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In this paper we will make a modest attempt to view some of the crucial components of political realism presented by Niccolo Machiavelli in his works, such as self-interest and the origins of conflict in terms of the dynamics of power politics, prudence, and expediency as prime motivators in the conditions of an ever-present threat of unrestricted violence. I will not, however, analyze each and every minute detail of Niccolo Machiavelli’s works. Nor will I closely investigate formidable scholarship on his treatises. Rather, I will demonstrate manifest instances of modern “Machiavellian” conduct in politics. Subsequently, in light of numerous facts and after careful study, it will be argued that Niccolo Machiavelli’s views are as relevant as ever after almost five hundred years and modern political realism as a theoretical approach launched by him can rationally explain the inner-most workings of politics in the era of the Florentine secretary, as well as in our day and age.
Political philosophers usually had been engaged in resolution of hypothetical problems which most of the time were inseparable from moral philosophy. However, Niccolo Machiavelli had no interest in this traditional approach to the study of politics. Instead, he immersed himself in ancient history, eager to discover why the Romans had been more successful than anybody before or since in practicing power politics. The important thing about the Romans was that they had crushed their enemies, not that they had led highly sophisticated lifestyles. What impressed Niccolo Machiavelli was the unaltered nature of politics, which did not display any fundamental signs of change for thousands of years. For him, success not morality, was what counted—“Men judge of actions by the result.”1 As a consequence of his historical observations and political professionalism, Niccolo Machiavelli put in the question entire body of political thought that had been in existence. Having insisted that politics must be the study of what worked in practice, Niccolo Machiavelli claimed to be doing something completely novel, for he set out to analyze factors leading to success in politics, so that one could do intentionally what Roman politicians had done by chance or instinctively. Most certainly, these thoughts constituted a new and courageous approach, as well as a coming era of modern political realism of which Niccolo Machavelli is viewed as a harbinger. This explains, in part, the fact that even today, one of the first words likely to come to mind when one mentions realism is “Machiavellianism,” and Machiavellianism itself entails understanding politics primarily in terms of who dominates whom and how successfully. Moreover, those premises and teachings, which are assessed by Leo Strauss as “maxims of public and private gangsterism,”2 no longer sound startling to us, because they have been incorporated into our sense of “political realism,” or of how the “real world” works.
Realism, sometimes called “power-politics”(machtpolitik) or realpolitik school of thought, is conventionally antagonized with idealist tradition. The ideas associated with it can be traced to the ancient Greeks and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which is widely regarded as the first persistent attempt to explain the origins of conflict in terms of dynamics of power politics. Political realism in one form or another has dominated both academic thinking and the conceptions of policy-makers since Niccolo Machiavelli had elaborated on the subject. It is derived from a tradition that is based on the doctrine of “raison d’etat”. This doctrine often credited to Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote five centuries ago in The Prince: “The rule to preserve the state is the first principle of the Prince’s morality.” The realist vision of the state leads statesmen and scholars to argue not only that the state has the right to do whatever it must, without limit, to preserve its existence, but that all states can be expected to behave the same way. Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince provided crucial components of this tradition. Especially, in their conceptions of interest, prudence, and expediency as prime motivators in the conditions of ever-present threat of internal revolution and external anarchy in which politics takes place. His vision of Egoism and self–interested behavior are not limited to a few evil or misguided leaders, as the idealist would have it, but are basic to homo politicus and thus are at the core of realist theory. Survival and safe navigation in a turbulent environment demands a capable conduct of politics, which can only be understood and explained through the correct theoretical approach. The theory is essential “to bring order and meaning to a mass of phenomena which without it would remain disconnected and unintelligible. It must be employed in order to make sense of the real world”.3 So, taking all this into consideration, it can be deduced that theoretical concern “with human nature as it actually is, and with the historic processes as they actually take place, has earned name of realism”4and the first who perfected this approach and shaped it into theoretical guise by producing a political treatise was the great Florentine, sometimes referred as “Old Nick” or “an enemy of human race.”
