The Renaissance is rightly celebrated as the age when western society moved out of the Middle Ages to form the basis of the modern world. It was an age when art, music, literature, philosophy and science innovated and developed. Philosophers began to debate and question the nature of political authority, with the Spanish Jesuit Suarez outrageously declaring that as sovereignty lay with the people, they had the right to overthrow an unjust monarch. Later in the 17th century John Locke would attack the patriarchal theory of government, and argue that the people had the right not only to elect their own representatives and formulate governmental policy, thus laying the foundations for modern political liberalism.
The invasion of the Americas spurred a debate on the nature of international law, as jurists and philosophers questioned the morality and legality of the Spanish conquest of the indigenous nations. These were based on Christian Just War theory and the old Roman idea of the Lex Gentium, the Law of Nations. This held that there were common ideas of justice held by all nations governing international affairs, ideas further developed in the 17th century by the Dutch writer Hugo Grotius. One of the writers to examine this question after the conquest of the Americas was the Spanish writer Francisco De Vitoria. In his De jure belli and De potestate civili De Vitoria firmly stated that Christian states should only wage defensive wars. Wars should not be waged because of difference of religion, neither the extension of empire or the glorification of the prince. All of which means that Trump’s desire to annexe Greenland and Canada, through military force if necessary, are morally unjust. De Vitoria’s views on international law and the just war are laid out in an extract ‘War and the Law of Nations’ in James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin, eds. The Portable Renaissance Reader (Viking Penguin, Revised Edition 1968).
At the end of the extract De Vitoria places the nature of war with the context of the international community and argues for the pre-eminence of the Law of Nations. He writes
‘From all that has been said, a corollary may be inferred, namely: that international law has not only the force of a pact and agreement among me, but also the force of a law; for the world as a whole, being iin a way one single state, has the power to create law that are just and fitting for all persons, as are the rules of international law. Consequently, it is clear that they who violate these international rules, whether in peace or in war, commit a mortal sin; moreover, in the gravest matters, such as the inviolability of ambassadors, it is not permissible for one country to refuse to be bound by international law, the latter having been established by the whole world.’
This was written in 1532, centuries before the foundation of that bugbear of the American right, the United Nations. The modern neo-Con view of international relations firmly rejects the idea of international law, seeing international affairs as a Hobbesian war of each nation against all for dominance. Hence Trump’s flouting of it in his kidnapping of Maduro, demands for the annexation of Greenland, Canada, and the possibility of further action against Cuba and Colombia.
Some National Conservative thinkers have argued that we should no longer judge the past by our modern viewpoint and condemn it for its immorality compared to our modern standards. Rather we should reverse this, and see how immoral our modern world is when judged by their standards.
Well,, if we judge Trump’s neo-Con imperialism by the standards argued by De Vitoria, he stands utterly condemned. Sometimes our ancestors really are wiser than our modern leaders, and speak their wisdom across the ages.
We should listen.
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