“Appeasement in itself may be good or bad according to the circumstances. Appeasement from weakness and fear is alike futile and fatal. Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble, and might be the surest and only path to world peace”.  – Winston Churchill, 1950.

The recurrent blunders and incompetence of Vladimir Putin and the Russian military in Ukraine have destroyed the country’s previous aura of military might. Yet it is somewhat counterintuitive that the weakening of one of the warring parties has intensified the unease of the international community. The war has resuscitated a looming wrangling in history: how to deal with a decadent and diminished but still dangerous state. Historian Stephen Kotkin recently noted how “this aggression derives from weakness, a sense of grandeur that is unmet”[1] in Russia’s self-perception; history often emphasizes how the end of empires are seldom peaceful processes.[2] As Russian resources and options run out, the glitter of nuclear weapons becomes a more appealing last resource. Still, the West must be wary and avoid the ‘fear of looking weak’ as the bedrock for the design of foreign policy; this prejudice has led to preventable violent escalations in the past.

With the growing compilation of failures in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has fallen into the trap and urge to micromanage and meddle in all kinds of military tactics and subtleties, raising the risk of mistakes, further escalation, and the creation of a personal link with the conflict that could diminish his power. As Tzar Nicholas II was warned during World War I about his own participation in the war, “beware of creating a personal association with the outcomes,” one of his advisers alerted, remember that the “[T]he army under your command must be victorious.”[3]

Earlier in the conflict, Vladimir Putin and his accomplice, Chinese President Xi Jinping, issued a joint statement: “Friendship between the two states has no limits; there are no forbidden areas of cooperation.”[4] Yet the “no-limit” friendship has to survive the persistent incompetence of Russian forces, their sinking morale on the battlefield, the internal opposition of Russian citizens, and the embarrassment on the international stage. It is unlikely that all this wreckage hasn’t made Putin cognizant that “he has no way to retire gracefully after all the damage he’s done.”[5] Hence the danger. The possibility of using nuclear weapons at least give him the cowardly solace to grumble, ‘après moi, le dèluge.’ In this volatile scenario, crammed with cruelty and grudge, the West should be careful not to misuse one of history’s most referenced and misunderstood lessons: the ‘Munich lesson.’

Appeasement is one of the worst insults in politics—a synonym for cowardice and naivety. The well-known image of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepping out of his airplane, waving a piece of paper in front of a cheering crowd, proclaiming “peace for our times” became the yardstick of weakness and political short-sightedness. But political strategies are rarely suitable or harmful in the abstract; they are advantageous or ineffective in specific contexts. The Munich Lesson needs to be reconsidered and used more scrupulously. The agreement of 1938 extended territorial concessions to Germany, allowing Adolf Hitler to occupy the Sudetenland, an ethnically German area in Czechoslovakia, hoping to stop further territorial claims by the Reich. Nonetheless, the event left the wrong lesson in history because it has been recreated as a binary scenario for action: tyranny must always be met with force. Not doing so represents moral bankruptcy, or as Churchill described it, “one who feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”[6]

Appeasement has been a significant reference point in U.S. foreign policy on more than one occasion. It was explicitly pointed out to justify the invasion of Iraq during the G.W. Bush administration and to bolster the harsher versions of neoconservatism.[7] Journalist Gideon Rachman asserts that “misapplied ‘lessons of Munich’ have led to repeated foreign policy disasters since 1945”.[8] The gist of the ‘lesson’ and its use as the moral podium to advocate for the benefit of force and military interventions rests in the simplification that democracies in the 1930s ‘lacked the will’ to stop Hitler. The analogy was likewise employed during the Vietnam War. President Nixon wrote in his memoirs that “what had been true of the betrayal of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 was no less true of the betrayal of South Vietnam to the communists advocated by many in 1965”.[9]  But the analogy is deceptive because it draws a deduction in hindsight, a conclusion that at the time was “neither simple nor obvious.”[10] When Chamberlain made the agreement, the decision was the result of a political context that included the risk of Britain’s military overstretch, American isolationist trend, distrust of the Soviet Union, guilt for a recent vindictive Versailles Treaty, and the constraints of public opinion.[11] The correct ‘Munich lesson’ is not that appeasement is a moral disgrace, but rather that “appeasement failed because Hitler was unappeasable”; Hitler wanted war.[12] The narrower pejorative connotation needs to be reexamined, as it rests on the generalization that all “states are inherently insatiable.”[13] Furthermore, hindsight bias gives the wrong impression that facts were self-evident at the time and their consequences were predictable.

But security threats must not be confronted as simple dichotomies. A more sensible lesson is distrusting the tendency to use military responses as the ultimate and imperative foreign policy tool. This reconsideration is not an argument to turn a blind eye to bullies; but an invitation to outmaneuver them. The 1930s reveal “the danger of underestimating a security threat [however] the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating [one].”.[14] To grasp the events in Munich, we must consider other historical examples where “short-term self-discipline set the stage for long-term success,” like how H. Truman’s moderation in North Korea or D. Eisenhauer’s refusal to intervene in the Soviet invasion of Hungary[15] led to positive results. History shows that moderation and restraint must be considered as options in foreign policy; compromise is not tantamount to appeasement.

