The field of international relations centers on the problem of war and
peace. For many decades nuclear weapons have given great urgency to
dealing wisely with the subject. Countries having sometimes very tense
relations with each other possess these weapons. Nevertheless, because
they have not been used since World War II, the threat of nuclear war has
appeared distant. We tell ourselves that no sane, rational leader would
resort to these weapons. Self-preservation and enlightened self-interest
forbid their use.
And yet history is full of evidence that human beings often act not
prudently but out of the intense passion of the moment—out of hatred,
fury, wild abandon, sheer desperation, or boundless ambition. Nuclear
weapons are but one of the reasons why theories of international relations
should include as complete and subtle an understanding as possible
of what might induce prudence and restraint. Realism is certainly
needed, but the belief that human beings are rational actors pursuing
self-interest and that states behave in a quasi-mechanical manner needs
to be revised and supplemented. Because of the potentially disastrous
consequences of flawed assumptions in international relations, simplified
theories of human nature are out of place. Even more than other
fields, international relations needs in-depth reflection on subjects that
some may consider too subtle, esoteric, or “philosophical.”
What, ultimately, induces self-restraint, prudence, and circumspection
in leaders of countries? That enlightened self-interest can be and
frequently is a source of restraint is not in dispute, but it is important
to understand why a capacity for such thinking cannot be taken for
granted. Enlightened thinking presupposes an already sturdy check on
the passions and an already existing inclination to listen to argument.
Self-interest also has many layers. It will be suggested here that international
relations would benefit from broadening and deepening its view
of what shapes human conduct, specifically, of what might avert conflict.
For about a century it has been unfashionable in dominant Western
scholarly circles to raise questions of human conduct that were considered
central in the preceding millennia of classical and Christian civilization.
It was then assumed that the crux of human existence was moral-spiritual.
The great question was how human beings ought to live for the
sake of their own ultimate well-being as well as to avoid disaster. This
was the central subject for Homer, Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, Cicero, Jesus,
Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, and countless others who
shaped the Western mind and imagination. In the East, moral-spiritual
traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism played an
analogous role. Yet dealing more than marginally or cursorily with the
moral-spiritual terms of human existence has for decades been rare in
academic disciplines. In the twentieth century, attempts to drain the
study of history, politics, and even the humanities of the content known
in lived human experience have transformed the universities.
The field of international relations has adopted standard modern
epistemological assumptions. Briefly put, scholars must observe a distinction
between “facts” and “values.” They cannot adjudicate disputes
regarding putatively “universal” higher values. There is, in the opinion
of this author, a sense in which a facts-values distinction can be philosophically
defended, but that distinction has little or nothing to do with
what is asserted by modern empiricistic, quantifying notions of scholarship.1 In the modern “scientific” study of history, politics, and other
subjects “higher values” are said to belong to a sphere of merely “subjective
preferences.” Scholars should be methodological “positivists” and
aspire to a thoroughgoing empiricism. Moral-spiritual phenomena can
be empirically observed and classified—from the outside, as it were—
but cannot be assigned a value by scholarly methods. To deal with
moral-spiritual factors from the inside and try to assess whether they are
conducive to peace and a life more truly worth living has been judged
incompatible with the scholarly enterprise. Rationalistic explanations of
human conduct have been treated all the more favorably.
Yet, historically speaking, epistemological positivism is a minority
position that has long been challenged, in recent decades by so-called
postmodernism. But it has made even international relations, a field
intensely interested in what leads to war and peace, skirt, if not ignore,
a subject deemed central by the ancient civilizations, the chronic tension
within human beings between higher and lower motives—not between
what is rational and irrational, but between the potential for noble, more
than selfish conduct, on the one hand, and malicious, destructive selfindulgence,
on the other.
Moral-spiritual factors are intimately connected to other factors that
affect human conduct—more or less powerful, if subtle, influences on
will, imagination, and reason such as education, the arts, literature, and
entertainment. The latter phenomena can be summed up in the term
“the culture.” But how the culture in that sense may foster or undermine
peace has not been a central topic in international relations. This is particularly
problematic at this time in history because of the special complication
of multiculturalism. The world has always been multicultural,
but in this globalizing era diverse groups and societies brush up against
each other in an unprecedented manner, adding greatly to the danger of
conflict. One might have hoped that for this reason international relations
would be well-prepared for dealing systematically and in depth
with how cultural diversity and peace might be reconciled or how conflict
might be defused.
But the dominant approaches to international relations and grand
strategy largely avoid both moral-spiritual and cultural issues. Samuel
Huntington pointed, however tentatively, in a different direction, but
he was widely challenged, and his efforts seem not to have resulted in a
surge of deeper reflection on these interrelated topics. International relations
theory rests predominantly on highly abstract and otherwise selective
assumptions, e.g., that peace will be served by a savvy balancing
of power and/or by cleverly constructed institutions; that increasingly
intertwined “markets” will reduce tensions; that general enlightenment
and the spread of “democracy” will make for peace; or that the introduction
of human rights legislation will defuse conflict. Behind some of the
more optimistic notions of how to achieve peace one detects the dream
of a “brotherhood of man” that has been with us since the eighteenth
century.
