U.S. and Iran Exchange Military Strikes Amid Strait of Hormuz Tensions
Missiles in Place of Law Are Not Government but War
When states trade ship attacks and missile salvos without impartial judgment or public consent, they fall from rule into a state of war, and the people’s trust in government is what lies burning on the water.
I begin not with theories but with the scene described: a Cyprus‑flagged merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, attacked until its crew must abandon ship and take to a lifeboat; the military command of the United States striking some 140 targets inside Iran; Iran replying with missiles against a base in Jordan and toward Arab neighbours; missiles intercepted over Qatar, wounding three persons, including a child; and fresh missiles, said by Iran, flying toward an island that holds an important military post. Meanwhile, one president declares the ceasefire over and boasts that his forces “bombed” the adversary, and the adversary accuses him of breaking an agreement. This, we are told, is order.
When I wrote my Second Treatise of Government, I began from a simple thought: that men are by nature free, equal, and independent, subject only to the law of God and reason, which forbids that any harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. Political power is not a natural dominion of some over others; it is a trust, granted by consent, that authorizes rulers to make known laws and employ force only for the public good and the preservation of everyone’s property, taken in that large sense of lives, liberties, and estates. Whatever power goes beyond that definition, and cannot show its title from consent and public safety, must stand not as government but as usurpation.
By that measure, I ask what title either side shows for these acts. The Revolutionary Guard insists that ships must follow its proposed route through the Strait of Hormuz and attacks one that does not, so that it is left disabled. By what covenant does one regional power command the common passage of the seas for all nations’ merchants? The United States launches wide strikes within Iran at missile and drone sites, ammunition dumps, and communications. By what standing law, known beforehand to those now under the bombs, are these particular men and places made liable to such destruction? I see armed prudence, perhaps; I do not yet see rightful authority.
It will be said, as it is always said, that there had been attacks first; that Iran “blatantly” struck the ship; that missiles from Iran flew toward Jordan, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates; that a navy officer in Iran is now reported dead. I do not deny that there may be provocations, nor do I pretend to know which hand loosed the earliest shaft. But men do not escape the state of nature merely by putting uniforms on those who bear their weapons. If there be no impartial judge acknowledged by both sides, and no settled rule to which they appeal, then each sovereign remains, with respect to the other, in that state of nature where force and not right decides.
Here a distinction must be observed. Within each commonwealth, the people may have authorized their rulers, by something like consent, to employ force in their defence. A government has a kind of prerogative to act swiftly in emergencies; I admitted as much when I wrote of executive power that must sometimes go beyond the letter of the law for the public safety. Yet prerogative is a dangerous medicine. It is tolerable only so long as it is plainly used for the public good, kept within necessity, and remains revocable by the people who granted the trust. When I hear of one side boasting of having “bombed the hell” out of another, I hear not a physician using a bitter draught, but a man glorying in the strength of the potion.
What then shall we say when this power, claimed on all sides for safety, yields instead a long train of abuses: a disabled merchant vessel, civilians scrambling from shrapnel, a wounded child, families of sailors waiting for those in lifeboats, and neighbours drawn in who would rather be let alone? If the people find that every incident in the Strait, every contested missile, is made the occasion for more unaccountable force, more secrecy, more concentration of power in executives and generals, then the very purpose for which they left the state of nature is disappointed. Their rulers, by endangering their property instead of securing it, set themselves, in that point, into a state of war with their own people.
I do not urge every man, upon the first miscarriage of his governors, to throw off obedience. The right of resistance that I defended is reserved for great and manifest cases, where a pattern of arbitrary power shows itself and points always in the same direction. Whether that point has been reached in these countries, I cannot say from the few reports before me. But I can say this much: when rulers, under colour of security, treat remote peoples and even their own subjects as mere matter to be struck, and leave them no clear law, no impartial tribunal, and no path back from this posture of perpetual retaliation, then they are no longer mediating between peoples but appealing to heaven; and appeals of that sort seldom end where princes intend.
From the works cited
- Second Treatise of Government — Political power defined narrowly as the right to make laws, with penalties, only for the public good — anything beyond that definition must justify itself or stand condemned.
- Second Treatise of Government — The state of nature as analytic baseline: perfect freedom and equality under the law of nature, so that government must be shown to improve on that baseline for everyone who leaves it.
- Second Treatise of Government — Dissolution of government and the right of resistance: when legislators invade property or set up arbitrary power, they rebel against the people, not the people against them.