It needs to be mentioned that some opponents become extreme in their criticism of Niccolo Machiavelli by considering his works to be “…written by the hand of Satan [he to be] utterly unworthy to have so noble a city [Florence] as his fatherland.”5 Frederik the Great, himself an austere character, who in pursuit of power waged almost incessant wars and caused enormous bloodshed, assessed Niccolo Machiavelli’s writings as “the most dangerous works ever disseminated in the world.”6 On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s opinion is in cardinal opposition. He offered a novel interpretation, while elaborating on monarchical government in the Social Contract. In chapter 6 of book 3, Rousseau declares that “under the pretence of instructing kings, he has taught important lessons to the people.” Remarkably, he goes on to claim that “Machiavelli’s Prince is a handbook for republicans.”7 Machon went farther than anybody else. In order to justify Niccolo Machiavelli’s writings, he attempted to demonstrate that “nothing was more Machiavelian than the way in which, according to the Bible, God himself and his prophets had guided the Jewish people.”8
Niccolo Machiavelli is regarded as a thinker who first promulgated the dangerous assertion, in his times, that political practice differed from generally accepted political theory. In contrast to the ideas of the Church’s and universally recognized ancient philosophers, he demonstrated immense discrepancies between the real art of government and the speculations of celebrated thinkers. His observations compiled in brief works proved to be greater utility than extensive works of inexperienced philosophers whose hypothetical states with ideal human society had still not been created by men. He unambiguously indicates that philosophers concerned primarily with ethical motivation can not offer anything sensible on politics. In chapter XV of The Prince, Machiavelli claims that, though many had written on the nature of politics, he was discussing the matter again and consciously “departs from the orders of others,” all of which were founded on fixed belief in the inter-relationship between ethics and politics.9 For him, conventional evil might become political good and conventional virtue might result in political ruin. It was his intention to write something practical, rather than provide another benign edifice in order to create a state with the sole purpose of propagating the Christian ethic, unrelated to practical affairs. As Sydney Anglo also noticed, Niccolo Machiavelli disregards others considerations as irrelevant in real politics and consciously diverges himself from:
“the vast corpus of medieval and Renaissance prince literature dealing specifically with the problems of kingship—countless treatises with such titles as De regimine principum, De officio Regis, or The governal of princes—copied and recopied, translated, revised, enlarged, and adapted for century after century.”10
From the very beginning of the Discourses, Machiavelli emphasizes the novelty of his enterprise. Presenting himself as a kind of Columbus traversing uncharted seas, he claims to have set out in search of “new modes and orders” and entered upon a “new way, as yet untroddden by anyone else.” Asserting that he departs “from the order of others,” Niccolo Machiavelli states that he will “go directly to the effective truth of the thing rather than its imagination”—for “many have imagined for themselves republics and principalities which no one has ever seen nor known to be in reality.”
It should be noted that Machiavelli lived in times when modern political realism was dawning on Europe. Especially in the world of Italian city states contours of a realistic framework of political reasoning was becoming conspicuous. Along with Niccolo Maciavelli another shrewd Florentine, Francesco Guicciardini, made political realism almost axiomatic in his Dialogue on the Government of Florence “we have not to look for an imaginary government which appears much more easily in books than in fact, as perhaps is the case with Plato’s republic.” Though, in spite of numerous forerunners who, having discovered by intuition or through meticulous contemplation on the subject, the ruthless nature of the genuine workings of politics, Niccolo Machiavelli has come to be identified with the divorce of politics from morality, with the doctrine of expediency in political action, and with the mode of justifying all political means on the grounds of reason of state.
In Niccolo Machiavelli’s world even the good must “know how to enter into evil, when forced by necessity.”11 Machiavelli’s praise of exemplary violence, in the case of removal by Cesare Borgia of his henchman Remirro de Orca, is determined by habits of a more violent age and not by deviations in his personal psychological state. According to him there are times when humans can be put in line only by ferocious cruelty. It should be noted that this is not an attempt of some type of evil theorizing on Niccolo Machiavelli’s part. All he offers is straightforward opinion gained through meticulous study of human affairs. After all, at any given time, the Florentine can be proven right by presenting modern factual evidence. Consider, for example, Chile, El Salvador, Zaire, Cambodia and others, in the 1970s and early 1980s, or Russia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan today. Governments of these countries are founded and rest almost entirely upon the exercise of violence.