The approach to international relations that is often called “realism”
has a great deal more to recommend it. Realism shuns wishful expectations
that are contradicted by the historical record. Realism recognizes
the inescapably prominent role of self-interest in human affairs, the
inevitability of conflict among states, the role of fear, and the limits
of politics. But realism is also prone to a simplified understanding of
self-interest and an overly abstract, quasi-mechanistic theory of powerrelations.
Economists have long attributed a self-regulating, disciplining
dynamic to the economic system; order in the marketplace requires no
other explanation. Realists are similar in that they underestimate what
peace and order owe to influences not generated by the power play
itself. Grand strategy would be well served by a more nuanced, variegated
view of human nature.
The criticism that realists such as E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau
directed at “idealism” and heavy reliance on international law was, for
the most part, salutary. Their rather dark view of human nature and
their emphasis on the role of power and interests were a needed counter
to romantic dreaming, but they were at the same time disinclined to
inquire into the subtleties and complexities of the inner life of human
beings. They thought a focus on external power-relations and constellations
of forces sufficient to explain war or peace. They took little account
of the role and variability of moral-spiritual and cultural factors. Morgenthau
attributed the idiosyncracies, foibles, and pathologies of individual
actors to “irrationality” and stressed the “rational” dimension of
international politics. “Neoclassical” realists have attempted to fill gaps
in the older realism by considering more variables, including domestic
factors, the role of perceptions, and trends in the international system,
but they have nevertheless, as in their penchant for behaviorist methods,
evinced insufficient sensitivity to the kind of issues that are here being
brought into the foreground.
Considering that in this age of nuclear weapons intemperate action
by particular individuals can have cataclysmic consequences, there is an
urgent need for more deeply probing the origins of either self-control or
its opposite.
To explore moral-spiritual and cultural factors is to advance a more
complete understanding of both dangers and opportunities in foreign
affairs. Supplementing realism, as here proposed, would have the additional
benefit of undermining spurious “idealism.” Idealists of various
kinds cater to the need that so many feel for a higher goal of national
policy, but they usually have rather naive expectations that are bound
to backfire in the real world. A deepened realism can address moral and
cultural concerns without succumbing to sentimental dreaming.
Study of the mentioned moral-spiritual and cultural factors would
sharpen awareness of the complexities of human motives and of what
either increases or reduces conflict. More attention needs to be paid to
questions of character in the old sense and to corresponding social patterns
than is done, for example, in standard leadership psychology or in
evolutionary psychology, whose behavioristic or biologistic proclivities
do not capture the intricacies and intangibles of human personality, including
moral tensions.
Especially in really tense political circumstances, a surge of passion
in a leader can easily overwhelm ingenious power balancing, sturdy
international arrangements, enlightened ideas, or democratic structures.
Leaders are often hard-charging and not only irritable but inclined to
sheer intemperance. Recent American foreign policy actors such as
Richard Holbrooke, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton come immediately
to mind. What could be more relevant to understanding war and peace
than in-depth study of the origins of or the remedies for irascibility in
leaders? But mainstream academia has chosen to place outside of its
purview what may be central to understanding human action: the morally
cleft nature of man and the preconditions of self-imposed restraint.
Struggles of conscience, once regarded as the crux of human personality,
are deemed inaccessible or inconsequential. As ordinarily conceived,
even mainstream psychology simply avoids raising the ancient moralspiritual
questions. Behaviorist research may explore the role of emotion,
but it is a very blunt instrument for studying the varieties and
deeper sources of emotion and for understanding how individuals become
able to control the passions of the moment.
When emotions run high in foreign affairs, leaders are needed who
can control the kind of personal intensity—arrogance, ruthlessness,
ethnic-nationalistic ardor, anger, or hatred—to which human beings
are all-too-prone. Tense situations call, in brief, for statesmanship—for
calm, detachment, caution, circumspection, foresight, and creativity. But
traits of that kind can be expected only in people who are used to taming
their less admirable urges, people of strong character whose souls are
deep down balanced and peaceful rather than unruly and belligerent.
Without such leaders, external supports for peace can be swept aside in
an instant.
It needs to be better understood that efforts to avoid or defuse conflict are likely often to turn on moral-spiritual and cultural factors that
are rarely placed at the center of attention in international relations. Attempts
to achieve peace are likely to fail unless those on different sides
are predisposed to such a course in the first place. Whether actors will
indulge or transcend dangerous passion will depend importantly on
the strength or weakness of moral-spiritual and cultural dispositions in
themselves and their societies. In the study of war and peace this question
should be receiving at least as much attention as other topics.
The Challenge and Promise of Multiculturalism
One of the reasons why an intellectual reorientation is necessary and
urgent is an historical development that could not bear more directly on
the issue of war and peace. It is that globalization is bringing culturally
disparate and potentially incompatible groups into ever closer contact
with each other. The benefits of globalization are widely discussed
and celebrated, though mired at the same time in controversy, but the
peoples of the world are also increasingly confronted with what divides
them. Contrary to wishful thinking, growing physical rapprochement
carries a potential for great dissonance. Exploring how the dangerous
consequences of globalization might be mitigated requires unusual
scholarly range and great intellectual seriousness as well as a willingness
to question widely held assumptions. Here, too, international
relations needs to expand its scope and refine its thinking, notably by
addressing the moral-spiritual questions previously discussed. The field
must cultivate greater cosmopolitan breadth and versatility. Supposedly
comprehensive and sophisticated but abstract theorizing on war and
peace is a poor substitute for reflection informed by historical and crosscultural
learning and philosophy.
Progressive globalization is but one reason why it is important to
resist intellectual insularity and a preoccupation with ideas currently in
vogue in the Western world. Broadmindedness requires critical distance
to the present and a willingness to weigh historically prominent ways
of thinking about what makes human beings tick. The assumption that
moral-spiritual claims can be nothing more than subjective, historically
conditioned beliefs must not go unchallenged. To approach this question
from a more historical, international, and ecumenical perspective is, to
be sure, initially to discover a bewildering diversity of beliefs and many
at least apparent disagreements, but study of this kind also discloses a
remarkable, far-reaching convergence of views concerning humanity’s
central problem. At its very core, this problem is regarded as moral-
spiritual. Human experience over millennia seems amply to confirm that
the human will is torn between opposing inclinations. Human beings
are chronically prone to self-indulgent, short-sighted, cruel, reckless action.
The role of pettiness, rank partisanship, and outright malice can be
studied not least in current American politics. Man is his own worst enemy.
But human beings also have a potential for restraining these lower
inclinations. With sustained effort and the aid of cultural supports, they
can achieve the kind of character that makes for nobility and respect for
a common good.
Although the terminology for describing what produces the higher
forms of life varies among cultures, one finds across geographical
boundaries and historical epochs a striking consensus on the substance
of what is inherently desirable conduct and conducive to a deeper kind
of well-being. The ancient Greeks summarized the universal values of
human existence as the good, the true, and the beautiful, while the East
referred to the dao, “the way,” the “right path.” Ecumenical research
reveals a widely shared trans-historical sense of the general direction in
which to look for the most deeply satisfying life. There is far-reaching
agreement on the existence of an enduring moral-spiritual compass. It
is reflected in the encouragements and prohibitions of a corresponding
culture that tempers destructive self-indulgence and the tendency of the
strong to act ruthlessly.
When leaders of nations respect rather than violate the highest standards
of their own traditions they tend to restrain their own arrogance
and partisanship and reduce the incidence of crude, short-sighted
exercise of power. These standards help transform narrow-minded,
improvident egotism into enlightened self-interest, the realization that
it is in one’s interest to curb one’s egotism in hopes that others will return
the favor. Although this motive can keep large egos from clashing,
compromise among egotists is an inherently fragile stand-off and offers
no stable basis for peace. To be a force to be counted on in statecraft, enlightened
self-interest itself must be leavened to some degree by a desire
on the part of leaders to do what seems right for its own sake. In short,
even enlightened self-interest presupposes ascent from a raw, primitive
pursuit of power. One need look no further than to recent American
domestic politics for an illustration of the fact that politics often does
not rise much above small-mindedness, rank partisanship, and blind
hatred. It should be easy to understand that if people who behave in
this manner have influence in foreign affairs the result will be similarly
unenlightened.
The spread of today’s Western culture around the world creates a
kind of global commonality, but it should be carefully noted that this
culture is in many ways disdainful of the ancient moral and cultural
traditions of mankind, including those of the Western world itself. Acceptance
in the West of certain desires and behaviors that were scorned
by its old traditions will tend to antagonize rather than impress representatives
of more traditional cultures, not least people at the grass roots.
The more that peoples and civilizations display what may be their least
admirable traits, the more likely they are to recoil from each other—a
state of affairs that power-seeking demagogues will be quick to exploit.
Dubious Assumptions
Some issues that require more attention will strike most scholars in
international relations as remote from their field as they have come to
understand it. They operate on assumptions that they rather passively
assimilated from their mentors. Issues that are quite different, like the
ones raised here, are bound to appear far-fetched or just puzzling. In
this regard, scholars in international relations are no different from other
mainstream Western academics. When they think about how to achieve
peaceful human relations they routinely ignore, at least in their capacity
as scholars, the ancient view that human beings are chronically torn
between morally opposed potentialities. They are more likely to be making
rationalist assumptions. A prime example of mainstream Western
rationalism is the thought of John Rawls, whose famous theory of justice
simply neglects the issue of moral character and regards wholly ahistorical
ratiocination as the guide to action. Rawls is famous for his notion
of “the veil of ignorance.” Human beings would become impartial and
reasonable if, when contemplating policies, they would be ignorant of
how policies might affect them personally. Mere self-interest would not
infect decisions. A glaring weakness of this argument is that any kind of
reasonableness is wholly unlikely unless human passions have already
been brought under control. An equally serious problem is that the
supposedly perfect frame of mind for making enlightened decisions is
utterly different from any situations actually to be faced by real-life leaders.
Although most scholars in international relations do not delve into
considerations like these, this kind of abstract thinking has been a part
of the air that Western academics breathe, especially in the Anglophone
sphere, and, in one version or another, it has echoed and reechoed in the
background, helping to make rationalism in international relations, e.g.,
in realism, seem plausible.
Other examples of abstract rationalism that neglect the divided human
self and ignore concrete historical circumstances are theories of
“communicative” or “deliberative” democracy. Open, continual communication
among interests is expected to yield a fair outcome. But
these theories, too, assume what cannot be assumed, that human beings
are naturally predisposed to hearing and weighing views that challenge
their own. They are in actuality more likely to treat opposing views as
obstacles to be removed. When people are genuinely open to competing
opinions and to compromise it is because they have learned through
protracted effort to resist the urge simply to overpower opposition. It is
civilizing habituation that has made openness of mind and compromise
possible.
Yet another example of viewing rational calculation as the source of
order and peace is the notion long prominent in economics that those
pursuing their interest in the market are rational actors. What needs to
be much better understood is that the rationality and “spontaneous order”
of the market owe greatly to moral-spiritual and cultural restraints
long operating among the participants.
Although scholars in international relations ordinarily do not go into
issues of this kind or speak this kind of language, most of them make
assumptions similar to those of their intellectual cousins in political
theory, economics, and other fields. They share the academic prejudice
against addressing moral-spiritual and cultural issues, except perhaps in
a truncated, empiricistic, social-scientific manner, preferring to view the
system to which they pay the most attention as generating its own selfdisciplining
dynamic, independent of “higher” considerations.
An Enhanced Realism
To indicate further the kind of considerations that ought to be central
to the study of international relations, it may be useful to refer to thinking
generally familiar to most educated Americans. The framers of the
U.S. Constitution did not expect spontaneous reasonableness of political
leaders. They prepared rather for the opposite. They feared the darker
side of human nature and designed a system of government that would
help rein in the partisan passions of the moment, specifically, those of
a “majority faction.” They put a premium on seeking consensus and
increasing the chances of genuine debate. They wanted mere partisanship
to yield as much as possible to what has been called the “deliberate
sense.” But external, procedural checks would here be insufficient. Participants
had to impose restraints upon themselves. They had to exhibit
what this writer calls the “constitutional personality.” The prominence of
unbridled partisan passion, cynicism, and viciousness in recent American
politics suggests that today this personality is in short supply.
To assume that reasonableness comes naturally and does not have
any particular moral-spiritual and cultural prerequisites is to ignore
plentiful evidence. Realists in international relations are quick to criticize
people with sentimental illusions about peace, but they are, in their own
way, as reluctant to explore moral-spiritual and cultural origins of reasonableness
or of tendencies toward either peacefulness or belligerence.
It is enough, they tell themselves, to say that persons and states are “selfinterested”
and rational and to concentrate on the discipline induced by
the balance-of-power itself. But both “self-interest” and “power” come in
different forms that have different implications for conduct.
It was taken for granted in Greek, Roman, and Christian societies and
in the East that only protracted moral and cultural exertion and habituation
could produce people of wisdom, persons who would be able to act
in their long-term interest and guide others in the same direction. The
central purpose of civilization was to assist individuals in controlling
their least admirable traits and in developing their more admirable ones,
for their own good. Those who failed to control their lower desires undermined
not only their own well-being and the cohesion of their society
but good relations with other societies. At the extreme, self-indulgence
could become diabolical and wreak havoc.
The ancient Greeks referred to eudaimonia, happiness, as the goal of
life. Happiness referred not to a maximization of pleasure, but to the
deeper sense of self-respect and well-being—the serenity—that attends
living nobly. The Christians spoke of a peace that passeth understanding.
A small minority—priests, monks, and nuns—aspired to otherworldliness,
a further intensification of the moral-spiritual life outside of
ordinary social life. In the East, Confucius and the Buddha represented
similar modes of life. It was for the sake of what completes our humanity
that persons learned to forego actions that are pleasurable or advantageous
in the moment. The old Western and Eastern traditions coincided
on this point: one who lacks character cannot achieve happiness or peace
by some other means. Society must encourage the kind of working on
self that holds the key to building meaning and worth into personal and
social existence.
What was most to be feared? It was the kind of conceit that elevates
the ego and turns other human beings into supporting cast. The ancient
Greeks warned of the greatest failing of all, hubris, believing that you are
among the gods. In Christianity the greatest sin was pride. We are not to
dedicate ourselves to remedying the flaws of others, but work first of all
on our own failings. Jesus said: “Take the log out of your own eye first,
and then you will be able to see and take the speck out of your brother’s
eye.”
It is central to understanding these older traditions that for them the
key measure of human progress was the quality of actions. Jesus of Nazareth
declared: “I am the way and the life and the truth.” He did not here
formulate a new doctrine to be tested in the intellectual abstract. What
he proclaimed had to be tested in action. In Buddhism, similarly, the
right Way was to work tirelessly on self to extinguish destructive desire.
The Dhammapada, attributed to the Buddha, said about the path to Nirvana:
“You yourself must make an effort.”
Civilization had many aspects and prerequisites, but there was wide
agreement among the old traditions that their health ultimately depended
on a certain quality of will. There was no substitute for the often
arduous inner moral-spiritual struggle.
The Redefinition of Morality
The modern Western thinker whose challenge to this view of the
human condition was most radical and influential was Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778). Rousseau inspired the Jacobins, whose ideas
dominated the French Revolution. Rousseau flatly rejected the old view
that man is chronically torn between good and evil. There is in man’s essential
nature no propensity to evil, certainly no original sin. Man in his
pre-social, “natural” state was good. His life then was primitive, simple,
peaceful, and happy. What causes evil in existing societies are the wholly
artificial and perverse norms and institutions of civilization. The natural
goodness of man can be restored by destroying traditional society.
The time seems to have been ripe for Rousseau’s ideas. They became
a major influence in the West. They inspired a powerful strain in the Romantic
movement. It brought a profound change in the understanding
of man’s moral predicament. Briefly put, the notion of morality as right
willing and character was replaced by the notion of morality as having a
“heart.” Virtue became understood as a sentiment and as having “pity”
at its center. The old idea of morality had been loving, responsible action,
as in love of neighbor, which required an ability to rise above what was
easy and convenient. For Rousseau, virtue was not a matter of self-discipline
but of liberating man from confining and perverting socio-political
structures. Inherited traditions, social groups, and institutions were
not needed to support moral striving; they were positively destructive
of man’s natural goodness and had to be abolished. Earlier the central
problem of human life had been for the person to overcome the importunate
ego. Now the focus shifted to society, where virtuous, caring people
like Rousseau had to root out evil. “Idealists” soon propounded ambitious
plans for transforming society and the world.
The emergence in the Western world of this new idea of morality coincided
in time with the spread of Enlightenment rationalism. The latter
advanced the notion that abstract rationality was the defining characteristic
and proper guide of humanity. According to the rationalists, the
old Western view of man was superstitious and unscientific. Rationalists
and romantic idealists had disagreements, but they shared the view that
there was no chronic sinful self in human beings that required inner
vigilance. The key to remedying social ills, both groups also agreed, was
a basic reconstruction of society. Rationalism and sentimental idealism
came together in social engineering. Dreamy idealistic vision defined the
goals, while supposedly rational manipulation provided the method for
remaking society.
This new outlook on life, inspired at bottom by dreams of brotherhood
and equality, would in time pervade Western thought and practice.
People thinking about international politics envisioned a new world
order. Perverse traditions and wars would one day give way to a transnational
uni-culture and peace. Rousseauistic faith in human goodness
and in the transformative power of politics affected the study of international
relations and remained influential, but it was virtually antithetical
to what would become known as realism. Representatives of the latter
sided, to their credit, with Machiavelli. This is as good a place as any to
state that, surely, no view of international relations is adequate that has
not taken full account of the Machiavellian understanding of politics. It
must at the same time be noted that in rejecting a cloying sentimental
moralism realists have been too prone to a rather crude amoralism that
is not even true to the spirit of Machiavelli.
Toward a New Multiculturalism
Having indicated the kind of issues that international relations would
do well to explore in depth, it is time to connect what has been said
about the moral-spiritual and cultural life to the special challenge of
multiculturalism. However much traditional cultures have changed due
to globalism and other influences, they have not disappeared. Indeed,
they have to some extent been reaffirmed, and they are today coming
into ever closer contact. Together with new forms of cultural diversity,
they are compounding the problem of peace.
Today’s dominant multiculturalists favor diversity—the more the
merrier—especially if the diversity challenges traditional culture. But,
again, this thinking leaves unexplained how different cultural entities
are to be kept from clashing. Because they lack a sense of how to handle
the darker side of human nature, neither sentimental rationalism nor
mainstream multiculturalism can deal satisfactorily with the role and
meaning of culture.
Grand strategy needs a new type of moral-cultural cosmopolitanism
that may at first blush seem paradoxical. This cosmopolitanism is rooted
in a particular soil. It is not some kind of homeless universalism that has
abandoned dense and concrete cultural phenomena for bland, abstract,
supra-national commonalities. Neither is it a form of globe-trotting tourism.
The needed cosmopolitanism is at the same time pan-cultural and
strongly attached to distinctive cultural particulars—a merely apparent
paradox. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish the cosmopolitanism
in question from patriotic love of one’s own society. A person cannot
be genuinely cosmopolitan without cherishing and having deep roots
in his or her own primary national, regional, or local culture. Without
being well-versed in the best that his own society has to offer a person
will lack the understanding and sensibility to recognize and appreciate
corresponding feats of goodness, truth, and beauty in other societies. A
person only superficially familiar with his own heritage will find moral,
intellectual, and aesthetic phenomena in other societies confusing and
alien, charming and diverting perhaps, but just as likely annoyingly
different. A patriot intimately familiar with his own heritage, on the
other hand, is likely to find much in other societies unfamiliar and yet,
qualitatively, intriguingly kindred to what he already values. Only a
person of that kind can understand and really appreciate the equivalent
or superior achievements of other societies. The genuine patriot is not a
self-absorbed, self-enclosed nationalist, but assesses what he considers
lovable about his own society by a more than national higher standard.
Though his tastes may still be limited, he has the sine qua non for a genuine
cosmopolitanism.
Truly cosmopolitan thinkers or leaders who see disturbing weaknesses
in a people that they would like to see changed would not demand
that the people abandon their historical heritage for a wholly different
way of life assumed to be inherently superior. Fruitful, authentic change
can only result from the particular society trying to be more fully itself,
by living up to and in the process also revising its own highest standards.
To the extent that particular societies are anchored in the moral-spiritual
and cultural striving previously discussed, cultural distinctiveness and
pan-cultural unity will tend to coincide qualitatively and form a basis
for respect and mutual accommodation. The reason is that, despite obvious
cultural differences, traditional cultures tend to be similar in what
they consider admirable. Character traits that are widely praised, such
as restraint, humility, circumspection, and respect for others, tend to aid
peace. What is disdained—recklessness, arrogance, narrow-mindedness,
dishonesty, ruthlessness, etc.—generates conflict.
