“The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egoistically the extremity of `everyone for himself’ is false and against nature.”- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959)
If history has any pride of place, human “oneness” must be considered axiomatic.[1] Yet, with a US president who demands “America First,” such consideration could remain visionary. For both the United States and the wider world, seemingly indissoluble attachments to belligerent nationalism portend catastrophe on every level. In our age of expected nuclear encounters, such unprecedented failures could quickly become existential.
There are many clarifying particulars. U.S. President Donald J. Trump did not invent the illogical dichotomies of world politics. Still, variously unhidden trajectories of his leadership are self-defiling for individuals and states. Lacking any purposeful concepts of international relations and international law, these trajectories rest on the perpetually false mantra of “everyone for himself.”
These are not the abstract particulars of academic or legal philosophy. Ipso facto, a tangible question now needs to be raised: “What should be done about misdirected Trump foreign policies that portend multiplying spasms of war, terrorism and genocide?” Without a willing rejection of “everyone for himself” thinking in Washington and elsewhere, this planet will be left with a “struggle for existence” that is not “just” Darwinian, but is also destined to fail.
The substantive issues are unhidden. In these nuclear times – times that are unique or sui generis – zero-sum orientations to national security could never be gainful. In the final analysis, recalling French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this “built to fail” destiny looms large because American national security postures remain “false and against nature.”
History could be instructive, but only if it was first studied and then taken seriously. By definition, Donald J. Trump’s “America First” misfires on all pertinent “cylinders.” Because his all-against-all orientation is driven by gratuitous rancor and dissembling acrimony, it foreshadows more than singular policy losses.
In certain worst-case but still easily-imagined scenarios, new wars could become nuclear because of variously confusing and multi-layered conflicts and/or because of a bewildered US president’s decisional errors.[2] As timely example, a once-distant prospect has become concerning on account of Russia’s aggression[3] against Ukraine[4] and Trump’s de facto support of Putin crimes.[5] On an especially worrisome level, the American president could even be partially controlled by his Russian counterpart. According to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, president of Portugal, “The supreme leader of the world’s largest superpower is objectivelya Soviet or Russian asset.”
There is more. US national security distinctions should always be understood in their proper analytic context. From the mid-seventeenth century to the current historical moment – that is, during the continuously unraveling period that dates back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648[6] – an adversarial “state system” has produced neither peace or justice. To wit, there is nothing on any foreseeable intellectual horizon that points to promising national or world-system transformations.
Even now, after millennia of more-or-less orchestrated human barbarisms, declining civilizations cling shamelessly to the “unspeakable lies”[7] of politics. In this connection, decision-makers should bear in mind, civilizational decline is reconcilable with accumulations of personal wealth, rapidly advancing technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). In a literal flash, momentary military miscalculations in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Islamabad or Pyongyang could override the apparent “progress” of centuries. Among other things, this conclusion is compelling because of (1) a steadily-advancing “world order” led by Russia, China, India, and North Korea et. al.; (2) a reasonably predictable nuclear weapons program in South Korea and/or Iran; (3) a tinderbox Middle East with possible nuclear ambitions by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey; and (4) persistent rivalry between nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan.
What about decisional rationality and irrationality? Often, individuals fail to act in their own interests, an observation made as forcefully by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Notes from Underground) as by diligent scholars of diplomatic history and international law. To be sure, “everyone for himself” foundations of global anarchy are not about to disappear, and the continuing lack of world-system governance would represent an unsuitable context for planetary survival. Though still generally unacknowledged, realpolitik[8] or power politics proves its own insubstantiality.
Always.
As a single state in world politics – and as a “powerful” player among almost 200 manifestly unequal states – the US is anything but immune from planet-wide vulnerabilities. Significantly, this sobering conclusion about global peace and justice is unassailable. It remains especially applicable to “great powers.”
Regarding specific US foreign policy obligations, no conclusion could be more apparent or prophetic.[9] Though Donald Trump’s “America First” may sound reasonable on its face, its underlying arguments make no intellectual, scientific or policy sense.
None at all.
