In a recent New York Times article, editorial board member Farah Stockman refers to Donald Trump’s foreign policy strategy as “Neanderthal realism.” She defines this as dominating the weak and deferring to the strong. It is, of course, the strategy of the bully.
And a strategy much-applied throughout history. As the Athenian general and historian Thucydides’ put it: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” An ancient expression of might is right.
Stockman suggests that this administration believes “the liberal international world order was possible only because of U.S. military might and that Americans don’t want to pay the bill anymore.”
Thus the U.S. panders to Putin’s Russia while demanding full access to Ukraine’s mineral resources. Defer to the strong, dominate the weak.
This reversion to “realism” as a foreign policy matches the reversion to the 1930s march of fascism in Europe I discussed in a previous post. If there was any period of history that etched itself in the memory such that it should never be forgotten it was the Nazi era in Germany. That episode saw the greatest atrocity in human history, the destruction of the country that spawned the evil, and the destruction of much of Europe along with it.
And yet the memory seems to be dimming to the point that even in Germany fascism reawakens in the guise of the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, now the biggest opposition party in the Bundestag. When American Vice-President Vance visited Germany recently, the only politician he courted was the leader of the AfD and he scolded other German political parties for not working with them. President Trump’s buddy, Elon Musk, has repeatedly claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany.”
It is in our nature it seems to learn lessons, behave better, and then as the memory of the lesson slips away we slide back into our old behaviour. Is this what is happening now?
Is the behaviour of societies prior to the lesson of Nazism the default mode? Is this what we are always doomed to return to after bouts of progress and enlightenment?
After all, we live in a world foreign to our nature. We evolved to live in small, heterogeneous groups, not in the immense, complex, pluralistic societies we inhabit today. Maybe our very nature irresistibly returns us to a more primitive state.
Must we then inevitably trend toward some simple set of innate practices, such as “Neanderthal realism” in our approach to affairs with other tribes? Or can we rise above our basest nature to sustain practices more appropriate to the modern world?
The best of human nature suggests that possibly we can, but are there enough of the best among us to pull it off? Perhaps, but it’s clearly a struggle, and judging by the current drift in the U.S. and Europe, the good guys are losing.