Why the US president, Donald Trump, is unintentionally spurring decentralisation worldwide; what role crypto reserves will play in national economies; and whether we are heading towards the “state as a service”.
Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky discussed this and more in an interview with FLMonthly.
A natural reaction to democracy
ForkLog: You often say the era of vertically organised political structures is ending. What makes you think so?
Stanislav Belkovsky: I would put it differently: the era of total dominance by hierarchical structures is ending. They will persist, but they will no longer matter as much as before and will cede a significant share of power to decentralised networked structures.
Beyond intuition, which I trust in such matters, one can see networked structures gaining strength while hierarchies face mounting difficulties, above all a crisis of identity among their participants. Even the war that has been going on for the past 10–11 years shows that fewer people are willing to die for the state. This materially affects events. National affiliation remains an important part of a person’s identity, but not to the same degree as before. Elements of network identity are emerging.
If you watch the historical process, you will notice it moves not in a circle but in a spiral. The cyclical model is more typical of Eastern civilisations, whereas the Christian world is organised around the idea of forward development. In truth, the answer lies in a dialectical mix of both. Every moment brings something new while reproducing the past—though not exactly, but on a new level.
Hierarchical and networked structures have always coexisted. The state is the ultimate expression of hierarchy; the church is the ultimate network, since its basis is a global identity. A person who belongs to a church is not tied to territory or bureaucracy. It is another matter that many churches became states, like the Vatican, or their appendages, like the Orthodox churches of the East following the Byzantine tradition inherited by Russia. But on the whole the religious world remains networked.
Today networked structures predominate across many religions—Protestant denominations, Islam, Judaism, Eastern spiritual traditions. Hierarchical forms in religion are losing influence because people no longer understand why they are needed at all. The same goes for states: people want to move across borders, regardless of power structures. The technological revolution only amplifies this trend.
Of course, hierarchies will not vanish, because history knows no zero-sum conflicts. The participants may think they play a game in which someone must lose, but in the long run it turns out differently. Napoleon may have looked like a victor, then suddenly began to lose. A person who died in 1807 would never have learned that he lost in the end.
As Heraclitus said, “War is the father of all things.” For development to continue, both hierarchical and networked structures must exist. But the balance will shift—networked structures will become far more significant. Alongside traditional territorial states we will see the rise of network states without territories.
ForkLog: For now, we have territories without states.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Indeed. If we proceed from a multi-civilisational model of the world, we understand that humanity is not one, and a single system of governance is impossible—you cannot build the Tower of Babel.
Take Africa. Perhaps the state was never needed there. Africans lived within clan structures until European colonisers imposed the nation-state and drew artificial borders. Such states often prove non-viable. Without them Africa might have been far more stable. But the West tried to make it resemble Europe. If you drop that ambition, things could have turned out differently.
ForkLog: Decentralisation was all the rage in the 1960s. Philosophers embraced the idea; many predicted the coming age of the rhizome: everything would blur, structures vanish, the world become a web of nodes. Yet what we see today looks more like a comeback of hierarchy. Politics is dominated by “strongmen”—leaders whose power rests not on institutions but on personal loyalty and charisma. Xi, Putin, Trump, Orban, Erdogan, Modi. Does that not contradict your intuition about growing decentralisation?
Stanislav Belkovsky: No, it does not. The modern understanding of decentralisation differs from the debates of the 1960s. The rhizome emerged in the context of postmodernism, which on the whole denied the hierarchical nature of man and his subordination to God. All that came amid talk of the “death of God”, the “death of the subject” and so on—ideas which, in my view, are already exhausted.
I have already said: there can be no totally networked structure. At a minimum the hierarchy “man—God” always remains. Hierarchy is embedded in human nature; we cannot rid ourselves of it. The question is not whether hierarchy disappears, but how the balance between it and networks changes.
Decentralisation does not mean chaos or anarchy. It means decentralised structures will, for the first time in history, gain real legitimacy. Look at decentralised finance—they are already supplanting the traditional banking system. Banks were once market agents; today they have become instruments for controlling money flows, an appendage of the state’s police apparatus. Their main function is no longer financing or working with capital but oversight. Decentralised technologies are changing this, and the process they have set in motion is now irreversible.
The logic of a police machine is such that it never saves the state; it merely postpones its collapse. At the critical moment it proves inoperable—as with the Soviet Union. A police system can freeze a process, but it remains only a tool, not a subject of governance.
