are "in it" only for themselves. The result is the expression of the contradiction of pre 1939 classical contradiction in the spirit of Risa Luxembourg: "Rarely has a president managed to alienate so much of his winning coalition in such a short period." (Id.). Of course that is a necessary rhetorical trope and perhaps meant to hide the problem of social engineering  (and cultural rectification campaign designed to augur in a new era of proper belief) at the heart of the last campaign, one which alienated  the working classes perhaps as much as the current administration's economic policy alienate them now. Still, technological innovation may make it easier to make such cultural rectification campaigns more palatable in the future or at least easier to implement, with the State at the forefront.

There is much more that might be unpacked here. I note only the following: 

1.  The binary--basic research versus applied research--is both contested and historically contingent (see, e.g., Désirée Schauz, "What is Basic Research? Insights from Historical Semantics," Minerva (2014) 52:273–328). It does little to help understand the debate except by reference to the role of utility in both. That is, that the difference between basic and applied research is time.   Where one speaks to funding basic research by the State, purpose and utility remain in the picture--and necessarily so. The only issue is the specificity of purpose in relation to a specific problem the solution to which requires a specific answer or approach. Neither Mr. Emanuel nor the Chinese Communist Party understand basic research as serendipity that at some future point might be unearthed and then applied to some future (and perhaps unforeseen) challenge. They both understand the concept as directed toward utility. In the case of China that connection is well theorized and developed through the concept of high quality or innovative development, one tied closely to the goals (long and short term) of Chinese Socialist modernization. 

It was stated that education, science and technology, and talent function as a basic and strategic underpinning for Chinese modernization. We must fully implement the strategy of invigorating China through science and education, the strategy of developing a quality workforce, and the innovation-driven development strategy, make coordinated efforts to promote integrated reform of institutions and mechanisms pertaining to education, science and technology, and human resources, and improve the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to make key technological breakthroughs. (Communique of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China)

These are undertaken toward State ends and ultimately help  move the nation along the Socialist Path toward the establishment of a Communist society. The project is not basic research as such, but basic research guided by the needs of the State under the leadership of its vanguard CPC. Mr. Emanuel uses the notion instrumentally as a political trope. And yet it is a trope that has the same trajectories and effects--especially in its relationship between State guidance and the curation of funding. At the same time, he appears to suggest that basic research might well be best undertaken under the guidance of its expert techno-bureaucracies deeply intertwining state organs and the organs of knowledge production centers in universities (for example). There is little space for serendipity here--at least as between idea and funding. 

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2. The concept of science and research is itself also contested, and is politically contingent. The image Mr. Emanuel perhaps seeks to evoke is of the 18-20th century scientist generating key basic ideas that revolutionize a field, process, or way of thinking. Not so much a mad scientist, as one who is devoted to pushing the frontiers of a field in ways that make it possible to produce something useful.  That leaves a lot of space for politics--and the free ranging of ignorance in the context of science in the 21st century. The focus implied are the traditional "hard" sciences; that leaves no space for "social science" much less the humanities. One is producing wonderful new innovations, but only respecting what might, at some point along the historical evolution of the ideology of science, something "scientific".  And yet those distinctions may be falling away--for example the intertwining of philosophy with artificial intelligence, and religion with physics, etc. On the other hand quality innovation in the social science might produce the sort of radically transformative insights that might make it far easier to control the Republic's population and certainly to police its beliefs and behaviors. (L.C. Backer, "Next Generation Law: Data Driven Governance and Accountability Based Regulatory Systems in the West, and in Social Credit Regimes in China"). And, indeed, Mr. Emanuel just assumes a purpose driven agenda on the part of the State-Knowledge industry complex toward their own ends (which by definition must be that of the public): "to augment national investments in basic research, defense, life science and energy technology" (id.). This, indeed makes it clearer--the object is essentially Leninist--not necessarily focused on basic research as such, but rather on research as a national investment producing goods that suit the needs of the State and its apparatus. That is not a bad thing; it is just not quite aligned with the rhetorical presumptions of Mr. Emanuel's proffered project. On the other hand, it is deeply aligned with the idea of State (or rather) vanguard leadership as a predicate for success. That is certainly true when measured against the Chinese model; on the other hand, it is not clear that this Republic is meant to emulate that model, even if it continues to embrace the Leninism of techno-bureaucratic expert leadership and guidance of the population through institutions of state and otherwise. 