History, as we may learn from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, is the “sum total of individual souls seeking some form of redemption.”[10] Recognizable expressions of any broader human search for security can be detected in the self-centric legal ideals of sovereignty and self-determination.[11] But the oft-celebrated “self” in these ideals refers to entire peoples, not to individual human beings. Conspicuously, it references perpetually-conflicting states, juristic collectivities that are preparing not for planetary peace and coexistence, but for war,[12] terrorism and genocide.
For Americans, it’s high time to think seriously about “America First” and planetary survival. Accordingly, world-system dynamics will need to be more fully understood and purposefully acknowledged. Among always-primal human beings, billions of Jungian “souls” who remain divided among hostile “tribes,” too-many still find it exhilarating to slay “others.” [13]
What about “empathy?” Normally, amid self-destroying human populations, this capacity is reserved for those within one’s own “tribe.” Moreover, this lethal reservation holds true whether national or sub-national loyalties are based on geography, nationality, ideology or religious faith.[14]
There is more. Any deliberate expansions of empathy to include “outsiders” would represent a necessary condition of global progress and express a sentiment indispensable to overcoming nationalistic predations.With this in mind, how should scholars and policy-makers best proceed? What should be done in the American nation to encourage empathy between “tribes”?
Scholars and presidents may inquire further: “How can we improve the state of our world to ensure a more welcome fate for the Trump-imperiled American commonwealth?”For the United States, these are fundamentally intellectual questions, queries that will demand conclusive victories of “mind over mind,” not “mind over matter.”[15]
Always, for science-based assessment, logical arguments should be followed to the end. At some point, the essential expansion of empathy for the many could become dreadful, improving human community at the margins, but only at the expense of private sanity. All-too-quickly, this expense could become intolerable. Isn’t it obvious that we humans were “designed” with rigid boundaries of permissible feeling? Were it otherwise, a more extended range of compassion toward others could bring about the emotional collapse of individuals en masse and the coinciding disintegration of nation-states.
There is a core dilemma. Seeking a more empathetic world order, humankind would of necessity confront a self-contradictory kind of understanding: A widening circle of human compassion is both a prerequisite to civilizational survival and a source of private anguish.
Sometimes, truth can emerge only through paradox. According to certain ancient Jewish traditions, the world rests upon thirty-six just men – the Lamed-Vov. For them, the overall spectacle of the world is endlessly combative and wholly insufferable. Nonetheless, there is something useful to be learned from this parable about the state of a single nation and the state of the world.
Inquiry should begin with questions. What if these two conditions were intersecting or synergistic? In the latter case, a specific subset of the former, the “whole” of any outcome must be greater than the sum of its constituent “parts.”[16]
There are many meanings to the elucidating Jewish tradition of the Lamed Vov, but one is expressly relevant to the contradictions between “America First” and planetary survival. A whole world of just men and women is plainly impossible. Ordinary individuals could never bear to suffer the boundless torments of other human beings beyond a narrow circle of identifiable kin. It is precisely for them, Jewish legend continues, that God created the Lamed-Vov.
But what are the clarifying lessons? Empathy on a grander scale, however necessary in principle, must include prescriptions for individual despair. What happens then? How shall humankind reconcile two indispensable but mutually destructive obligations? It’s a rudimentary question that can no longer be ignored or subsumed by a steeply pedestrian national politics.
There is more. Helpful answers to such complex question could never be found amid the poet Roethke’s “unspeakable lies” of political oratory. They could be discovered only in the resolute detachment of individual human beings from their crudely competitive “tribes.” Recalling French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, any more perfect society, whether national or international, should stem from a carefully-calculated replacement of civilization with “planetization.” Any such redemptive replacement would need to be premised upon an inextinguishable global solidarity, that is, on a carefully designated order of planetary “oneness.”
Going forward, individual flesh and blood human beings,[17] not their coalescing nation-states, should become the primary focus of national and global reform. Without such a transformational focus, there could be no long term human future for this endangered planet. In turn, such gainful replacement would depend upon certain prior affirmations of self, most urgently, ones urging acceptance of “World First.”
By law, national and international, foreign policies favored by Donald J. Trump ought never to disregard the human rights of persons who live in other countries.[18] In more precisely legal terms, this president’s openly-declared neglect of human rights across the world is not a volitional matter or one of his personal choice. Rather, it represents an integral requirement of a US domestic law, one that has long-incorporated binding norms of both natural law and international law. [19]
For casual doubters of “incorporation” who stay committed to contrived bifurcations of US law and international law,[20] they could learn something of importance by examining Article 6 of the US Constitution. This “Supremacy Clause” mandates adaptations of authoritative treaty law. These obligatory adaptations are unambiguous.
