5 April, 12:19
In the 21st century, even ideas spread like viruses. And as the cases of Russia and the United States show, the most dangerous ones are those disguised as “patriotism,” “sovereignty,” and “traditional values.”
If we view politics as a state’s immune system, then some of the most dangerous illnesses are those that trigger an autoimmune response—when the system meant to defend begins attacking itself. One such condition is sovereignopathy: a pathological obsession with sovereignty as an end in itself, which paralyzes the ability to think in terms of partnership, trust, and global responsibility.
This syndrome first emerged in Russia. We’ve seen its development since the early 2000s: the Kremlin rejected Western prescriptions for modernization and began cultivating a vision of a “unique path,” “civilizational identity,” and “traditional values.” Everything that didn’t fit into this worldview—international law, liberal norms, human rights—was rebranded as a hostile contaminant.
Initially, this looked like a localized ideological mutation. But it turned out the virus was highly contagious.
After 2016, similar symptoms began manifesting in the United States. With the rise of Donald Trump, America began to exhibit its own version of the Russian strain: isolationism, aggressive protectionism, fetishization of borders, dismantling of alliances, and deep hostility toward institutions it once helped build. Sovereignty became not a strategic tool, but a fetish—an absolute, a new secular religion.
Interestingly, one of the first to diagnose this convergence was none other than Alexander Dugin—a Russian ideological mystic more often dismissed as marginal. Yet in a recent CNN interview, Dugin remarked that “Putinism has triumphed in America.” By “Putinism,” he meant not the Kremlin’s policies per se, but a shared mutation: the shift from liberal universalism to imperial isolationism.
And indeed, Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia have become mirror images—not allies, but parallel paranoias. Both are obsessed with lost greatness, both see globalism as a threat, both reject compromise as weakness. Each imagines itself as a “civilization” that answers only to its own truths.
Within this logic, Europe is no longer a partner—it’s an irritant. Liberal, multicultural, institutional Europe triggers an allergic reaction in both systems. Politics turns into a phobic response: not a way to act, but a way to withdraw.
Sovereignopathy is the political equivalent of an autoimmune disorder. The state begins to attack reality itself, convinced it poses a threat to its very existence. Strategic thinking erodes, diplomacy is reduced to spasms of fear, and even the ability to view others as equals—rather than adversaries—disappears.
This doesn’t mean that globalization is flawless, or that sovereignty is inherently bad. But when sovereignty becomes the sole political currency, societies begin to decay. They retreat into fear, reject complexity, and seek simple answers to problems that demand nuance. In the end, they begin to imitate the very regimes they once opposed.
Like any virus, sovereignopathy can be treated. But recovery takes time, institutional therapy, and civic mobilization. Above all, it requires rethinking the very meaning of strength—not as dominance, but as the ability to be vulnerable and responsible at once.
Because sovereignty without trust is meaningless. And trust is not weakness. It’s the cure.
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