Revel: A Liberal between Paris and Washington

Known and recognized for his talent as a polemicist and his unquestionable erudition, Jean-François Revel added to these qualities the strength of his personal convictions against the current of his time and his country. Of his time—he defended an uncompromising liberalism against all forms of totalitarian temptation when almost no one was grumbling against the Marxist doxa. Of his country—he was an atypical exponent of a pessimistic and skeptical current in the nation that has probably deposited more militant faith in the transforming capacities of politics. However, as we shall see later, these two considerations need, if not total amendments, at least partial ones.

A Liberal of the Land who Loved Ideas

Born in Marseille in 1924, a student of the elite École Normale Supérieure and a philosophy graduate, he taught in Algeria, Mexico and Italy before abandoning teaching and devoting himself to an independent intellectual and journalistic career. He was a cosmopolitan spirit, an attitude that radiated in his writings and was reflected in his philias and phobias, but very French in an essential sense: that of the utmost fidelity to that national spirit summed up in the formula that the British historian Sudhir Hazareesingh coined for his How the French Think: “that country that loved ideas.” For, although every great nation considers itself to be an exceptional homeland, France’s particularity is that it associates that status with the genius that allows it the greatest theoretical feats and the greatest intellectual prowess. As a historian of ideas, philosopher, journalist, literary and political editorialist, director of collections in various publishing houses, Jean-François Revel’s biography fits like a glove with the epochal sense of what Michel Winock baptized as “the century of intellectuals.”

In his case, however, the slogan so often repeated in the Parisian 1960s can be reversed: unlike a whole generation seduced by that “cabal of devotees” (title of the book in which he criticized the intellectual caste infected by totalitarian ideologies), Revel preferred to be right with Aron rather than wrong with Sartre. He challenged with the weapons of the committed intellectual the kind of anti-capitalist and anti-liberal gnosticism that manifests itself in the disdain for facts and the real man. Against the prophetic attitude of his guild, which proclaims itself, as Voegelin noted, “connoisseur of the means to save the human race,” Revel dared to proclaim the nakedness of ideologies surrendered to radiant futures that pass for unwavering and sanctimonious adherence to the iron fist wielded by the salvific powers of the earth. As his boss wrote in the newspaper l’Express, Olivier Todd, he was a declared enemy of jargon, systems, gurus, social projects and utopias.

But this is, as we have already warned, only a half-truth, which leaves Revel, so to speak, on the good side of history in view of the well-known outcome of the Cold War. Because Revel’s liberalism came from the humanist left and he did not end up separating himself from a certain idea of socialism that he cultivated since his youth as a resistance fighter during the German occupation of France. He wrote his first works against the right (Lettre ouverte à la droite), against General de Gaulle and against the monarchical architecture of the Fifth Republic. He came to the conclusion that the greatest enemy of the socialism he desired was communism. He knew Mitterrand very well, and even became a candidate on his electoral lists during the long desert crossing of the socialist leader, whose political youth was, as is well known, quite different from his own (perhaps for that reason Revel was one of the first to portray that cold and impenetrable sphinx who arrived at the Elysée Palace in 1981). To put it in Oakeshott’s terms, Revel’s liberalism proceeded from the politics of faith but ended up being anchored, perhaps to his regret, in the politics of skepticism. Though never quite.

In How Democracies Perish, Revel warned that liberal democracy risks being a brief parenthesis in history, if the mental framework of Western leaders and public opinion remains a prisoner of bad conscience and political blindness. Almost naturally, and perhaps hastily, he shifted his interpretation of the red totalitarian threat to a new actor that was to replace it after the establishment of the New World Order: Islamist terrorism. This coalition of enemies explains to a large extent his bet on the American model, even though Revelian liberalism was, however, decidedly anti-Fukuyamaesque. In fact, he could rather be reproached for an excess of pessimism in his prognoses. The astuteness of reason seemed to lean toward the perverse side of history. Precisely at the moment when humanity perceived the need for a universal democracy, Revel understood that the Western democratic system “is corrupted, denaturalized, falsified at its core.” Little trace of messianism or democratic soteriology in his worldview.

An unrepentant liberal, Revel proposed in his works various remedies against democratic defeatism. This historical therapy could also be interpreted as an inner struggle against the psychological needs that the various forms of totalitarianism satisfy: overcoming nationalism, re-establishing the separation and balance of powers, matching the progress of knowledge with the efficacy of political action and decision. His theory of useless knowledge is, in this sense, symptomatic of his civilizational pessimism. The increase of knowledge in multiple fields of knowledge does not, according to Revel, have repercussions in a public space impervious to the rationalism of facts that thrives in civil society. By their attachment to the legends and prejudices of ideologies, the political-intellectual clercs continue to lead the masses along the path of chimeras.

This general attitude makes their increasingly enthusiastic defense of the United States a problematic and symptomatic element of their thinking. “If you erase anti-Americanism, you erase eighty percent of French political thought, both left and right,” he went so far as to say in an interview. This position undoubtedly reveals his public dissent. However, even he did not manage to remain aloof from the deformed image of the United States that prevails in the Hexagon.

Neither Marx nor Jesus?

For Revel America practically invented the idea of the future. While all previous societies, including modern ones, had their models in the past (the anticomania, for example, of the French revolutionaries, marvelously restored by Claude Mossé), the United States populates its imaginary with a society to come, a city on the hill to be inhabited by new men without stain. And Revel aspired precisely to a type of planetary democracy born of a second world revolution. According to the daring interpretation of Ni Marx ni Jésus [Neither Marx or Jesus], this second coming of the revolutionary spirit could only sprout by virtue of the particular historical dynamism of the United States of America, a “laboratory society” called to infect its way of life to all the countries of the world, for “revolution breaks down into two words: crisis and innovation.” It is here where one of the great errors of his understanding of historical facts can be pointed out.

Undoubtedly, he was right in understanding, perhaps before anyone else, that the revolution would not come from Moscow but from America. But, neither Marx nor Jesus? The American revolution is nothing but a particular and heterodox way of other Christians for another socialism. There is the Woke spawn to prove it, religious acrobatics, unhinged heresy of iconoclastic followers of both Marx and Jesus, twinned in the common devotion of victimocratic religion. It is no coincidence that the new European left expresses an undisguised admiration for this liberal and progressive America that fits in perfectly with its aspirations. When Revel was vituperative of the residues of totalitarian mentality in the European left despite the undeniable failures of real socialism, he was not wrong: his socialism could feel better represented in Washington. In a way, Augusto del Noce’s formula can be repeated: Marxism failed in the East because it triumphed in the West.

Edgar Morin, who by his own admission had lived his militancy in the French Communist Party during the forties and fifties of the last century as a form of religious mysticism, returned ecstatic from his stay with the “socialists” of California in the sixties. Thus he found an ideal that rejuvenated him and which he could not have defined in better terms: “Neo-Rousseauism, yearning for Christian purity, childlike warmth, libertarian tradition, utopian communism, Kathmandian rejection of the West.” Jean-Marie Domenach put it less nuanced in Esprit magazine in the 1970s, shortly after the publication of Neither Marx nor Jesus: “The United States is today the greatest communist country in the world.” Annie Kriegel recalled that communists “in their own way love America, as they feel attuned to its aspirations, its needs, the expectations that preside over the persistent use of the New World metaphor.” And he added: “Whether the entrance into the Promised Land is through migration or conversion, in both cases it has been necessary to tear oneself away from the ancient land of the Fall and Sin; it has been necessary, in person, to choose, to choose a new way of being in the world. The emigrant and the communist share the same brutal experience which is that of rupture.”

Trotsky, for his part, in a particularly revealing text, confirms this essential anthropological reality that nests in a revolutionary spirit common to modern Promethean projects: the Founding Fathers of Bolsheviks and Puritans share the same ancestors. After the Revolution, noted the creator of the Red Army, human life has become a Bivouac, that is to say, one of those camps set up provisionally to spend the night outdoors while waiting for the definitive dwelling. He wrote: “What is the use of solid houses,” the old believers of yesteryear asked, “if we are waiting for the coming of the Messiah? The Revolution does not build solid houses either; to compensate, it moves the people, crowds them in the same premises and builds barracks. Provisional barracks: such is the general aspect of its institutions. Not because it awaits the coming of the Messiah, not because it opposes his ultimate goal to the material process of organizing life, but because it strives, by constant research and experimentation, to find the best methods for building its final home. All its actions are sketches, drafts on a given theme.”

French Liberal… and American

Revel could have joined the mainstream of French liberalism, which is not that of giants like Tocqueville, but that other one portrayed by Lucien Jaume from his studies on Jacobin democracy and the 19th century. Far from enthroning the individual like the Scottish Enlightenment, French liberalism erases him. The French-style liberal individual, consecrated by the Reformation and confirmed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, must contend with the sovereign state of the Bodinian matrix, which, far from being weakened, was strengthened by the Revolution. In figures such as François Guizot and Victor Cousin, this effort to erase the individual by submitting him to the geometric spirit of administrative centralization was manifested. French liberalism was an eminently statist liberalism, also colored with a missionary and collectivist spirit, of genuine republican civil religion. The liberalism of figures such as Madame de Staël or Benjamin Constant, supporters of the protection of individual conscience and the rights of the individual against the State, did not join the main stream of the majority liberalism in France. The Jacobin anticomania leaned to the side of the liberty of the ancients, which demands that the interest of the City should absorb the energy of all. In The Republic of the French Republicans, the interpretation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was always selective. The Frenchman would only be recognized as a citizen in the capacity of soldier, taxpayer, voter or pupil of the republican school. The long shadow of Rousseau did not fade with Robespierre. French liberal humanity, beyond the universalist rhetoric, circulated along the path of a citizenship domesticated by the State. Paradoxes of French liberalism, Jaume calls them.

If we expand on this point, it is simply to point out that Revel could have perfectly followed the course of this French-style liberalism without betraying the foundations of his thought. If he did not do so, perhaps it was because Paris was no longer the Mecca of the Revolution and Moscow could not be. Washington remained as the Third Rome of socio-liberal cosmopolitanism. There was no lack of philosophical sources on which to base an American-style progressive liberalism. In fact, in the United States the liberal is, broadly speaking, a praying social democrat. This is the line of Herbert Croly, who called for the creation of a New Republic of “Jeffersonian ends with Hamiltonian means.” These are aspects that Patrick Deneen reminds us of in Why Liberalism Failed? For this new American liberalism “Democracy could no longer mean individual self-reliance based upon the freedom of individuals to act in accordance with their own wishes. Instead, it must be infused with a social and even religious set of commitments that would lead people to recognize their participation in the ‘brotherhood of mankind.'” Baptist pastor Walter Rauschenbusch deepened this sensibility by proposing a Kingdom of God on earth, a new form of democracy that would not accept human nature as it is, but move it in the direction of its improvement.” Dewey proposed a “public socialism” and Croly a “flagrant socialism,” but for both of them this socialism was at the service of the construction of a new individual freed from the bonds of the past. It is a current that reaches as far as Saul Alinsky in the 20th century, Obama’s inspiration, Robin Hood of the Chicago suburbs, friend of the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (another convert, alas, to Americanism) and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s doctoral thesis.

Aron recalled in his memoirs that at the end of the 1970s Revel still considered himself a socialist, although in the paradoxical sense that “only liberalism can fulfill the hopes of socialism.” A liberal by the name of socialist, this particular vision manifested itself in a privileged way in The Totalitarian Temptation, whose first lines read: “Today’s world is evolving towards socialism. The main obstacle to socialism is not capitalism, but communism. The society of the future must be planetary, which can only be realized at the cost, if not of the disappearance of the nation-states, at least of their subordination to a world political order.” It is not forcing things too much to affirm that this bet on socialist-liberal, globalist and anti-national, de-ideologized and technocratic future-centrism makes Revel an intellectual precursor of Macronism, that is, a form of international-socialism of a Saint-Simonian cut operating behind the mask of European institutions impatient to dissolve the nation-states that founded them—institutions immersed in a federalist race that only disguises, with a kindly countenance, the true reality of the American hegemon to which they have bowed, at least since Jean Monnet. “He is not the man of the Americans,” de Gaulle said with derision about the French investment banker and “Father: of Europe, “he is a great American.”

Liberalism: A Socialism with a Human Face?

When a country subordinates its foreign policy to its domestic policy, that is to say, to the well-being of its citizens,” said Revel, “it can be considered more socialist than when it acts the other way around.” Here, at last, is the socialism with a human face so often invoked on the other side of the Wall. A socialism centered on the administration of things from which emanates the idol of material well-being. And autistic in terms of the internal concord and external security that defines the government of men. It was nothing new, in fact. It was not for nothing that Baron Hertling had already warned of this turn in contemporary politics in 1893: “It was not so long ago that word politics exclusively designated foreign policy. The respective strengths of the various states, their reciprocal relations, friendly or strained, their varying alliances, their projects and aspirations: such was the exclusive object of interest to diplomats and statesmen… Then the political interest changed direction, falling especially on questions of internal order, such as the constitution and administration of the state, brought up to date by the then so-called constitutionalism.” It is a tendency that Revel tirelessly cheered in his work, however much his pessimism made him lament, once again, the lamentable nationalist resistances of the nation-state. Socialist internationalism is perfectly expressed in this affirmation of the “liberal” Revel: “As long as the system of nation-states persists, democracy will retreat. And as long as democracy regresses, socialism cannot be established.” This socialism is nothing other than the liberal utopia of a disembodied democracy. And we can say that never has so much progress been made as in our time in this suicidal direction. Would Revel have deplored it?