Overall, Americans should finally understand that the livable status of their domestic union can never be better than the decipherable status of the wider world.[21] To act pragmatically upon this central understanding, an American president will need to range beyond any traditionally-“realistic” orientations to world politics. To competent logicians and scientists, these simplifying orientations will be fallacious prima facie. More specifically,as flagrant errors of logical reasoning, they will represent examples of the argumentum ad bacculum.[22]
“America First” remains a colossal mistake, one that could sorely disadvantage the United States. In principle, at least, the state of the American union should never have been fashioned apart from broader considerations of planetary security and survival. These considerations are drawn from incorporating the law of nations (international law) into US law. In the still-authoritative words of William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Law of England[23] reflect basic foundations of US jurisprudence: “Each state is expected, perpetually, to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon the offenses against that universal law.”[24]
There could be no more reasonable expectation.[25] Recalling French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, to ignore it would be “false and against nature.”[26]US President Donald Trump’s “America First” represents a primal threat to human survival at national and international levels. Ipso facto, it should be more openly challenged and courageously opposed.
[1]The history of western philosophy and jurisprudence includes illustrious advocates of global unity, interrelatedness or “oneness.” Most notable among them are Voltaire and Goethe. We need only recall Voltaire’s biting satire in the early chapters of Candide and Goethe’s oft-repeated comment linking belligerent nationalism to civilizational decline. One may also note Samuel Johnson’s expressed conviction that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel;” William Lloyd Garrison’s observation that “We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government…Our country is the world, our countryman is all mankind;” and Thorsten Veblen’s comment that “The patriotic spirit is at cross-purposes with modern life.” Similarly, straightforward sentiments are discoverable in writings of the American Transcendentalists (especially Emerson and Thoreau) and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human. Let scholars also recall Santayana’s coalescing remark in Reason and Society: “A man’s feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.” The unifying point of all such cosmopolitan remarks is that narrow-minded patriotism is not “merely” injurious, it is also “unpatriotic.”
[2] On irrational nuclear decision-making by this author, see Louis René Beres, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/2016/08/what-if-you-dont-trust-the-judgment-of-the-president-whose-finger-is-over-the-nuclear-button/ See also, by Professor Beres, https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making/ (Pentagon). For authoritative early accounts by Professor Beres of nuclear war expected 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). More recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy
[3]See especially: RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51. Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153, 1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043.
[4]See by this writer at JURIST, Louis René Beres: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2022/03/louis-rene-beres-worst-does-sometime-happen-nuclear-war-ukraine/
[5]On the law-violating elements of this de facto support, see by this author, Louis René Beres, at JURIST: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/11/forcing-ukraine-to-negotiate-for-territory-seized-by-russia-would-violate-international-us-law/
[6] The Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded the Thirty Years War and created the still-existing “state system.” See, regarding this self-help arrangement for managing global power: 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, Taken together, these two treaties comprise the “Peace of Westphalia.”
[7] See Rainer Maria Rilke, the Dionysian poet famous for philosophical matters of “being” (in German, “Existenzphilosophie)”: Possibility of Being, 1957.
[8] For an early book by this author on this doomed orientation to world affairs, see: Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (1984). See also, by Professor Beres, Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (1987) and America Outside the World: The Collapse of US Foreign Policy (1987).
[9] Never to be overlooked is that international law is a part of US domestic law. In the 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.'”).
[10] See C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self (1957.
[11] See, by this author: Louis René Beres, “Self-Determination, International Law and Survival on Planet Earth,” ARIZONA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW, Vol. 11, No. 1., 1994, pp. 1-26. See also: Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (The Principle of Equal Rights and Self-Determination of Peoples), G.A. Res. 2625, U.N. GAOR, 25th Sess., and Supp. No. 28 at 121, U.N. Doc. A/8028 (1970), reprinted in 9 I.L.M. 1292; Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 1514, U.N. GAOR, 15th Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 66, U.N. Doc. A/4684 (1960); Principles Which Should Guide Members in Determining Whether or Not an Obligation Exists to Transmit the Information Called for Under Article 73e of the Charter, G.A. Res. 1541, U.N. GAOR, 15th Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 29, U.N. Doc. A/4684 (1960).
