Moving Beyond Modern Sanctions: On a Neuweltbürgertum and a Grand Leviathan

"I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world." - Eugene V. Debs

To look beyond modern sanctions is to look both into the past, where we have all come from, as well as to imagine a future that we have not come to yet. It is to appraise who we are as a species, what we have been previously, as well as what we still may yet be moving forward. It is not easy, nor is it full of certainty. What societies or polities grow comfortable knowing and understanding must be evolving ever continuously; therefore, to look beyond those sanctions which have, to put it lightly, questionable moral justifications - however they’re sliced or discussed - the very organizations of humanity itself must be appraised and analyzed.

In my previous foray into this task properly, economic blocs, were discussed and the notion of grand incentivization - even reaching out to those nations of which the United States and its Western Allies have traditionally had issue with - were discussed at length. This is not entirely unlike the strategy that many American foreign policy analysts in the 1930s imagined might need to be a necessary reality in the face of Nazi-dominated Europe, Japanese-dominated East Asia and a USSR that was, somehow, not even considered within the equations until the United States was already finally in the Second World War. 

Yet today, the world is very much different than it was when I wrote that first piece. Today, the greatest, most multilateral sanction regime of all time continues to be developed and imposed upon the nation of Russia for its transgressions in and against Ukraine. While in that first piece considering the future of modern diplomacy beyond sanctions, it was decided between my editor and myself that I would focus more upon the economic bloc concept; the other concept that was not included is one that, today, feels a real part of not only looking beyond modern sanctions, but moving beyond modern sanctions altogether; that is, after all, the goal and the next step for further civilizing the nations and societies of the earth and international community.

At the time of the first piece, the idea floating through my mind was very much in the vein of a sort of international parliament, where nations would be represented by a delegation from the leader or coalition government in charge of each nation, alongside a sort of “shadow government” delegation made up of, depending upon the nation in question, either the opposition party or else a coalition of the losing parties. In this theoretical body, polities who frustrate the international community of nations by malevolent actions and deeds could very well face a vote in which the governing party or coalition of the nation in question was removed in favor of the opposition party of the coalition. 

Now, in hindsight, this concept would require a great deal of micro and macro innovations around the world to even be a thinkable or applicable solution, and yet for me, the essence of the idea remains as reasonable, necessary and vital for not only moving the world beyond the sanction regime that has particularly gripped parts of the world in the 75 years since World War II ended. The international community of nations, much like the communities and societies within those very nations themselves, requires greater infrastructure, organization, and order to be rendered more effective than their constituent parts. To channel and fuse both Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant for a moment, a sort of “Leviathan of Leviathans,” or “Neuweltbürgertum,” must be brought to life by the cooperation and determination of each nation of the world.

“For by art is created that great ‘Leviathan’ called a ‘Commonwealth’ or ‘State,’ in Latin ‘CIVITAS,’ which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the ‘sovereignty’ is an artificial ‘soul,’ as giving life and motion to the whole body…” - Thomas Hobbes, “Leviathan”

Not only must this Leviathan of Leviathans be analyzed and considered, but then, once that has been done, those institutions which would make such a massive, global construct up must also be sorted through as well. When one first appraises the notion of Leviathan regarding its implications vis-a-vis the social contract, society, states, polities and the like in today’s world, it is not difficult to understand why or how all of our constructed existence functions now as part of a more democratic Leviathan than Hobbes would have ever conceived. The mutual benefits and protection offered by a Leviathan have in many ways helped to create the semi-artificial existence - removed as far as we are from the nature of the rest of the world - that humans largely live within, only traveling into the world proper for pleasure, work or the like. 

Yet when one is finished considering Hobbes’ Leviathan, perhaps their own state’s Leviathan, one would be wise to notice the many, various Leviathan-type structures of which inhabit this modern world. There are those of states and nations, of course, but minor Leviathans exist in each town across the world as well in the form of corporations and collectives within the greater state or national Leviathan; multinational corporate Leviathans also exist, and do so somewhere within and without national Leviathans and the partially constructed vacuum that a greater, better organized Leviathan of Leviathans would more adequately govern. That framework which currently exists within the international community of nations, and of which has been constructed across the last several centuries or so, simply must continue to be built upon today and tomorrow.