The reality is that the political model of the European Union has long since veered towards a new form of liberal-socialist Welfare totalitarianism, a system, therefore, that defies Revel’s rigid antitheses: the convergence of liberal democracy and a new form of totalitarianism without violence. Did Revel forget the lessons and prophecies of the great Tocqueville about the disturbing horizon that looms over a democracy given over to paternalistic despotism? Would he have celebrated this evolution or would he have interpreted it as the fulfillment of his darkest prognoses about the inevitable infection of totalitarian ideological residues in the weak Western democracies? If so, if liberal melancholy had definitively prevailed over his socialist faith, the hypothetical Revelian analysis would resemble today the one offered to us from the post-communist East by authors such as Ryszard Legutko, who in The Demons of Democracy presents a merciless diagnosis of the European Union: the EU is today the EURSS. Contrary to what many think,” says Legutko, “the demoliberal world does not deviate too much, in important aspects, from the world dreamed by the communist man who, in spite of his enormous collective efforts, was unable to build within the communist institutions. To tell the truth, there are differences, but not so great as to be appreciated and accepted unconditionally by someone who has had first-hand experience with both systems and has passed from one to the other.” It is precisely this biographical experience that places this Polish philosopher, MEP of the conservative group, above the outdated vision of Revel, who never really suffered totalitarianism in the flesh, even though he always denounced it with vehemence and courage. Compared to this lucidity coming from the East, his judgments today seem petrified in a world that is no longer ours.

Yankee Apocalypse: The Return of Trotsky

If Revel ignored the fact that the totalitarian utopia was introduced under other guises in the mainstream of liberal democracies, his bet on the United States also overlooked a feature that John Gray masterfully exposed in Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. This apocalyptic tendency of American politics was especially aggravated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001. ” In claiming a foundation in a universal ideology,” Gray asserts, “the United States belongs with states such as post-revolutionary France and the former Soviet Union, but unlike them it has been remarkably stable.”

Revel’s ideological evolution does not differ much from that of the old leftists of the Trotskyist matrix who in the United States founded the Neocon current, such as Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Daniel Moynihan or Midge Decter. Michael Novak confirms: “Practically all of this group had been men and women of the left, and more specifically, of the sectors that were further to the left than the Democratic Party, perhaps among the most left-wing 2 or 3% of the American electorate. Some were economic socialists; others were political social democrats.” Gray, for his part, is very explicit about the revolutionary Marxist invoice of the thinking of this group of authors: “It is too simple to view neo-conservatives as reformulating Trotskyite theories in rightwing terms, but the habits of thought of the far Left have had a formative influence. It is not the content of Leninist theory that has been reproduced but its style of thinking. Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution suggests existing institutions must be demolished in order to create a world without oppression. A type of catastrophic optimism, which animates much of Trotsky’s thinking, underpins the neoconservative policy of exporting democracy.” It is the policy that Revel supported in his last years, albeit in the minority of a French atmosphere very hostile to the United States and its geopolitical projects.

Like the neocons, the planetary project of disembodied democracy defended by Revel retained a utopian matrix that dispensed with the national body, presenting both (democracy and nation) almost as opposites. Revel even spoke out in favor of the humanitarian right of interference, together with Bernard Kouchner and Mario Bettati. The latter, a French jurist and professor of international law, retains his good or bad reputation thanks to his terrible apothegm, worthy of appearing in the pages of the Yankee Apocalypse: “sovereignty is the mutual guarantee of torturers.” Very bad company. It was not necessary to wait twenty years of US military occupation in Afghanistan to understand that a democracy without a body is a much more utopian project than that of a body without democracy. The return of the Taliban to power is a great lesson against the multicolored democratism of the armed missionaries and against the discourse of the beautiful souls who support it.

Sovereignty as the Origin of all Evils: The Leap towards Utopia

It is one of the great errors of Revel’s political vision, which manifests itself in his rejection of the idea of national sovereignty. To a large extent this error is explained by his typically modern conception of political concepts. He probably understood, not without reason, that the French understanding of sovereignty, which starts with Bodin’s absolute and perpetual power and culminates in Rousseau’s general will, was incompatible with the liberal society to which he aspired. But this is precisely the impasse of a certain liberalism. Instead of betting on an alternative model of popular sovereignty, such as Althusius’ medieval one, it bet on the anti-political denunciation of national sovereignty. With modern sovereignty Revel despised not only a historical concept that can (and should) be criticized but the very essence of the political, which cannot be rejected without denying reality itself. It is what is called in France jeter le baby avec l’eau du bain (throwing the baby out with the bath water). Liberalism’s distrust of political power is all the more paradoxical because liberals began by conceding everything to the Leviathan in the construction of the new man and the new society. To take back with one hand what they have given with the other: this is the uncomfortable position of the liberal soul, eternally in conflict between its anarchic pole and its macro-archic pole.

Raymond Aron, who was personally fond of Revel and who collaborated with him in their common journalistic vocation, masterfully portrayed in his memoirs the aporias of his thought: “What impressed me in him as a writer was the simultaneous presence of an authentic culture and the art of making the polemic comprehensible to all readers. His books, which simplified without vulgarizing the great debates, were inspired by an anti-communism that he himself described as ‘visceral’ and found a large audience on both sides of the Atlantic, which demonstrated his success in such a difficult genre. At the same time, I was cross—and I told him so when our relations became closer—at his insistence on calling himself a ‘socialist’, of the leap he was taking towards utopia by rising up against national sovereignties, in his opinion the evil par excellence, the origin of all evils.” Once again, there is in Revel a skepticism that does not get off the ground, a utopia that refuses to die.

Indeed, Revel had written in The Totalitarian Temptation that Maurras had triumphed and Marx had failed. A puzzling judgment: with the principle of national sovereignty and the cult of the nation associated with the State, the principles of absolute monarchy were clandestinely triumphing in the modern world. This partly explains the anti-Gaullist origin of his intellectual career and his support for Mitterrand. His first works, Le style du général [The General’s Style] and L’absolutisme inefficace [The Inadequacies of Absolutism], fired their argumentative ammunition against General de Gaulle and the monarchical architecture of the Fifth Republic. As an interpreter of the genealogy of ideas he was not without reason but, in this respect at least, he failed to see that in contesting the Gaullian enterprise against the incipient Europeanist federalism and the military hegemony of NATO he was siding with another totalitarian temptation, a temptation perhaps more subtle but ultimately also more effective than that embodied by the Soviets.

In the 1980s, with the reprinting of his book against de Gaulle, he did not renounce his judgments against the general and what he considered as historical errors of his interpretation, but he ended significantly with these words: “De Gaulle was great, not because he was infallible, but because he was capable of that speed of decision and action which is the only mark of true leaders, and which allows us to say that, had they not been there, better or worse, the world would in any case have been different. Of how many can the same be said?” Had he finally understood that the greatness of the great stylists of politics ends up being in the end indispensable to sustain, not only democracy but also the prosperity of free peoples? We do not know what Revel would have said or written about the course of events between his death in 2006 and today. But perhaps this sentence pointed in a more stimulating direction than the one he reflected in previous writings.

Carlo Gambescia has masterfully portrayed in Liberalismo triste the features of a realistic liberal tradition, sentinel of the facts and attached to the regularities of politics. It is a melancholic tradition that knows well, as Berlin pointed out, that “from the twisted wood from which man is made… nothing entirely straight can emerge.” This sad liberalism has its feet firmly on the ground and feels awkward trying to lift them off. “It is melancholy proud in Burke; benevolent in Tocqueville; Faustian in Weber; aloof, perhaps too much so, in Pareto; restless, notwithstanding scientific habit, in Mosca; reasoning in Ortega; feverish in Röpke, methodical in Jouvenel; serene in Aron; humble in Freund; autoironic in Berlin.”

There are no willows in Revelian melancholy to inhabit this Olympus of thought. His vision did not entirely expurgate the utopias which, on this or the other side of the Atlantic, imagined “new heaven and a new earth” for men. He did not become a true sad liberal. Fortunately, he was not a sad liberal either. Let’s keep that.

Domingo González Hernández holds a PhD in political philosophy from the Complutense University of Madrid. He is a professor at the University of Murcia. His recent book is René Girard, maestro cristiano de la sospecha (René Girard, Christian Teacher of Suspicion) He is also the Director of the podcast “La Caverna de Platón” for the newspaper La Razón. He has explored the political possibilities of Girardian mimetic theory in more than twenty studies and academic papers. His latest publication is “La monarquía sagrada y el origen de lo político: una hipótesis farmacológica” (“Sacred monarchy and the origin of politics: a pharmacological hypothesis”), Xiphias Gladius, 2020. This article appears through the kind courteesy of La gaceta de la Iberosfera.

Robert Badinter, or the Errors of a Wise Man

The unanimous tributes paid to Robert Badinter leave a large part of his work in the dark, and overlook certain flaws in his thinking, certain deleterious effects of his political decisions, the price of which we are cruelly paying today, and certain ideological inconsistencies. We take a critical look at the career of this great figure of the humanist left, and the consequences of his actions.

By a natural law of things, without any relief of sentence, without the race to the abyss suffering any special consideration, at the end of his old age turned into a prison, following an irrevocable sentence, tortured for a long time, life has just condemned Robert Badinter to death. After the august Jacques Delors, who had the right to a national tribute at Les Invalides under the great European flag, his imaginary true nation, it is now the turn of the venerable Robert Badinter to pass, without a trace of irony, to head off into the sunset. One by one, the French giants of the early 20th century are departing.

A committed man gifted with charisma and a singular art for the phrase, his intellectual positions and biases, however questionable, do not prevent him from being shown a certain respect, like that owed to one’s adversary, and take on an obstinate and courageous air. Badinter, a life-long struggle, as we like to repeat since his death. This intellectual of the law, professor and academic, Minister of Justice, sage among the sages of the Palais Royal, then Senator, was a leading figure—a figure of the progressive left; a humanist figure; a heroic figure in defense of the oppressed. A totem without taboos. A certain section of the Catholic press praised “this force of law” and “this bulwark against populism,” whose aim was to bring the law fully into the Republic, so that, through the Constitutional Council, respect for fundamental principles would triumph.

Once we have said all that, and given Robert Badinter his due, it is time to return to the many pitfalls of his work and thought. Some have said that he was one of the last men of the Enlightenment. He was, for the better, a disciple of Condorcet in finesse and elegance, in his ideas on liberty and tolerance, in his mathematical sense applied to ideals in the form of constitutional equations. And above all, for the worst, born into a class that had succeeded, through social mobility, in replacing the old ruling class and seizing power, while carrying the new ideas of his time, universalist, generous and tolerant, Monsieur de Badinter was one of the great bourgeoisie of the left, capable of great indignation, lavish in humanism, generous in virtue and abundant by decree, sure of his duty: to impose his ideas on the people as a whole, applying them to reality without worrying about their consequences. This liberal, progressive bourgeoisie, who reaped the benefits of the French Revolution, was always at the forefront, on the correct side, marching with the party of order. It is easy to rant about the plight of criminals from below when you are not looking up to those above; it is easy to make humanist judgments about migrants, welcoming people, the Other, when you have spent your life in four arrondissements of Paris. It is easy to be comfortable in your own office, condoning and condemning with relativism, but it is also easy to have class contempt. There are the enlightened know-it-alls, who have understood; and then there are the others, the lowly folk, inhabited by all manner of wrongs, vices and crimes. Robert Badinter, his eyebrow furrowed, had the arrogant facility to declare that if you were in favor of the death penalty, you were a fascist; that if you were in favor of the obvious regulation of immigration, you were a racist; so many cookie-cutter, self-righteous judgments that never suffer debate.

Robert Badinter was passionate about human rights. What a passion that was! It was this passion that drove him for years to defend the oppressed, the persecuted of every stripe. In the name of human rights! Joseph de Maistre’s gentle irony of knowing the rights of Italians, Frenchmen and Russians, but ignoring those of a bodiless, abstract man, pure concept. Karl Marx spoke of the rights of the bourgeois, which made it possible to lecture others while ignoring the misfortunes of those closer at home. And it is at this very moment that Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s words in Emile make sense: “Beware those cosmopolitans who search far and wide in their books for duties they disdain to fulfill around them. Such a philosopher loves the Tartars, so as to be exempt from loving his neighbors.”

To Bernard Pivot’s question: “What would you like to be reincarnated as?” the wise man replied: “As a fox, because even if he is trapped, he can cut off his own tail to be free.” Ah, freedom! Cherished freedom! The one that Eluard’s poem haunts school classes about! Here too, it is astonishing that Mr. Badinter, shouting his passion for freedom at the top of his voice, had nothing to say about the vaccination pass and the suspension of unvaccinated hospital staff. No outcry, no humanist, left-wing, indignant reflection for poor people who find themselves with nothing from one day to the next. Similarly, when Edouard Balladur’s government sought in 1991 to work, supposedly, against massive and unregulated immigration, it was the Constitutional Council, of which Badinter was president at the time, that rejected the Pasqua bill in the name of France’s humanist and universalist values. The former Ricard executive himself denounced the “dictatorship of judges,” who, depending on circumstances favorable or not to their ideas, use the law and its values to make politics rain or shine.

When the Yellow Vests demonstrated and brandished the President’s head on a pike, in 2020, it was this same defender of freedom who vituperated these good people, finding it odious, almost fascist, that such an effigy should be brandished. But democracy is not all smooth sailing! It cannot be summed up in a conversation on the set of a TV Parliamentary Channel, nor can it be reduced to parliamentary palaver. Violence is a fact of politics, because it is exercised as a perpetual balance of power, and it can be seen in history as resolutely tragic.

