Kaja Kallas sits across from Iran’s FM lecturing about free passage and executions. Look at the CVs instead of the photo-op.
Kallas: Law Degree from Tartu + an EMBA. Classic Western political class pipeline. Lawyer then manager. No depth in political philosophy, no long engagement with ideas of sovereignty or power. Just the usual liberal-managerial toolkit.
Araghchi: International Relations, Political Science, then a PhD at Kent on the evolution of political participation in 20th-century Islamic thought.
He actually studied how different systems think about legitimacy and popular will. That is not an MBA seminar.
This is the pattern. Western leaders are often products of law schools and business schools. They speak in slogans, demand, and moralize. They offer little because they understand little beyond process and messaging.
On the other side you find people who spent years on the actual substance — history of ideas, statecraft, how different civilizations organize power.
BRICS-aligned diplomats tend to treat these questions as serious, not as branding exercises.
One side arrives with talking points. The other arrives having written a thesis on political thought.
Don’t be naive. Credentials reveal the difference between performance and seriousness.
