In his famous text, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes the state of nature as one of might, or raw force, being the decider of what is rightly and determinatively so. If one person physically harms another person such that the latter’s food may be taken by the former, then that food belongs to the victor even without any overarching normative, or moral, constraint that says that the food still belongs to the vanquished. If Trump's statement that Putin has "won" some regions of Ukraine by military means is correct, then those occupied lands will have been decided by might as if that constitutes right. That Israel has physically decimated Gaza's cities and placed its indigenous residents in concentration camps without enough food or access to medical care with impunity means that the plight of the Palestianians has been decided by might, not right.
In short, possession is really 99 percent of ownership. Might makes right. Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief-of-staff, described this world "order" in responding to questions on whether the U.S. planned to invade Greenland. "Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. . . . We live in a world, in the real world, . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."[1] In this system, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, simply does not exist or is a target. Evolution has not changed human nature from the hunter-gatherer “stage.” To be sure, not all of humanity is on board with this sort of global order, even if guns have a way of pushing down or even silencing the more progressive elements of the species. The Trump administration’s attacks on the ICC represent a case in point.
The absolutist interpretation
of national sovereignty feeds into the functioning of a might-makes-right
world. “Global standards for how civilians must be treated and how to wage war
are often, in the eyes of the Trump administration, a hindrance and a violation
of national sovereignty.”[2] The implication is that unimpeded national sovereignty not only comes without
danger, but is also the best system for international relations and thus the prosperity
and happiness of the species. Rather than merely criticizing Trump’s “unprecedented
campaign against a core institution of international law, the International Criminal
Court,” the assumptions underlying a global system of unfettered national
sovereignty merit critique, given the unnecessarily unheeded power-aggrandizing
actions of Stalin and Hitler in the twentieth century. The military exploits of
the Empire of Japan can be added to the list as well. In the next century, the unprovoked
invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the mass-killing and starvation of Gaza’s indigenous
residents by Israeli Zionists demonstrate the fallacy of a stable world to be
brought about by unrestrained national sovereignty, given the underlying human
nature that manifests too easily as the instinct of power-aggrandizement. In short,
the Israeli genocide in Gaza demonstrates that the Nazi holocaust was not a “one
off” deviation from human nature, but rather is closer to mainstream human
nature than was realized during the last half of the twentieth century. Indeed,
the genocide in Gaza may be reckoned by history as yet another holocaust writ
large.
Nevertheless, and as evidence
that might-makes-right can continue even amid such atrocities in progress, the
Trump administration “used America’s disproportionate global financial
power and threats of further repercussions to hinder the [ICC’s] work and
create a chilling effect—even as Palestinians [continued] to face U.S.-backed
Israeli policies that ICC judges said could constitute grave crimes, and that
could undermine Trump’s own stated vision of peace for Gaza.”[3]
Rather than focus on the role of private investor-capital in planned development
projects being planned for Gaza absent its indigenous population, I want to
highlight the disproportionateness of a might-makes-right superpower as itself
being a problem unless might-make-right is deemed salvific for humanity. For
the ICC, the raw power in the disproportionate military and financial power of
the Trump administration over other countries presented “an existential
paradox: The ICC’s pursuit of accountability over Gaza is both the reason it
has a target on its back, and proof that it [i.e., the ICC] is necessary.”[4]
But to be necessary and largely impotent against the power of the disproportionate
enabler of Israel (and perhaps even Russia) is to be in the worst of two
worlds, as it were.
Put another way, the very existence of a partisan “world police force” presents the ICC with its greatest threat as well as its highest raison d’etre. With such a police force operating on the basis of might-makes-right internationally, that same rationale can be seized upon by other partisans internationally to engage in power-aggrandizement activities of their own, even against the global police-force itself. Such a system is inherently self-contradictory, in other words, and thus weak as a system in which the world order can be in order rather than chaos and upheaval. That the dogma of absolutist national sovereignty sanctions and protects parchment-constraints at the national level (and below) saves such a system from being chaotic from top to bottom, but as Trump’s second presidency demonstrated, a might-make-right foreign-oriented attitude can easily be translated into efforts to walk through constraints at the national level, such as legislatures and courts.
Arresting and deporting a person deemed to be an illegal immigrant before one has the chance to challenge the actions judicially enjoys the default of a fait accompli. Quelle domage. The Trump administration could simply inform a judge that the suspect is no longer under U.S. jurisdiction so there is nothing that can be done. Such a tactic is well-known to the might-makes-right mentality. This point should not be taken to excuse or accept illegal immigration as if it were not a crime and one worthy of punishment and expulsion by the rule and thus due process of law.
Might-makes-right hates to be subject to, or constrained by the rule of law as the mentality sees itself as the law. It is easy for this mentality oriented to foreign affairs to be turned inward while using absolutist national sovereignty as a shield both domestically and internationally. Trump, "himself convicted of felonies, has promoted impunity for various violations of domestic and international law; in addition to opposing the ICC warrant for Netanyahu, Trump is supporting the Israeli leader's bid for a pardon over his corruption charges from Israeli prosecutors."[5]
I contend that such a world of both domestic and international impunity from the constraint of an externally imposed law represents a step backward for the species. Given the foregone benefits that political development could otherwise deliver, the phenomenon worthy to be examined goes
beyond the legitimacy and functioning of the ICC and the American foreign policy on
Israel and even Russia. The post-World War II international efforts to subject
might-makes-right to constraints internationally were being cast off and even
attacked a few decades into the next century with the implication being that nothing
but might-makes-right might be left standing.
2. Akbar S. Ahmed, “Trump’s Pressure Campaign on the ICC Is Falling Apart,” The Huffington Post, December 3, 2025.
3.. Ibid., italics added.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., italics added.