Robert Badinter was not a politician. Like Jacques Delors, of the same generation but operating at a different level, he was never an elected official. His career can be summed up by the fact that, in the 1980s, he was the strongman of the judiciary, accompanying the ideas and interests of a new category of decision-makers known as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (VGE), Jean-Jacques Servan Schreiber, under the leadership of Pierre Mendès-France, an anti-Gaullist and Atlanticist whose involvement and influence on political ideas in the early years of the Fifth Republic is still unmeasured. Badinter, a handsome man with slicked-back hair, an elegant suit and modern, close-cut hair, was a figure of change that was to follow the end of Gaullism, which, it should be remembered, was a national rally for a sovereign France against Europeanist yes-manism and American Atlanticism. The much-vaunted liberation of society, applied on those down below, needed to find figures from above to make it palatable in politics. It found Robert Badinter.

His famous battle was for the abolition of the death penalty. He was the driving force behind this project; he was its face. It would be all too easy to believe that a single man can, by his own will, change things in this way, without there being any underlying trend. The abolition of the death penalty was already on the shelves of the cupboard of the Second Republic; it was already supported by Victor Hugo, it was enacted in other countries in the 19th century, in Portugal or in the Netherlands; it was already in the program of VGE in 1974.

The death penalty is a thorny issue to defend point-by-point and peremptorily. Such a problem does not presuppose a dogmatic solution. It is not that either party is wrong to be for or against it. Robert Badinter was not a man of faith or the law. He started from very precise and fixed ideas, the effects of which must be assessed. We refer you only to Father Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, Yes to the Death Penalty, which summarizes the conceptual history of the death penalty and debunks the very modern idea that it is a denial of civilization, when in fact it has been practiced within civilization. It was the sacredness of life that justified the death penalty, at least from a traditional point of view: “Thou shalt not kill” was, like incest, a prohibition. Its transgression earned the murderer radical exclusion from the human community, following a public ceremony. This same death penalty in 1981 threatened so few people that it should have been the last measure taken by a left-wing government. It was the first under François Mitterrand.

Opposition to the death penalty remained numerous: religious opposition, which questioned whether a human community could substitute itself for God by taking life, turning the “Thou shalt not kill” principle against itself; conservative and Catholic opposition, which was also logically opposed to abortion. In the face of this “right-wing” opposition, progressive “left-wing” abolitionism advocated its humanist logic of the credit due to every human being, first and foremost a victim of his or her environment. This has led to a kind of lax degeneration of justice, allowing a judge to see a custom in the rape of a woman by a Pakistani migrant.

The first flaw in Robert Badinter’s thinking is that it is permeated by that bourgeois instinct for whom, outside profit, nothing is sacred, neither death nor life, and which makes it criminal to take the life of a despicable murderer, but normal to take it from a future innocent baby—to be both, without the slightest problem, against the death penalty and in favor of abortion. This Left, therefore, good in every way, is in fact a simulacrum of the Left to lyrically conceal the abandonment of concrete progressivism, the kind that was not intended to save the heads of a handful of scum, but to improve the lives of ordinary people. It was at this very moment that a vast abolitionist nebula, meditated in universities in the aftermath of 1968 by agents of French Theory, sought to create a tohu-bohu, a notion dear to Michel Foucauld, in society. Our twisted and tainted elites had to dismantle the totems of our society and break down its taboos. A few years ago, a few renowned intellectuals and committed figures had sought to abolish the age of sexual consent and decriminalize relations with minors under the age of fifteen.

Another pitfall is the assumption that man is infinitely good and infinitely lovable, that it is society that perverts him and that he is unintentionally evil. The death penalty had been applied in a Christian society, based on the Gospel itself. Jesus was on the cross, with two thieves at His side. One mocks Jesus, the other rebukes him: “What is happening to us is just, while he is innocent” and adds, “Jesus, remember me when you are in your kingdom.” This prompts the Lord to say, “Truly, I say to you, you will be the first to enter the kingdom of heaven.” In a few lines, everything is there: a man can be condemned for his crime; by the justice of men, he can be led to die, but he can be saved by divine justice. Traditional Christian society played both sides: God’s justice and man’s justice, earthly life and metaphysical life, body on one side and soul on the other. Our post-Christian society, secularized to the extent that it has digested Christian ideas and done away with them, is witnessing the emergence of a form of justice that gives itself the proper role of executioner and priest. This kind of justice condemns while absolving; it punishes while judging a man’s redemption. In his 1981 speech to Parliament, Abbé Badinter, dare we say it, explained that “however terrible, however odious their acts, there are no men on this earth whose guilt is total and which one must always totally despair about.” This secularized mercy, this unshakeable faith in redemption, forgiveness, conversion to virtue and goodness, sometimes contributes to an obscene fascination that made Fourniret, Bodin or Dutroux famous, and sometimes to an unhealthy victimization that makes the executioner as much a victim as his own victim. Forgiving an executioner is a personal process, and that of little Philippe Bertrand’s mother commands respect, but it is not up to justice to show mercy and have feelings. In short, Patrick Henry is a kind of Saint Blandine, a martyr of the arena? Is it not dishonest to equate an innocent with a scoundrel?

Badinter made a major intellectual error: he confused philosophy with justice. They are two different categories. A man is not guilty, yes, as a concept. When we put a man on trial, we do so in the context of his crime, in relation to the law, and not on the basis of a concept. This philosophy is accompanied by a rhetorical art of clichés, peremptory elucidations, evasions and slips, ideas asserted with authority, false truths and true political ideas, adulterated concepts mixed with pathos and lyricism—which has raised almost no criticism.

The death penalty is capital punishment, because it is at the top of the pyramid of punishments. It is the basis for all possible sanctions in response to crimes or misdeeds. The abolition of capital punishment has shaken the pyramid of penalties and sanctions to the point of disordering the whole, and leading to a tohu-bohu in society where, to caricature, as Jean Ferrat sang in “Tout Berzingue” [“Full-Throttle”]: “steal an apple and you’re done for, shoot a man, you get probation.” All these arguments—”the death penalty is not a deterrent,” “it doesn’t make people think,” “it adds blood on top of blood”—have their share of truth, if only the debate did not stop there. If we believe that justice is reparation by equivalence, then it is only natural that when an innocent person is murdered, justice should give itself a monopoly on legitimate vengeance, to prevent all hatred and personal vengeance, to make reparation for a crime and balance the loss of a life against a criminal whose imprisonment would ensure him, at times, certain moments of happiness—when he has taken a life. And besides, is there not a worse failure of justice and Mr. Badinter’s lofty ideals when a rehabilitated criminal relapses into crime, when a murderer takes another life, shatters a family that will never recover, when prison no longer terrifies the bad souls it houses? It is enough to make one despair of the naivety that fails to see that man is on the slippery slope to evil. Mr. Badinter’s justice system has caused suffering and harm to the people; society has been traumatized by cases, victimized by insecurity, demoralized by injustice, disgusted by the failure of justice. This naïve and generous ideal allowed furious, ideological magistrates to give free rein to their whims, and degenerate intellectuals to spend their pity on criminals. The death penalty had its aesthetics in Montherlant, de Maistre and Baudelaire; the scoundrel became an idol of the counter-culture; the underworld theater of those years had its Cid with Roberto Succo.

“The system is simple: we have a justice of freedom.” In his almost five years as minister, Robert Badinter profoundly transformed the justice system: he abolished the State Security Court, put an end to the “Security and Freedom” text, reformed the Napoleonic penal code; he worked to reintegrate criminals, abolished the high-security wings, while conforming to European law. At the end of his life, he came to believe that prison was torture. Man as a concept is not guilty, and if we like to think that freedom defines man, then we cannot lock him up, either. Man’s inseparability is replaced by his “inclosability.” Let’s abolish prisons! What a program!

“Of all the trials a lawyer can go through, we had forty-five minutes to save a man’s life, that’s the most frightening vertigo a human being can have.” Fair enough. But why, then, did he never write a line, never dwell on the fate—just or unjust, that is not the question—about Bastien-Thiry, Degueldre and Claude Piegt? Jean Dutourd, the bête noire of the German-Pratin world, had the beginnings of an answer: the death penalty should never be abolished for political enemies. The same Badinter, when asked if he would have voted for the death of the king, replied that “the king’s head had to fall for the people to be sovereign.” There you have it. If there is one more inconsistency to be found in his body of work, we have found it.

Nicolas Kinosky is at the Centres des Analyses des Rhétoriques Religieuses de l’Antiquité and teaches Latin. This articles appears through the very kind courtesy La Nef.

Drone Ideology for Volunteers

In the realm of ideology in Russia we have the following picture.

The state has done a lot to marginalize radical liberals. This process began in 2000 and took 24 years with several administrations. The influence of liberals on Russia’s ideology has steadily declined, but it is still very significant—primarily in culture, education, and science. Only liberals or those who do not receive clear and precise instructions from above can fight liberalism in such an uncertain and protracted manner.

At the same time, patriotism was growing steadily, but just as slowly—sometimes freezing on the same frame for a year or more. This was demanded by both our Crimea and the Special Military Operation (SMO). But even here the authorities acted as cautiously and uncertainly as they did with the dismantling of liberalism.

But new cadres had to be trained, and the main focus was the training of a special type—pure volunteers, ideological drones, managerial drones. This is how an interesting phenomenon emerged—a class of ideologically neutral statesmen oriented toward power and the managerial vertical as such.

At first, they tried to introduce a simulacrum of ideology, but then they gave up on that, too. Mass training of young and not so young volunteers of power has given birth to a whole new managerial class. It somewhat resembles the functioning of a computer or Artificial Intelligence. It does not matter what data the operator loads, what commands he gives. A computer is not supposed to reason. The main thing is that the algorithms work correctly.

Volunteers—carriers of zero-ideology—are now trained on an industrial scale. This is half good (they are not liberals), half bad (they are not patriots). The SMO and the war with the West (it is a long time coming, maybe forever) requires a further and rapid shift in the center of gravity toward an ideology of meaningful patriotism. Zero-ideology carriers are perfectly fine-tuned drones, and they are perfectly suited for this purpose—to process a patriotic program. But the operator has to hit the “enter” button. And the operator’s finger trembles. And the government volunteers are still processing what they have. For now—it is a testing ground and a laboratory. But it is time to get the program up and running.

But this principle was transferred to ideology, where such a model looks strange. An ideological class with zero ideology, a political drone. It is no longer liberal (minus-ideology), but not yet patriotic (plus-ideology).

At the same time, other neural networks are gradually forming in society and the nation—with a pronounced patriotic content. These are not zero-volunteers, but plus-volunteers—volunteers, heroes of the front and rear. The state stands on them. They create Victory, and therefore history. They are ruled by the spirit.

Zero-volunteers have nothing against patriots. But they have nothing for them, either. They have a different algorithm. It is time to unite these networks.

I hope that after the elections the authorities will hit the “enter” button to upload to society a full-fledged patriotic program, the general outlines of which are quite clearly outlined by the President, the decree on traditional values, the concept of foreign policy, etc. Plus-ideology, the foundations of patriotism are announced and outlined by the authorities. It is logical if their implementation starts in full force after the elections.

After all, it is time for us to start winning.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitika.

Featured: Golconde, by René Magritte; painted in 1953.

The Civilizational Approach

To effectively confront the West in the war of civilizations that Russia is already waging, we must take into account the hierarchy of plans.

The highest level is identity:

  • what is the identity of the enemy (who are we basically at war with?);
  • what is our own identity;
  • what is the identity of the other civilizational actors?

We have to start with such a civilizational map. And already at this level we encounter a problem: the enemy has penetrated so deeply into our own civilization that he has partially hijacked the control of meanings, mental structures to determine who is who—not only from outside Russia, but also from within it. Therefore, we need to start with clearing the mental field, the sovereignization of consciousness.

Here is the next problem: the so-called civilizational approach. The enemy has managed to impose on Russian socio-humanitarian science that the civilizational approach is either wrong, marginal, or optional. But. The rejection of the civilizational approach automatically means only one thing: full recognition of the universality of the paradigm of Western civilization and consent to external control of the consciousness of Russian society by those with whom we are at war.

In other words, anyone who questions the civilizational approach automatically becomes a foreign agent—in the truest sense. It does not matter whether this is intentional, foolish or out of inertia. But now it is only thus and no other way. Only a civilizational approach allows us to talk about a sovereign public consciousness, and thus about sovereign science and sovereign education.

This is the last call for Russian humanitarian science: either we rapidly move to the positions of the civilizational approach (Russia = sovereign civilization), or we write a letter of resignation. Sometimes the increase of scientific knowledge is achieved by subtraction, not addition—if we subtract nonsense, toxic algorithms, subversive epistemological strategies, in a word, the liberal virus of Westernism.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitika.

Featured: The Triumph of Civilization, by Jacques Reattu; painted ca. 1794-1798.

Vladimir Putin and Tucker Carlson: The Geopolitics of Dialogue

Why is Tucker Carlson’s interview momentous for both the West and Russia?

Let us start with the simpler part—Russia. Here, Tucker Carlson has become a focal point of convergence for two different—polar—segments of Russian society: the ideological patriots and the elite Westernizers who nevertheless remain loyal to Putin and the Special Military Operation (SMO). For the patriots, Tucker Carlson is simply ours. He is a traditionalist, a right-wing conservative, a staunch opponent of liberalism. This is what walking to the Russian Tsar looks like in the 21st century.

Putin does not often interact with the brightest representatives of the fundamentally conservative camp. And the attention that the Kremlin pays him kindles the heart of a patriot, inspiring him to continue the conservative-traditionalist course in Russia itself. Now it is possible and necessary to do so: the Russian authorities have decided on an ideology. We have taken this path and we will not turn away from it. But patriots are always afraid that we will turn back. No.