Now, there are certainly powerful structures and institutions within each national Leviathan, although these relatively minor Leviathans, alongside the rest of the society, actually make up the national Leviathan of Hobbes’ mind properly in the first instance. The greater world, however, has at least 195 of these great, national Hobbesian Leviathans in it. To a Leviathan, surely, other Leviathans must appear to each other just as people appear to other people within the context of a relatively formless landscape: As potential enemies, as potential allies, as potential friends, and as potential rivals. 

The modern international community of nations, or Leviathans as we might call it, does have structure and organization, in the form of regional and broadly international institutions where nations can bring their issues, evidence, or complaints for fair, balanced, and unbiased arbitration and reconciliation. These institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Monitoring System, the International Atomic Energy Agency, etc, serve purposes and functions to varying degrees, but there are great and obvious issues concerning cooperation, functionality and their roles in assisting the needy while promoting positive change across the world.   

Certainly, these aforementioned institutions can be considered to be a sort of international Leviathan infrastructure - to some degree and extent - but each institution has flaws connected to the lack of power relative to the interconnectedness of all the various superstructures. To put it another way, while all of those bodies and constructs exist - and oftentimes even work with one another in both looser and more intimate ways - they are not really one fluid body in the sense of any traditional, singularly national Leviathan; they are only relatively-connected institutions, of which, because and thanks to this, cannot fully command any dissenting or uncooperative Leviathan, having not the intrinsic, collective power necessary by what we might call a sort of grand, International Leviathan to move international society, as those parts and entities of the national Leviathans do within their own societies. 

So, a “Leviathan of Leviathans,” a “Grand International Democratic Leviathan,” or any other term you like, must have the same great collective power with which the people imbue each of their national constructs with; that grand construct might include a sort of international parliament, but it could be constructed in several different ways as well. In the past, the Leviathan that is each nation has very much developed over time, across the entire world; as nations and societies grew and developed, so too did the Leviathan of which controlled, ordered, and organized them, with institutions arising as was expedient, innovative or necessary. 

While economic incentivization or coercion - depending on how one appraises and perceives the actions of interested parties and nations - are often used in our relatively loose international community today, using them to bring nations into a more egalitarian economic and diplomatic international amalgamation of fully integrated arbitration bodies, criminal courts, and democratic proceedings that all party members will be accountable to and members of would be useful in ways seen across bodies like the European Union and, of course, the United States of America. 

With not only nuclear, but human rights investigators and inspectors and institutions, along with the mutual, collective backing of all member nations - not simply the most economically well endowed of them - human, economic and material progress can be made across regions where recalcitrance or autocracy remains; this would mean, naturally, that, composed of peoples from across the entire globe, all nations who benefit from, yet stray outside of the norms of international law, could be investigated, held accountable and made an example of as any international leader or their military should be. 

Nations within a congress of nations could choose to confront issues and polities in that setting, and, depending on how votes and ideas played themselves out, diplomatic confrontations could replace those of the militant variety. With the structure of the UN as currently conceived, some nations are given more power than others, and so, little has been achieved comparatively speaking since Russia came back to the Security Council in the early 1950s. A world congress that had more collective power from each individual state to uphold the international rule of law and global interests might be able to push for different types of arbitration more frequently than we currently often witness; while sanctions will not be immediately outrun, they would likely serve in a

downsized role compared to their share presently, owing to the greater diplomatic levers and incentivizations that would come with a better functioning and organized global community.

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In this world today, with so many innovations of the nation-state left woefully underdeveloped in the international sphere, the innovation of the greater, more developed global Leviathan could be as positive an engine for collective accountability, arbitration, equality, innovation, mutuality, and progress as has ever been dreamed or imagined previously. And, of course, like its older and relatively smaller predecessor, the first step towards its creation and application - before all of those aforementioned institutions and innovations can be conceived of or created - lies within the unified, multilateral “consent” or desire for both its existence as well as for the order, protection and organization of which it would provide all of humanity by all of humanity.