3.  The idea that basic research R&D  as a function of federal government investment ought to be undertaken in ways that Washington could get more bang for its buck" (id.) also suggests that it is not basic research that is being targeted--but like the Chinese approach after the 3rd and 4th Plenum, "targeted incremental  research." (Id.). These also have a significant managerial aspect--one is not merely focusing on research but also on its institutional footprint in ways that are determined by the expert techno.-bureaucrats awarding these funds. Mr. Emanuel offers, for example, the suggestion of "awarded bonuses to investments in industrial campuses that cluster researchers, suppliers and manufacturing facilities." (Id.). One moves here far from the ideal of basic research to high quality production and innovation in the service of State objectives or high priority projects that in  very little respects deviate from the Chinese model--other than in China the policy direction emerges from the Communist Party and in the U.S. from its expert techno-bureaucratic apparatus. Compare: " On a broader national scale, China has fostered more than 500,000 high‑tech enterprises over the past five years and now claims the largest global share of sci‑tech innovation clusters." (China's new quality productive forces gather steam to turbocharge future growth). Not that this approach is either bad or good--but in both cases the State apparatus is at the center and driven by its own interests and concerns which then shape the pace, character and trajectories of innovation to suit its goals. 

4. The object of this focus on basic research (the ostensible object of the essay), then, is essentially a means to an ends. That ends is politics, and the control of the apparatus of a guiding techno-bureaucracy in and as the State in ways that can then be used to reduce the power of the non-State sector to drive economic, social, cultural, and political agendas.  "To become the party of economic growth again, we need to offer fresh ideas that keep America competitive as the global landscape evolves" (id). Thus the object is not the research and innovation, but rather the strategies for attaining and retaining power over an expanding governing public techno-bureaucracy. 

5. Yet, at the end, what appears to irritate Mr. Emanuel most is not R&D (something that most elites paid lip service to over the last several decades, leaving it to the private sector to innovate and, what some might have argued, continuing to feed an institutional system of financing universities and others through deeply inter penetrative  grant systems). What irritates Mr. Emanuel--and appears to serve as the inspiration for this essay--is the disdain that might have been felt at the rise of betting platforms in which  individuals bet on all sorts of outcomes. "I am tired of watching people bet against America, rather than betting on our nation's success" (id.). This Mr. Emanuel finds offensive; and perhaps frightening because even Mr. Emanuel understands the predictive power of data rich platforms of betting on future events, a richness which one might tax (but not exploit) in 2026 rather than suppress when presented in 2003 as the "Policy Analysis Market,", a proposed Pentagon-funded futures market.

6. Of course it makes perfect sense for the State--the liberal democratic State--to invest in those projects that its leaders believe serve the national interest, as that is understood from time to time and as its trajectories change from election to election.  It may be that the State is best suited to invest in serendipity--knowledge production originating in curiosity unconnected to anything of present value. To those ends the State might well serve as a router overseen by its techno-bureaucracies of experts, whose mandates are politically and policy driven but fashioned by elected officials as part of their fundamental political line effective until they no longer serve in office. But these are not the issues that appear to interest Mr. Emanuel. Instead one starts with the premise of the necessity and permanence of a generalized power over the national collective has come late and  which is not,That authority has grown in line with the increase in the acceptability of State based compliance oriented managerialism, again grounded in the premise that everything is public policy and that experts are best suited to manage these policies for "optional" performance--but again ideally as understood from time to time and as its trajectories change from election to election. Where there is a separation between ownership of state power (in elected officials) and control (in the hands of expert techno-bureacrats in the administrative apparatus of the state), then one has the conditions suitable for liberal democratic Leninism, here guided by an expert vanguard produced and disciplined within self referencing systems of the production of experts in "knowledge factories" intimately connected to the State.  It is in that context that Mr. Emanuel's arguments make the most sense. 