On the other hand, the Westernizers have also breathed a sigh of relief: “Well, everything is not so bad in the West, and there are good and objective people there; we told you! Let’s be friends at least with such a West, Westernizers think, even though the rest of the globalist liberal West does not want to be friends, but only bombards us with sanctions and missiles and cluster bombs, killing our women, children and the elderly. We are at war with the liberal West; let there be friendship with the conservative West.
Thus, in the person of Tucker Carlson, Russian patriots and Russian Westernizers (already more and more Russian and less Western) have come to a consensus.

In the West itself, the situation is even more fundamental. Tucker Carlson is a symbolic figure. He is now the main symbol of an America that hates Biden, liberals and globalists and is preparing to vote for Trump. Trump, Carlson and Musk, and Texas Governor Abbott, are the faces of the impending American Revolution, this time the Conservative Revolution. And now Russia is tapping into this already quite powerful resource. No, it is not about Putin’s support for Trump; that could easily be minimized in a war with the United States. Carlson’s visit is about something else: about the fact that Biden and his maniacs have actually attacked a great nuclear power with the hands of Kiev terrorists, and humanity is about to be destroyed. Nothing more, nothing less.

And the world globalist media continues to spin Marvel-series for the infantile, in which the spider-man Zelensky magically defeats the Kremlin’s “Dr. Evil” with the help of superpowers and magic piglets. But that is just a cheap, silly TV series. And in reality, it is all about the use of nuclear weapons and possibly the destruction of mankind. Tucker Carlson has offered a reality check: does the West realize what it is doing, pushing the world towards the Apocalypse? There is a real Putin and a real Russia, not these staged characters and sets from Marvel. Look at what the globalists have done and what we are standing right up to! And it is not the content of the Putin interview; it is the very fact that a man like Tucker Carlson visited a country like Russia and a politician like Putin at a time like this.

Tucker Carlson’s arrival in Moscow may be the last chance to stop the extinction of humanity. And the gigantic billion-dollar attention to this momentous interview on the part of humanity itself, as well as the frenzied inhuman rage of Biden, the globalists, and the world’s decay-addled philistines, is evidence that this humanity is aware of the seriousness of what is happening. The only way to save the world is to stop now. And to do that, America must elect Trump. And choose Tucker Carlson. And Ilon Musk. And Abbott. And we get a chance to stand on the edge of the abyss. And compared to that, everything else is secondary. Liberalism and its agenda have brought humanity to a dead end.

Now the choice is: either liberals or humanity. Tucker Carlson chooses humanity, and that is why he came to Moscow to see Putin. And everyone in the world realized what he came for and how important it was.

The content of the interview was not sensational. Much more important is its very fact. And the photo of President Vladimir Putin talking to the hero of American patriotism, the indomitable Tucker Carlson. Conservatives of all countries united. In a multipolar world, the West, too, must have its share. But Western civilization will be the last to join BRICS.

Sleepy Joe then came to, and having watched with horror Putin’s conversation with Tucker Carlson, decided to interfere in world affairs. At first, Blinken and Nuland advised him to just declare that no such interview had even happened, that it was fake news, readily “disproved” by fact-checkers, and anyone who claims that there was an interview was a bellowing conspiracy theorist. But that initial plan was rejected, and Biden decided to honestly state that, contrary to the findings of the prosecutors’ probe, he is not a senile old madman out of his mind. “That’s not true, I’m not a senile old madman,” Biden indignantly denied the prosecutors’ findings…. And then forgot what he wanted to say next.

President Putin has spoken clearly about our Old Lands. It is important. The West will not get them. And Ukrainians live on them and will live on them, if Zelensky, Umerov and Syrsky, who have the most distant relation to the Malorussians, do not destroy all Malorussians and Malorussian women in the near future. Then there will be no Ukrainians left. And the Old Lands will have to be populated by someone else. God forbid we live to see that. On the agenda is the revolt of the Malorussians against the anti-Ukrainian puppet government, which has subjected Ukrainians to a real genocide by its policy.

The interview of Putin with Tucker Carlson is the most successful move by the Russian media strategy during the entire time of the SMO. Of course, the initiative clearly came from the brilliant American journalist himself, but responding to it and supporting it was a creative, brilliant decision by the Kremlin. Carlson hacks into the system of globalist propaganda by telling the truth of the people, of society, in spite of the systematized lies of the elites. A win-win, but difficult, a heroic move: the truth of the people against the lies of the elites. Putin has something to say to both the West and the East. And they want to hear his speech, his arguments, to know his picture of the world, his views on the future of Russia and humanity. On this depends, in many respects, whether this humanity itself will exist or not. Ask honestly, you will get an honest answer.

The number of views of Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson on social network X has far exceeded 100 million [as of this article]. I think cumulatively the interview will be viewed by a billion.

Let us emphasize once again: Tucker Carlson is not just a journalist and not even just a non-conformist journalist, he is a well-established and consistent (paleo) conservative with a clear and well-thought-out ideology, value system and world picture. And his visit to Russia is not a pursuit of sensation, but part of an ideological program. It is a political visit. With Tucker Carlson’s visit, the conservative wing of American society (at least half of it) will come to define its attitude toward Russia and Putin. Tucker Carlson is a conservative politician, traditionalist and public figure. In his person, conservative America asked the President of Russia the questions it was really interested in and got answers. This is a double blow to the globalist liberal lobby in the US—external from Putin and internal from Tucker Carlson (read Trump). Interestingly, there is also such a thing as MAGA communism in the US—Jackson Hinkle, Infrared, etc. These are friends of conservative Tucker Carlson, yet Marxists who support Trump and call for Make America Great Again (MAGA). Thus, there are also normal leftists. And together they are determined to crush liberal hegemony.
Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson has already led to Biden’s unseating in the presidential race and essentially Trump’s victory in the US election. That is what real soft-power is—just one thing, and history now flows in a different direction.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitika.

Arché and Montesquieu’s Principles

E principio oriuntur omnia ( Cicero, De re publica).

1.

In the Esprit des lois Montesquieu wrote “Having examined what are the laws of every government, let us now see those which are relative to its principle. Between the nature of government and its principle there is this difference: that it is its nature that makes it so, and its principle that makes it act. The one is its particular structure, the other the human passions that make it move.” The importance that the President à mortier attached to the “principle of government” was anticipated in Book I, when in illustrating the foundations of the laws of each people he writes, “They must be in harmony with the nature and principle of the government established, or intended to be established, whether forming it, as political laws do; or maintaining it, as civil laws do.”

To find the principle of each government, Montesquieu starts from the nature of it, and in particular who “exercises supreme power, and, secondly, how he can accomplish it,” and concludes the chapter thus, “I need nothing more to find the three principles of the above governments; they flow naturally from them. I will begin with the republican government and first speak of the democratic” of which he points to virtue as the principle. Immediately afterwards he explains why “A monarchical government or a despotic one does not need much probity to maintain or sustain itself. The force of the laws in the one, the arm of the prince always raised in the other, regulate or govern everything. But in a popular state an extra spring is needed, which is none other than virtue… for in a monarchy, where he who enforces the laws judges himself above them, virtue is needed to a lesser extent than in a popular government, where he who enforces the laws feels that he himself is subject to them, and will bear the burden of them.”

And, in the republics themselves, democracies need far more of it than aristocratic governments: “Greek politicians who lived in a popular government recognized virtue as the only force capable of sustaining it;” while “virtue is also necessary in aristocratic government, although it is not required there as absolutely… By nature of the constitution, it is therefore necessary for that body (the aristocracy, ed.) to possess virtue.” And this lesser virtue (because it is limited to the governing body) is moderation: “Moderation is therefore the soul of these governments; but that… which is founded on virtue, not on cowardice or laziness of mind.”

By contrast, in monarchy “the state lives independently of love of country, of the desire for true glory… of all those heroic virtues we find among the ancients… Laws take the place of these virtues, which are now useless… I am not at all unaware that virtuous princes are not rare, but I do say that it is very difficult that in a monarchy the people are so.” Thus, in monarchies the principle, the “gear” that makes the state work, is honor, because “ambition is dangerous, in a republic, but it has good effects in a monarchy: it gives it life, and it has the advantage of not being dangerous.” Finally, in a despotic government, “As in a republic, virtue is needed, and in a monarchy honor, so in despotic government fear is needed: virtue is not needed there, and honor would be dangerous. The prince’s immense power passes entirely into the hands of those in whom he confides… when in a despotic government the prince forgets for a moment to raise his hand, when he cannot annihilate in the twinkling of an eye those who hold the first places, all is lost… It is necessary therefore that the people be judged by the laws, and the great by the whim of the prince; that the head of the last among the subjects be secure, and that of the pashas always in danger.”

2.

In conclusion according to Montesquieu:

The principle (of the “form”) of government is the driving force that makes it act.

This principle is, to varying degrees, virtue; this must be possessed by those who govern: in democracies, by all citizens, in aristocracies by the optimates, in monarchies by the king. He does not write it, but even in despotic states the despot must have a glimmer of virtue (perhaps different). Honor and fear are feelings that belong to the subjects. In particular to the collaborators of the sovereigns.

The principle is necessary, because a body politic is composed of men, is a vital institution and cannot disregard what is likely to make men act and thus the institution. Laws are necessary, but not sufficient for the existence and vitality of the whole.
The principle is what “unifies” rulers and ruled: it affects the command/obedience relationship, and is at once a factor of integration and legitimacy.

Like the “classical” political thinkers, Montesquieu sees institutions made up of men, where some command and others obey: it is far from the French thinker to believe that a beautiful constitution, complete with moving enunciations of principles, and myriad implementing laws (equally moving) are enough to make a viable state. Laws are not enough: to constitute and preserve it requires the gear that makes them live. Indeed, between the laws and the principle (the gear), there must be consistency: it would be clueless to constitute a democratic government without a modicum of virtue, and even more so a despotic government without fear.
Virtue plays an extremely important role in this context, primarily because it recurs—even if not equally necessary for all—in the three non-despotic forms of government; and in this, Montesquieu harks back to ancient political thought, for which it was natural to link the fate and fortune of the polis to the virtue of the citizens; and not to the mere “goodness” of the laws. If, as Montesquieu writes in the opening of the Esprit des lois, “Laws… are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things; and, in this sense, all beings have their own laws: the gods, the animals, man,” from the very beginning of the work he fixes—so to speak—the relationship between existent and normative: in which the former determines the latter far more than the latter can do on the former.

In this sense, the principles of government are the indispensable gear for the community: which, not living by rules alone, even the best possible ones, must be based on a (general) principle that determines it to act. Because on the historical level—and not only—to exist means to act: and acting calls for mobilizing the human will(s); the Thomist rule, omne agens agit propter finem, applies, which, more than a century after Montesquieu, a great jurist like Jhering would identify in the connection between purpose and interest.

3.

Shortly after Montesquieu’s death, the figure of the legislateur, of the one (those) who gives (give) certain rules to the community, began to be emphasized; and of the same rules—fixed in laws—which, rather than being discovered by studying the “nature of things,” are the product (prevalent or exclusive) of the human will. It is this that gives laws to things, and not vice versa. The relationship between the existing and the normative begins to tilt in favor of the latter. Modern constitutions that are the fruit of human reason (of equity, justice, but in effect of will) are the most obvious fruit of this. That constitution which is not such if, as Thomas Paine wrote, you cannot put it in your pocket, written, the result of public deliberation, following (mostly) free and rational discussion. For a long time, however, the main links that anchored the normative to the existent, particularly to will and virtue in citizens, were not lost. Indeed, the French Revolution, and the Jacobins in particular, made virtue a necessary and primary element of the new political regime: a sign that the links to the real were still robust.

Later, as Ernst Forsthoff writes, “the doctrine of the state took a path that distanced it from human qualities, and consequently also from virtue. In Georg Jellinek’s work, which well represents the period at the turn of the century, this is no longer mentioned.”

Hence the later one “became a doctrine of the state without virtue.” Probably, indeed to follow Forsthoff surely, the whole thing was a consequence of legal positivism (broadly understood), whereby the doctrine of the state is the doctrine of its institutional and functional system, and prescinds from human qualities. In this we can also see a prevalence of “technical,” and, in particular “technical-normative” aspects; Carl Schmitt wrote that already clear in Machiavelli’s thought was the technical aspect of conquering and preserving power; but this technique did not prescind from either human qualities or human relations. Whereas contemporary normativistic “technique” implies doing without—or reducing to the minimum—the one and the other.

However, as Forsthoff writes, the success of positivism was such “that German law, neither before nor since, has ever again reached or maintained, in jurisdiction and administration, such a high level;” and this was possible in good part, thanks to the qualities (to the “virtues”) of the German professional bureaucracy, the result, in particular, of the alliance “between a historically based Enlightenment and the legacy of the Reformation,” whereby “this legal system, apparently stripped of all ethical reference and stuck to the purely technical plane, still had its own ethics, in that it was based on specific human virtues, without which it could not be understood.” Thus, to think that a state can stand on the strength of the goodness of laws alone is to make a partially true (and therefore partially false) statement. No “good constitution” can function well if it is not adapted to the objective situation and the existing real forces, in which the moral qualities (virtues) of those who govern, or rather exercise public functions (starting with voting), are included to a decisive extent.

4.

Forsthoff’s findings should also be updated according to what is thought—mostly—about in these years, in the late postwar period, which has become a (third) postwar (cold) period.

Nowadays, anyone who speaks of virtue would move to laughter (or a smile), and not only because of the unedifying spectacle offered by the ruling elites, but, even more, because no one thinks of virtue as a factor in sustaining the community, and democracy in the first place, anymore. He would be answered that good laws are enough, and he would be considered an oddball. But to the writer, and given the consideration accorded by Western thought to the necessary relationship between virtue and good institution, it seems bizarre to argue otherwise; and the first retort that comes to mind is the Tacitian corruptissima res publica, plurimae leges, on the other hand amply confirmed in Italy over the last half century. Secondly, if so many thinkers, from Plato to Aristotle, from Cicero to Machiavelli, from Montesquieu to Mably (to name a tiny fraction) have held the contrary, it is not clear why one would share the idea that a state needs only good laws and, above all, does not need a certain amount of virtue (and especially what experience of what political unity corroborates it).

