Commentary | On Freud, Hobbes, and the Politics of Illusion

In his major work on religion, Sigmund Freud offers a broad definition of “illusion.” Examined in terms of Israel and world politics, this definition is dense with implication. It is a definition that could help Israelis understand (1) vital linkages between “wish fulfilment” and jihadist enmity; and (2) lethal limitations of anarchic world politics

By its original meaning, Freud’s “illusion” references hope for personal immortality.  If extended to world politics, this term could also suggest illuminating linkages between “power over death” and power over a despised adversary. For Israel, moreover, it could clarify the long-term limits of short-term military solutions.

National survival strategies should always be considered an intellectual task. In the seventeenth century, political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan described the global “state of nature” (aka world politics) as a “state of war.” Because this condition involves the absence of a central power to keep competitive states “in awe” (i.e., a world government authority), the system’s one unchanging dynamic is violent struggle of “all against all.” For both individuals and states, seeking to survive through competitive risk taking is inevitably a futile effort. For both, recalling Sigmund Freud, any such search is an “illusion.”

What can be learned from Freud and Hobbes to create a safer world politics? Though any proposals to implement a more centralized system of power and authority would be labeled “unrealistic,” nothing could be less realistic for states than maintaining dependence on a “balance of power.” How then should rational leaders proceed?

To begin, world history will deserve pride of place. Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, global politics have been shaped by sovereignty-centered belligerence. When considered over time, especially as the technologies of military destruction become more “advanced,” this system of competitive nationalism exhibits one overriding deficit: It is destined to fail.

For humankind, there is one general expectation. This is the obligation of states to replace “Westphalian” threat-system dynamics with durable mechanisms of world legal order. Animating this core obligation must be scholars who could understand that the visionary is the only realist.

If left unchallenged, world politics will undergo increasingly catastrophic breakdowns. To call for yet another round of “tribal conflict” would be to reject everything we ought already to have learned about law, civilization and “wish fulfilment.” For Israel, the fact that such a tiny and beleaguered state has been effective in its history of war-fighting ought never to be taken as “evidence” of future efficacy.

Going forward, Israel cannot afford to detach its own survival strategies from much wider considerations of planetary survival. Unless world leaders generally take tangible steps to implement a cooperative planetary civilization - one based on the central truth of human "oneness" -  there will be no civilization for any single state. To reject this conclusion would require world leaders to accept that an inherently corrosive ethos of “everyone for himself” could somehow be made sensible. Any such requirement would not “only” be illogical. It would also be a grievous violation of international law and a rejection of eternal Jewish precepts of justice.

In all world politics, retreats from policies of “wish fulfilment” will require erudition and diligent study – traits long-connected to Jewish life. A universal dimension of species identity (“human oneness”) can be encountered not just in Torah and Talmud, but also among such seminal thinkers as Sören Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Jose Ortega y' Gasset, Miguel de Unamuno and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The fact that such thought is almost always disregarded in “real life” is testimony to how little is being done to save an imperiled planet from itself.

In all world politics, not just the Middle East, everything begins with the individual, with the microcosm. Humans generally fear solitude or "aloneness" more than anything else on earth, sometimes even more than death. Amid the chaos that is already stampeding across entire continents, individuals wittingly prioritize loyalty to dissembling claims of "tribe." Ironically, because the cumulative effect of these contending claims is radical insecurity for all, such loyalty is anything but rational. Ultimately, it is self-destructive.

 Among Israel’s enemies, loyalties to tribe may carry within themselves a witting acceptance of "martyrdom." Recalling the marooned English schoolboys in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Israelis should be reminded here that the veneer of human civilization is razor thin. Impressive scientific and medical discoveries aside, whole swaths of humankind remain fiercely dedicated to "sacrifice." Prophetically, wrote Jewish psychologist Otto Rank in Will Therapy and Reality (1945): “The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the Sacrifice, of other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying….”

Today, hope still exists, but now it must sing softly, with circumspection, inconspicuously, sotto voce. Though counter-intuitive, the time for celebrating exciting new technologies is at least partially over. Though Space X-type ventures promise wealth and excitement, humankind ought not suffer additional delusions of extra-terrestrial colonization. In essence, rather than produce a safe-haven for humanity on distant planets, such colonization could only transport existing human defilements to outer-space.

In The Decline of the West, first published during World War I, Oswald Spengler inquired: "Can a desperate faith in knowledge free us from the nightmare of the grand questions?" This remains an indispensable query. Any correct answer would acknowledge that war and terrorism can never be durably countered by fashioning more “advanced” weapon systems or moving human populations to extra-terrestrial spaces. To believe otherwise is to embrace illusion.

Our tribal planet lacks a tolerable future not because we have been too slow to learn what has been taught, but because what has been taught is largely beside the point. That point must reference science-based human survival, not transient military victories. Even if current wars seem to end “successfully,” the underlying system of world politics will remain crudely rancorous, structurally unstable and entirely self-deceiving. For all states, but for Israel in particular, this warning is authentically existential. Any decision to ignore such final warning would represent irremediable surrender to “illusion.”

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LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Purdue University.  Born in Zürich at the end of World War II, he is the author of many major books and articles dealing with world politics, law, literature and philosophy. Professor Beres' writings have been published in The New York Times; JURIST; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Yale Global; Harvard National Security Journal; The Hill; The Atlantic; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; JNS; The Jerusalem Post; American Journal of International Law; Princeton Political Review; Modern Diplomacy; Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press; The Brown Journal of World Affairs; Special Warfare (Pentagon); Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College; Modern War Institute (West Point); The War Room (Pentagon); BESA Perspectives (Israel); INSS Strategic Assessment (Israel); Israel Defense (Israel); JST (Jerusalem Strategic Tribune); World Politics (Princeton) and International Security (Harvard). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy was published in 2016 (2nd. ed., 2018).  https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy