“The dust from which the first man was made was gathered in all four corners of the earth.” — Talmud, Sanhedrin 38a
In the final analysis, ending America and Israel’s current war with Iran is only the tip of a much larger “iceberg.” Even if this war ends successfully, core global stability will remain imperiled.
Though there is no single or simple solution to such an underlying security deficit, potentially promising insights can be discovered in Jewish thought.
Since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), world politics has remained glaringly self-destructive. The absence of viable international law is responsible for a global structure that continuously spawns war, genocide and terrorism.
This is the result of a world order that rejects all indispensable notions of human “oneness.” Although the philosophers Plato and Aristotle insisted that politics and law make the “souls” of citizens better, the cumulative effects of an “everyone for himself” orientation have made everything worse.
Today, when they are assessed in a zero-sum world system rippling with weapons of mass destruction, these destabilizing effects are more potent than ever before.
Somehow, prima facie, humankind has managed to tolerate human security arrangements in which everyone must eventually lose. Everywhere on earth, a presumed military victory must remain partial and transient. Whatever the power-centered calculations of a present moment, any alleged gains will be illusory. Ultimately, they will be superseded by entirely new rounds of violence and terror.
This can be put down to the phenomenon of belligerent nationalism, which over time will become increasingly injurious and exterminatory. By any reasonable standard, no capitalized affirmations of “greatness” can make any meaningful sense. Left unchecked, the dynamics of “all against all” will lead humankind to endless war, terrorism and genocide.
At this point, two questions should be raised: 1) Why do we humans cling tenaciously to a persistently discredited system of international relations? 2) Why have our consistently failed global dynamics managed to remain the determinative wellspring of “Westphalian” diplomacy?
Until world leaders can answer these basic questions satisfactorily, there will be no respite from the interminable horrors of modern world politics.
Some additional questions will need to be raised. Accordingly, capable scholars should inquire: 1) Why are there still no discernible movements to build purposefully on human unity, the latent “oneness” that lies promisingly in us all? 2) Why has there been so little intellectual dissatisfaction with worldwide anarchy and global chaos? 3) Are we humans merely a self-destroying “mass,” an intellectually inert species destined for recurrent bloodshed and eventual extinction?
On such core matters, there is little cause for optimism. Though few people could reasonably expect political leaders to resemble Plato’s “philosopher-king,” others ought at least to be able to choose decision-makers who can offer more than delusion. In essence, this means national leaders who can apprehend and appreciate the interrelated benefits of philosophy, culture, literature, law and science.
Such leaders are few indeed.
Projected debilities of ‘America First’
From the beginning of his first presidency, Donald Trump’s rancorous ideology of “America First”—the reductio ad absurdum of belligerent nationalisms—has been manipulative and shortsighted. The defiling notion that an exploitative and self-centered American philosophy could somehow propel the United States in tangibly gainful directions is erroneous on its face.
To wit, drawn in significant measure from traditional Jewish philosophy, the Natural Rights premises of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution emphasize equality and cooperation as universal human values.
Such emphases are purposeful and ought never to be minimized. They have not been rendered moot by Trump’s international aggressions (both direct and indirect) or by his not-so-veiled threats of “obliteration.”
Certain associated particularities are worth noting. In the words of 17th-century jurist Samuel Pufendorf, whose legal philosophy was well-known to Thomas Jefferson and other American Founding Fathers: “One of the common duties of the Natural Law is that no one who has not acquired a peculiar right arrogate more to himself than the rest may have, but permit others to enjoy the same rights as himself.” No American president (or any other national leader) can claim such a “peculiar right.”
As the principal expression of Trump’s “brand” of belligerent nationalism, “America First” is unacceptable not only on expedient grounds but also on moral grounds. This judgment can be made more evident by invoking certain Jewish philosophic expectations. Multiple ethical derelictions of U.S. foreign policy violate timeless Jewish principles of decent and dignified human behavior. Most notable among these principles are cooperation, “oneness” and community.
“There is no longer a virtuous nation,” lamented the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, “and the best of us live by candlelight.”
There is still more. American thinkers have generally ignored the obvious: No foreign-policy prescriptions founded on a contrived and rancorous posture of cynicism have ever succeeded. The obligation of all civilized states and peoples to accept worldwide interdependence or “oneness” has never been greater. Among other core sources, this obligation has ascertainably deep roots in Jewish philosophy.
The primacy of ‘mind’
How should America proceed on matters of global cooperation and unity? Over time, only a suitable expansion of human empathy can realistically save the United States and the planet as a whole. This suggests, among other things, that any such expansion by the United States would represent not an unreciprocated act of charity—that is, a one-sided species of American benevolence—but a self-serving expression of rational national policy.
There is a conceptual bottom line: U.S. national interests can no longer be served in any serious way at the expense of other states and nations. Always, these American interests should be served together with those of other states and nations, even when international relations have become grievously adversarial. In the end, in world politics as in law, only truth can be exculpatory.
The truth is that, at every crucial level—military, economic and biological—American security is linked with the much wider “human condition.”
Truth is the final arbiter, not just in matters of law and policy, but also in critical judgments of ethical conduct. Today’s American national and geopolitical truth remains grim and unpromising. There are no discoverable correctives in Trump’s policy prescriptions, even those few that remain more-or-less decipherable.
