Thomas Hobbes, in one of the best known and most abused phrases in the English language, described the life of man in a state of nature as 'solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short'. Less famous, but almost as notorious, is Hobbes's contention that the relations between the states that human beings create in order to escape the misery of their natural condition are subject to nothing but the laws that produced that misery in the first place. 'The Law of Nations,' Hobbes wrote, 'and the Law of Nature, is the same thing. And every Soveraign hath the same Right, in procuring the safety of his People, that any particular man can have, in procuring the safety of his own body.' In other words, states can do what they like. This has led many people to suppose that international relations must replicate the terrible conditions of the original state of nature. The adjective 'Hobbesian' has become shorthand for a view that sees international politics as a scene of conflict and strife, in which the law of the jungle prevails. But this view is a mistake, both in Hobbes's terms, and in ours.

LRB 3 April 2003 | PDF Download