Groups and societies do of course often violate their own highest
standards. Unless cultural diversity is humanized by moral-spiritual
and other effort, it may descend into self-absorption and belligerence.
Nationalistic conceit was the cause of horrendous suffering and turmoil
in the twentieth century. The great weakness of the multiculturalism currently
in vogue is that, like modern Western rationalism, it recognizes no
deeper standard for distinguishing between what elevates and degrades
human existence and between what reduces or increases conflict.
All peoples evince less than admirable attributes, and people from
other countries will be quick to point them out. But so do societies have
traits and achievements in which they can take pride. To call upon a
people to discard what made them what they are and to insist on a supposedly
superior uni-culture is to rob them of a source of identity and
self-respect. A people cannot genuinely reform without building on its
own strengths, without, in a sense, being itself. Imposing on it an allegedly
universal culture inimical to its traditions can produce only mechanical,
inorganic change.
A Philosophical Interlude
What is suggested here as the basis for a proper cosmopolitanism is
that when people in different societies develop what is most admirable
in their own traditions they are moving in the direction of a dynamic,
never-static common human ground and reducing the danger of conflict.
Though efforts to articulate the universal values of goodness, truth, and
beauty must bear the distinctive imprint of the particular people and
be adapted to its historical circumstances, those efforts can, by virtue of
equivalent efforts in other societies, be a source of mutual understanding
and respect.
What seems paradoxical turns out not to be such once it is recognized
that the common human ground here discussed is not some kind of
fixed, static, abstract, predefined standard. It is thus not a call for uniformity,
conformity, or ideological homogeneity. The ground in question is
a sense of direction in the sense that it challenges human beings to rise
towards a life more truly worth living, but the common ground is not a
model, an unchanging set of ahistorical “principles,” but a sense of the
universal qualities that life can acquire. To become a living reality these
must be forever rearticulated as to concrete specifics. To be an inspiring
force and not a stale replica, true universality must be continually reinstantiated
in particular historical circumstances through new moral, intellectual,
and aesthetic creativity. Different cultural groups can express
one and the same higher aspiration in varying ways, which they will of
course do with varying degrees of success. It is by virtue of a shared, if
sometimes imperfectly intuited, dynamic center of values that people in
different historical circumstances can understand each other as fellow
human beings and recognize each other as respecting a common higher
standard. They can do so not despite but through their distinctive identities,
namely, in proportion as their efforts are kindred. This point has
been argued in philosophical depth in this writer’s A Common Human
Ground: Universality and Particularity in a Multicultural Age.2
It is because the higher unity finds expression in different circumstances
that diversity is a possible source of respect and understanding
across national, cultural, and historical boundaries. Moral-spiritual and
cultural activities emanating from pursuit of the higher unity of mankind
harmonize and elevate the diversity. The corresponding diversity varies,
deepens, and enriches the unity. What is properly called higher values,
then, involves a synthesizing of universality and particularity that contrasts
sharply with universality understood as a static, purely abstract
final norm.
The U.S. Constitution offers a domestic example of this merely apparent
paradox. Implicitly agreeing with the philosophical point here made,
the Framers sought a national unity that would co-exist with great diversity.
As applied to the America they envisioned, the phrase e pluribus
unum did not signify an attempt to abolish diversity but to cherish and
draw strength from it.
Sources of Statesmanship
Progressives of various types expect that a new culture will come
into being in proportion as the bad old days of history are left behind.
Because of their ahistorical and “idealistic” notion of good, the progressives
vastly underestimate the extent to which social and political practices
that they favor—such as tolerance, respect for rights, rule of law,
and freedom of speech—presuppose personality traits that are heavily
indebted to precisely the ancient moral-spiritual and cultural traditions
that they wish to expunge. They assume the future availability of certain
character traits but see no need to inquire into their demanding moralspiritual
and cultural prerequisites. To repeat, both rationalists and
dreamy sentimentalists ignore the most basic threat to domestic and international
peace: that the human self is torn and easily falls prey to lower
inclinations. Rationalists will concede that human beings are sometimes
less than rational. The remedy, they think, is to be more rational.
Sentimental idealists simply deny the basic problem. Both groups ignore
or play down the deeper problem that human beings are often strongly
prone to conduct—arrogance, partisanship, ruthlessness, laziness, greed,
a wish to lord it over others, and so on—that shuts down debate and
generates conflict. For prudence, reasonableness, and respect for others
to have a chance, leaders of different societies must to the greatest extent
possible be in the habit of checking their impulses and examining their
consciences, which they will be prone to doing only because of previous
moral-spiritual and cultural formation.
The proposed way of approaching international relations would,
then, jettison the dogmatic positivism that forbids fundamentally addressing
the moral-spiritual and cultural terms of human existence. It
would revisit questions central to the old Western and Eastern traditions.
That there is broad agreement among the ancient civilizations about the
crux of human existence and about what is praiseworthy and disreputable
conduct could not be more directly relevant to foreign affairs. What
could be more appropriate for the field of international relations than
asking what character traits are most likely to advance either peace or
war? If enlightened self-interest is to be a source of prudence and restraint,
what will make self-interest enlightened rather than primitive
and narrow-minded? In a society without some concern for a common
good, what will pull self-interest in the right direction?