The essence of appeasement is probably best summarized by the phrase attributed to Churchill: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war”.[16] But this is an incomplete story. As former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain understood the confines of Britain’s crippled economy at the time. A vast array of foreign policy options was not the defining setting of a country traumatized by the Great War. Chamberlain was no feckless dove; he was a man of his generation, a man deeply abhorred, along with his countrymen, by the memory of the recent war, “the British and French people greeted the Munich agreement with heartfelt relief. It was not until “March 1939, when Hitler occupied what was left of Czechoslovakia, a revulsion of feeling had occurred in Britain, where war was now widely accepted as inevitable”.[17] Moreover, Chamberlain was aware of Britain’s insufficient military preparedness. He had received a report from the military chief staff concluding that the army’s capabilities were inadequate to stop a German takeover of Czechoslovakia[18]and to the possibility of a German air assault, “Britain was defenseless in the face of the bomber.”[19]  The Committee of Imperial Defense argued that delaying the outbreak of war was necessary for the acquisition of airplanes to counter the Luftwaffe.[20]

The events at Munich developed under a much more sophisticated and adverse context than it is usually recognized, “the failure to stand up to Hitler was not the real lesson to be learned […] For a liberal democracy to effectively oppose aggression, especially if it comes at the risk of a long and costly war, it requires the overwhelming support of the people”.[21] Delaying war was essential and ineluctable for Britain. The country needed to build up the army, and, not less importantly, the public was divided, “[…]public opinion dreaded the prospect of another war and welcomed any diplomatic initiative that might avert one.”[22] Additionally, Britain had no treaty obligation to defend Czechoslovakia. It was not until Hitler invaded Poland, violating the Munich Agreement, Britain was united and militarily prepared.[23] Historian Michael Howard proposed an insightful explanation of how Chamberlain and his generation understood the world and their context, which, of course, constrained what they envisaged as viable options:

“It is difficult for historians in retrospect, with all the wisdom of hindsight and all the time in the world, to comprehend the complex processes that went to the creation of the Third Reich and the nature of the society to which it gave political expression, we should not be too quick to condemn those contemporary British statesmen who so tragically misunderstood the phenomenon in their own day. For their perceptions were also constrained by their cultural framework. Neville Chamberlain and his closest colleagues had been brought up in the England of Queen Victoria and were middle-aged when the First World War began. Their world was that of the British Empire. The problems posed by the Congress Party in India, by the Wafd movement in Egypt, and by the relations of Briton and Boer in South Africa were more immediate to them, more real, more urgent, than were the racial antagonisms of Central Europe”.[24]

Back to the repercussions for our age, the West’s response -or lack thereof- to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the aggressions in Georgia in 2008 was condemned as bashful and insubstantial, a careless green light that emboldened the Putin regime for the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Appeasement swiftly returned as the once again always-forgotten lesson of history. Once more, a tyrant in violation of international law, invaded a neighboring territory to protect stranded ethnic populations’ captured by made-up countries and corrupt Western regimes’.[25]

With Vladimir Putin’s criminal aggressions, Western leaders became paranoid and wary of being associated with arch-appeaser Neville Chamberlain.[26] Arguably, then as now, the unwillingness to establish redlines emboldened the dictators to demand more. The Munich lesson applied to Ukraine is often argued along the following lines:

“Any talk of a negotiated peace would only appease the aggressor, reward blatant aggression and crimes against humanity with territory or a neutral status of its target […] The Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of Czech Sudetenland did not prevent the Second World War; rather, global acceptance of these compromises hastened and invited it”.[27]  Therefore, the lesson is “confront evil regimes as soon as possible.”[28]

The problem with this rigid reconstruction of the analogy is that the world is different now than in the 1930s. Back then, with all its cruelty, war did not imply nuclear Armageddon. The far-fetched interpretation of Munich does not solve the usual complex details and more intricate aspects of policy and war, the concealed, and not so thrilling, role of economics, alliances, and function of public opinion in democratic politics. For example, does avoiding Appeasement means that the West should give Ukraine everything it needs to succeed? How should the U.S. deal with foes supporting Russia or with the “Ukrainian fatigue” as assistance becomes increasingly a partisan issue? The ghost of Chamberlain often hunts down those who even dare to have doubts or consider options in foreign policy.

Ukraine must win and Vladimir Putin should be persecuted as the fugitive criminal that he is. But historical lessons are usually misguidedly retrieved to shrink our options for action instead of widening our path and scope to appraise political dilemmas. The recollection of history seldom creates consensus, albeit it should be upheld for its capacity to shed light on dangerous zones and build signposts along the way of statecraft.

In hindsight, once catastrophes occur, it is not unusual to ask why these were not prevented in due time. Every crisis has its “where were you when” moment. If we only “had ‘stood up’ to Hitler sooner; or if we had given greater encouragement to the clandestine opposition within Germany,” we tell ourselves. But the “sad paradox of Munich is that when thuggish aggressors can be easily stopped, there’s rarely the moral case necessary for democracies to take action.”[29] Are all other options short of war only emboldening to the aggressor? This can undoubtedly be the case, but more often than not, bullies have already made up their minds.

The ‘Munich lesson’ is not a straightforward guide to action nor an unwavering moral principle. Its careless use sprouts from the generalization that all authoritarian regimes are equally insatiable, but a one-fits-all solution to all tyrants is irresponsible. Every autocrat needs to be faced according to their foibles. Dictators must be stopped, and their means condemned, yet a stringent application of the ‘Munich lesson’ constrains policy options and the required imagination to outwit their regimes.

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[1] Stephen Kotkin, Foreign Affairs Podcast, “What Putin got wrong about Ukraine, Russia and the West, May 26, 2023: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/what-putin-got-wrong-about-ukraine-russia-and-west

[2] Niall Ferguson, “Why the end of America’s Empire won’t be peaceful”, The Economist, August 2021:

[3] Tom Nichols, “Russia’s nuclear threats are all Putin has left”, The Atlantic, September 2022:

[4] Tony Munroe and Andrew Osborne, “China, Russia partner up against West at Olympics summit”, Reuters, February 2022:

[5] Andreas Kluth, “A decision tree for Biden if Putin goes nuclear”, The Washington Post, September 2022:

[6] Mathew Wills, “Reconsidering Appeasement”, Jstor, August 2055:

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Jeffrey Record, “Appeasement reconsidered: Investigating the mythology of the 1930’s”, August 2005:

[10] Ibid.