To a large extent this is the outcome of the extreme phase of the functionalization and technicalization of law, the most coherent conception of which is legal neopositivism. A prerequisite (and general condition) of which is to conceive of the world as a universe of norms, where there are no persons (or subjects of law), but centers of imputation of legal relations; there are no hierarchies of men, but gradations of norms; not subjective rights, but norms to be applied; not the sovereign, but the Grundnorm, and so on in a consistent de-humanization (and de-concretization) of the worldview. The only human element remains the “knowledge of the jurist;” in which this conception is revealed as the ideology of a particular social group, of the officials of the decadent phase of the bourgeois rule of law.

In such a conception, everything that is “extra-normative” is not legal (and therefore irrelevant): at most it comes down to the appeal to “constitutional values.”

This seems to have the function of satisfying (at a minimum) the need to ground collective existence on something that is nonnormative anyway, and thus to “gain the ground of a recognized legitimacy” by going beyond mere legality. That is, it constitutes the exception to the mostly shared view (by jurists).

5.

In fact, the “classical” conception (within which to place Montesquieu’s theory of principles) was the answer to the question: when is order vital (in the first place) and just?

The answer—given more than two millennia of political reflection—combines “existential” and “factual” factors with others of a more properly “normative” and legal nature, with the former prevailing over the latter. Personal qualities, beliefs, legitimacy, authority constitute (but do not exhaust) its essential cornerstones.

If, on the other hand, one asks for an answer to the question of how one should correctly (validly) interpret a legal norm, and more generally how the jurist’s knowledge is to be attuned to the normative system—that is, a different question—and one with reduced content, the answer normativists give, by expunging from the horizon of the (practical) jurist any “factual” element, has its correctness. For which, however, as noted, particularly because of the formal character of such a theory of law (and the like), there exists (and does occur) the risk that “by reducing law to logical propositions disregarding their content, some piece of it too important to be neglected, or bracketed, is lost along the way, so to speak, just as a physical theory is exposed to the risk of neglecting some aspect of reality too important not to need to be explained. On the other hand, who can assure me that my model of knowledge of reality is truly coextensive with the reality I want to explain? In other words, who can assure me that my reasoning really explains everything I need to explain? Science risks being a set of propositions that, paradoxically, does not photograph the world, but itself; that is, the scientist risks seeing nothing but his own reasoning, and not the reality he wants to explain. “Truth” thus means only consistency to the starting assumptions, which, moreover, are unproven, and dissolves reference to reality, to explain which the “pure” scientist began to do science. We are facing a real implosion of the system.”

And this is precisely the point: by narrowing the problem of the order to that of the proper application of norms, one expunges from the legal horizon the main and determining elements, and in any case much of what is necessarily part of it. That is, both the aspect of the unity, action and cohesion of the social group, and that of the application of law (through organized coercion and legitimate violence); so normativism has been regarded by many as a legal gnoseology, and it is, because, consistently, it eliminates from the legal horizon everything that is “factual.”

Conversely, and in the line of classical political thought, we find (among others) the institutionalist jurists, who obviously take into consideration (maximally) the order and all those existential factors that condition and determine its form and action, with particular regard to the concrete situation.

Hauriou, who in Précis de droit constitutionnel repeatedly criticizes Kelsen, beginning with the error, which he stigmatizes, of assimilating “objective order to static order” and subordinating “strictly the dynamic to the static.” Whereas “what men call stability is not stillness, but the coordinated (d’ensemble) slow and uniform movement that lets a certain general form of things subsist.” To make sense of and understand it, Kelsen’s essentially static system, in which there is no place for human freedom, is wholly unsuitable.

Santi Romano with the constant attention he gave from his youth until shortly before his death to the problems of change, legitimation and crisis of the legal systems is, likewise, exemplary of a dynamic and vitalistic conception of law. Going back to Montequieu, he was very clear that a human community lives in history, in space and (also) in time: the same can be said of Hauriou and Romano, who have a sense of “two-dimensional” law.

Instead, a static system is, as it were, to paraphrase Marcuse, a one-dimensional right, since it takes no account of time—and consequently of history (as of so many other things).

In this sense Hauriou’s critique of “static” systems that convert into a contemplation of rules is penetrating.

6.

That being said, it is necessary to see what the concept of virtue was for Montesquieu and whether it is still necessary today:

“Virtue in a republic is a very simple thing. It is the love of the republic: it is a feeling and not a series of notions.”

However, given the equivocity of the term, Montesquieu since the avertissement to the Esprit des lois has been keen to define it, outlining its public and political and not private (i.e. “non-political”) character by specifying:

“What I call virtue in the republic is love of country… It is neither a moral nor a Christian virtue; it is political virtue; it is the gear that makes republican government act (mouvoir).”

Consistent with what Plato (Callicles’ thesis in the Gorgias) and Aristotle already held, political virtue is connoted by the citizen (civis), i.e., the public man, not the bonus paterfamilias, i.e., the private man: an essential distinction, maintained by philosophical thought and particularly Christian theology, from Luther to Bellarmine. And which, consistent with the general confusion of public and private, nowadays is often no longer understood, to the point that, to hear some crude demagogue, any good man (as long as privately honest) would suffice to lead a state. Which (not new, but often repeated) aroused Croce’s sarcasm, as of “the ideal that sings in the soul of all imbeciles.” Surely there is no need for that kind of private virtue: not that it spoils; but surely the state can exist and act even if sexual mores are relaxed and business mores not exactly adamantine.

Instead of the other, what Montesquieu called political virtue is felt to be needed, in proportion to how much it has been reduced for over fifty years.

How one feels the need for Montesquieu’s lesson on the principles of government as sentiments and as gears to make the state institution act. The contrary, much-repeated thesis that good rules (laws) are sufficient is flawed by (at least) three errors:

The first of which is the reduction of law to legal gnoseology, as a technique of applying norms to the concrete case. Appropriate to this conception is the criticism above that “some too important piece of it” is thus lost. Whereas law is essentially a system for regulating action. It is the orientation that gives human actions the decisive aspect for understanding the essence of law.

Second, and consequently, that rules are not enough: these can regulate, permit, command actions, but without ever neglecting that the “object” of them is human action.

And above all, finally, that in order to sustain the original legal phenomenon, that is, the institution, it is necessary to leverage (also) the feeling that makes “government act.”

A state that does not act, that does not leverage sentiment (i.e., principle) is a gangrenous institution: to exist, in history, means to act. Acting does not mean (only) enforcing rules, but above all having what in different terms of similar concepts has been called virtue, love of country, sense of state. Without which—or lacking which—the state falls or decays.

Of course, one can reply like Don Abbondio that virtue is like courage: if one does not have it, one cannot give it. But one must reply that a first step to (attempt to) have it is to think that it is necessary. That is, the opposite of current idols.

Teodoro Katte Klitsche de la Grange is an attorney in Rome and is the editor of the well-regarded and influential law journal Behemoth.

Featured: Allegory of Virtue and Vice, by Veronese; painted ca. 1581.

Teilhard de Chardin: Putting an End to the Myth

Pasolini once wrote that theology is one of the branches of fantastic literature. We will reserve this assertion for the theology-fiction of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Despite eleven condemnations by the Church, which silenced him because of the “serious attacks on Catholic doctrine” developed in his books, his theology enjoyed incredible success in the 1950s and especially the 1960s, supported by the Society of Jesus. Even good souls were seduced by its lyrical prose, full of neologisms and appealing, if bizarre, poetic flights of fancy. His euphoric project of reconciling modern science and faith was very much in the spirit of a time bathed in optimism against a backdrop of technological advances.

And yet, not only are the Jesuit’s theses devoid of scientific credibility, they are also contrary to the most elementary truths of faith. This is what Wolfgang Smith demonstrates at length in a very insightful work. Smith is both an inspired philosopher and a leading scientist, physicist and mathematician, who has taught at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Teilhard was a paleontologist of no particular genius, incompetent in both biology and physics, and the knowledge he gained from his profession (the discovery of fossils) had no connection with his ideological construction, as he acknowledged in his correspondence. This explains why his theses were criticized by renowned scientists.

Teilhard’s intention was to reintroduce God into a scientific vision dominated by evolution. He made no secret of his intention to re-found Christianity—an “improved Christianity,” an “ultra-Christianity,” a “meta-Christianity,” as he put it—on new foundations. The universe was conceived in a pantheistic mode: “There is in the World neither Spirit nor Matter; the Fabric of the Universe is Spirit-Matter.” According to a great “law of Complexity of Consciousness,” “everything that exists is Matter that becomes Spirit.” For him, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is contradicted by the “temporo-spatial enormity,” the “energetic immensities,” and the “unfathomable organic connections of the phenomenal World.” For Teilhard, “grace represents physical over-creation. In other words, it is properly biological in nature.”

We must also abandon our conception of a God above time: “Around us and within us, by the encounter of his Attraction and our Thought, God is in the process of ‘changing’… By the rise of the Cosmic Quantity of Union, his radiance, his hue are enriched!” Rejecting the law of the universe’s increasing entropy, Teilhard asserts that everything converges irresistibly towards an “Omega Point,” which is none other than the cosmic Christ.

One of the stumbling blocks between Teilhard’s vision and Church teaching is the dogma of original sin. In what is perhaps the most fascinating chapter of his book, Wolfgang Smith explains how Adam’s Fall fits into a different representation of origins than the Jesuit’s: ” it is this primordial catastrophe—and not a Darwinist ascent—that is responsible for the human condition as we know it today.” On the contrary, for Teilhard, evil is simply disorder caused by natural processes. This conception led him to an astonishing relativization of man’s sinfulness. His “neo-humanist” political vision is based on the phenomenon of “socialization,” aggregation through collectivization, which brought him to a singular complacency to Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. In 1938, he wrote: “I do not know where to fix my sympathies, at the present time: where is there more hope and ideal at present? In Russia, or in Berlin?”

In the end, all the truths of faith are reinterpreted in his own way, as best he can, or, in the case of the most troublesome, abandoned.

We recommend this book to all Teilhardardians, and in particular to the Jesuits, who have just opened a Centre Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on the Plateau de Saclay [the European Silicon Valley], with the ambition of making it “a space for dialogue between science, philosophy and spirituality.” It would have been preferable to choose better sponsor.

Denis Sureau is the editor of the review Transmettre and the bi-monthly newsletter Chrétiens dans la Cité. He is the author of Pour une nouvelle théologie politique. This article comes through the kind courtesy of La Nef.

Gastronomically Correct: McDonald’s and Globalization of the Table

Gastronomic identity is declared in the plural, since there are many traditions at the table and each one exists in the constant nexus of mixture and hybridization with the others. Each identity exists, in itself, as a never definitive result of a process by which it intertwines or—to remain in the field of culinary metaphors—mixes with the others.

It is true that in the past, if we were to venture into the “archeology of taste,” this rich cultural plurality linked to food traditions tended, in some cases, to degenerate into forms of culinary nationalism, whereby each people considered itself to be the bearer of a sort of eno-gastronomic primacy. In this regard, some have coined the category of “gastronomic nationalism,” although in truth, even if cuisine is fundamental for drawing the political and cultural boundaries of national identities, culinary traditions never existed, originally, in a national form, being instead regional inheritances, as Mintz has shown. In any case, gastronationalist policies have also manifested themselves because of the tendency of States to use the recognition of their own food heritage as an instrument for their own politics, for their own recognition in the international arena and in the sphere of what is usually defined as “gastro-diplomacy,” thus alluding to the practice that takes advantage of the relational nature of food and seeks to consolidate and strengthen ties at the political level.

In the apotheosis of a sort of “boria delle nazioni,” as Giambattista Vico’s New Science might have labeled it, the English thought they were superior because of their roast beef, the French because of their grande cuisine—Camembert, in particular, became a Gallic “national myth”—or the Italians because of their variety, unique in the world. Very often, this plurality encouraged a fruitful desire to experience and know what was different, and thus an intercultural dialogue mediated by the food heritage of each people.

In this sense, Mennell’s study of the gastronomic difference between the English and the French, an emblem of the diversity of the two peoples, is still essential. Montanari, for his part, ventured to support the suggestive thesis according to which the identity of Italy was born at the table long before the political unification of the country took place. Moreover, Ortensio Lando, in his Commentario delle più notabili e mostruose e cose d’Italia ed altri luoghi (1548), describes with an abundance of particularities and details the gastronomic and oenological specialties of the various Italian cities and regions. And the most famous Italian cook of the 15th century, Maestro Martino, listed in his recipe book Romanesco cabbage and Bolognese cake, Florentine eggs and so many other local specialties that, in fact, were forging the Italian identity at the table.

Coherent with its ideology, global-capitalist de-imbolization finds in the suppression of enogastronomic identities and in the removal of their historical roots a fundamental moment of its own. Even the table is overwhelmed by the processes of post-identitarian and homologous redefinition essential to the rhythm of turbo-capitalist globalization.

For this reason, very often we witness the substitution of the foods in which the spirit of the peoples and of the civilization of which we are the children—red meats, cheeses, wines, local and village foods— with substitutes created ad hoc. and, more precisely, by food produced by faceless and rootless multinationals, the same ones that regularly finance the operators and agencies that “scientifically” decide what is healthy and what is not, prolonging the hegemonic connection between capitalist market and the techno-scientific system.

