Solidarity

The ideal to strive for in international relations is what in the natural law tradition and Catholic social teaching is called solidarity. On the one hand, this entails respecting the independence of nations and their right to preserve their own identities, rather than absorbing them into a one-world blob; on the other hand, it entails promoting their cooperation and mutual assistance in what Pope Leo XIV calls the “family of peoples,” rather than a war of all against all in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Where economics is concerned, this entails rejecting, on the one hand, a globalism that dissolves national boundaries and pushes nations into a free trade dogmatism that is contrary to the interests of their citizens; but also, on the other hand, a mercantilism that walls nations off into mutually hostile camps and treats international economic relations as a zero-sum game. From the point of view of solidarity, neither free trade nor protectionism should be made into ideologies; free trade policies and protectionist policies are merely tools whose advisability can vary from case to case and require the judgment of prudence.

Where war and diplomacy are concerned, this vision entails rejecting, on the one hand, the liberal and neoconservative project of pushing all nations to incorporate themselves into the globalist blob by economic pressure, regime change, or the like; but also, on the other hand, a Hobbesian realpolitik that sees all other nations fundamentally as rivals rather than friends, and seeks to bully them into submission rather than cooperate to achieve what is in each nation’s mutual interest.

This solidarity-oriented vision is an alternative to the false choice between what might be called the “neoliberal” and “neo-Hobbesian” worldviews competing today – each of which pretends that the other is the only alternative to itself. It is the vision developed by thinkers in the Thomistic natural law tradition such as Luigi Taparelli in the nineteenth century and Johannes Messner in the twentieth, and which has informed modern Catholic social teaching.

The principle of solidarity is fairly well-known to be central to natural law and Catholic teaching about the internal affairs of nations (and famously gave a name to Polish trade union resistance to Communist oppression). But it ought to be better known as the ideal to pursue in relations between nations as well.

(From a post today at X/Twitter)