Hobbes' Leviathan: The Monster That Keeps Us Safe › Concrete Examples

Consider international relations. Between nations, there is no common power. Each state exists in something like Hobbes' state of nature relative to others. Treaties are kept when convenient and broken when not. Military power determines outcomes. Alliances shift based on interest. The United Nations can recommend and condemn but cannot enforce. This is why Hobbes believed perpetual peace between nations was impossible without a world sovereign, a conclusion that many international relations theorists still find compelling. Or consider a failed state. When central authority collapses, as in Somalia during the 1990s or Libya after 2011, Hobbesian dynamics emerge. Warlords carve out territories. Clans arm themselves. Commerce becomes dangerous. Life expectancy plummets. People flee or submit to whoever can provide protection. The absence of Leviathan doesn't produce freedom. It produces something closer to the war of all against all. Even within functioning states, Hobbesian logic operates at the margins. Prison populations, lacking reliable protection from authorities, form gangs for security. In neighborhoods where police are absent or mistrusted, informal power structures emerge. During natural disasters, looting sometimes begins within hours. The veneer of civilization may be thinner than we like to imagine. Consider also nuclear deterrence. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union existed in a state of nature relative to each other. Each had the power to destroy the other. Trust was difficult. The solution was Mutually Assured Destruction: make the consequences of a first strike so catastrophic that neither side would risk it. This is Hobbesian reasoning applied to geopolitics. Peace through terror. The sovereign's sword, scaled up to planetary annihilation.