Looking at International Politics Differently

This article is the winner of the 2024 E-International Relations Article Award, sponsored by Edinburgh University Press, Polity, Sage, Bloomsbury and Routledge.

In the 1970s, Melissa Manchester’s song ‘Through the Eyes of Love’ was nominated for an Oscar. It became the wedding song for thousands of couples, often used for the first dance. In 2023 it was re-envisioned and re-recorded, because (according to Manchester) ‘the message of this song still stands true and timeless’. Why did this song become so popular, amongst so many other songs about love? I think that it is because – as the song says itself – looking ‘through the eyes of love’ leads to one ‘finding out what’s true’. This idea goes against the tendency, especially dominant in the field of international relations, that we should be honest about the real fact that states and people are driven by fear. As a result of this conviction, many students and diplomats are trained to analyze, understand and approach the world of international politics through the lens of fear. But what if it is more accurate to approach the world through the perspective of love? In this article, I will argue for a love-based perspective on international relations. I will start by describing the fear perspective on international relations and point out some of its shortcomings. After that, I will sketch the love perspective, and discuss some of its advantages. Finally, I will compare fear and love in addressing the question of what matters most.

Seeing the World through the Lens of Fear

It is not my aim to deny the impact that fear has and the role it plays in the world. The historian Herbert Butterfield says that fear ‘is a thing which is extraordinarily vivid while we are in its grip’ (Patterson and Joustra 2022, 5). He also points out that we do not always realize or do not want to recognize ‘how often a mistaken policy, an obliquity in conduct, a braggart manner, or even an act of cruelty, may be traceable to fear’ (Patterson and Joustra 2022, 5). Fear plays a huge role in international relations.

A couple of months ago, Europeans were able to vote for the European Parliament. ‘Never again’ is one of the slogans which politicians like to use to promote the European Union: Since the EU was founded to prevent the outbreak of another world war, reasonable people can do nothing other than vote for more European Union, the argument goes. Fear is used here to mobilize people to vote for a certain cause.

In an interview with Gustave Gilbert during the Nuremburg trials, the high-level Nazi leader Hermann Göring once said:

Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

The interviewer Gilbert responds: ‘There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.’ But then Göring said:

Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country (Mölder 2011, 242).        

Thomas Hobbes believed that fear played a crucial role in creating our social institutions; Niccolò Machiavelli advised the Prince that it was much safer to be ‘feared than loved’ because the ‘dread of punishment’ never fails; and Thucydides before them suspected that ‘prestige, fear, and self-interest’ are indeed the most powerful motives of political actors (Edinger 2021, 1).

The fear perspective as we know it in the study of international relations is as follows. International relations are characterized by anarchy. That means that there is no higher supranational authority to keep aggressive or egoistic states in check. Therefore, balance of power is an important instrument and strategy. Because you cannot be sure about the intentions of other states, you better assume the worst, as offensive realism does. The other option – called non-offensive realism – is that you take institutional measures (for example, establishing the EU) to reduce the uncertainty about the intentions of others and the fear that comes with it (Tang 2008, 451).

However, this fear perspective has its shortcomings. In the first place, it is often historically inaccurate or inadequate. Was fear indeed the primary drive and motivation for the project of European unification? Let us have a look at one of the founding fathers of the European unification. Robert Schuman saw Europe as a spiritual and cultural community going back at least 2000 years. As a result of the Peace of Westphalia, this unity had already been disintegrated. World War II marked a terrible compromise of this unity. Thus, there were other, more positive motivations for the start of the project of unification: for example, to restore the unity of Europe which has disappeared since the Peace of Westphalia. The founders of the EU were not so much against something as for something, namely unity (Harryvan and Polinder 2021, 14-19). So the starting point was not fear but the love of unity in Europe. Politicians might play the fear card when it comes to Europe – emphasizing the necessity of a strong EU because of the threat of Russia or dependence on China, for example – but I think that this overlooks the fact that people love, and care for, a European culture, its social welfare system, its solidarity, and its human rights.

In the second place, fear does not provide any norm or direction. If fear is the starting point of your analysis, which norm do you use to decide to what extent this fear is justified (Hartnett 2023, 211)? According to Joustra:

Fear, after all, is not a primary emotion. It is a responsive emotion, related to the more fundamental feeling of attachment, desire, and love. We would hardly fear a thing if we did not love something first. We fear for our lives because we love them. We fear for injury or pain because we love our health, the ease and motion of our bodies. We fear collectively for loss of power, wealth, and prestige because we love these things, and not always improperly. Power, wealth, and status are all needed in some measure for clean water, safe streets, profitable business, and raising children. If there was no threat of their abasement or erasure, we would have nothing to fear. But fear, then, is a second thing, not a first. (…) It is a secondary response to the more fundamental thing that animates our politics and our commonwealths: love (Joustra, 2024).