[12]Under international law, the question of whether or not a condition of war exists between states is often unclear. Traditionally, a “formal” war was said to exist only after a state had issued a formal declaration of war. The Hague Convention III codified this position in 1907. This Convention provided that hostilities must not commence without “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. See Hague Convention III on the Opening of Hostilities, Oct. 18, 1907, art. 1, 36 Stat. 2277, 205 Consol. T.S. 263. Presently, a declaration of war could be tantamount to a declaration of criminality because international law prohibits “aggression.” See Treaty Providing for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, Aug. 27, 1948, art. 1, 46 Stat. 2343, 94 L.N.T.S. 57 (also called Pact of Paris or Kellogg-Briand Pact); Nuremberg Judgment, 1 I.M.T. Trial of the Major War Criminals 171 (1947), portions reprinted in Burns H. Weston, et. al., INTERNATIONAL LAW AND WORLD ORDER 148, 159 (1980); U.N. Charter, art. 2(4). A state may compromise its own legal position by announcing formal declarations of war. It follows that a state of belligerency may exist without formal declarations, but only if there exists an armed conflict between two or more states and/or at least one of these states considers itself “at war.”
[13]See by this author at JURIST: Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2025/03/sovereignty-and-immortality-deciphering-the-ultimate-promise-of-world-politics/
[14] On this last dimension, a significant tie has always existed between realpolitik and eschatology. For a clarifying example, see: Bardia Farahmand, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2025/08/messianic-multipolarity-and-the-islamic-regime-a-strategic-and-theological-doctrine-of-resistance/
[15] This distinction figured importantly among the ancient Greeks and Macedonians. See, for example, F. E. Adcock’s classic text: The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (1957).
[16] See by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School: Louis René Beres, https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/
[17] See, in this regard, Miguel de Unamuno’s discussion of “The Man of Flesh and Bone,” in his modern existentialist classic: Tragic Sense of Life (1921).
[18] The founding fathers of the United States – believing firmly in natural law and natural rights – held that the human rights expectations of the Declaration of Independence apply to all peoples, necessarily, for all time, and can never be properly reserved to Americans. Says Rabbi Avraham Kook, somewhat similarly: “The loftier the soul, the more it feels the unity that there is in us all.”
[19]See by this author, Louis René Beres, at JURIST: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/12/louis-rene-beres-natural-law-us-constitution/
[20]International law includes norms of customary as well as codified nature. Article 38(1)(b) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice describes international custom as “evidence of a general practice accepted as law.” 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993 (June 26, 1945). The norms of customary international law bind all states irrespective of whether a State has ratified the pertinent codifying instrument or convention. International law compartmentalizes apparently identical rights and obligations arising both out of customary law and treaty law. “Even if two norms belonging to two sources of international law appear identical in content, and even if the states in question are bound by these rules both on the level of treaty-law and on that of customary international law, these norms retain a separate existence.” See Military and Paramilitary Activities (Nicaragua v. U.S.), 1986 I.C.J. Rep. 14, para. 178 (June 27).
[21]Says Marcus Aurelius in Meditations: “What does not benefit the entire hive is no benefit to the bee.”
[22] See by this author, at Israel Defense (Tel Aviv), Louis René Beres: https://israeldefense.co.il/en/node/30288
[23] See Book IV.
[24] The related principle of universal jurisdiction is founded upon the presumption of solidarity between states. See generally Hugo Grotius, ON THE LAW OF WAR AND PEACE (Francis W. Kilsey, tr, 1925) and Emmerich de Vattel, LE DROIT DES GENS, OU PRINCIPES DE LA LOI NATURELLE 93 (1916). The case for this principle is also built into the four Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, which impose upon the High Contracting Parties the obligation to punish “grave breaches” of their rules, regardless of where the infraction was committed or the nationality of the perpetrators.
[25]Humankind must first cease making itself into what C.G. Jung calls a “quantité négligible,” into a creature who is a “conscious, reflective being, gifted with speech, but lacking all criteria for self-judgment.”
[26]The Phenomenon of Man (1959); originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955).