The rise of charismatic leaders in various countries is a natural reaction to democracy. Democracy inevitably leads to averaging out, to the promotion of mediocrities to key posts. Whether that is good or bad is another matter, since the large human ego has often been destructive in history. It works splendidly where it cannot do much harm—say, in art. Had mediocrities frescoed the Sistine Chapel instead of Michelangelo, the result would have been quite different.
But in politics and statecraft, the hypertrophied ego produces large undertakings that often lose their meaning because of the same personal ambitions. Here operates the principle Hegel called the “cunning of reason”: the politician pursues one set of goals but ends up achieving a completely different result.
Trump, for instance. His ego is a product of the past. In the end that will ruin him; he cannot remain in power in the United States forever, though he wants to.
Yet here is the paradox: Trump objectively furthers the development of decentralised structures. In global politics he weakens America’s role, though he does not want to. At home he dismantles the hierarchical state, throwing the system into disorder with his struggle against the “deep state”.
If you asked him, “Dear Donald, Your Majesty, do you want this?” he would answer: “No, I am strengthening the state.” In reality, by purging the traditional bureaucracy and appointing freaks to key posts, he weakens hierarchical institutions—and that is an objective process aligned with the global trend.
He also stimulates the development of decentralised finance, including cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. Had he lost the election and, say, Kamala Harris come to power, state institutions would have strengthened and regulation of decentralised systems would have tightened to the point of paralysis. But the historical vector points in another direction.
In that sense leaders like Putin or Orban themselves contribute to the weakening of traditional statehood. Take Hungary. There are now two countries there—one “Orbanised”, the other its opposite. On one territory it is becoming ever harder for these groups to coexist, because Orban is not going to leave, and those who fundamentally reject his course do not want to live under “Orbanisation”.
What do these people do? They either leave physically, or they stay but shed the main thing—their psychological dependence on the state. They switch to networked structures, step outside national jurisdictions.
Until recently we lived in an American-centric system in which Washington was the global decision-making centre. Thanks to all these “strongmen”, the world’s hierarchy is collapsing.
ForkLog: It resembles a kind of deluxe digital edition of the Middle Ages—strong feudal lords rule their domains with an iron fist, alongside independent cities like the Hanseatic League for those who refuse feudal subordination because it does not fit their identity.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Yes, humanity develops in a spiral. We can always find past models that suddenly reappear in the present—on a new historical and technological level. Your metaphor is quite apt.
But there is another important point—identity. Why do we compare ourselves to the Middle Ages? I foresee a new wave of religious revival.
First, man is inherently religious. Everyone is born with a certain religious identity. Under the influence of family, society, the state, one may suppress it, transform it, misunderstand it. But when a person steps out from under hierarchical power—one of the key trends of our time—he again needs a religious identity as a fundamental criterion of civilisational belonging.
As churches weakened as networks, centralised states grew stronger. Now the weakening of states is leading to the reverse—rising salience of religious identity.
ForkLog: We see ideologies have stopped mobilising people. We no longer observe serious movements as in the early 20th century—Marxist, anarchist, fascist—that could bring people onto the streets to fight for their identity. What is happening to ideology in this decentralising world?
Stanislav Belkovsky: By the end of the 19th century the Enlightenment had practically killed traditional religions. Man firmly established the idea that it was not God who created man, but man who created God. But the instinct of religiosity did not disappear. Therefore new religions had to emerge.
Marxism became such a religion. Freudianism became such a religion. Nietzscheanism, too. From a European perspective, one might say Marxism, Freudianism and Nietzscheanism form a dialectical triad that replaced the old religions.
Marxism, in this sense, is pure eschatology, a promise of the Kingdom of God on Earth. It explains how it will come—through historical predestination. There is no Lord God there, but there are higher forces akin to fate in ancient pagan cults. Freudianism tied everything to sexuality. Toward the end of his life Freud suddenly realised that death is no less important than sex and began to seek a balance between Eros and Thanatos. Nietzscheanism gave us the superman—instead of God. In Dostoevsky’s terms, a man-god instead of a God-man. What Trump is doing today is, in fact, the cultivation of a religion of the superman, albeit in a limited format. He thinks he is becoming stronger, but in reality he is weakening himself. As we have discussed, such people actually reduce their influence rather than increase it, though for now they think they are growing stronger. These new religions drew people in and gave them identity. Then the state arrived and said: “Let the state be the religion. People must die for the state.”