What makes Niccolo Machiavelli special is that “he extends enormously the area within which any ruler, striving to create or maintain a state, may be expected to operate.”12 To him political affairs transpire in a ceaseless state of emergency in which necessity is norm, not the exception. In order to make a political action successful, it must be suitable to the time and the place. In the case of The Prince this position is clearly demonstrated in dealing with modern Italy—the most corrupt corner in a corrupt world. J.G.A. Pocock in his classic study The Machiavellian Moment aptly noticed that Machiavelli’s heroes are no longer guided or inhibited by any system of habitual legitimacy because they are in “Hobessian world in which men pursue their own ends without regard to any structure of law.”13 So, Niccolo Machiavelli is again first in recognition of anarchic nature of politics. In this delegitimized world of anarchic order Machiavelli yet again is first to assert that action is the prime necessity of strategic behavior among power-seekers, and that the alternative to action is delay. Which in turn can result in the change of one’s valuable position to that of weakness. The Romans realized that well, Machiavelli observes, and never allowed adversaries “to escape a war, because they knew that war may not be avoided but is deferred to the advantage of others.”14 Niccolo Machiavelli declares in uncompromising manner that, unless a ruler abandons conventional morality, he can only achieve his own destruction. He tirelessly keeps warning over and over again that emergency is permanent in almost all political activity and for that reason a choice must always be between evils. Beneficial deception is perpetual requirement and therefore it is highly advised to be masked under guise of probity, piety and equity. A ruler must be prepared to cheat. In order to achieve the goals he needs to use servants as tools as well as scapegoats when unpopular policies are practiced. A leader is expected to break treaties when they cease to be advantageous and even to exterminate rivals, if by so doing he can preserve the state and bring order to it. In the Discourse, Cesare Borgia’s actions turn to be a prime examples of Machiavellian necessity, where good end is achieved by any means available, and not by any means acceptable from normal ethical standpoint. However, Machiavellian doctrine of necessity, in addition to the leader, encompasses all other individuals: the soldiers, magistrates, officers of every kind, and even the people. When security of the state is challenged, an attention must be granted to:
“every citizen who has to give advice to his country. For when the safety of one’s country wholly depends on the decision to be taken, no attention should be paid either to justice or injustice, to kindness or cruelty, or to its being praiseworthy or ignominious. On the contrary, every other consideration being set aside, that alternative should be wholeheartedly adopted which will save the life and preserve the freedom of one’s country.”15
For Niccolo Machiavelli there is no better goal than the creation and maintenance of a secure state in the ever present conditions of turbulence. As a consequence, violence and even acts of brutality are unavoidable, especially as a new state, or when new or regenerated governments are being established. He goes on: “it is the man who uses violence to spoil things, not the man who uses it to mend them, that is blameworthy.”16 However, it should be mentioned that the tradition of applying violence in politics was rooted in the classical past, and remained powerful up to Machiavelli’s day. Those who demonize Machiavelli for advocating violence in achieving political ends need to view his medieval precursor Dietrich of Niem (1340-1418) who, in the state of emergency, speaks of the “lawfulness of imprisoning or even executing the Pope if he stands in the way.”17 Another honest conformation of the Machiavellian nature of politics, replete with violence, is revealed in Max Weber’s unemotional observation in his seminal Politics as a Vocation: “He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence.”18
Irrespective of the time and age, for Machiavelli human affairs always stay the same because they are compounded of the deeds of men—and men always have the same passions. To be more precise, in The Prince, men are selfish, easily deceived by appearances, and since they only do good under constraint, need to be governed more by fear because “it is much safer to be feared than loved.”19 The Discourses also is abundant with plentiful examples of depravity which are typical to the man. As Niccolo Machiavelli claims, by nature men are more prone to evil than to good; they are ambitious, suspicious; their appetites are insatiable, always. He regularly returns in his works to a topic of human nature, characterizing them as “arrogant, crafty, and shifting, and above all else malignant, iniquitous, violent, and savage.”20 Accordingly, human beings are inclined to “do wrong and to the same extent when there is nothing to prevent them doing wrong.”21 Time and again he warns “one can say this generally of men: that they are ungrateful. Fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain.”22 Similarly, in Mandragola, a strong suggestion is made that “everybody is looking for personal gain, be it lust or loot.”23 For Machiavelli it is not out of the ordinary to degrade his fellow human beings even in the Art of War, which is a technical treatise and should not be expected to be concerned with morality. His two judgments are, as usual, unforgiving: one is the ignorance and little diligence of men; the other is men’s love of property, which is as great as their love of life itself. Finally, Florentine History can be considered as the most depressed account of behavior characteristic to mankind. This is the work where Mkhiavelli’s pessimism about human nature turns into total hopelessness. He remarks:
“Men are more likely to strive after things they can not obtain than to accept things which are within their reach; the more authority they enjoy the worse they use it, and the more insolent they become; they are never satisfied, and having gained one thing they immediately seek something else; they are always more ready to covet the possessions of others than to preserve their own; they seldom suffer as much from the loss of their own things, as from not having appropriated someone else’s.”24
Machiavelli’s realism is starkest in the Florentine History,where he argues that “God and Nature have put all the fortunes of men in their midst; and these are open more to theft than to industry, and more to bad than to good arts.” He goes on to suggest that “men devour one another, and less capable always come off worst.”