For the United States, like other nations large and small, this is a real issue to be sure however. For an innovation such as a greater Leviathan, like other international institutions of today such as the International Criminal Court - of which the US, China and Russia have all shown utter disdain for over the years and are not part of - the US would have to, to some, varying degrees, subordinate itself to a greater Leviathan than itself. This has been used as an excuse for not participating in greater, more broad international institutions that naturally engender more intricate cooperation throughout the past, but it really is an unreasonable excuse on its face. 

If all people of a nation agree to be, to varying degrees, subordinated and supported by the structure, laws, and rules of the country they find themselves in, and this is deemed as mutually positive, as reasonable and as palatable for humanity to generally abide by, then why should not those Leviathan avatars themselves be bound by a similar, multilaterally agreed pact of the already pacted? It feels as though it is the most obvious way of protecting humanity from the abuses of the domestic governments of humanity; to ground the notion in a deeper, more historical context, it might actually be the answer to the famous question of Juvenal in his Sixth Satire, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” - variously translated along the lines of “Who will watch the watchers?”

This more complete and expansive Leviathan - whatever it might be practically named in the future - would progress beyond anything of the previous two centuries concerning cooperation, delineated power and abilities, and formal organization and scope. The loop, therefore, might finally be closed, after multiple attempts over the last few centuries; in the international sphere, accountability and arbitration could finally be taken out of the hands of individual or independently collective actors alone, and would instead be nothing more than the same egalitarian reflexes that nations have within themselves in the forms of the institutions that variously check, balance and police polities and societies.

This is the type of work that requires relatively peaceful circumstances to build, develop and grow, and the current world is simply not at that moment right now. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict threatens to throw the world into a major - perhaps even nuclear - conflict even as Ukraine has won back territory and Russia flails painfully in economic and social turmoil; meanwhile, the international community continues to throw itself into sanctioning the most massive and multilateral sanction regime in the history of mankind to oppose the Russian incursion into Ukraine. 

“So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel: First, Competition; Secondly, Dissidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other men's persons, wives, children and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.” - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

While this remarkable, and in many ways draconian, response to a differently draconian invasion of a sovereign neighboring nation in the year 2022 might actually work this time to push Russia towards entreating with Ukraine and, eventually, the rest of the cooperating world, thanks to the sheer collective weight of humanity, as well as the economic and military deficiencies of Russia, there is no telling how long “success” will take, or whether, at that point, the result can even be considered success anymore at all. It could fail and have dreadful consequences as well, of course; while economic downturn does appear either likely or possible across the world, there is no indication that Russia’s quick and destructive domination of Ukraine would’ve been the end of their tour across Eastern Europe either - as old reports concerning Moldova warned. Yet this - as well as the recent rebuke at the UN - has been the chosen path thus far by the grand majority of the nations of the world; moving past this horrific circumstance in Ukraine between Russians, their allies, Ukrainians and their allies, must also mean that the world largely moves beyond and past the “Great Era Of Sanction Diplomacy” as well.

The tightrope that humanity continues to walk upon - even after the end of the Cold War - is not a sustainable way forward between the spectres of international conflict, climate change poverty, illness, and multinational conglomerate and oligarchic greed. A better way forward is possible within the international community of nations, in the same way as national communities would eventually come to organize themselves. It can, however, not be further built upon that which has preceded it during such crises as this conflict in Easter Europe; peace is the time to build, and until the destruction of people, lives and societies ceases, there can be no real innovation, and only more of the same story that humanity has eternally suffered through. 

In order to create this greater Leviathan, of which is a means towards attaining the cosmopolite vision of a global Neuweltbürgertum - “New World Citizenship” - for people and nations, the commonalities of humanity must be more readily identified than they are often today. While the beautiful traditions of all cultures must be cherished, those that diminish humanity simply cannot remain. A society of societies and all that that entails must be truly endeavored for, and that will require the full support of the most powerful nations of the world; the United States would find itself on the good and positive side of history by acting with such humanitarian and international consideration, foresight, and mutuality, and by supporting a truly egalitarian and innovative project such as this Leviathan of Leviathans, the world itself could not only look beyond modern sanctions, but could work to move firmly beyond their usage as well.