I believe the search for identity is one of the most important human instincts. Nothing paralyses a person like an identity crisis, when an individual does not understand who he is. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone seeks an answer. And that is followed by a second, subordinate question: “Where am I?”
It is not only geography. It is a question of belonging to a network. Today a person can be anywhere, but his identity is determined by the network to which he is connected.
That is why the church model is so important. Not necessarily in the religious sense, but as a structure that allows one to identify oneself beyond national borders.
Hence the pompous phrases like: “One must live for what one is ready to die for.” Though pathos is alien to me and the urge toward death is unpleasant, within the mechanism of deconstruction this thought is true. In any case, identity is the key part of the equation.
It always balances between the individual uniqueness of a person and the inevitable parameters of space and time.
We live in the 21st century, not the 16th. If we lived then, completely different things would be happening to us. The lines by Alexander Kushner, “One does not choose the times, / In them one lives and dies”, are perfectly accurate.
Today identity is increasingly formed along new fault lines.
Take the Islamic world—until recently it did not exist in its current form. There was pan-Arab socialism, but it disappeared, and in its place came Islamisation.
If Europe wants to move forward rather than vanish, it will inevitably return to its Christian identity—on a new level.
And, most intriguingly, Trump, Musk and their ilk, without meaning to, are contributing to this. Though personally far from religion, their actions objectively broaden the space for the return of Christian identity in a new era.
The role of fiat currencies will shrink
ForkLog: I think many people, after this duo came to power, reread the Apocalypse. It promises that the Antichrist will have a prophet who calls down fire from heaven. That, of course, brings to mind Musk’s exploits in space.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Yes. For example, the recent video about the Gaza Strip, with a golden statue of Trump at its centre, fits this image perfectly. To some extent it is through such things that Christian identity will be reborn.
ForkLog: Several states are now talking about bitcoin reserves. A structure conceived as a tool to overturn the entire financial system is suddenly being integrated into national economies. What do you make of this?
Stanislav Belkovsky: Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies do not thereby become instruments of nation-states. They remain decentralised. If the world had taken the path of creating digital national currencies, then yes—one could say new financial technologies are being appropriated by old hierarchical systems.
But we see the opposite logic: it is states that are propping up decentralised finance. Excellent. That makes finance even more decentralised.
The role of fiat currencies and the old banking system will diminish.
Of course, that does not mean hierarchical structures will disappear entirely. We will still live in a world of balance—only the share of networked structures will be much larger.
If it used to be 100 to 1 in favour of hierarchy, it may now become 50–50. The United States, for example, is forming bitcoin reserves. Does that make it the issuer of bitcoin? Of course not. It simply means it is feeding a decentralised system with hierarchical resources. Good for them.
ForkLog: The success of bitcoin as the first decentralised currency and financial system has inspired many techno-utopians. They think blockchain will become the infrastructure for new network states.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Yes, and I think other technologies linked to this idea will emerge. The process is developing rapidly. Meme coins, NFTs—all this is in vogue because they allow people to capitalise themselves while bypassing hierarchical structures.
ForkLog: In his manifesto The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan argues for building network states that should, in his view, form around an ethical maxim uniting their members. He calls it the One Commandment. A simple ethical idea that binds a community of like-minded people. Then the community can physically anchor itself on a territory that suits it.
Stanislav Belkovsky: I find that very interesting. But, you will agree, he is saying exactly what I am saying. He is talking about a network state whose foundation is what? Religion. An ethical maxim is the basis of religion, its essence. Religions differ in their approaches to the transcendent and immanent, but at their core they always have an ethical nucleus. In effect this esteemed author is speaking of religious identity as the foundation of a network state.
ForkLog: Perhaps such structures already exist. International corporations in their current form are already full-fledged network states. Belonging to Google, for example, often matters more than belonging to a particular jurisdiction.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Quite right—with one caveat. Corporations remain hierarchical structures, like traditional states. They are not decentralised.
ForkLog: Maybe this is simply an attempt by a new technocratic high-tech class to invent an ideology that elevates them above everyone else?
Stanislav Belkovsky: Such attempts have been, are and will be.
For example, recall American technocrats of the 1930s. A group of ideologues then formulated a model in which power should belong not to politicians but to engineers and technocrats.
