There is a lingering fear of dystopia which may weaken the link between morality and governance but politics won’t let it break 

In History of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian historian, Thucydides, documented a dramatised negotiation between the Athenians and the Melians. The Melian dialogue held during the war between Athens and Sparta is a classic case study to support the realist view that morality will always be subordinate to power. The island of Melos advocated for justice by choosing to stay neutral. The Athenians mercilessly killed the men and enslaved the women by saying, “Question of justice hardly ever comes into human affairs. The truth is that the powerful take what they can and the weak grant what they must.”

In the megalomaniacal international affairs, chaos in the world order melts the ethical boundaries of countries in their quest for power. The question that comes to mind is: “Does morality play a role in international relations?”

In the wake of the Pulwama terror attack, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, graced India with his hagiographic presence. The strategy was simple: To pressure Pakistan by issuing a joint statement with the kingdom condemning the heinous attack. Much to our surprise, the condemnation happened without any reference to the state of Pakistan. The confluence of ideologies between Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud’s forming the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, defying terror and fundamentalism, is surely an anomaly. Lest we forget that 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis.

Letting bygones be bygones, one should not lose sight of the happenings on Mahatma Gandhi’s 149th birth anniversary, observed on October 2, 2018. Celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence, this was the day when over a dozen men were reportedly flown from Riyadh to Istanbul to kill one journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Surely, the lives of a few are much more valued and the sins of a few are excessively tolerated than others.

This example is not to project any particular Government/individual/ideology in bad taste. As the elder American statesman, Henry Kissinger, said, history reflects that on the international stage; there are no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. The Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956 against the nationalisation of the Suez canal was criticised by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as soon as it happened. However, the Soviet invasion, followed by the Hungarian Revolution during the same period, which led to a formation of a more responsible Government, witnessed no condemnation. The Indian representative, VK Krishna Menon, had abstained in the UN resolution, “calling upon the Soviet Union to withdraw all of its forces without any delay.” Ramchandra Guha, a contemporary historian, raised an important question: “How non-aligned was our non-alignment? As a moral project, perhaps, non-alignment was over.”

The principles of a utopian state and the ideals of morality always contradict the reality. The pursuit of human beings or what Hans Morgenthau, one of the leading 20th century figures in the study of international politics, calls the “animus dominandi”, our lust for power exists universally. To manoeuvre this irrationality, often the actions taken by the international community leads to a zero-sum game in which one’s gain is exactly balanced by the losses of others.

The United State’s decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 was based on the latter’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and to free the people of Iraq. The irony of the American “democracy project” is that neither did Iraq possess WMD, nor did it deserve the catastrophic destruction that followed soon after.

History has been a victim of the “isms” and rigid doctrines. In the garb of socialism, communism, nationalism and liberalism, people at power have substantiated their own self-interest. Any ideology practised as monism without regard to the ever-evolving realities leads to catastrophe. The Native American Cherokee parable poses a tradeoff between the good and the evil: Between two “wolves” inside us all. The winner is the one you feed. To expect the world to be utopian would be perfecting the imperfectible. Amid the dystopia, the link between morality and governance may weaken but the international community shall strive to not let it break.

(The writer is policy and legislative researcher)