by Yoram Hazony
2nd part of 4
III.
Kuhn’s ideas have had an immense impact on the way the scientific enterprise is understood in the universities. And since most academic disciplines see themselves as “sciences,” few have escaped revision in light of Kuhn’s way of thinking about science. This has been true, for example, in the field of international relations, in which studies applying Kuhn’s ideas have concluded that nations are likewise perceived from within a fixed conceptual framework or paradigm, and that their actions, regardless of how carefully crafted, usually do little more than reinforce pre-existing expectations.[4] The implications of this kind of rethinking for academic research and teaching are vast, and are still unfolding even now.
But as far as I can tell, the revolution in the way scholars think about facts, arguments, and truth has not yet had the slightest impact on the manner in which Jews and friends of Israel think about the progressive delegitimization of the Jewish state in the international arena. Indeed, most of the concerned individuals I speak with are still convinced that if only certain facts were better known–or better presented–Israel’s circumstances could be improved dramatically.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is right. Media battles such as the one over the Turkish ship off Gaza are necessary for Israel’s short-term defense, and we had better do our best to win them by presenting the facts as best we are able. But I think that Kuhn’s argument makes it clear that the outcomes of these contests won’t have any real impact on the overall trajectory of Israel’s standing among educated people in the West. This standing has been deteriorating for the past generation, not because of this or that set of facts, but because the paradigm through which educated Westerners are looking at Israel has shifted. We’ve been watching the transition from one paradigm to another on everything having to do with Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation. So long as we don’t understand this well, we won’t really understand what’s going on, and we won’t be able to do anything to really improve things.
What’s the old paradigm? And what’s the new one to which the international arena is shifting?
Let’s begin with the old paradigm, which is the one that granted Israel its legitimacy in the first place. The modern state of Israel was founded, both constitutionally and in terms of the understanding of the international community, as a nation-state, the state of the Jewish people. This is to say that it is the offspring of an early modern movement that understood the freedom of peoples as depending on a right to self-protection against the predations of international empires speaking in the name of a presumed higher authority.[5] And while there have always been nation-states—the Jewish kingdom of the Bible was the most important classical example[6]—the modern history of the national state focuses on the rise of nation-states such as England and the Netherlands, and subsequently Richelieu’s France, whose self-understanding as sovereign nations was sharpened and consolidated during the long struggle to liberate their peoples from the pretensions to universal empire of the Austro-Spanish Habsburgs (that is, the “Holy Roman Empire”) beginning in the mid-1500s. What made the defeat of the Spanish “Armada” by Elizabeth in 1588 a turning point in mankind’s history was precisely the fact that in turning away Phillip II’s bid to rule England, she also made solid the freedom (or “self-determination”) of peoples from the Austro-Spanish claim to a right to rule mankind as sole protector of the universal Catholic faith.
The defeat of the universalist ideal in the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 led to the establishment of a new paradigm for European politics—one in which a revitalized concept of the national state held the key to the freedom of peoples throughout Europe. By the late-1800s, this idea of national liberty had been extended to the point that it was conceived not only as a governing principle for Europe, but for the entire world. Progressives such as John Stuart Mill and Woodrow Wilson championed the sovereign nation-state, which would have the right to defend its form of government, laws, religion and language against the tyranny of imperial actors, as the cornerstone of what was ultimately to be a new political order for humanity. Herzl’s Zionist Organization, which proposed a sovereign state for the Jewish people, fit right into this political understanding—and indeed, it was under British sponsorship that the idea of the Jewish state grew to fruition. In 1947, the United Nations voted by a 2/3 majority for the establishment of a “Jewish State” in Palestine. And the birth of Israel was followed by the establishment of dozens of additional independent states throughout the Third World.
But the idea of the nation-state has not flourished in the period since the establishment of Israel. On the contrary, it has pretty much collapsed. With the drive toward European Union, the nations of Europe have established a new paradigm in which the sovereign nation-state is no longer seen as holding the key to the well-being of humanity. On the contrary, the independent nation-state is now seen by many intellectuals and political figures in Europe as a source of incalculable evil, while the multinational empire—the form of government which John Stuart Mill had singled out as the very epitome of despotism—is now being mentioned time and again with fondness as a model for a post-national humanity.[7] Moreover, this new paradigm is aggressively advancing into mainstream political discourse in other nations as well—even in countries such as the United States and Israel.
Why is this happening? How is it that so many French, Germans, English, Dutch and others are now willing to lend a hand in dismantling the states in which they live, and to exchanging them for the rule of an international regime?