[11] Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, “Thinking in Time. The uses of history for decision makers”, The Free Press, 1986, p. 87.

[12] Jeffrey Record, “Appeasement reconsidered: Investigating the mythology of the 1930’s”, August 2005:

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Samuel Charap and Michael Mazarr, “The wisdom of U.S. restraint on Russia. As in the Cold War, Washington cannot wish Moscow away”, Foreign Affairs, September 2022:

[16] Mark W. Davis, “What would Churchill do?”, The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2015:

[17] Michael Howard & WM. Roger Louis, “The Oxford History of the 20^th Century”. Oxford, 1998, p. 111.

[18] Ishaan Tharoor, “In defense of Neville Chamberlain, hindsight’s most battered punching bag”, The Washington Post, July 20, 2015.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] John Storey, “War in Ukraine and the forgotten lesson of Munich”, The Strategist:

[22] Michael Howard & WM. Roger Louis, “The Oxford History of the 20^th Century”. Oxford, 1998, p. 111

[23] Gideon Rachman, “The wrong lessons from Munich”, Financial Times, September 24, 2007: https://www.ft.com/content/9680de94-6aaf-11dc-9410-0000779fd2ac

[24] Michael Howard, “The lessons of history”, Yale University Press, 1991, p. 15.

[25] John Storey, “War in Ukraine and the forgotten lesson of Munich”, The Strategist:

[26] Ibid.

[27] Yaroslav Baran, “Ukraine and the Price of Appeasement”, Policy Magazine, February 23, 2023:

[28] Gideon Rachman, “The wrong lessons from Munich”, Financial Times, September 24, 2007: https://www.ft.com/content/9680de94-6aaf-11dc-9410-0000779fd2ac

[29] John Storey, “War in Ukraine and the forgotten lesson of Munich”, The Strategist

Russia, on 24th February 2022, invaded Ukraine. Initially, Russia called this invasion a ‘Peacekeeping’ mission but later called it a ‘Special Military Operation.’ Moscow has given many justification in the legal domain to legitimize its military operation in Ukraine, but they all have failed to win the support of international law and the majority of states.[1] According to research conducted by Alonso Gurmendi, an International Law professor at the Universidad del Pacífico Law School in Peru, out of 197 entities (193 member UN States, Taiwan, Palestine and the Holy Sea), 143 entities[2] (72.59%) consider Russia’s actions as ‘act of aggression.’[3] So it is clear that Moscow failed to win the international legitimacy of its ‘special military operation.’ This essay explores from a legal perspective how Kremlin’s actions are unlawful and failed to meet the standards of international laws of Use of Force as the international community calls Russia’s actions an ‘act of aggression’.

Jus ad Bellum

Jus ad bellum is the legal rule which governs when a state can decide to use force against another state. Three laws of the UN charter comprise the Jus ad bellum principle. The first is the UN. Charter. Article 2(4). It prohibits the member states of the UN to ‘use or threaten’ to use force against the other member state of the UN.[4]  However, Article 51 presents an exception. It states that UN member states can resort to ‘individual or collective self-defence’ if an armed attack occurs against them.[5] Similarly, Chapter VII (Article 39) of the UN charter authorizes the UN Security Council to permit necessary military actions to ‘maintain or restore the international peace and stability.’[6]

Moscow’s Infringement of Jus ad Bellum

               Kremlin gave three legal arguments to prove its obedience to Jus ad bellum: Self-Defense, Collective Defence and Humanitarian Intervention.

Self-Defence

Moscow claims that the presence of the United States and NATO in Ukraine threatened its security. So under Article 51 of the UN Charter, it has the ‘inherent right’ to defend itself from an armed attack. However, there was no armed attack from Ukraine, the United States or NATO, which could have given the right of self-defence to Russia. So Moscow has used “pre-emptive” self-defence, which is not under the umbrella of Article 51.[7] Secondly, according to this article, a state exercising its right of self-defence must immediately report to the UNSC. Russia’s representative to the UN informed the UN Security General on the morning of the day when it launched its military operation in Ukraine under Article 51 of the UN charter. Russian representative also sent a letter (UN Doc. S/2022/154). However, the council condemned it and voted 11-1 against Russia. India, China and the United Arab Emirates abstained from voting, but Russia’s veto status in the council saved it from any resolution against it.[8] Lastly, NATO has a limited deployment of forces on the Russian border, which didn’t give NATO any offensive capability to breach the territorial sovereignty of Russia.[9] However, the irony is, Russian forces were at the gates of Ukraine. Kremlin gave “indications and warnings” to Kyiv from its borders, Belarus, and the Black Sea more than NATO gave at the Russian border.[10]

Collective Self-Defence

Moscow claimed it acted under the collective self-defence of Ukraine’s separatist areas, Luhansk and Donetsk regions, under Article 51. Russia recognized these areas as independent only three days before its attack.[11] However, can these regions fulfil the criteria of independent states? Before the invasion, along with Russia, only four states –Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela- consider these regions independent.[12] So far, only these states have considered these regions independent. According to the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of the States, these regions can’t be regarded as Sovereign States as they lack international recognition.[13]

Even if we view these regions as independent states, three arguments will debunk Russia’s claim of Collective Defense. First, according to Article 51, there should be an armed attack to use the right of self-defence. However, there is no proper evidence that Ukraine authorities launched a military operation on these regions.[14] Second, Article 51 is only for UN member states. Russia’s claimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are not UN member states, so ‘Collective Self-Defence’ under Article 51 does not apply to them.[15] Third, if the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic were in danger of a Ukrainian assault, the Russian forces should have limited themselves to these two regions. Instead, its forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine aimed at its ‘demilitarization.’[16] It is against the International Customary Laws of ‘necessity and proportionality’ of the use of force.[17]

Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide?