In this way, within the framework of the new and “indigestible” gastronomically correct order, tastes tend to become increasingly horizontal on a planetary scale, annihilating the plurality and enogastronomic richness in which the identities of peoples are rooted: if the current trend is not counteracted, a single homologated way of eating, deprived of variety and diversity, will be created, or, if preferred, a global sentire idem which will be presented as the gastronomic variant of mass consensus. Foods historically rooted in the identity heritage and traditional roots of peoples—there is, in fact, a genius gustus as well as a genius loci—will be replaced by foods without identity and without culture, integrally desymbolized, the same in all corners of the planet, as is already happening in part. This allows us to maintain that the gastronomically correct is the dietetic variant of the politically correct, just as the “single dish” becomes the equivalent of the single thought. The dominant economic order produces, in its own image and likeness, the corresponding symbolic and gastronomic orders.

Their common denominator is the destruction of the plurality of cultures, sacrificed on the altar of the monotheism of the market and the model of the individualized and homologated consumer, submissive to that “big cart” which is the successor of the Orwellian Big Brother. The pedagogues of globalism and the architects of neocapitalism, with an unprecedented dietary paternalism founded on the order of medical-scientific discourse, seek to reeducate peoples and individuals in the new gastronomically correct program, that is, in the new globalized menu that, composed of approved foods, often incompatible with the identities of the people, is presented by the administrators of the consensus as optimal for the environment and health, unlike traditional dishes, ostracized as “harmful” in all respects.

This supports, also on the food level, the thesis of the “Marxian-Engelsian” Manifesto: Capital “has stamped a cosmopolitan imprint on the production and consumption of all nations,” pushing them towards that homologation which is the negation of internationalist pluralism. Food de-sovereignization, directed in the name of gastronomically correct globalism and multinational interests, is piloted by the cynical stateless lords of profit-making, thanks also to the use of specific biological tools, such as pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, as well as recourse to the practices of genetic engineering. Thus, exempli gratia, one can explain the use of “genetically modified organisms” (GMOs), which genetically contaminate natural species, sabotage conventional agriculture and deprive peoples of their food sovereignty. They thus force them to depend on multinationals, which supply them with patented seeds and substances, protecting in the abstract, at the level of ideological propaganda, the health of all and, in concrete terms, the profit of a few.

According to what has been explained above, food has historically always been a fundamental cultural and, specifically, intercultural vehicle, revealing itself as the simplest and most immediate way of decoding the language of another culture, in order to enter into contact with it and its customs. The elimination of local food specificities is, for this very reason, consistent with the ongoing disintegration of any authentically intercultural relationship, replaced by the monoculturalism of consumption: the historical multiplicity of tastes rooted in tradition is replaced by the unity of ahistorical and aprospective tastes of the globalized menu. After the limitation of “what can be said and thought” through the imposition of the new politically correct symbolic order, the new regulation of “what can be eaten and drunk” is now imposed, more and more furiously, according to the hegemonic global-elitist order of the neoliberal oligarchic bloc.

If in the past, cuisine also determined cultural identities, today, especially since 1989, it tends to cancel them out. Traditional foods rooted in the history of peoples are more and more frequently replaced—because they are no longer considered “suitable”—by those delocalized and “global fusion” foods that, devoid of identity and history, give rise to an artificial and nomadic diet, uprooted and culturally vacuous, that homogenizes both palates and heads; a diet that, however—the strategists of consensus assure us—respects the environment and health.

With the unsurpassed immediate power of the image, a scene from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975)—a film conceived ad hoc to be horrible and obscene, just as horrible and obscene is the consumer civilization it photographs—can be worth more than any articulate conceptual description. The scene is set in one of the most macabre “infernal circles” of which the film is composed and which, in turn, is meant to be an allegory of consumer civilization and its errors: the inmates of the Villa dei Suporti are condemned to eat excrement.

The coprophagic act thus becomes the very symbol of the market society, which daily condemns its docile and unconscious ergostuli to eat the shit connected to the commodity form, a simple and apparently banal object, which nevertheless crystallizes in itself all the contradictions of capitalist society, beginning with the one linked to the antithesis between use-value and exchange-value. Dragging Pasolini “beyond Pasolini,” that macabre and scandalous scene seems to find its further confirmation in the new gastronomically correct tendencies of the global market society that, without any violence other than the glamour of manipulation, forces its own servants to the coprophagic gesture.

Food in the age of global-capitalism is usually managed by multinationals and offshore companies, which manipulate taste and control the abandonment of everything that is plural and not modeled ex profeso by the new uprooted and flexible lifestyle. In this context, McDonald’s (the unsurpassable paradigm of “non-place,” called into question by Marc Augé—and one might also add, of “non-food”) represents the quintessential figure of gastronomic globalization and of the culinary imperialism of the single plate triumphant after 1989: a single way of eating and thinking about food, of distributing and presenting it, of producing it and organizing work, naturalizing a gesture and its conditions of opportunity in something as evident and obvious as the air we breathe.

But McDonald’s itself embodies the profound meaning of globalization also from another point of view, identified by Ritzer and expressed in his consideration that “it has become more important than the United States of America itself.” McDonald’s, in fact, represents the overwhelming power of supranational capital, today—by power and specific strength, by recognition and by attractive capacity—above the traditional national powers which, precisely for this reason, are unable to govern it and, not infrequently, are strongly conditioned by it.

That the well-known globalist fast food represents the figure par excellence of capitalist globalization seems to be supported, moreover, by the fact that the two yellow arches that form the stylized “M” of its logo are today, in all probability, more famous and better known than the Christian cross, the Islamic crescent and the American flag itself. Universal merchandising is confirmed, even iconographically, as the great religion of our present in terms of diffusion, number of proselytes and ability to conquer souls even before bodies. That is why the yellow McDonald’s arches, no less than the contoured Coca-Cola bottle, represent the symbol of globalization as “bad universalism” and, at the same time, the privileged target of gastronomic anti-imperialism.

As Marco D’Eramo emphasizes, biting into a McDonald’s hamburger may, at first glance, seem an obvious and natural gesture. With its standardized flavors, its mustard and ketchup, its pickles and onions, the same from Seattle to Singapore, from Genoa to Madrid, served in the same way and by waiters dressed in identical uniforms, the hamburger seems always and everywhere the same, almost as if, anywhere in the world and at any time, it were ready to materialize at the customer’s request; almost as if it were the natural way of eating and, for that very reason, it generated everywhere identification and a sense of familiarity.

Like the table Marx wrote about in the opening sections of Capital, the McDonald’s hamburger also now appears as an obvious and trivial object that, however, if analyzed from the point of view of “exchange value” and sociality, of the division of labor and the standardization of the way of eating, is revealing of the whole volume of meanings and contradictions that innervate the capitalist mode of production in the era of neoliberal globalization.

In this regard, the advertising slogan chosen by McDonald’s in Italy a few years ago deserves some consideration, albeit telegraphic: “It only happens at McDonald’s.” The formula promised a unique and unrepeatable experience, which is still offered, always the same as itself, in all McDonald’s around the world. Moreover, it augurs an out-of-the-ordinary experience that, in fact, coincides in everything and for everything with the increasingly widespread standardized experience of food consumption in this time of gastro-anomic globalization.

It would be quite right to identify the McDonald’s hamburger as the very effigy of globalization from any perspective from which it is observed: whether it be that of the homologation of knowledge and flavors, or that of the capitalist rationalization of the way of managing production and the social organization of labor, McDonald’s perfectly embodies the new spirit of capitalism, its combined disposition of uniformity and alienation, of reification and exploitation which, instead of receding in the name of dreams of better freedoms, become as vast as the space of the world, becoming the image of reified and low-cost happiness.

Proof of this is that, a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first McDonald’s fast-food restaurant opened in East Germany, in Plauen, where the first mass demonstration against the communist government had taken place. Such an event, on a symbolic level even before the material one, marked with strong impact the sudden transition from real socialism to capitalist globalism, from communism to consumerism.

Two typical examples of flexible globalization are intertwined in the McDonald’s diet. On the one hand, we have the presence of standardized foods, without cultural roots and accessible to all. And on the other hand, the flexible organization: a) of very fast dishes, consumed at the most diverse times of the day, b) of places conceived as non-lieux, as mere uninhabitable passing points, and c) of workers, subject to contracts with a very high rate of flexibility and low qualification.

Diego Fusaro is professor of the History of Philosophy at the IASSP in Milan (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies) where he is also scientific director. He is a scholar of the Philosophy of History, specializing in the thought of Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. His interest is oriented towards German idealism, its precursors (Spinoza) and its followers (Marx), with a particular emphasis on Italian thought (Gramsci or Gentile, among others). he is the author of many books, including Fichte and the Vocation of the Intellectual, The Place of Possibility: Toward a New Philosophy of Praxis, and Marx, again!: The Spectre Returns. This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia.

The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure On Creation

Then appeared the peripatetics, whose master and leader was Aristotle, and whom St. Bonaventure treats with some moderation during the calm period of the Commentary on the Sentences. At this time he is well aware that Aristotle taught the eternity of the world; now, as we shall see more fully later on, he considers that the doctrine of the eternity of the world is extremely hard to reconcile with that of creation; he does not believe then that Aristotle considered matter and form created by God out of nothing, even from all eternity: utrum autem posuerit materiam et formam factam de nihilo, hoc nescio; credo tamen quod non pervenit ad hoc.

Relying upon charitably interpreted texts, St. Bonaventure supposes that Aristotle considered the world as made by God from eternal elements. The philosopher’s error was therefore double, since it rested on the eternity of the elements and on ignorance of creation ex nihilo, but it had at least an advantage over Plato in not supposing that matter could ever have existed without its form. The error of Plato, which assumed God, matter and the idea in separation, seemed to him then more objectionable (multo vilior) than that of Aristotelianism which assumed God and a matter eternally perfected by its form: ideo et ipse etiam defecit licet minus quam alii. Later St. Bonaventure expresses harsher opinions about Aristotle, but yet he will never expressly deny that his God without ideas and without providence made the world eternally, of eternally existent matter and form.

So it clearly appears that those who of all philosophers came nearest to the truth yet failed to reach it. Now it is just there, at the precise point at which the skill of philosophers breaks down, that revelation comes to our aid, teaching us that all has been created and that things have been brought into being in the totality of what they are: ubi autem deficit philosophorum peritia, subvenit nobis sacrosancta Scriptura, quae dicit omnia esse creata, et secundum omne quod sunt in esse producta. Thus it is that the reason when better informed perceives and confirms with decisive arguments the truth that Scripture affirms.

For it is certain that the more a productive cause is primary and perfect in the order of being, the more profoundly its action penetrates its effects. In the case where the cause considered is the absolutely primary and perfect being, the action that it exercises must extend its efficacy to the total substance of each of its effects.

In other words, if God produces a thing, He can only produce it integrally, and His action necessarily engenders its constitutive principles, matter and form, at the same time as the compositum. Similarly, the less aid it requires for its action, the more noble and the more perfect is the agent. If then we consider the most perfect agent possible, his action must be completely sufficient in itself and must be exercised without recourse to any external aid. Now the case of God is exactly this; He is then capable, in Himself, of producing things without the help of pre-existing principles. On the other hand, God is perfectly simple; His essence is not divisible into particular beings; He does not extract things from Himself by dissecting His own substance; so He necessarily extracts them from nothing. In the same way, lastly, if God is truly perfect and absolute simplicity, He cannot act in a part of Himself; in each of His actions, it is His whole being that is concerned and comes into play; now the nature of the effect is necessarily proportioned to that of the cause; so just as the action of a being composed of matter and form can engender a form in a matter which is already present, so an absolutely simple being such as God can produce the integral being of a thing. Acting in all His being, His effect can only be being; the natural result then of the divine action is the bringing into existence of that which nothing preceded, except God and the void.

A second problem, and one inseparable from the foregoing, is the question when this integral production of beings can have taken place. The human reason, incapable of discovering with its own resources the true nature of the creative act, is similarly incapable of determining accurately the moment of creation. Either we know that creation consists in producing the very being of things, without employing any pre-existing matter, and so it is obvious that the world was created in time; or, on the contrary, we believe that the creator used in His work principles which were anterior to the world itself, and thus the created universe seems logically eternal. The kernel of St. Bonaventure’s argument on this point was always that there is a contradiction in terms in supposing that what is created out of nothing is not created in time. The idea of a universe created by God out of nothing and from all eternity, an idea which St. Thomas Aquinas considered logically possible, seemed to St. Bonaventure so glaring a contradiction that he could not imagine a philosopher so incompetent as to overlook it.

His thought, which he does not develop at length, although he states it with the greatest energy, seems here to follow St. Anselm very closely and to proceed from a vigorously literal interpretation of the formula ex nihilo. The particle ex, in fact, seems to him capable of only two interpretations. Either it designates a matter existing before the divine action, or it simply marks the starting point of this action, implies and establishes a relation of order, fixes an initial term anterior to the appearance of the world itself.

Now the word ex cannot signify a matter, for it here determines the word “nothing,” the very significance of which is absence of being, which could not therefore designate a material in which things could be shaped. It can only signify the starting point of the divine action and establish the initial term of a relation of anteriority and posteriority. It follows that to say that the world was created ex nihilo is either to say nothing or to say that the non-existence of the universe preceded the existence of the universe; that before there was nothing of the world and that only afterwards the world appeared; to suppose, in a word, the beginning of things in time and to deny their eternity.

Although this seems to have been the central and decisive argument in St. Bonaventure’s eyes, since it makes the eternity of a world created out of nothing seem contradictory, it is presented to us from the time of the Commentary on the Sentences flanked by other arguments of no less historical importance, based on the impossibility of the created infinite. It is easy to prove on this point how inaccurate it is to explain St. Bonaventure’s thought by his ignorance of the Aristotelianism of Albert and St. Thomas. For it is with the help of Aristotelian arguments and in opposition to Aristotle himself that he shows the impossibility of a world created from all eternity; better still he expressly refutes the thesis which St. Thomas was to believe supportable; St. Bonaventure therefore is fully aware of the position that he takes up, and he dismisses the teaching of which he is alleged to be ignorant on the ground of maturely considered principles.