To answer these questions, we have to take a brief look at the source of the modern post-national paradigm in European thought. This alternative way of viewing European politics was launched in a 1795 manifesto by Immanuel Kant called Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. In it, Kant issued a famous and explicit attack on the ideal of the nation-state, comparing national self-determination to the lawless freedom of savages, which, he said, is rightly detested as “barbarism,” and a “brutish debasement of humanity.” As he wrote:
We look with profound contempt upon the way in which savages cling to their lawless freedom. They would rather engage in incessant strife than to submit to legal constraint…. We regard this as barbarism, coarseness, and brutish debasement of humanity. We might thus expect civilized peoples, each united within itself as a [nation] state, would hasten to abandon so degrading a condition as soon as possible. But instead of doing so, each state sees its own majesty… precisely in not having to submit to any external constraint, and the glory of its ruler consists in his power to order thousands of people to immolate themselves….
For Kant, then, the hallmark of reason in politics is the willingness to give up any kind of right to act on the basis of one’s own political independence. This is true of the individual, when he submits to the lawful order of the political state. And it is true of nations as well, which must in the same way give up any right to independent action and enter into an “international state” that will assume all rights respecting the use of force and the establishment of justice:
There is only one rational way in which states co-existing with other states can emerge from the lawless condition of pure warfare…. They must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state, which would necessarily continue to grow until it embraced all the people of the earth.[8]
In Perpetual Peace, then, Kant argues that the establishment of a universal state, which will “grow until it embraced all the people of the earth,” is the only possible dictate of reason. Human beings who do not agree to the subordination of their national interests to the decisions of such a universal state are seen as opposing the historical march of humanity toward reason. The supporters of the nation-state are seen as supporting a violent egoism on an international scale, which is as much an abdication of morals as the insistence of violent egoism in our personal lives.
For many years, the Kantian paradigm, which imputed an intrinsic immorality to the institution of the national state, found few takers in Europe. In the 19th century, it was embraced by a minuscule number of Communists and utopians, and a handful of Catholic reactionaries. But the 20th century was a different story. The Soviets and Marxists blamed the carnage of the two world wars on the order of nation-states. This was an argument that had little traction in the European mainstream between the wars. But after World War II, when Nazism was added to the list of crimes attributed to the nation-state, the result was very different. Nazism was seen as the rotten fruit of the German nation-state, and Kant looked to have been right all along: For the nations to arm themselves, and to determine for themselves when to use these arms, was now seen as barbarism and a brutish debasement of humanity.
For the record, my own view is that this line of argument is preposterous. The heart of the idea of the nation-state is the political self-determination of peoples. The nation-state is a form of government that limits its political aspirations to the rule of one nation, and to establishing national freedom for this nation. The Nazi state, on the other hand, was precisely the opposite of this: Hitler opposed the idea of the nation-state as an expression of Western effeteness. On his view, the political fate of all nations should be determined by the new German empire that was to arise: Indeed, Hitler saw his Third Reich as an improved incarnation of what he referred to as the First Reich—which was none other than the Holy Roman Empire of the Hapsburgs! The Nazis’ aim was thus diametrically opposed to that of the Western nation-states. Hitler’s dream was precisely to build his empire on their ruin.
Obvious as this seems to me, many Europeans declined to see things this way, accepting the view that Nazism was, more or less, the nation-state taken to its ugly conclusion. In this way, the Soviets’ condemnation of the Western nation-state was joined by a new Western anti-nationalism, which eagerly sought an end to the old order in the name of Kant’s march of reason. As the philosopher Jurgen Habermas, perhaps the leading theoretician of a post-national Europe, pointed out, this transition was particularly easy for Germans—given Germany’s role in World War II and the fact that post-war Germany was in any case under occupation and was no longer a sovereign state.[9] He might have added that unlike the British, French and Dutch, the German-speaking peoples of Europe had historically never lived under a single sovereignty, so that the dream of the nation-state was perhaps in any case somewhat less important to them.
Be this as it may, this post-national vision found takers all over Europe. A mere generation later, in 1992, European leaders signed the Treaty of Maastricht establishing the European Union as an international government, and stripping member states of many of the powers associated historically with national independence. Of course, there are many in Europe who have not yet accepted this course. And it’s still unclear what the future holds—whether the nation states of Europe will succeed in retaining aspects of their sovereignty, or whether these states, as independent nations, will soon be a mere memory.
But either way, the impact of the new paradigm, which is the engine driving the movement toward European Union, has already been overwhelming. Both in Europe and in North America, we are watching the growth of a generation of young people that, for the first time in 350 years, does not recognize the nation-state as the foundation of our freedoms. Indeed, there is a powerful new paradigm abroad, which sees us doing without such states. And it has unleashed a tidal wave of consequences, for those who embrace it and for those who do not.
Yoram Hazony
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