7. For liberal democratic Leninist (unlike Marxist-Leninist) States, the question, then, comes to the issue of the role of the private sector in driving innovation, or better put the role of the State in guiding, lading, or financing the sort of innovation its leaders or bureaucracies prefer.  This question is impossible, of course in Marxist Leninist States, where the core operating premise of the fundamental political line is that the State owns and controls all of the productive forces of the nation, and that the State serves as the instrumentality of its leading forces organized as a communist party tasked with the scientific movement of the nation, through the modernization of its productive forces, along the Socialist path toward the establishment of a communist society.  These objectives, goals and premises ought not to trouble liberal democratic Leninist. The question then is the extent to which Marxist Leninist presumptions about the necessity of State control of productive forces also seep into liberal democratic state operation? The Trump Administration appears to take a view that the State interferes (or manages) only to advance national political interests but otherwise leaves it to the private sector to innovate as it wills (see, e.g., Liberal Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech Driven Social Progress: Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat and "The Golden Age of American Innovation"; Reflections on "'Accelerating American Exports'--Remarks by Director Kratsios at the APEC Digital and AI Ministerial Meeting" ). The opposing party suggests a grander role for the State, one perhaps, in which State organs and their techno-bureaucrats provide the same service as the Party cadres undertake in China. What separates the two, then, is operationalization rather than the fundamental premise of State guidance and expert management. But more importantly, what appears to separate them is the presumption about the private sector and  their role in the State. Mr. Emanuel presumes an unmanaged private sector will not produce innovation of the sort that America needs. He proposes greater State intervention.  Perhaps that is exactly what is needed, but its justification may require a little more refinement if it to be squared with the fundamental political line of the nation which he seeks to advance. . . .  And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing, ha ha! I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star, ha ha! I rather like a twenty-carat earring, ha ha! If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are! (Candide (1956 Libretto; A Comic Operetta based on Voltaire's satire; Book by Lillian Hellman; Score by Leonard Bernstein; Lyrics by Richard Wilbur; Other lyrics by John Latouche and Dorothy Parker) Act 1, Scene 3)

 

Pix credit; The Guardian

 8. And there it is. Mr. Emanuel's essay is far more interesting for the unstated premises driving his comparison with China than it may be for its political agenda setting (though that will be of primary interest to many). The functional comparison (on research output) hides a much richer conversation about the essence of comparison among systems  whose fundamental political lines are incomparable (in the sense that they they start presumably some quite different sets of presumptions about the essence and purpose of a political economic model). In that sense what Mr. Emanuel does is to perhaps unconsciously align the fundamental political lens of both states at least with respect to the role of the state in managing "investment" in R&D. Yet to do that reveals what may be the essential connection between the two systems--their Leninism; understood in the sense of the presumption that systems work best when driven by a vanguard of leading forces whose role is to guide the nation toward the realization of some ideal or other. And certainly one can suppose that both systems do share an attachment to Leninism; the Chinese embracing a political Leninism, the Americans a system of institutionalized expert vanguardism. But assume the possibilities of a scientific rationalization of the pathways to systemic perfection through the application of the essential value of these vanguards. Both appear to harbor varying degrees of distrust of non-vanguard elements, which have to be managed for the attainment of the fundamental goals of the vanguard. But there the alignment ends; and with it the possibility of comparative analysis that suggests that if the Americans do what the Chinese did (substantial State control of investment in R&D), then the Americans can achieve what the Chinese are achieving. The relevant analysis, then, might center not on China but on (as Mr. Emanuel does) on the differing sensibilities respecting the practice and operation of American expert Leninism in the context of innovation and tech dominance. There comparison is possible. Mr. Trump's approach is more transactional and functionally differentiated--that State management and guidance is centered on those areas and objects reflecting a State interest. Mr. Emanuel's suggests more broadly institutional suggesting a distrust of the individual and bottom up innovation generally, one that requires State direction and management in the way that had developed into the State-academic industrial complex that has been the partial target of Mr. Trump's policies. Mr. Emanuel distrusts markets as a means of generating and developing popular desire; these are matters best left to experts and subsumed within a broad understanding of the necessities of macro-economic policy to be controlled (one way or another by the State). Mr. Trump likes transactions and a n environment that makes transactional activity easier, except to the extent that it interferes with State interest in their own transactions, which in ideal form are meant to enhance the transactional capacity of the non-State sector. While Mr. Emanuel appears to tend toward the view that markets are instruments of policy directed by experts; Mr. Trump tends toward the view that experts are instruments of policy directed through markets and their actors. One can build worlds in the space that separate the two. And that leaves China to (again) play the role of (necessary) of the bogeyman, useful only as the instrument for confronting a more real and closer to home target. That, then provides the basis of the witches sabbath that appears to be the shape of American politics in this unsettled time, one in which even the century old embrace of expert vanguardism may be ripe for engagement. 