Be Not afraid of Love

I am not the first to argue for a love perspective. I take this idea from Robert Joustra. He himself is inspired by the ideas of Augustine on love (Patterson and Joustra 2022, 7, 8). In Augustine’s view, love is the basic attitude of all human beings towards reality. According to Augustine, love is not merely an emotion or a fleeting sentiment; rather, it is a profound orientation of the soul, a driving force that directs our actions, desires, and pursuits. Augustine delineates love into two primary categories: love of God and love of self. Human beings are constituted and moved by their loves. These loves can be good or bad depending on the direction or orientation. There is self-serving love, or cupiditas, which finds expression in self-interest, pride or superbia. Sacrificial love or caritas finds expression in disinterested concern for the other. Each human being, and also nations, are a mixture of both loves. Rightly ordered love legitimizes: ‘love and do what you will’ (Hartnett 2024, 210).

In other words, the basic disposition of human beings towards the world is love, but the direction of this love can be good or bad. It remains, however, an act of love.

The challenge is to make this (sacrificial) love relevant for international politics. Reinhold Niebuhr attempted to do this. For him, non-resistant love was the principle of criticism under which every scheme of justice stands. Justice is the approximation of brotherhood, which takes various forms in different times and places, and requires some sort of balance of power. This would, however, always be in a dialectical tension with the ideal of love, because justice without the pull of love would degenerate into mere order. This does not mean that order is not important, because order is needed to approximate justice, but order without justice could not long endure (Epp 1991, 16, 17). For Niebuhr, justice is love making its way through the world (Rice 2008, 275).

The liberal internationalist Eckhard Zimmern, a very influential man who did much to birth and shape the field of international relations, held that love, understood as family love, constituted the Commonwealth. Zimmern played an important role in reconceiving the British Empire as the Commonwealth. According to him, love constituted the Commonwealth, and supplied the moral purpose for it: ‘the Commonwealth is an organization designed with the ruling motive of love and brotherhood’ (Hartnett 2024, 206-208).

Another example is the classical realist Hans Morgenthau. In 1952 he told his students: ‘no political society can exist for any length of time in any harmonious and stable way which does not take into consideration both the desire for power and the desire for love’ (Hartnett 2024, 218). Power based on dominion is incomplete and tenuous, power that is sustained by love promises longevity. Rule, ideas, ideals and institutions are not sustained by coercion, but ‘spontaneous consent’ (Hartnett 2024, 218). Love has a normative function. It is a normative framework evoked to constitute community, legitimate coercion and empowerment. It offers the glue that binds groups and frames feelings to enable and constrain action. It is integral to the working of power (Hartnett 2024, 202).

Looking at international relations through the eyes of love has certain advantages. In the first place, it does more justice to historical events to start from the perspective of love, as we have seen with the emergence of the project of European unification. In the second place, love can restrain and sanction action (Hartnett 2024, 214). You need love to be able to direct power. Love orders by giving meaning or purpose to the international (Hartnett 2024, 219). Otherwise realism, also called ultrarealism, becomes cynical, making the national interest and the pursuit of power the ultimate criterion for political action. As Robin Lovin states: ‘We have to trust in a judgment that lies beyond our judgment. We have to have hope beyond the results of our actions that we can see, and finally we have to have love that keeps us from being locked into our own self-interest’ (Sabella 2017, 61-63).

In the third place, the concept of love explains why people appeal to higher norms in politics, and why so many governments and dictators attempt to appear as servants of the people: they have loves (Sabella 2017, 97)! In the fourth place, since love can be directed wrongly, it also accounts for cases in which love is absent and fear dominates. Is fear not often a surrogate for misdirected loves? Finally, love is a source of creativity and therefore hope (Hartnett 2024, 212). Niebuhr is more optimistic or hopeful than Morgenthau, because he believes in ‘the important residual creative factor in human rationality’ that could be a source for justice, understood as love making its way in the world (Rice 2008, 275). Former President Barack Obama even build his presidential campaign on the virtue of hope. According to Obama:

Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be (New York Times, 2008).