               The third argument that Russia gave was that it is preventing genocide prepared by the regime in Kyiv against the ethnic Russians or the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. Kyiv applied [18] to the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 26th February 2022 against the Russian claims of genocide under the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’ 1948.[19] On 16th March 2022, ICJ gave its verdict (13-2 votes) against Moscow and claimed its aggression as unlawful and asked it to suspend its Special Military Operation in Ukraine.[20] Nevertheless, Kremlin didn’t abide by the ruling of ICJ.

               Secondly, Russian actions are also not per the Genocide Convention. According to Article II of the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’ vicious acts committed against the part or whole of a ‘national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’[21] However, no evidence suggests Kyiv committed such violent acts on its Russian-speaking population.[22] As there is no evidence of Genocide, it is unlawful for Russia to maintain its forces in Ukrainian territory for humanitarian intervention.

               Another reason Moscow gave for its humanitarian intervention was the ‘Rescue of its National.’ Russia has handed its nationality to the Russian-speaking population of its neighboring states, which were once part of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine is one of them. However, such a policy of “passportization” is against the internal laws of the state in which the person resides.[23] So Russia is abusing the internal laws of Ukraine and making it a justification for its invasion. Also, the Ukrainian government has done nothing to the Russian population in Ukraine as they didn’t hold any Russian civilian residing in Ukraine hostage or threaten it with lethal force.[24] Even if Ukrainian forces have fought with the separatist group in the Donbas region, the proportionality of the Russian invasion is much greater. Thus, Russia is violating the internal as well as external sovereignty of Ukraine.

Conclusion

The main argument of this essay was ‘Russia is an aggressor state and has violated the International laws of Use of Force by starting its Special Military Operation in Ukraine.’ This essay looked into this argument from the perspective of jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles. According to the Jus ad bellum principle, Russia has falsely interpreted Article 51 of the UN charter to justify its claims of self-defence and collective self-defence. Moreover, its claims of genocide also don’t meet the standards of the ‘Genocide Convention and ICJ.’ Thus, Russia is an aggressor state and has violated the International laws of the Use of Force by starting its Special Military Operation in Ukraine.

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[1] Terry D Gill. 2022. “Remarks on the Law Relating to the Use of Force in the Ukraine Conflict.” Lieber Institute. March 9. Accessed April 28, 2023. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/remarks-use-of-force-ukraine-conflict/.

[2] Out of these 143 entities, 141 states voted for UNGA Resolution A/ES-11/L.1 against Russia and the other two are Taiwan and Kosovo.

[3] Alonso Gurmendi. 2022. “Tracking State Reactions to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: A Resource for Research.” Opinio Juris. March 4. Accessed April 30, 2023. http://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/04/tracking-state-reactions-to-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-a-resource-for-research/.

[4] Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs. 2021. Article 2(1)– (5) of Charter of the United Nations. United Nations, Codification Division, Office of Legal Affairs. March 10. Accessed April 30, 2023. https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2.shtml.

[5] Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs. 2016. Article 51 of Charter of the United Nations. United Nations, Codification Division, Office of Legal Affairs. August 23. Accessed April 30, 2023. https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml.

[6] Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs. 2016. Article 39 of Charter of the United Nations. United Nations, Codification Division, Office of Legal Affairs. August 23. Accessed April 30, 2023. https://legal.un.org/repertory/art39.shtml.

[7] Jus Mundi. 2022. Implications Of The War In Ukraine Under International Law – Part 1. April 29. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://blog.jusmundi.com/implications-of-the-war-in-ukraine-under-international-law-the-use-of-force-under-international-law/.

[8] Michael N Schmitt. 2022. “Russia’s “Special Military Operation” and the (Claimed) Right of Self-Defense.” Lieber Institute. February 28. Accessed April 30, 2023. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/russia-special-military-operation-claimed-right-self-defense/.

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] Valerie Hopkins and Andrew E. Kramer. 2022. “Why it matters that Russia just recognized Donetsk and Luhansk.” The New York Times. February 21. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/donetsk-luhansk-donbas-ukraine.html.

[12] Mansur Mirovalev. 2022. “Donetsk and Luhansk: What you should know about the ‘republics’.” Al Jazeera. February 22. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/22/what-are-donetsk-and-luhansk-ukraines-separatist-statelets.

[13] Jus Mundi. 2022. Implications Of The War In Ukraine Under International Law – Part 1. April 29. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://blog.jusmundi.com/implications-of-the-war-in-ukraine-under-international-law-the-use-of-force-under-international-law/.

[14] Marc Weller. 2022. “Russia’s Recognition of the ‘Separatist Republics’ in Ukraine was Manifestly Unlawful.” EJIL:Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law. March 9. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://www.ejiltalk.org/russias-recognition-of-the-separatist-republics-in-ukraine-was-manifestly-unlawful/.

[15] John B. Bellinger III. 2022. “How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Violates International Law.” Council on Foreign Relations. February 28. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://www.cfr.org/article/how-russias-invasion-ukraine-violates-international-law.

[16] Stephen P Mulligan. 2022. The Law of War and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Washington D.C: Congressional Research Service, March 16.

[17] Marko Milanovic. 2022. “What is Russia’s Legal Justification for Using Force against Ukraine?” EJIL:Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law. February 24. Accessed May 7, 2022. https://www.ejiltalk.org/what-is-russias-legal-justification-for-using-force-against-ukraine/.