ICoCA Newsletter January March 2026: "Local Solutions for Global Standards"

 

Accountability, transparency, and engagement are critical elements of any principles based system.  Those overarching principles are no longer easily applied through one-size-fits-all measures. Those concerns are nicely encapsulated in the January-March  2026 Newsletter of The International Code of Conduct Association – ICoCA--"Technology and the future of private security." These are framed in this way for the Newsletter:

Private security providers operate in diverse and often complex environments where risks and regulatory contexts vary significantly. Ensuring respect for international human rights standards therefore requires approaches that are adapted to local realities while remaining consistent in their application. This newsletter explores how ICoCA’s context-specific engagement is shaping responsible security practices in different regions.

ICoCA "is a multi-stakeholder initiative formed in 2013 to ensure that providers of private security services respect human rights and humanitarian law. It serves as the governance and oversight mechanism of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers." (ICoCA--About). The ICoCa summarizes its mission this way: "Our mission is to raise private security industry standards and practices that respect human rights and international humanitarian law and to engage with key stakeholders to achieve widespread adherence to the International Code of Conduct globally. Discover the benefits for each stakeholder group below."

Featured interventions include: (1) The end of plausible deniability: CSDDD and private security within the value chain; (2) Just transition through a community-based security model in Albania; (3) Empowering Mozambique's civil society for corporate accountability; (4) Towards stronger governance of private security in Nigeria; (5) Strengthening civil society advocacy in international decision-making processes; (6) Shaping private security governance in the Americas; and (7) ICoCA Responsible Security Awards 2025: Case studies highlights.

A French version of this newsletter is available here.

 

Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs: Central Asia Resource Tracker

 

Pix credit here

 

 The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs has produced a resource may some may find useful--its Central Asia Resource Tracker.

The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs is a DC-based nonprofit dedicated to fostering academic exchange between Central Asia and the rest of the world. They describe themselves this way: "Research is essential to the development of Central Asia, and its most pressing concerns require knowledge-driven solutions. Strengthening the academic sector stimulates cultural exchange, innovation, human capital development, and economic growth. We believe that people in Central Asia and beyond benefit from closer ties, intercultural exchange, and investment in the region's people and institutions."

Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Issues China Monitor No. 4 (14 April 2026)

 

 

 The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues.

CECC tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political and academic elites in the United States about issues touching on China and the official American line developed in connection with those issues. As such it is an important source of information about the way official and academic sectors think about China. As one can imagine many of the positions of the CECC are critical of current Chinese policies and institutions (for some analysis see CECC).

CECC periodically publishes its China Monitor. CECC notes: "The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) is mandated to monitor human rights and the rule of law in China. This newsletter contains the views of professional Commission staff and does not necessarily imply endorsement by any individual CECC Commissioner, or any Commissioners’ professional staff."

