AND ANOTHER THING
An American Leviathan to prevent life becoming nasty, brutish and short
PAUL JOHNSON
Ipredict that an influential tome in the 21st century will be Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), because it will justify what is likely to happen: the emergence of a single super-sovereignty, to 'keep them all in awe'. The end of the Cold War, which left the United States the only real great power, was one step in this direction. The second came with 11 September, which announced the globalisation of terrorism and so of universal insecurity. The willingness of President Bush, with the backing of the US Congress and people, to take up the challenge and change the regime in Iraq is the third great step, from which many more will follow.
Now it is important to grasp that, in moving towards world policing by a single Leviathan figure or nation, we are not moving to world government. Such a system is based on optimism about the nature of human beings, and there are no grounds for such a feeling. Hobbes was born prematurely in 1588, when his mother took fright at the coming of the Armada. He came to philosophical maturity during the English Civil War, which drove him into exile and penury. He thought that the propensity of men, unless regulated by power, was towards greed and aggression, and that therefore the first function of a sovereignty was to free all men from fear by providing a policing power whose punishment they all dreaded. Since Leviathan was published threeand-a-half centuries ago, all thoughtful people who have observed how humans behave when they are free to act have, in general, agreed with Hobbes's pessimism. But few of them say so. For they have to subscribe to the humbug of public optimism about the long-term future of the human race, and make hypocritical approving noises about such ineffective bodies as the League of Nations, the UN, etc.
We therefore have to be grateful, in a sense, to the murderous fanatics who perpetrated the 11 September horrors, for they shocked America into taking up the Leviathan role — something it might not have done otherwise until it was too late and weapons of mass destruction had spread all over the earth. Many people — and the great majority of intellectuals, needless to say — believe that the US aims at world power, and regard such an ambition with total abhorrence. The truth is exactly the opposite. Americans have never wanted power over others, their natural instinct being isolationist.
Isolation is now seen to be no longer an option and Americans regard themselves as vulnerable, like any other people in the long history of fear. And as the US is by far the strongest and best organised entity on earth, Americans are in a position to exorcise that fear, on their own behalf and for the good of ail. America has put on Leviathan's armour or, in a more homely image, has accepted the sheriffs star. It does not make the US popular (as yet). That does not matter. Police do not need to be popular; they need to be efficient, fearless and honest.
The move to change the regime in Iraq, so that it can finally be stripped of its weapons of mass destruction, opens a new chapter in geopolitics. It is a war of pre-emption, and a forceful declaration that certain types of state are not acceptable to Leviathan, Other states will be persuaded, or obliged, to change: Syria, which trains terrorists; Saudi Arabia, which finances them; Iran, which harbours and encourages them; North Korea, which arms states harbouring them; and so on. But this is merely the first phase in which Leviathan will transform regimes that have already proved themselves flagrant threats to the security of mankind. The essence of a Leviathan-run world is that the sovereign figure who keeps it peaceful must have a monopoly of decisive force. How to achieve it? Experience shows that weapons that can he used to destroy entire nations — or capital weapons. as I call them — cannot safely be left in more than one pair of hands. Steps must therefore be taken to enable all states with such weapons — except Leviathan himself — to forgo and surrender them: first India and Pakistan, then Russia and China, and finally Britain. France and Israel. It will be a princely task of Leviathan to ensure a climate of peace which makes such voluntary disarmament possible, and then to destroy the stockpiles and ensure, through direct inspection, that no research or production of capital weapons is proceeding anywhere in the world.
All this is in the long-term logic of what Mr Bush and his compatriots have undertaken; and I wonder if they would shudder at the prospect, were it clearly explained to them. And what would old Hobbes have thought of it? He has always struck me as a sensible man, to use Jane Austen's favourite expression of approval. He was more than six feet tall, active and spare. He had eyes 'which shone like corals'. He shaved his beard to avoid an appearance of philosophical austerity'. He refused to take the nauseous and dangerous physic of his day, preferring herbs. He calculated that 'he had been drunk a hundred times' during a life of 92 years, but no one saw him so; and he certainly never touched intoxicants after 60. He ate chiefly fish, rose early, took regular exercise, played tennis even at 75, wrote his autobiography, aged 84, in Latin verse, completed his translation of Homer when he was 86, and was learning and writing until a few days before his death. His singular good fortune was to be the tutor, mentor and friend of the great Cavendish family virtually all his life — a relationship that reflects well on both parties. He was affable, good-mannered, generous with his learning and charitable with his means.
Hobbes valued liberty as much as any intellectual today, and prized his own, which was often threatened by the censor. He made friends with the elderly Galileo and held him in veneration. But he was sensible enough to realise that liberty was useless without safety. He would have noted that liberty is most generously nourished, and generally enjoyed, in the United States, which has unmatched armed forces and the readiness to use them, and he might have sardonically observed that all free thinkers throughout the world are ultimately parasitical on American power to uphold freedom against despotism and darkness. He compared anarchy and the fear it breeds to a state of war, and noted that war does not have to be continuous: for war fear to be engendered it is enough to know that anarchic force can and will be used at any time, unrestrained and unpunished. That is precisely the future mankind will face, unless America takes on the Leviathan role. Once fanaticism — and there are other forms besides Islamic hatred of the West — is conceded its right to murder the innocent by the default and cowardice of the law-abiding powers, international intercourse will diminish, trade and industry will decline, what is desired will be taken by force or, if envied, wantonly destroyed. Nothing will flourish except killing, starvation and disease — and, to quote Hobbes, there will be 'No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'
This outcome will not be prevented by deals brokered by the UN. There is no compromise between crime and the law, no middle ground between a civilised society and bestial chaos. It is a simple choice between Leviathan and Saddam, the latter joined by others even more rapacious and evil, who are waiting for his survival to launch their own careers as vultures feeding upon the rotting corpse of humanity.
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