[18] United States International Court of Justice. 2022. “Allegations of Genocide Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation).” Application from the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Hague.

[19] Jus Mundi. 2022. Implications Of The War In Ukraine Under International Law – Part 1. April 29. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://blog.jusmundi.com/implications-of-the-war-in-ukraine-under-international-law-the-use-of-force-under-international-law/

[20] UN News. 2022. International Court orders Russia to ‘immediately suspend’ military operations in Ukraine. Hague, March 16. Accessed May 3, 2023. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114052.

[21] United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. 2023. Genocide. Accessed May 3, 2023. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml.

[22] John B. Bellinger III. 2022. “How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Violates International Law.” Council on Foreign Relations. February 28. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://www.cfr.org/article/how-russias-invasion-ukraine-violates-international-law.

[23] Terry D Gill. 2022. “Remarks on the Law Relating to the Use of Force in the Ukraine Conflict.” Lieber Institute. March 9. Accessed April 28, 2023. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/remarks-use-of-force-ukraine-conflict/.

[24] Ibid

“Where there is no Common Power, there is no Law….”- Leviathan, Chapter XIII[1]

A Hobbesian World

The seventeenth century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes associated world politics with the “state of nature.” In this anarchic state, war is a continuing condition, even in the absence of actual fighting. Moreover, legal order amid anarchy is problematic by definition. Warns Hobbes in a timeless observation, “Where there is no Common Power, there is no Law….”

Since the original publication of Leviathan in 1651, little has changed concerning the state of war in world politics. To be sure, we now have nuclear weapons and other instruments of mass destruction, but the underlying dynamic of anarchy-based lawlessness remains both evident and incontestable. Is there anything that could be done globally to alter and improve this stark impediment to world peace? If world law and world anarchy are plainly a contradiction in terms, what should be the next steps to safeguard an imperiled species?

States will have to learn to realign their own presumed national interests with a much wider global interest. From its modern beginnings in the seventeenth century – more precisely, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648[2] – international law has presumed variously hard and fixed distinctions between “national interest” and “world interest.” Rather than recognize the organic wholeness and interdependence of states, this infinitely false presumption has prodded nation-states to feverishly embrace “everyone for himself” orientations to foreign policy.

The cumulative result of such crude zero-sum thinking has been obvious. It has been unceasingly injurious and routinely lethal. In more expressly jurisprudential terms, this result has repeatedly been made manifest in war, terrorism and genocide.[3]

French thinker Pierre Teilhard De Chardin points in a remediating right direction: “The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egoistically the extremity of everyone for himself,” summarizes the Jesuit scientist and philosopher, “is false and against nature. No element can move and grow except with and by all the others with itself.”

               With particular reference to the United States, the still-accumulating costs of former President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” has been a debilitated nation. This grievous debility can be assessed not only in the usual political and geostrategic terms, but also from co-equally critical standpoints of national and international law.[4] Though generally disregarded, these complementary jurisprudential perspectives are authentically important to the overall security and well-being of “post-Trump” America.[5]

There are several relevant themes and details. From its modern beginnings, world law has been based upon the “egocentric” dynamic of Realpolitik[6] or power politics.[7] Although such thinking has normally been taken as “realistic,” that view has already proven shortsighted.[8]  An incumbent American president – any incumbent American president – would be well-advised to acknowledge the inherent limitations of our planet’s traditional global threat system,[9] and to identify more conspicuously durable configurations of international relations and international law.[10]

During this daunting process, history will deserve an evident pride of place. What might first have seemed promising to “realists” about national security in the “State of Nature” (the condition of global anarchy dating back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648) is apt to prove futile for longer-term world survival prospects. For the United States in particular, this futility could be experienced not as some casual debit in the country’s complex national security calculus, but instead as an explosive and potentially irreversible combination of existential costs.

               Anarchy is an old story in international relations and international law (1648 and the Peace of Westphalia), but chaos is not necessarily worse than anarchy. In certain circumstances, chaos could represent a potentially positive development for world order reform. In this eccentric but still conceivably plausible view, chaos implies unique opportunity, a chance to finally change things from the 17^th century dynamic of “Westphalian” interactions.

There is more. When compared or contrasted with Westphalian anarchy, chaos is prospectively that condition which prepares the world for all things, whether sacred or profane. It represents that yawning gulf of “emptiness” where nothing is as yet, but where remaining civilizational opportunity can still originate. The 18th century German poet Friedrich Hölderlin observed: “There is a desert sacred and chaotic, which stands at the roots of the things, and which prepares all things.” Insightfully, back in the ancient pagan world, Greek philosophers thought of this inchoate “desert” as logos, a primal concept which indicates context that is anything but random or without intrinsic merit.

Harmonizing National Interests with Global Interest

 In principle, at least, it is high time for states to understand that their own national interests ought never be placed at odds with world system interests. The United States, in the fashion of every other state, is merely one intersecting part of a much larger and many-sided world legal order.[11] As was already foreseen by Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth-century, this comprehensive system of law reveals steadily diminishing chances for success within any recalcitrant patterns of  global anarchy. Ipso facto, “Westphalian” decentralization is markedly corrosive and irremediably broken. [12]

“What is the good of passing from one untenable position to another,” asks philosopher/writer Samuel Beckett provocatively in Endgame, “…of seeking justification always on the same plane?” Thought the celebrated Irish playwright was assuredly not thinking specifically about world politics or international law, his generalizable query remains perfectly well-suited to the broadly global “State of Nature.” As a bitterly competitive power-politics has never been propitious for human security at any tangible level, why ought any national leader still insist upon maintaining it as the core doctrine of national interest and survival?