In the first place, the eternity of the world contradicts the principle that it is impossible to add to the infinite; for if the world had no beginning, it has already experienced an infinite duration; now every new day which passes adds a unit to the infinite number of days already gone; the eternity of the world supposes therefore an infinite capable of being augmented. If it is objected that this infinite is so only, as it were, at one end, and that the number of days gone, infinite in the past, is finite in the present, nothing substantial is asserted. For it is evident that, if the world is eternal, it has already passed through an infinite number of solar revolutions and also that there are always twelve lunar revolutions to one solar; so that the moon would have accomplished a number of revolutions in excess of the infinite. So, even considering this infinite bounded by the present, and considering it infinite only where it really is so, in the past, we end by supposing a number larger than the infinite, which is absurd.

In the second place, the eternity of the world contradicts the principle that it is impossible to order an infinity of terms. All order, in fact, starts from a beginning, passes through a middle point and reaches an end. If then there is no first term there is no order; now if the duration of the world and therefore the revolutions of the stars had no beginning, their series would have had no first term and they would possess no order, which amounts to saying that in reality they do not in fact form a series and they do not precede or follow one another. But this the order of the days and seasons plainly proves to be false. This argument may seem sophistical from the Aristotelian and Thornist point of view.

If Aristotle declares that it is impossible to order an infinite series of terms, he refers to terms essentially ordered; in other words, he denies that a series of essences can be infinite if it is hierarchically ordered, if its existence or causality is conditioned from top to bottom, but he does not deny that a series of causes or of beings of the same degree can be infinite. For example, there is no progression to the infinite in the ascending series of the causes of local movement in terrestrial bodies, for superior movers are required, requiring in their turn an immobile first mover to account for them, but we can suppose without contradiction that this hierarchical system of moving causes exists and operates from all eternity, the displacement of each body being explained by a finite number of superior causes, but being preceded by an infinite number of causes of the same order. St. Bonaventure is not ignorant of this distinction and, if he does not accept it, it is not because he cannot grasp it, it is because it implies a state of the universe which is incompatible with his profoundest metaphysical tendencies. In St. Bonaventure’s Christian universe there is, in reality, no place for Aristotelian accident; his thought shrinks from supposing a series of causes accidentally ordered, that is to say, without order, without law and with its terms following one another at random.

Divine Providence must penetrate the universe down to its smallest details; it does not then account only for causal series, but also for those of succession. The root of the matter is that St. Bonaventure’s Christian universe differs from the pagan universe of Aristotle in that it has a history; every celestial revolution, instead of following indifferently an infinity of identical revolutions, coincides with the appearance of unique events, each of which has its place fixed in the grand drama which unfolds itself between the Creation of the world and the Last Judgment. Every day, every hour even, forms part of a series which is ruled by a certain order and of which Divine Providence knows the whole reason; si dicas quod statum ordinis non necesse est ponere nisi in his quae ordinantur secundum ordinem causalitatis, quia in causis necessaria est status, quaero quare non in aliis? St. Bonaventure refuses to admit not only causes but also events accidentally ordered.

The third property of the infinite which is irreconcilable with the eternity of the world is that the infinite cannot be bridged; now if the universe had no beginning, an infinite number of celestial revolutions must have taken place, and therefore the present day could not have been reached. If it is objected, with St. Thomas Aquinas, [Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, I . 46, 2 , per tot., where St. Bonaventure’s arguments are discussed point by point: ad 1 and 2 against his interpretation of ex nihilo; ad 6 against the argument “infinita impossible est pertransiri“; ad 7 against the impossibility of an infinite series of accidentally ordered causes; ad 8 against the actually realized infinity of immortal souls]—that to bridge a distance it must be traversed from one extremity to the other, and that, in consequence, one must start from an initial point which in this case is lacking, we shall answer: starting from the present day, we must necessarily be able to fix a day infinitely anterior to it, or else we cannot fix any one; if no anterior day precedes the present day by an infinite duration, then all the anterior days precede it by a finite duration and therefore the duration of the world had a beginning; if, on the contrary, we can fix an anterior day infinitely removed from the present day, we ask whether the day immediately posterior to that one is infinitely removed from the present day or whether it is not. If it is not infinitely removed from it, neither is the preceding one, for the duration which separates them is finite. So if it is infinitely removed from it, we ask the same question about the third day, the fourth, and so on ad infinitum; the present day will not then be further removed from the first than from any of the others, which amounts to saying that one of these days will not precede another, and that they will consequently be all occurring at the same time.

A fourth proposition incompatible with the eternity of the world is that the infinite cannot be understood by a finite faculty. Now to say that the world had no beginning is to say that the finite can understand the infinite. It is generally admitted that God is infinitely powerful and that all else is finite; it will be admitted further, with Aristotle, that every celestial movement implies a finite Intelligence to produce it or, at least, to know it; no doubt it will be allowed, lastly, that a pure Intelligence can forget nothing. If then we suppose that this Intelligence has already determined or simply known an infinity of celestial revolutions, since it has forgotten none of them, it necessarily possesses today the actual knowledge of an infinity of memories. And if it is objected that it can know in a single idea this infinity of celestial revolutions which are all similar to one another, we reply that it does not know these revolutions only, but their effects also, which are diverse and infinite, so that actual knowledge of the infinite must necessarily be attributed to a finite Intelligence.

The fifth and last impossibility which St. Bonaventure brings forward against the eternity of the world is the coexistence of an infinite number of given beings at one and the same time. The world has been made for man, for there is nothing in the universe which is not in some way related to him; it cannot have ever existed therefore without men since it would have had no reason for existing; now man lives only in finite time; if then the world exists from all eternity, there must have existed an infinite number of men. But there are as many rational souls as there are men; therefore there has been an infinity of souls. Now these souls are naturally immortal; if then an infinity of souls has existed, there exists an infinity of them in actuality also, which we have already declared impossible. And the evasions which are attempted in order to escape this error are worse than the error itself. Some suppose metempsychosis, so that a finite number of souls could pass through different bodies during an infinite time, a hypothesis irreconcilable with the principle that each form is the proper and unique act of a determined matter. Others suppose, on the contrary, that a single intellect exists for the whole human race, a still graver confusion, since it involves the suppression of individual souls, of last ends and of immortality. [This objection seems very strong to St. Thomas Aquinas and he hardly sees how the supporters of the eternity of the world can meet it, unless by supposing that the world has always existed, like the unchangeable bodies or the eternal Intelligences, but unlike corruptible beings such as the human species. Cf. Summa theologica, ad 8].

1938.

Featured: Saint Bonaventure, by Claude François; painted ca. 1655.

Korean Peninsula: A Complex Subregional Security Landscape

The political, economic and security context in Northeast Asia has suffered a constant deterioration in recent years. The reason of it is the growing strategic rivalry between China (hereinafter PRC) and US. Both countries are engaged in a competition to expand their spheres of influence, security architectures and the creation of commercial blocs and the restructuring of their commercial and industrial policies, promoting, in turn, a race to achieve technological leadership.

Likewise, North Korea (hereinafter DPRK) has developed intense military activities since years and tensions around Taiwan have been increasing. Within this framework of instability, South Korea (hereinafter ROK) plays a critical role. The traditional policy of maintaining military ties with the US and seeking greater economic cooperation with PRC shows more and more its unsuitability. As this balance between the two great powers is more unstable, the long-term strategic ambiguity should be replaced by a clear choice of the bloc to which ROK wishes to belong.

The incumbent president Yoon Suk-yeol seems to have re-chosen that the national path heads towards Washington. However, this decision is not free of obstacles, the overcoming of which is not guaranteed. PPP’s (Power People Party) Yoon Suk-yeol’s victory in 2022 against Lee Jae-myung, the DP (Democratic Party) candidate, marked a new direction for ROK foreign policy, which moved away from the priorities and positions of the previous guest of the ‘Blue House’ (the presidential palace of Seoul). There are two concepts on which this new foreign policy has been founded.

The first is the perception that the previous Government had put aside the alliance with the US, going so far as to suspend bilateral military exercises, which generated a progressive weakening of such ties.

Secondly, it is perceived that the attitude of the previous ROK Government towards DPRK and PRC was considered too conciliant; in the opinion of the current Seoul’s Administration damaged the country position. Based on the above premises, the Yoon Government has designed a foreign policy aimed at integrating the country more firmly into the Washington-led system. In this way, President Yoon aims to move from ambiguity to strategic clarity. Unlike the previous Government, he has not hesitated to consolidate ties with the US, as could be seen during President Yoon’s visit to Washington on the occasion of the trilateral summit with Japan. While the previous Government exercised extreme caution when assessing the US strategy in the Indo-Pacific, the current one has not hesitated to integrate this vision into its National Security Strategy. The concept of global pivotal state aims to project ROK as a key partner not only for the US, but also for the countries of Southeast Asia, Oceania, Africa or Latin America in the construction of a global and regional system based on international legality and rules, open and free. As a result of this interest in greater military cooperation, the US Government did not hesitate to reaffirm to Japan and ROK its commitment to deterrence, supported by all of its capabilities, in the Washington Declaration (26 April 2023).

Additionally, the three countries committed to the massive resumption of trilateral exercises to improve military capabilities and coordination. Critical point is the new ROK strategy the rapprochement with Japan and the attempt to normalize bilateral relations after years of continuous tension, which led to the Japanese trade blockade on the export of basic materials for the ROK semiconductor industry. While the rapprochement with the US is seen favorably by a majority of the population, the rapprochement with Japan represents an obvious political risk for the ROK Government, due to the constant tensions due to historical and territorial disputes between both countries.

Economically, Korea has decided to participate at the IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework). This US-led initiative aimed at presenting an alternative to PRC’s economic partnership offers, despite IPEF framework has at the eyes of the Asian partners elements of dissatisfaction, especially on trade. IPEF is made up of four pillars: A) trade, B) supply chain resilience, C) clean economy and D) fair economic practices.

Within the economic sphere, it is necessary to highlight Korea’s participation in the ‘Chip 4 Alliance’, along with the US, Japan and Republic of China/Taiwan (hereinafter ROC). This initiative aims to reduce the dependence of the PRC semiconductor industry by returning factories to ROK, protecting intellectual property and diverting investments to friendly countries. The US, ROC, ROK and Japan meet most of the world’s semiconductor demand. They sit on most of the capacity to design, produce and test tiny chip components. Vis-à- vis DPRK, the conciliatory tone and favorable stance of the previous leadership has been transformed by the incumbent conservative party in a policy that is committed to toughness in the face of any nuclear or ballistic test by Pyongyang.
The Yoon Government aims to denuclearize the peninsula through a hard line of condemnation of DPRK actions and pressure through international sanctions, which reduces the incentives of the neighboring country to follow this provocative line. This approach is intended to be an alternative to the previous policy of compromise and dialogue, which showed the intrinsic weakness of it.
However, the international context seems less favorable to led to the resolution of the inter-Korean conflict. All these actions aimed at strengthening the alliance with the US and Japan and antagonizing DPRK will have the direct consequence of South Korea heading a worsening of the relations with PRC (and Russia as well, especially now that Pyongyang provide weapons to Russia). For PRC leadership, ROK had always been the weakest point in the US security architecture in the region.

The nationalist tendencies present in ROK, which sought greater autonomy and decision-making capacity within the alliance and which till now prevented the normalization and effectiveness of coordination with Tokyo, also played in Beijing’s favor barring the consolidation of a cohesive security architecture for the North East Asia. By putting a stop to these dynamics, President Yoon has strengthened that link and has made feasible one of PRC’s main concerns: the existence of a firm trilateral relationship between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo and the creation of a bloc that can contain Beijing push.

However, China has two powerful tools at its disposal: on the one hand, the interdependence of the PRC and ROK economies; on the other, the relationship with DPRK. At the same time, there is another variable that may represent a limit to the rapprochement between the US and ROK: the unstable electoral life in Seoul. No doubt that PRC occupies a preeminent place in the analysis of the foreign policy of any ROK government.

Historically, Korea was strongly linked to China both politically, economically and culturally. The disparity in power between the two nations forced successive Korean dynasties to take their neighbor’s interests very seriously, carefully calculating each step, in order to maintain relative autonomy and a certain margin of maneuver in a dangerous neighborhood.

Korea has always stood out for its close relationship with China, which meant its integration into the so-called ‘Sinocentricsphere’ that predominated for centuries in East Asia. Korean emperors were invested as such by the Chinese ones, and embassies sent by Korea boosted trade between the two countries.

In the eyes of Beijing, Korea, was relevant also during the imperial era, especially for XVII Century, giving that China saw Korea as a gateway for other great powers such as Russia, Japan and the US to penetrate in the area. There was a long disengagement process from the Sinocentricsphere due its weakening started in 1895 following the war with Japan, the Russo-Japanese war and the occupation of the peninsula by Tokyo and the bilateral relations hit rock bottom during the Korean War, which led to the partition of the country.

The PRC role in supporting the government of Kim Il-sung and his successors severely damaged the perception of Beijing in ROK. The end of the Cold War and the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992 gave way to a recovery of ties, supported by economic growth, the openness of both countries and the boost to bilateral trade promoted by the governments of Kim Dae-jung and by Roh Moo-hyun. The bilateral relationship was expanded to the level of strategic cooperative partnership during the presidency of Lee Myung-bak, which continued the path of improving relations initiated by his predecessors.