The latest issue (No. 4, 14 April 2026) is now available. These suggest what appears to be foregrounded by Congressional leaders and will likely play a role in interactions between Congress and the State Depart, and ultimately between Secretary Rubio (a former co-chair of CECC), the President and other relevant Cabinet secretaries. The contents  include the following:

Contents: 

Party Watch

Two Sessions prioritized national security and Taiwan reunification
CCP ramped up anticorruption messaging and purges ahead of Two Sessions
Additional removals of military officials and others continued ahead of Two Sessions
CCDI work report highlights increased number of investigations, punishments, and detentions of Party officials

Think Tanks Associated with U.S. Entities Ensnared in Anticorruption Drive

Public Backlash Against Mistreatment of  Women with Mental Disabilities

Hong Kong: National Security Law Punishes Father of Exiled Activist

Technology and Human Rights: PRC Enables Iran’s Surveillance and Repression:

Political Prisoner Case—Huang Xueqin (黄雪琴)

 The longer discussions of each of these topics  may be accessed through the links above and appear below. 

 

Upcoming Event: "C-LAW-D: Understanding Claude, Sovereign AI & the Law" 4 May 2026

 

 

Delighted to pass along the announcement for this quite interesting upcoming event:  C-LAW-D: Understanding Claude, Sovereign AI & the Law. It is co-hosted by FSU College of Law, Holland & Knight, and BDO and is described this way:

C-LAW-D: Understanding Claude, Sovereign AI & the Law
Co-hosted by FSU College of Law, Holland & Knight, and BDO

C-LAW-D is a high-signal forum at the intersection of frontier AI, sovereign infrastructure, and legal architecture. Bringing together operators, lawyers, and policymakers, this session examines how models like Claude and emerging regulatory structures are reshaping institutional governance, national competitiveness, and liability in the machine age. Designed for legal and tech professionals, the convening explores the Open Claw movement - a builder-driven wave of autonomous agents - to establish a durable policy node for the legal framework of frontier technology.

Approved for 2.0 Florida Bar CLE credits (including 2.0 Technology and 0.5 Ethics).

It is organized by the FSU Institute for Law, Technology & Innovation and Lab22c.

Registration may be found at this LINK. 

Upcomng Event: "The Internet of Value: How Distributed Ledger Technology Will Change Everything We Know About Finance, Banking and Money Itself" Apr 24, 2026

 

 

Delighted to pass along notice of this upcoming event at Florida State University College of Law. The Event is titled: "The Internet of Value" and features former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo.

The Internet of Value: How distributed ledger technology will change everything we know about finance, banking and money itself.
This presentation explores the transformative potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT), moving beyond the hype to examine how it is fundamentally reshaping the core pillars of the modern economy. Designed for legal and financial professionals, the session bridges the gap between technical innovation and practical application, detailing how decentralized infrastructure is redefining trust, transaction speed, and asset ownership. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of how these emerging tools are poised to dismantle legacy banking systems and create a more efficient, transparent future for global finance.

Approved for 1.0 Florida Bar CLE credit, including Technology.

Registration is available HERE.

 

Tom Rosenberger on "The Prince of Peace and the Sword of History: Pope Leo XIV, Just War, and the Christian Tradition"" Telos Insights

 

Pix credit here

 

It is always newsworthy when secular princes argue theology against the princes of the Church; equally interesting are those instances where the princes of the Church argue politics with secular princes.  Even more fun is when both sets of princes get judgey about each other with respect to their respect competence in the core areas of their authority. Neither is entirely out of their depth in reaching out in this way--and that dialectic always, in the long run, benefits the community of the faithful.  Or it ought to anyway. And the press is always happy to encourage this sort of thing, or at least report on it in ways that heighten the drama.

So it was with the trifle that emerged in what some hoped might have become more more extended war of words between the Trump Administration officials and Pope Leo XIV. 

With respect to that Tom Rosenberger has written an interesting essay for Telos Insights:  The Prince of Peace and the Sword of History: Pope Leo XIV, Just War, and the Christian Tradition. Whether one agrees with it or not, there is lots to chew on. Its most interesting point, however, are less its arguments than its elaboration of the quite nuanced field of work on which spats like this will ultimately flounder in any quest for certainty.  The essay follows below.