                In these conspicuously urgent matters, truth is necessary and exculpatory.  Pertinent facts about such matters can never be overridden by visceral chanting at mind-canceling political rallies or by any substitutions of empty political witticism for verifiable analysis. Retained as context for world legal order, the State of Nature can never preserve national or human security for reasonably sustained intervals. Looking further ahead, this unsteady condition could quickly be exacerbated by multiple systemic failures, by losses that could become mutually reinforcing or fully “synergistic.”[13]  Plausibly, these failures could sometime involve assorted weapons of mass destruction.

Most conspicuously portentous, in this regard, would be the use of nuclear weapons.[14] In this connection, it is important to understand that states are under no externally-imposed obligations to remain non-nuclear. Such an obligation may be incurred, of course, by volitional state action, but not by any antecedent and general normative prohibition.[15]

There is still more to consider. By definition, any prospective failure of nuclear Realpolitik in the State of Nations could represent not “only” catastrophic forms of aggression,[16] but  negative forms that are also unprecedented (sui generis). This sobering conclusion would hold true if the relevant failures were eventually judged within the full scope of their national and international declensions.

Beyond Westphalia: Alternative Systems of World Legal Order

What next?  All states that depend upon some form of nuclear deterrence – especially the United States – must prepare to think more self-consciously and imaginatively about alternative systems of world politics and world law; that is, about creating prospectively viable legal configurations that are reliably war-averse and determinedly cooperation-centered. Although any discernible hint of interest in such patterns of expanding global integration (of what the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls “planetization”[17]) could sound unacceptably utopian to “realists,” an opposite interpretation would actually prove more sensible.[18]

At this point in national and world history, it is more realistic to acknowledge that an “every man for himself” ethos in world politics is endlessly degrading and also sorely incapable of  offering any plausible legal reassurances.[19] Indeed, even to challenge such an acknowledgment would be unsupportable prima facie.

Again and again – and at some point, irretrievably – “Westphalian” world systemic failures could become relentlessly dire and potentially irreversible. In the final analysis, it will not help the United States or any other country to assert “national interest” as a brazenly self-confirming national objective. Clinging stubbornly to variously vitriolic notions of  “us versus them,” maintaining belligerent postures between states or (as “hybridized” actors) between states and surrogate or sub-state organizations[20] would prove excruciatingly misconceived.[21]

Going forward, the only sort of legal realism that could make any sense for America and other leading states in Westphalian world politics is a courageous posture that points thoughtfully toward some aptly “higher” awareness of global “oneness.”

In its fully optimized expression, any such indispensable awareness – a literally opposite awareness of former US President Donald Trump’s “America First” – would resemble what the ancients had called “cosmopolis” or “world city” focused. For the moment, the insightful prophets of a more collaboratively legal world civilization must remain “out of sight,” few and far between.[22]  But this consequential absence is not due to any intrinsic lack of need or witting intellectual forfeiture. Rather, it reflects a progressively imperiled species’ retrograde unwillingness ever to take itself seriously –  that is, to recognize that the only sort of law-based loyalties that can finally rescue nation-states from war, terrorism and genocide must embrace a redirected commitment (both individual and national) to humankind as a whole.

 The only reasonable mantra to guide the United States on security matters must be “World First, America First.” Nothing else could prove more sensible.

There is more. This is not really a bewildering idea. It is hardly a medical or biological secret that the core factors and behaviors common to all human beings outnumber those that genuinely differentiate one person from another. Unless the leaders of all major states on Planet Earth can finally understand that the survival of any one state must always be contingent upon the survival of all, true national security will continue to elude absolutely every nation. This references even the purportedly “most powerful” states, including those that so fitfully declare themselves “first.”

Acknowledging Planet Earth as an Organic Unity

 The most immediate security task in any law-based state of nations must remain cooperatively self-centered, including the traditional remedies of collective self-defense and collective security. Simultaneously, however, leaders of  all countries, especially the United States,  must learn to understand that our planet represents an organic whole, a fragile but variously intersecting legal “one” that increasingly exhibits only diminishing options for successful war avoidance.[23]

To seize disappearing opportunities for longer-term survival, national leaders should learn to build upon the critical foundational insights of Francis Bacon, Galileo and Isaac Newton,[24] and on the more contemporary observation of Lewis Mumford: “Civilization,” says the distinguished social philosopher,  “is the never ending process of creating one world and one humanity.”[25] These names will signify nothing to adherents of belligerent nationalism in the United States or elsewhere, but there may still remain some capable advisors who can appreciate the tangible benefits of intellect or “mind.”

 There is no point to speaking of civilization without also speaking of law. In principle, no particular national leadership has any special obligations in this regard. Nonetheless, the United States remains a key element of the “legal community of nations,” and an American president, regardless of party, should do everything possible to detach the Westphalian State of Nations from the State of Nature. Moreover, any such willful detachment should be expressed as part of a much wider vision for durable and justice-centered world politics.

For the moment, at least, there is no obvious need to further detail any analytic or intellectual particulars.  There are bound to be many, but for now, only  a more evident and dedicated awareness of this basic civilizational obligation should be expected.[26] Once the basic vision  is properly understood, proper details can reasonably follow.

In The Plague, Albert Camus instructs: “At the beginning of the pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth – in other words – to silence.” As long as the states in world politics continue to operate in narrowly zero-sum terms of engagement, they will be unable to stop the next wave of terror attacks, genocides and catastrophic wars. Presently, we will need to add “plague” in its original biological iteration to this fearful list. Both scholars and policy-makers will have to look more closely and more specifically at possible intersections/synergies between world political hazards and disease pandemics.