However, behind this continuous improvement, remained untouched numerous serious unresolved problems and the creation of new file of confrontation. Trade ties between both countries took off in the 1992. Only three years after, ROK exports to PRC reached 9.56 US$ billion and PRC exports to ROK amounted to 7.37 US$ billion.

During the following two decades, trade between both countries grew more than 11% on year basis. This has meant that the number of exports from ROK to PRC exceeds 158 US$ billion and those from PRC to ROK exceed 140 US$ billion in 2021. This explosion in commercial interactions has placed PRC as the main ROK client, absorbing 22.8% of exports and its main supplier, PRC is the origin of 21% of ROK imports. The main product of bilateral trade is integrated circuits, which have become an essential resource within the current geopolitical chessboard. Computers, transmission equipment, cyclic hydrocarbons and refined oil are other important products in bilateral trade.

Another factor to take into account in the economic relationship is the tourist flow from PRC to ROK. In 2017, almost 8 million Chinese tourists entered in ROK. This figure fell almost 50% after the Seoul Government’s decision to install the US THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system units in its territory, considered by PRC as a threat to its interests and safety.
Before the crisis that broke out in 2016, Chinese citizens made up 47% of visitors to ROK and were a considerable source of income for ROK businesses. Beijing did not hesitate to restrict both the flow of Chinese citizens to ROK and the dissemination of Korean music, television programs and films in PRC. Cosmetic products and video game development companies were also affected by PRC government instructions.

It should be noted that the use of economic power to punish countries that make decisions contrary to its interests has become an increasingly component of PRC’s foreign policy, highlighting the risks posed by an increasingly asymmetric economic relationship in dealing with Beijing. In order to reduce the threat of PRC retaliation in the face of greater trilateral coordination with Tokyo and Washington, perceived as an hostile move by Beijing, the ROK Government decided to join the IPEF, which has a pillar dedicated to the redirection of supply chains. production towards the US or countries close to its orbit.

Although the strategy seems reasonable to avoid the worst consequences of commercial subordination to PRC, giving the deep existing interdependence, the challenges for the ROK economy are extraordinarily complex. The reactions of the PRC could be resumed in the words of the Beijing Ambassador to Seoul who stated that “those who bet on China’s defeat will regret it.” Considering the fact that many ROK components are found in PRC end products and vice versa, the trade restrictions mutually imposed by PRC and the US will end up indirectly affecting ROK and its companies, especially those specialized in integrated circuits and LCDs.

As said, due to the deep and strong ties between the two economies, the decoupling of ROK from PRC is a real challenge, with the persistence of economic pressures from Beijing, with possible impacts on consumer prices and employment and consequences on the voting dynamics. After winning the election, President Yoon Suk-yeol announced a new initiative aimed at achieving peace and denuclearization of the peninsula called the “bold initiative.” Despite this new strategy, the deterioration of global geopolitical conditions makes it very difficult to make substantive progress.

One of the main obstacles to the resolution of the conflict has traditionally been the primacy of PRC national strategic interests on the Korean Peninsula. The first aspect to take into account is the nature of the link between PRC and DPRK. The mutual assistance treaty that they signed in 1961 has been one of the bases of their bilateral relationship, founded at first on ideological solidarity and later on the joint experience of the Korean War and PRC support for DPRK during the following decades.

However, this strong relationship, described by Mao Tse-Dong as close as that of “lips and teeth”, has not been free of turbulence during the last seven decades. The origin of the aforementioned turbulence lies in the difficult fit between PRC’s desire to exercise increasing influence and control over DPRK decisions in order to adjust Pyongyang’s actions to Beijing’s preferences.

The relations between Beijing and Pyongyang, despite appearing difficult to believe, quite often are indeed difficult; tensions between PRC and DPRK have arisen periodically over the past thirty years. Especially critical were Beijing’s recognition of ROK and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Seoul in 1992. This action was perceived by Pyongyang as a betrayal that degraded its security in the face of a possible abandonment of its traditional ally. A year later, DPRK threatened to withdraw from the NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) indicated that it could not conclusively assure that nuclear weapons were not being developed in the country. This tense period was followed by a rapprochement caused by the recurrent famine and crisis suffered by DPRK, in addition to international sanctions due to the development of its nuclear program. In this stage of extreme DPRK’s vulnerability, an intense economic dependence was forged that has marked the relationship between both countries ever since. Despite this, the first years after the rise of Kim Jong-Un as supreme leader once again brought tension to the bilateral relationship, since DPRK nuclear and missiles actions were perceived by PRC as a useless provocation that could destabilize the region at a critical moment for Beijing strategies.

Both the nuclear tests and missile launches of 2016 and 2017 and the brutal executions of important officials of Pyongyang (Jang Song-thaek and Kim Jong-nam), considered close to Beijing, led to a cooling in relations, which was only recovered with the summits between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un prior to the latter’s meeting with Donald Trump. The failure of ROK’s policy of rapprochement with DPRK during Moon Jae-in’s mandate and the stalemate reached at the Singapore and Hanoi summits have blocked any possibility of progress.
Now, the growing tension between the US and PRC has eased the joint pressure to which DPRK was subjected through UNSCRs (UN Security Council Resolutions) 2371, 2375 and 2397. The PRC position continues to be one of support for the DPRK Government. Despite international sanctions, PRC continues to be Pyongyang’s economic support both in terms of legal trade and irregular exchanges that occur on the Yalu’s border or on the high seas to circumvent the aforementioned sanctions.

In this way, although there is no reliable data, a high percentage of DPRK trade is carried out with PRC, which has been an economic lifeline in the worst times. For PRC, DPRK’s survival remains a priority but also a deep strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the imbalance of political, economic and military power is evident and the relationship of dependency is critical; however, this does not translate into greater docility of DPRK with respect to Beijing interests. The constant provocations show that, despite the manifest asymmetry in the capabilities of the partners, Pyongyang’s search for autonomy and independence will continue to generate discomfort for Beijing.

Regardless of the tensions that may periodically arise in the relationship between PRC and DPRK, Beijing’s long-term interests have remained unchanged for decades. Firstly, one of Beijing’s main objectives is to ensure that Pyongyang’s interests are aligned with its own in order to obtain a partner that is increasingly attentive to its needs and objectives. Preventing DPRK from acting alone and putting the stability of the region at risk or spurring other actors to acquire nuclear weapons has been and will be a primary objective of Beijing. In fact, exists inside Beijing leadership two lines regarding the position that the country should adopt in Korean affairs. The first current, associated with the Ministry of Defense and the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), defends the close association with Pyongyang in the face of any crisis and continued support to sustain its survival. The second current considers that this support could be counterproductive for Beijing interests and represents more of a burden than an asset, since if PRC wants to be recognized as a responsible actor in the region and globally, it must cut its ties with Pyongyang, but at the moment appear the prevailing opinion is the first.

The importance for Beijing of the survival of DPRK derives from the possible negative consequences that the fall of the communist’s dynasty would have. Among other reasons, PRC fears the flow of refugees that could lead to state collapse, which would put severe pressure on the neighbouring provinces, with a humanitarian catastrophe due to general insecurity or a cut in the supply of food and social services, with a flow of desperate refugees, repeating the nightmare scenario of the 1990s famine crisis when half millions of people crossed the Yalu River.

Secondly, DPRK represent as a buffer zone for PRC that guaranteed the security of its northeastern border. Given the alliance between ROK and the US, ensuring that those forces were as far away as possible from PRC territory has been a factor to take into account when considering the benefit of support of DPRK.

However, this approach, that a strategic logic decades ago, has been losing meaning due to the advances in military technology have reduced the role of DPRK as ‘buffer zone’ to stop any conventional threat from ROK (and Japan as well). A third reason for Chinese support for DPRK is related to the ROC situation. The possibility that, in the face of PRC military actions, US forces will be gripped by a double crisis on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait is one of the advantages that the DPRK Government offers to Beijing. The resolution of the inter-Korean conflict is one of ROK’s main strategic objectives. PRC’s influence over DPRK thus becomes an asset for Beijing, which can derail any Seoul initiative that does not match with its strategic interests.
One of the great limitations that ROK foreign policy suffers from and that puts it at a disadvantage compared to its neighbors is the country’s acute political split. This polarization poses a threat, due to the blockade to which it can subject the nation at critical moments originated by DPRK actions.

The difficult geostrategic situation of ROK, trapped in a dynamic of confrontation between the two great powers and with a dangerous neighbor to the north, makes it extremely necessary for its internal political situation to be stable and solid. However, the last elections in 2022 produced very close results, which led that the government party does not have a majority in the National Assembly, which reduce its room of maneuver in foreign policy matters.

The angry 2022 election campaign is an example of the increase in polarization in the country, reflecting it in matters of foreign policy, with hypersensitive matters like relations with PRC, DPRK, US. The polarization is aggravated by the ROK political system itself, which prevents the re-election of the president, whose term is reduced to five years, in which he must design and implement a new foreign policy in the event of a change. The alternance between conciliatory and hardline policies of Seoul is a serious obstacle for the country, preventing governments from developing their strategies in a continuous and stable manner, generating confusion at the national and international level.

The deterioration of the security context in Northeast Asia requires the careful planning and execution of a clear foreign policy, free of ambiguities and not subject to possible political fluctuations. This year legislative elections will be decisive for the Government, which hope to remove the National Assembly majority is in the hands of the opposition party. Given this situation and given the existing limits, ROK’s strategic possibilities risk to be limited.

Over the last three decades, the country lived in a very comfortable situation, based on maintaining military ties with the US and establishing a powerful commercial relationship with PRC. In this way, ROK has been able to take advantage of the US defensive shield to counter the DPRK nuclear threat and, at the same time, has boosted its economic growth through trade agreements with PRC, constantly improving the framework of the bilateral relationship until reaching a partnership of strategic cooperation.
This political balance has been a constant in recent ROK governments. During the Roh Moo-hyun government, ROK began a progressive rapprochement with PRC and criticized Japan, weakening the good relationship with the US. However, at the same time it began negotiations for a future free trade agreement with the US. The Lee Myung-bak government, for its part, carried out diplomatic improvements with both countries. With the US he promoted the reinforcement of their alliance, launching the concept of strategic alliance for the 21st Century. With PRC, it placed the bilateral relationship at the level of a strategic partnership for cooperation while beginning negotiations to sign a free trade agreement.

Although this strategy was possible and useful in a context of relatively harmonious relations between the US and PRC, the progressive deterioration of the relationship between Beijing and Washington makes the balancing act that the ROK governments have resorted to since 1992 increasingly unviable. Regardless, Seoul will see its room for maneuver reduced, limiting its options to three strategies. The first would be to continue with the balancing exercise between the two powers to extract the greatest benefit from their bilateral relations. The second would be to opt for an accommodation with PRC in the face of Beijing’s foreseeable regional dominance in the near future. The third option would be to achieve strategic autonomy through nuclear weapons and the renegotiation of the military agreement with the US, but Washington is reluctant that junior partners are equipped with nuclear weapons, of whatever origin (self-built or Washington provided), with risk of lower control of their use and potential destabilization. The first strategy is, perhaps, the most desired by ROK.

However, the dynamics between both countries outline an extension of the confrontation scenarios and an intensification of the rivalry. Given this situation, it is worth asking how long the ROK governments will be able to continue with the balancing act and if at some point the US or PRC will demand that Seoul clearly define in which field it wants to place itself. For this reason, the current strategy does not seem to have guarantees of success in the medium and long term. The second strategy, less likely and riskier for ROK, is to get closer to PRC, leaving aside its alliance with the US. As we saw, there is a sector within PRC that sees DPRK more as a burden than an asset. This sector advocates a rapprochement with ROK that culminates the path begun in 1992. Beijing has been close to declare officially that there is no conflict between the fundamental interests and values of PRC and the ROK, adding that its rise does not pose a threat to neighboring countries, given that its security concept is based on respect for the full sovereignty of nations and bilateral cooperation.

In reality the perception of Beijing in ROK has worsened decisively in recent years due to economic boycotts, historical and territorial issues, and PRC support for DPRK. The main risk of this strategy is the very possible loss of Pyongyang’s autonomy if it is absorbed into Beijing’s sphere of influence, which awakens worrying memories of its past as a member of the PRC tributary system.
Added to this is the erosion of China’s image among Korean citizens. Seoul’s third strategy would be to seek strategic autonomy that would avoid possible retaliation from the great powers and allow the Government greater room for maneuver. This autonomy would only be possible if three extremely complex requirements are met. The first would be the diversification of ROK foreign trade to avoid excessive dependence on the PRC domestic market in both imports and exports. Moon Jae-in’s government attempted through its “New Southern Policy” to explore the options of the Southeast Asian and Indian markets.

However, reconfiguring ROK value chains to distance themselves from China would entail notable changes for the economy that will not be feasible in the short and medium term. Second, it would be necessary for the ROK Armed Forces to reclaim their own full OPCON, which currently falls under the triad of USFK (US Forces in Korea)-ROK/US CFC (Combined Forces Command)/UNC (United Nations Command).
The last requirement, which has considerable support among the population, would be to obtain nuclear weapons that shield ROK against threats from DPRK and retaliation from Beijing. The present geostrategic rivalry between the US and PRC will mark the regional scenario in the coming years.

The era in which ROK has been able to grow economically and enjoy security in a context of optimal regional stability is coming to an end. The rivalry between the two great powers is moving to all areas and is forcing the actors to make a series of complex decisions and choices. With the Yoon Government, ROK seems to have decided which direction to follow, although, there are conditions and limits that could derail its strategy. However, all the other options are full of destabilizing elements in its economy, security, its autonomy or its independence.

Enrico Magnani, PhD, is a retired UN official and expert in military history and international politico-military affairs.