We may elaborate on the needed reorientation of international relations
by explicitly associating it with a definition of statesmanship. What
is real statesmanship and what makes it possible? The term has historical
resonances that connect it with the moral-spiritual and cultural considerations
previously discussed. It is usually reserved for leadership out
of the ordinary. The statesman is one who rises above the provincialism
and opportunism of mere politicians. The statesman is not swept up in
the passions and opinions of the moment, but has a sense of history that
gives him or her critical distance to the present and an ability to see further
than his or her contemporaries. The statesman is no mere partisan.
He has the imagination and empathy to recognize that opponents are
fellow human beings with legitimate interests. He is cautious and prudent
and has the flexibility to compromise and defuse conflict. War may
sometimes be unavoidable, but for the statesman it is a last resort.
There can of course be no effective leadership without the above
traits being combined with great political skill, practical experience,
toughness, daring, and strength of will. Moral rationalists often misinterpret
Machiavelli as being a mere cynical advocate of ruthlessness. He
is in reality concerned to show that no political purpose can be achieved
without action being efficacious. That is to say that well-intentioned action,
too, must contend with and overcome great obstacles—or it will
fail. It is because of the sometimes brutal, even horrendous nature of
politics that good leaders must sometimes violate conventional morality.
Machiavelli himself does not speak explicitly and systematically on
this point, but it can be plausibly argued that for morality to be itself and
efficacious it must combine its moral motive with uncompromising realism.
If something is genuinely necessary, does it really violate morality?
All moralistic condemnations of Machiavelli notwithstanding, learning
from his realism may be indispensable to political morality. Be that as
it may, the old traditions created the presumption that for political skill
and vigor to be truly statesmanlike they had to be aligned with moral
integrity, intellectual humility, respect for others, personal dignity, good
manners, courage, loyalty, and much else.
It is important to add that, given the flawed nature of man, great
statesmen have far from always lived up to high standards of personal
conduct. Indeed, persons egregiously lacking in personal virtue were
sometimes capable of great feats of foresight and political creativity. Still,
the virtues admired by the old traditions formed a gravitational field for
political leaders.
Modernity itself has, despite its many attacks on traditional classical
and Christian thinking, to some extent retained old views of what
constitutes exemplary leadership. It has at the same time been strongly
disinclined to explore what might produce such persons.
So where, in a modern world in which the mentioned traditions are
fading away, are these desirable qualities to come from? International
relations without an answer to that question is not equipped to deal with
a vital part of the problem of war and peace. It ought to be for this field a
central task to explore what kind of general upbringing and other social
and cultural influences will tend to foster good leadership.
For reasons already explained, the cross-cultural and cross-historical
confluence of views about nobility and depravity does not imply the
possibility or even the desirability of some kind of global educational
scheme. Trying to advance man’s higher humanity, societies must draw
on their own traditions, as adapted to their own current circumstances.
Here, too, diversity not only is inevitable but desirable. Yet without efforts
of this general kind, the danger of inferior leadership grows. For
international relations to have little or nothing to say about how societies
can raise future statesmen is a great disability.
Ideology and the Will to Power
The approach to international relations that is being advanced
here may be explained further with reference to what it challenges or
rejects. The need to revise and supplement realism has already been
discussed. The proposed way of thinking contrasts more sharply with
the sentimental-rationalistic ideology that has been so influential in the
United States in recent decades. That ideology assumes that a certain
political-economic model is inherently superior and that America, as
an exceptional country based on universal principles, should champion
that model everywhere, using military means if necessary. This thinking
is reminiscent of the ideology of the Jacobins who spearheaded the
French Revolution. The model they championed was “freedom, equality,
and brotherhood.” They regarded France as the liberator of humanity.
The new, American Jacobins advocate “freedom” and “democracy” and
believe that the United States should help remake the world accordingly.
It is hard not to associate this political grandiosity with the Greek notion
of hubris or the Christian notion of pride.
The ideas behind the U.S. Constitution and those behind the French
Revolution were proximate in time but sharply different. The Framers
had essentially classical and Christian views of human nature and society,
whereas the French Jacobins were enamored with Rousseau. Moral
virtue was for the authors of the U.S. Constitution first and foremost a
matter of ruling self, of republican virtue. It was indistinguishable from
a sense of one’s own shortcomings. It was by checking self-indulgent
passion that leaders might rise to a concern for the common good. Jacobin
virtue is chiefly political and does not recognize a need for humility
or restraint, for its great cause is inherently right. To be virtuous is to
favor the great cause, which is by definition a state of moral superiority.
Because the cause is nothing less than to improve the lot of all humanity,
Jacobins feel entitled to exercise great power, sufficient to transform the
world. Virtue is not to check and improve self but to control and reform
others. Instead of restraining the will to power, which was a preoccupation
of the U.S. Framers, the Jacobin notion of virtue fuels and strengthens
this will. It even inspires belligerence.
The Framers created checks and balances even among the limited
powers granted to the central government. They left most of the power
in states and localities and, above all, with the people themselves. The
same spirit of restraint entailed limits on power in foreign affairs. For
example, the president could not take the country to war without a congressional
declaration. The new Jacobins stress that America’s so-called
“founding principles” belong to all mankind and require American
armed global hegemony, which is to say that they favor an unleashing of
American power.