“Everyone for Himself:” A Prescription for Worldwide Catastrophe

 Until now, the traditional legal expectations of Realpolitik, though corrosive,may still have appeared sensible. Today there are no practical reasons for expressing retrospective regrets. Nevertheless, from the always-overriding standpoint of improving humankind’s longer-term security prospects, the American president and other national leaders should substantially expand their visionary imagination to include more seriously promising forms of world legal order understanding. By ignoring the complex interrelatedness of all peoples and all states, crudely competitive visions of Realpolitik or Power Politics represent the opposite of what is required.

 Now more than ever, affirming the extremity of “everyone for himself” in world politics represents a prescription not for realism and global law-enforcement, but for recurrent conflict and existential despair. If this refractory prescription should remain in place, the costs could sometime become nuclear. At that hard-to-imagine but increasingly plausible point, it will already be too late to discover that “competitive national interest” had actually been a lethal political slogan.

Thomas Hobbes, whose comment from Leviathan introduces this paper, was analytically correct. In whatever fashion scholars and decision-makers might choose to tinker round the edges of a still-malleable State of Nature, that State would necessarily remain in an intolerable condition of lawlessness or “war.” To progress and to survive, international law must finally be rendered compatible with more expressly cosmopolitan and centralized visions of global human society.

About such visions, we may learn from the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, “You are a citizen of the universe.” A broader idea of “oneness” followed the death of Alexander in 322 BCE, and with it came a coinciding doctrine of “universality” or interconnectedness. By the Middle Ages, this political and social doctrine had fused with the notion of a Respublica Christiana, a worldwide Christian commonwealth, and Thomas, John of Salisbury and Dante were looking upon Europe as a single and unified Christian community. Below the level of God and his heavenly host, all the realm of humanity was to be considered as one. This is because all the world had been created for the same single and incontestable purpose; that is, to provide background for the necessary drama of human salvation.

Only in its relationship to the universe itself was the world considered as part rather than whole. Says Dante in De Monarchia: “The whole human race is a whole with reference to certain parts, and, with reference to another whole, it is a part. For it is a whole with reference to particular kingdoms and nations, as we have shown; and it is a part with reference to the whole universe, which is evident without argument.”

Seventeenth-century political philosopher Hobbes has been reinvigorated by 20^th century psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Notes the latter in his classic essay, Civilization and its Discontents: “The replacement of the power of the individual by the power of the community constitutes the decisive step of civilization.” Though Freud was thinking here of individual human beings within nations, and not of diverse nation-states in world law, the same argument applies. We cannot afford to disregard it.

There can never be meaningful legal order amid anarchy in either civilizational setting, domestic or global. It is high time, therefore, to enhance the “power of the community” in world politics. No such complicated objective will ever be realized by nefarious political phrasemaking (e.g., “Make America Great Again”) or by authoritarian leadership diktat. At this point, the intersecting processes of transformation are indispensable; finally, they must be brought to “center-stage.”

 There is one last observation, a final matter of “will,” whether personal, national or global. By definition, no pertinent task of will could possibly prove more vital to American  or global survival than a committed dedication to planetary “oneness.”[27]  Though such a goal may first appear utterly naïve or foolishly visionary, nothing could actually prove less reasonable than continuing with our world legal order’s Westphalian directives. In sum, no individual nation-state can ever be “first” except together with and by all others in law-based global community.

To render such a complex objective tangible represents above all a herculean intellectual task.[28] We require not a Hobbesian Leviathan, but a viable system of international law based upon certain commonly accepted rules and procedures. As a core example, we ought never to expect success when neither of the world’s principal superpowers will bind itself to peremptory obligations of the International Criminal Court or to the more general obligations of codified and customary anti-genocide norms. These obligations include foreseeable circumstances in which there would obtain a universal legal “responsibility to protect.”[29]

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[1] By this assertion, Thomas Hobbes clarifies that there can be no law of any kind in a “State of Nature” and that any juxtaposition of the two terms is not merely flawed, but also represents a contradiction in terms.

[2] The reference is to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which concluded the Thirty Years War, and created the still-existing state system. See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119. Together, these two treaties comprise the “Peace of Westphalia.”

[3] Thomas Hobbes notes in Leviathan that although the “state of nature” in world politics is one of inherent lawlessness, scholars and policy-makers have since accepted the notion that global anarchy and international law can coexist. Hobbes argued further that the international “state of nature” is more tolerable than the condition of individual human beings in nature. This is because with individuals, “…the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” But the times have been changing. With the continuing expansion of nuclear weapons programs and strategies, there is no longer any persuasive reason to believe that the state of nations remains more tolerable. Prima facie, nuclear weapons are bringing the state of nations closer to a true Hobbesian state of nature. See, in this connection, David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 207. As with Hobbes, 17^th century German philosopher Samuel Pufendorf argued that the state of nations is not “as intolerable” as the state of nature between individuals. The state of nations, reasoned the famed jurist, “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature….” In a similar vein, Baruch Spinoza suggested “that a commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.” See, A.G. Wernham, ed., The Political Works, Tractatus Politicus, iii, II (Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 295.

[4] Though few Americans understand, international law is always a part of US domestic law. In precise words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.  For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.”  See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900).  See also:  The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774, 781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (Edwards, J. concurring) (dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1003 (1985) (“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.'”).

[5] See, by this author, Louis René Beres, at JURIST:  https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2017/08/president-trump-nuclear-war/  Of course depending upon the 2024 presidential election, the idea of a post-Trump America may turn out to be incorrect.

[6] An earlier book by this author deals with these issues from an expressly American point of view. See: Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington Books, 1984). A common synonym for Realpolitik is Machtpolitik.

[7] For the political philosophy origins of such core assumptions, see especially classic comment of Thrasymachus in Bk. 1, Sec. 338 of Plato, The Republic: “Right is the interest of the stronger.”

