Machiavelli’s The Prince teaches us that in politics, there are no moral rules. You have to act from a position of advantage. Power defines the rules of the game. Any sign of weakness can be exploited by your enemy. To understand Machiavelli, you have to know the role of power in politics. Machiavelli is critical of the ideal concept of the state that one finds in Plato or Aristotle. Instead of laying the foundation of a society that is grounded on a moral ideal, it is about the politics of power.
Machiavelli used as basis the historical context of his time. People do not naturally obey laws and rules. They will only do so if they realize the consequences of their disloyalty or disobedience. When it comes to the idea of fear, what the people fear is not authority but the possibility of getting punished if they do not follow their rulers. Power, in this way, does not come from the concept of legitimacy.
The basic point is that idealists believe in the moral qualities of leaders as basis for having authority. But Machiavelli was aware that people in fact do not follow a ruler because he is virtuous. Rather, people submit themselves to the power of the sovereign because the same has control over them. This pragmatic approach means that the ruler must exclude his moral judgment to maintain his position.
Politics comes as a matter of necessity and a leader who cannot control his people is useless. By this, Machiavelli meant that the ruler must know how to use power in order to protect the interest of the state. Much focus has been on the qualities or attributes of the prince, which Machiavelli termed “virtu”. In contrast to virtue, virtu implies a capacity to achieve goals. Now, there is this point that the prince uses cunning and deceit to get things done.
The point of virtu explains the role of authority in the state. Precisely, you cannot expect people to follow rules by saying that “the law is law.” Why? The answer comes from the idea of “fortuna” or fortune. There are things that are beyond human control. In the midst of a great calamity, for instance, what do you expect a leader must do? Must he depend on the goodness or the generous acts of individual citizens to overcome adversity? The reality is that he cannot. In fact, the point is that he must use his power so that those who do not recognize his authority will realize the dire consequences of disobedience. This does not mean that the prince is bad. It only means that he must be strong to be effective as a leader.
In political realism, no international standard of justice is applicable. As always, it is about the position of strength. While the free world says that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now, Ukraine are for the cause of freedom, in reality, it is about the military industrial complex that wholly benefits from these campaigns. The money allocated to defend any country for that matter actually goes into the weapons industry. The enemy of the world is not just Vladimir Putin. There are warmongers who must be held accountable because they want nothing but profit from all the conflicts in the world. They use democracy as a shield to justify the violence.
The history of the world is a history of bloodshed. Monarchs are known for their legacy of conquest and domination while the weak and powerless are at the receiving end of every defeat. Courage and honor are defined not on the basis of how you help people live. Rather, it is about death and dying. People say, there’s always love and mercy. They’re lying.
“All against all,” Thomas Hobbes wrote. The philosopher was not prescribing anything. He was explaining the state of nature. Men are selfish. We only want things for ourselves. It is for this reason that the Sovereign must exert control over men and their affairs. The only way to govern is for self-centered bipeds to be under the domain of the state. Without power and control, there cannot be order in the world.