It should be clear from this example that the field of international
relations simply cannot do without addressing supposedly “subtle
philosophical questions” or making supposedly “fine distinctions.”
Neo-Jacobinism and other forms of abstract universalism that disparage
or discount diversity and the special needs and opportunities of
particular societies might seem to warrant a turn in the direction of the
“historicism” of modern multiculturalism and postmodernism. These
do in a way recognize life’s inescapably historical character. But they
also deny the possibility of a universal element in life. By rejecting every
deeper continuity and unity they actually exclude the possibility
of an enduring human consciousness and can offer no real antidote to
social-cultural fragmentation and conflict. Leo Strauss and his followers
have long attacked “historicism” of various kinds in the name of
what they call “natural right.” Note, however, that multiculturalists and
postmodernists, on the one side, and Straussians, on the other, agree that
universality and particularity are incompatible. The former group rejects
universality in favor of a radical historicism, while Straussians regard
historical particularity as irrelevant to universality, which they regard
as wholly abstract. Neither side entertains the possibility that has been
emphasized in this article, that, in creativity that enhances and enriches
life, universality and particularity cease to be discordant. In the articula
tion of goodness, truth, and beauty, universality and particularity come
together. Cosmopolitanism as here defined accepts the inescapably contextual,
contingent, “historical” nature of human existence. Moral and
cultural achievements must be rooted in a particular soil.
To reiterate a central point about multiculturalism and peace, the
more than superficial and momentary unity across borders that true universality
makes possible does not generate a homogeneous global culture.
To the extent that peoples can be brought more closely together—so
it has been argued here—it must be through diversity. The qualitative
bond of the common human ground harmonizes the diversity. When
persons, peoples, and civilizations cultivate their distinctive selfhood at
the highest level, they do not undermine cordial relations but advance
them. The very different idea that personal or other distinctiveness
should yield to a single, ahistorical model betrays an inhumane, potentially
tyrannical spirit.
Toward a Philosophy of International Relations
This article has argued that the field of international relations needs
to expand its intellectual range and delve deeply into the moral-spiritual
and cultural preconditions of peaceful relations. One of the reasons it
must, as a part of this effort, achieve something like the cosmopolitanism
here suggested is the acute need in this era of globalization to address
the problem of multiculturalism. It is necessary and urgent to explore
sources of more than superficially respectful relations among peoples
and groups. A multiculturalism of the kind here proposed approaches
diversity not indiscriminately but as potentially expressive of the higher
life of humanity. A multiculturalism that celebrates diversity but without
recognizing the need for moral-cultural restraint throws gasoline on a
smoldering fire.
The supposed cosmopolitanism of people who have no deep cultural
roots has in many places given cosmopolitanism a bad name. These are
people who are not truly at home in any particular place and have no
special love for particular people and places. They are “citizens of the
world,” belonging nowhere and everywhere. Having only a historically
and philosophically shallow familiarity with their own society, they lack
the moral and cultural sensibility to appreciate similar achievements in
other societies. They are not able to intuit the presence of any deeper
common ground and recognize no particular moral-spiritual and cultural
preconditions for respectful relations. Peace or other beneficial
conditions seem to them a merely external state of affairs, the result of
people like themselves advancing fine ideas and employing deft social
engineering. Typical Eurocrats, for example, endorse abstract ideas like
“democracy,” “human rights,” or “tolerance,” but have only a limited
understanding of what created European unity in diversity in the first
place. It is anomalous for the field of international relations that it is exhibiting
a similar reluctance to explore the moral-spiritual and cultural
sources of cohesion and respect.
A grand strategy that aspires to the greatest possible realism must
resist theoretical simplification and disciplinary compartmentalization
and recognize that human beings and their societies are more intricate
and have more multifaceted motives—for both good and ill—than the
modern Western academy will take into account. Intellectual presentism
and myopia should not be allowed to stand in the way of consulting and
selectively drawing on the ancient wisdom of humanity. Mainstream
academics are accustomed to viewing the moral-spiritual and cultural
dimensions of the problem of war and peace as accessible only through
empirical, sociological observation; as being beyond the scope of scholarly
inquiry; or as being esoteric and insignificant. Studying these dimensions
is actually indispensable to a full-bodied realism. What needs
to be understood, simply put, is that no genuine lessening of the danger
of conflict is likely unless persons, peoples, and civilizations cultivate the
traits that are most admired in their respective traditions and that put
strong checks on arrogance and belligerence.
As Americans revise and supplement the study of international relations,
they have much to gain from repairing to the spirit of American
constitutionalism, which is in many ways a summation of classical and
Christian insights, as supplemented by modern ideas. The system that
the Framers set up put a premium on cooling the passions, deliberating,
compromising, and protecting minorities. The Framers assumed the
desirability of precisely the character traits and cultural dispositions that
have been discussed in this article. In their preference for limited, decentralized
power and for state and local independence and diversity, they
can be said to have exhibited a brand of multiculturalism appropriate to
international as well as domestic affairs. The constitutional temperament
of self-control and respect for cultural diversity can help guide a new approach
to international relations.
Notes
*Claes G. Ryn is Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America. [Back]
1 The special sense in which a facts-values distinction can be defended is explained in depth in this author’s Will, Imagination and Reason, 2nd exp. ed. (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1997). [Back]
2 Expanded paperback edition (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2019). [Back]