BRICS Leaders Discuss Middle East Concerns and Sanctions at India Summit
Unilateral Sanctions Are Not Law, but a Species of War
When great powers punish others by their private will, without a common rule or impartial judge, they do not govern; they merely strike, and invite the rest of mankind back toward the state of nature.
At Delhi, I am told, many of the most powerful rulers on earth sat at a vast circular table and listened as their host urged them to become “rule-shapers, not rule-takers.” They then condemned “unilateral sanctions” and expressed alarm at deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and on peaceful nuclear facilities under the authority of the United Nations. The words are few, and much is left in shadow: we are not here given the full catalogue of injuries, nor the authors, nor the proposed remedies. Yet in these bare facts one may already discern the old question that has occupied me since I first wrote on government: by what right does any man, or any confederation of men, claim authority over another’s life, liberty, or estate?
When I defined political power in my Second Treatise, I described it as a right of making laws, with penalties, only for the public good. That definition is not a flourish; it is a measure. Power that cannot be brought under known standing rules, directed to the preservation of the lives, liberties, and possessions of those subject to it, is not properly political power at all, but mere force. If one state, or a handful of states, announces that another shall be cut off from trade, finance, or the ordinary intercourse of nations, and does so by its private counsel, without a common rule to which both are bound, then I must ask whether this differs, in kind, from seizing a man’s goods upon the highway because one thinks him wicked.
To see this steadily, one must, as I argued there, step back into the state of nature, where men are naturally free, equal, and independent, under the law of nature which is reason. In that state, every man is obliged not to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions; where he has suffered an injury, he may seek reparation, but he may not make himself judge in his own case without setting himself into a state of war with the offender. Now much of what you call sanctions is defended as reparation or restraint: this people, it is said, has offended, therefore we impoverish it; that ruler, it is said, has endangered peace, therefore we close his markets. But if the accuser alone defines the offence, weighs the evidence, and fixes the penalty, has he escaped being judge in his own case, or has he only given that old partiality a modern name?
Here the Delhi assembly’s talk of “rule-shapers” and “rule-takers” is of moment. For a law binds as law only when those subject to it may be supposed to have consented, or at least to have had voice by their representatives in framing it. A solitary power that proclaims rules of commerce, and then punishes all who will not keep them, may indeed compel obedience; it does not thereby gain authority. But when many nations, free and independent, convene and agree to be governed by common rules—when they truly shape rules together, and do not only register the edicts of the strongest—then even sharp restraints, applied according to those rules and judged by impartial tribunals, may be acts of lawful government between societies rather than unilateral hostilities disguised as policy.
Yet I must add a caution that cuts both ways. It is not enough for some rulers to complain of “unilateral sanctions” and to desire a new order in which they, too, may shape the rules, if the rules they seek are but a shield for their own arbitrary power at home or abroad. The same law of nature that restrains the strong from oppressing the weak in the state of nature binds princes and assemblies: no one ought to harm another’s life, liberty, or possessions without just cause and due process. If, under cover of resisting one empire’s economic weapons, a confederacy were to claim a liberty to despoil their neighbours, to crush their own subjects, or to strike civilian works and peaceful reactors, they would not be advancing consent and law, but only trading one long train of abuses for another.
The mention in Delhi of “deliberate attacks” on civilian infrastructure and on peaceful nuclear facilities raises here a darker question. For such acts, if truly deliberate and not accidental in the course of a just defence, come very near to what I called a state of war: a settled design upon the lives and security of a people as such, not upon their guilty leaders alone. Against this, men are not bound to sit still under fear of disorder. The world may, and must, contrive institutions by which such accusations can be examined with evidence, and wrongs repaired, lest every plea of security become a pretext for wanton destruction. Where no such impartial judge is acknowledged, each side will claim necessity, and the innocent will pay the price.
From the little that is reported, I draw only this modest conclusion. Efforts by many states together to erect a more equal frame of international rules, in which no single power may by its lone decree reduce whole peoples to poverty, are in harmony with the principle that all political authority is held on trust and must be consented to by the governed. But the mere fact that nations speak in a circle and call themselves a group does not cleanse their measures if those measures violate the law of nature. Unilateral sanctions that confiscate property, endanger health, or abridge liberty, without a common rule and an impartial judge, are not acts of government but of war; multilateral tyranny would be no better. The world will be just in proportion as its rulers remember that they, too, are but men, the workmanship of one Maker, sent into it not to domineer, but to preserve one another.
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 — Government by consent and majority decision, with the legislative supreme but itself bound: a fiduciary power, held on trust, forfeited by breach.