Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of identity

3. Foreign Policy and Identity

3.1 Hobbesian Strategies
- within the discipline of IR there is a widely recognized if imperfectly understood (according to Campbell) Hobbesian tradition of anarchy, conflict, the state of nature (přirozeného stavu lidské společnosti, kde je člověk člověku vlkem a která je válkou všech proti všem) - these features are taken to be the conditions of possibility for IR and the understanding of foreign policy
- Hobbes’ state of nature: „it’s a jungle out there“ - anarchy is the rule; order, justice, and morality are the exceptions
- the basic features of this Hobbesian tradition proceed from an individualist anthropology to the political theory in which the comfort and security of individuals is threatened by their existence in the state of nature and achieved by their surrender of sovereignty to common power (the social contract)
- implication for IR: in the international arena, states behave as individuals do in a state of nature; individuals are described as subjects - to point out that people are subordinated to a higher sovereign authority
- Hobbes: where there is no common power to fear, there would be a civil war
- but since today is there is no absence of common power, it is the danger of slipping back into the state of nature, that people fear, so they give up their sovereignty to the power of the state