They believed such a project could be realised in North America, as the region is self-contained and has all the necessary resources, especially energy.
From the same roots grow Trump’s ideas about Greenland and Canada. He wants to create a closed technocratic zone. Greenland, I think, he could have got fairly easily had he not switched to other topics. Canada—no, but the intent is clear.
ForkLog: But you believe technocrats cannot run the world?
Stanislav Belkovsky: No, they cannot. The world should be run by amateurs, not technocrats.
All humanity can be conditionally divided into two types—professionals and amateurs.
A professional is someone who understands one narrow field in depth. An amateur thinks across disciplines and knows a little about everything.
Politics is the business of amateurs.
As soon as a technocrat comes to power, he begins to see the world through his specialisation, and the entire system of governance becomes skewed in that direction. Other aspects of life are simply ignored.
Therefore I do not see how such a utopia could succeed. But, as we know, history is full of irony. If technocrats destroy the old European states—we would welcome it. It accords with the global trend. And, by the way, they also say Musk’s projects are a struggle for cheap energy, which is absolutely right. Because the world must move from a state in which conditions are dictated by energy suppliers to one in which consumers become the key factor.
The development of decentralised structures, artificial intelligence and new technologies—even within a technocratic utopia—will all help make energy cheaper.
ForkLog: There is a new phenomenon—the state as infrastructure. Few care about Dubai’s politics, but it is a very convenient place to do business. In the middle of a desert, in an unbearable climate, the state provides enterprising people with a platform. Will this trend continue?
Stanislav Belkovsky: Of course.
This is the ideal model of relations between the state and the individual in the coming era. Any territory becomes merely a platform for the realisation of network identity, without attachment to state institutions.
The main thing is that I am not required to be a patriot of this state and to die for it. That is the most important characteristic of the new era.
ForkLog: So in future we will see the state as a service, citizenship by subscription?
Stanislav Belkovsky: State patriotism will remain, as will the willingness of some to die for their state. There will simply be much less of it, and more network patriotism and subscription citizenship.
But, as I said, dialectically one principle cannot disappear entirely.
ForkLog: How will social justice work in such a structure? Will we end up with high-tech cities for the super-rich, run by artificial intelligence and serviced by hundreds of thousands of rightless migrants, as in the UAE?
Stanislav Belkovsky: But networked justice is possible too, is it not? The answer will come not from hierarchical bureaucracy but from network structures. Within such structures the rich should pay taxes—not into state budgets, but into network redistribution systems. In general, the unlimited wealth of some at the expense of others rests largely on fixed hierarchies and access to the resources of traditional states. In network structures it is much easier to become rich or to pool resources. Everything is more dynamic there.
Therefore, to use the term from The Network State, these network states must provide mechanisms of social justice.
I do not see a problem here. Any social system must provide compensation for a deficit of opportunity.
ForkLog: Is there any difference between a network state and a diaspora?
Stanislav Belkovsky: Hardly any. A diaspora is a network structure. What is a diaspora? At the limit—it is a church. The ideal example is the Jewish diaspora, built on religion, on Judaism. When Judaism weakened, Jews assimilated and ceased to be Jews. That is precisely why Jewish identity did not disappear entirely.
Meta-Russia and Metarossiya
ForkLog: You yourself had a Meta-Russia project. What is its status?
Stanislav Belkovsky: As for Meta-Russia, I am working to get the project off the ground.
But the main problem is the colossal atomisation of Russian people. For a Russian, Russian identity is not an advantage but, rather, a liability. Many want to stop being Russian. I have made several attempts to rally teams around Meta-Russia, but each time it ran into the same question: how do you create a community of Russians if they do not want to be Russian?
Jews wanted to remain Jews—and they did.
Russians do not want to remain Russian. For now that trend cannot be reversed.
ForkLog: The St Petersburg philosopher Mikhail Kurtov independently formulated the concept of Metarossiya. He believes its main task should be to fight the “repressions of imagination”.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Absolutely right.
Imagination is a key human function. The imagined world is as real as the unimagined one.
ForkLog: Bitcoin is a vivid example. It was enough for a group of people to imagine it seriously—and it became real financial infrastructure.
Stanislav Belkovsky: Of course. As a Christian I can say that everything a person imagines already exists. Imagination is a tool of communication with a global reservoir of knowledge that was formed even before the emergence of humanity.