By
Prof. Louis René Beres
Africa-Press – Eritrea. “Where will it end? When will it all be lulled back into sleep, and cease, the bloody hatred, the destruction?” -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
In world politics, nothing fundamental really “ends.” Though specific events, personalities and weapon technologies do vary from minute to minute, the enabling structures of world politics remain ominously constant. To wit, if the anarchic system of states birthed at the 1648 Peace of Westphalia “stays the course,” all states will have to base life-or-death foreign policy decisions on expectations of chaos.[1]
There is a tangible difference between chaos and anarchy. Chaos is not the same as anarchy. It is worse than anarchy – infinitely worse.
“Where will it end”? asked classical Greek playwright Aeschylus in Agamemnon. Amid the current wars involving Russia/Ukraine, India/Pakistan and Israel/Iran/US, the global powers remain focused on immediate and particular security threats, not longer-term world system transformations. Such conspicuous policy inertia is understandable and situationally defensible. Still, chronic indifference to more visionary security obligations suggests that no traditional remediation could really “work.” This prognosis would remain valid even if all pertinent states were well-intentioned and presumptively rational.
Year after year, political leaders and pundits express concern about ongoing wars and armed struggles. Though there is nothing wrong with seeking to manage global conflicts “in time,” a concurrent concern for world system vulnerabilities is also needed. Potentially, leaving core vulnerabilities in place would signify a universal surrender to irremediable harms.
A medical metaphor could be clarifying. We may think here of a patient’s particular illness being treated as discrete and isolable harm rather than something system-related. Generally, in dealing with biological disease processes, it makes little sense to tackle disease manifestations without first understanding systemic causes. Similarly, in dealing with variously manifested “pathologies” of world politics, capable thinkers ought first to acknowledge underlying issues of interdependence and global unity. In the fashion of an individual human being, world politics needs to be treated as an organic “whole,” one that is more than the simple sum of its “parts.”[2]
What next for global survival? Aren’t visionary suggestions for transformative world order reform unrealistic ipso facto? Perhaps. But these suggestions are still more realistic than continuing to embrace an infinitely lethal system of geopolitics. Here we may purposefully recall the deeper wisdom of Italian film director Federico Fellini: “The visionary is the only realist.”
There is more. The overall challenge to human survival in world politics is not “merely” conceptual. There are also complex details that need to be identified and managed. In certain foreseeable cases, the specific failures of “Westphalian” international lawwould not “merely” be catastrophic. They would also be unprecedented or sui generis.
For every state’s foreign policy planners, it is high time to take science seriously, not as demeaning background for self-driving cars or heated steering wheels, but for the prevention of nuclear war. Accordingly, a derivative question should promptly be raised: What to do if we should suddenly or incrementally find ourselves “in extremis,” in a uniquely perplexing nuclear crisis? Such portentous prospects already lie latent in assorted Russian, Chinese, and North Korean collaborations. Though scholars are unable to assign precise scientific probabilities to unique events – an inherent limitation of reasoning in logic and mathematics – they will still have to think systemically about improved survival options.
Conceptual errors continue to accumulate. World leaders continue to be guided by zero-sum orientations to world politics. For the major powers, these orientations are typically made manifest in rhetorical flourishes of belligerent nationalism.
To survive as a planet, we will need the very opposite of such unproductive flourishes. In the years ahead, only one thing is certain about world politics international law: Bellum omnium contra omnes – the longstanding “war of all against all” described by 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes – could never support planetary security.
Soon, all states, but especially those that rely implicitly or explicitly on nuclear deterrence, must think seriously about alternative systems of international relations. While even the tiniest hint of interest in global unification or integration (what French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls “planetization”) will sound fanciful, it would still represent humankind’s only residual opportunity to “stay alive.” The “every man for himself” ethos in world politics is “dead on arrival.” Simultaneously, it reveals a pitiless provenance and a lethal providence.
There are foreseeable narratives. At some potentially irretrievable point, world system failures could become literally intolerable. Episodically, it can still be rational for major states to use military force against barbarous enemies, whether sovereign states or sub-state terror groups.
In the longer term, however, the only sort of realism that could make sense for virtuous states[3] and their allies points toward much higher awareness of global “oneness.” In this connection, the grievously injurious consequences of climate change already impact humankind as a whole. Plausibly, similarly global impacts of war, terrorism and genocide are not far off.
In its most fully optimized expressions, a higher awareness of organic global interdependence would coalesce around what ancient philosophers called “cosmopolis.”Lamentably, the willing prophets of a more cooperative world civilization still remain few and far between. How then should we proceed?
“Cosmopolis” is not really a bewildering idea. It is hardly a biological secret that the basic factors and behaviors common to all human beings greatly outnumber those traits that superficially differentiate one segment from another. Unless the leaders of major states can finally understand that the durable survival of any one state would be contingent on the survival of all, true national security will become a glaring contradiction in terms.
There are still-remaining intellectual opportunities for world order visionaries. Inter alia, these opportunities lie in the foundational insights of Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton and Lewis Mumford: “Civilization,” says Mumford, “is the never ending process of creating one world and one humanity.”
Powerful states ought never allow themselves to be “lulled back into sleep” by shortsighted calls for military “victory.” For humankind in its entirety, the only triumph worth celebrating would be one that could transport itself beyond millennia of “bloody hatreds” and “destruction.” As we may have learned from filmmaker Federico Fellini, so may we also learn from Aeschylus, the ancient Greek author of Agamemnon.
Soon, though seemingly farfetched, we will need to think more systematically and systemically about alternative world futures. Though problematic, if we could be endowed with capable and willing visionaries and imaginative and decent national leaders, there would still be enough time for eleventh-hour planetary rescue. Otherwise, all will suffer irreversibly from the lethal “Westphalian” legacy, a defiling inheritance of war, terrorism and genocide.
Time is literally “running out.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Enlightenment philosopher so important to 18th century American political thought, wrote prophetically: “The majority of nations, as well as of men, are intractable only in their youth. They become incorrigible as they grow old.” Understood in terms of our human obligation to replace belligerent nationalism with an organically-unifying world politics, this suggests that all interim military victories would ultimately be defeats.
“Where will it end?” asks Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright. Without embracing an expanded vision of planetary “oneness,” the answer is both obvious and intolerable. But what could allow such a desperately-needed vision to be taken seriously as a state’s policy position? How could such vision actively guide national decision-makers? Until humankind recognizes the primacy of this question, there can be no correct answers.[4]
Infinite lethality remains the continuous inheritance of “Westphalia.” It can be overcome only by getting beyond the sordid dynamics of “everyone for himself” orientations to world politics. For the immediate future, species “oneness” should be acknowledged not just as an abstract element of philosophy or science, but as a conceptual blueprint for global transformation. Though such an expectation would be unrealistic prima facie, it would be more realistic than staying tethered to an infinitely lethal world politics.
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