In his famous text, Leviathan,
Thomas Hobbes describes the state of nature as one of might, or raw force,
being the decider of what is rightly and determinatively so. If one person physically
harms another person such that the latter’s food may be taken by the former,
then that food belongs to the victor even without any overarching normative, or
moral, constraint that says that the food still belongs to the vanquished. If
Russia has successfully conquered a few regions of Ukraine by military means,
then those occupied lands have become part of Russia. If Israel has physically
decimated Gaza and placed its indigenous residents in concentration camps
without enough food or access to medical care, then Israel and the United States
can engage private investors on large-scale, upscale real-estate development
projects as attacks against the remaining residents in Gaza continue unabated. In
short, possession is really all that is needed to establish ownership. Might
makes right. In this system, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, simply
does not exist or is a target. Evolution has not changed human nature from the
hunter-gatherer “stage.” To be sure, not all of humanity is on board with this
sort of global order, even if guns have a way of pushing down or even silencing
the more progressive elements of the species. The Trump administration’s
attacks on the ICC represent a case in point.
The full essay is at "A Hobbesian World of Might-Makes-Right."