[8] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at Horasis (Zurich):  https://horasis.org/getting-beyond-power-politics-narratives-for-a-trust-centered-world-order/

[9] In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes further points out that while an anarchic “State of Nature” has likely never actually existed between individual human beings, it nonetheless defines the usual structures of world politics, patterns within which all nations coexist in “the state and posture of gladiators….” This “posture,” expands Hobbes as a matter of definition, is a condition of “war.”

[10] In the final analysis, such configurations must always be anchored in Natural Law. The core idea of Natural Law is based upon the acceptance of certain principles of right and justice that prevail because of their own intrinsic merit.  Eternal and immutable, they are external to all acts of human will and interpenetrate all human reason.  This idea and its attendant tradition of human civility runs continuously from Mosaic Law and the ancient Greeks and Romans to the present day.  For a comprehensive and far-reaching assessment of the natural law origins of international law, see Louis René Beres, “Justice and Realpolitik:  International Law and the Prevention of Genocide,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 33, 1988, pp. 123-159.  See also, more recently, Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/12/louis-rene-beres-natural-law-us-constitution/

[11] The term “world legal order” has its contemporary origins in a scholarly movement begun at the Yale Law School in the mid- and late 1960s, and was “adopted” by the Politics Department at Princeton University in 1967-68. The present author, an early member of the Princeton-based World Order Models Project, wrote several of the early books and articles in this once-emergent academic genre.

[12] This condition of Westphalian anarchy stands in stark contrast to the jurisprudential assumption of solidarity between states. This assumption concerns a presumptively common legal struggle against both aggression and terrorism. Such a “peremptory” expectation, known formally in law as a jus cogens assumption, was already mentioned in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis (533 CE); Hugo Grotius, 2 De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Ch. 20 (Francis W. Kesey., tr, Clarendon Press, 1925) (1690); and Emmerich de Vattel, 1 Le Droit Des Gens, Ch. 19 (1758).

[13] See: https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

[14] For specialized accounts by this author of nuclear war effects, see: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018).

[15] In certain residual circumstances, even an actual resort to nuclear weapons could be lawful. On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague handed down its Advisory Opinion on “The Legality of the Threat or Use of Force of Nuclear Weapons.” The final paragraph of this Opinion, concludes, inter alia: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law. However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

[16] For the crime of aggression under international law, see: Resolution on the Definition of Aggression, adopted by the UN General Assembly, Dec. 14, 1974. U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 UN GAOR, Supp (No. 31), 142, UN Doc A/9631 (1975) reprinted in 13 I.L.M., 710 (1974).

[17] Se Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1955), originally Le Phénomene Humain (Paris).

[18] One may recall here the parable from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations: “What does not benefit the entire hive is no benefit to the bee.” Unless we take meaningful steps to implement an organic and cooperative planetary civilization – one based on the irremediably central truth of human “oneness” –  there will be no civilization at all.

[19] International law is ultimately deducible from natural law. According to Blackstone, each state and nation is always expected “to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon offenses against that universal law….” See: 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, “Of Public Wrongs.” Lest anyone ask about the significance of Blackstone, one need only point out that Commentaries are the original and core foundation of the laws of the United States.

[20] Plausibly, these sub-state organizations could represent terrorist groups. Under authoritative international law, terrorist movements are always Hostes humani generis, or “Common enemies of mankind.” See: Research in International Law: Draft Convention on Jurisdiction with Respect to Crime, 29 AM J. INT’L L. (Supp 1935) 435, 566 (quoting King v. Marsh (1615), 3 Bulstr. 27, 81 Eng. Rep 23 (1615) (“a pirate est Hostes humani generis”)).

[21] Regarding antecedent legal obligations of sub-state surrogates, state parties (e.g., the United States) should remain wary about signing pacts because, inter alia, such agreements could impose unequal legal expectations. In this connection, several U.S. federal court decisions affirm that legal agreements between sub-state and state parties may sometime impose asymmetrical compliance expectations. In the very prominent case of Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, a 1981 civil suit in U.S. federal court wherein the plaintiffs were Israeli survivors and representatives of persons murdered in a terrorist bus attack in Israel in 1978, Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards opined: “…I do not believe the law of nations imposes the same responsibility or liability on non-state actors, such as the PLO, as it does on states and persons acting under color of state law.”

[22] The best studies of such modern world order “prophets” are still W. Warren Wagar, The City of Man (1963) and W. Warren Wagar, Building the City of Man (1971).

[23] Because war and genocide are not mutually exclusive, either strategically or jurisprudentially, taking proper systemic steps toward war avoidance would plausibly also reduce the likelihood of egregious “crimes against humanity.”

[24] Regarding science in such matters, Niccolo Machiavelli had joined Aristotle’s plan for a more scientific study of politics generally with various core assumptions about geopolitics or Realpolitik. His best known conclusion, in this particular suggestion, focuses on the eternally stark dilemma of practicing goodness in a world that is generally evil. “A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything, must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good.”  See: The Prince, Chapter XV. Although this argument is largely unassailable, there is also a corresponding need to disavow “naive realism,” and to recognize that, in the longer term, the only outcome of “eye for an eye” conceptions in world politics will be universal blindness.

[25] We may think also of the Talmudic observation: “The earth from which the first man was made was gathered in all the four corners of the world.”

[26] International law, which is an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, already assumes a reciprocally common general obligation of states to supply benefits to one another and to avoid war whenever possible. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one that is not even subject to question. It can be found already in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).

[27] Modern origins of “will” are discoverable in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew freely upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Nietzsche drew just as freely and perhaps more importantly upon Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas;1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948) and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).

[28] Notes Guillaume Apollinaire, “It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” See his The New Spirit and the Poets (1917).

[29] See United Nations: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.shtml