Karl von Clausewitz under noticed that “politics is the womb in which war is developed, in which its outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like the qualities of living creatures in their embryos.”25 This famous observation is in harmony with the opinion of celebrated modern realist scholars asserting that “in politics force serves not as the ultima ratio, but indeed as the first and constant one.”26 However, Niccolo Machiavelli was the first who realized existence of the constant threat of war in the realm of politics, and consequently, power and security became paramount concern for him:
“a prince should have no other object, nor any other thought, nor take anything else as his art but that of war and its orders and discipline; for that is the only art which is of concern to one who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who have been born princes but many times it enables men of private fortune to rise to that rank; and on the contrary, one sees that when princes have thought more of amenities than of arms, they have lost their states.”27
An attention needs to be paid to the fact that an example of Rome is of special importance to Machiavelli, because it shows that power comes through the cultivation and practice of military virtue by an entire society. Niccolo Machiavelli’s “militarism” is becoming most apparent when the link between “good laws” and “good arms” is being proposed. Possession of a strong army is not a requirement but an imperative, because it is the very existence of a viable political unit, which in turn depends on good laws, deemed to be unthinkable since “there can not be good laws where there are not good arms, and where there are good arms there must be good laws.”28 Even, when discussing religion, Niccolo Machiavelli observes that “all armed prophets won and the unarmed came to ruin,”29 simply because without arms they could not enforce their policies. Well-ordered states rest on their war-waging faculties, and so Niccolo Machiavelli’s preference for republics is determined by their greater capacity to engage in expansive war, and not because they are of a more peaceful nature—his thoughts truly seem to challenging the currently popular “Democratic Peace” thesis that democracies are peaceful and do not fight each other.
Recent events in the Middle East are the embodiment of the conduct of politics Machiavelli-style, replete with deceit, intentional violation of agreements, assassinations, and most importantly, civil unrest. Machiavelli proves to be right all over again—the struggle for power occurs on the battlefield and will never be transformed into a competition in the council room. Si vis pasem, para bellum, for Niccolo Machiavelli, must have been a dictum of fundamental significance. In Discourses Niccolo Machiavelli, elaborating on causes of war comes, to the conclusion that most of the time mere “chance” can give rise to a war.30 Why? Essential causes of war are found in the nature and deeds of man, therefore conflict is unavoidable!
Time and again, a premise—the perpetual threat of war— as offered by Niccolo Machiavelli has become a core principle of realism. And, war with the ensuing need for self-defense came about long before a creation of state. Here is, much neglected, Machiavelli’s version of the state of nature and of the origin of society:
“when inhabitants dispersed in many small communities, find that they can not enjoy security since no one community of itself, owing to its position and to the smallness of its numbers, is strong enough to resist the onslaught of an invader, and, when the enemy arrives, there is no time for them to unite for their defence … and thus at once fall as prey to their enemies. Hence to escape these dangers, either of their own accord or at the suggestion of someone of greater authority among them, such communities undertake to live together in some place they have chosen in order to live more conveniently and the more easily to defend themselves.”31
Niccolo Macniavell should not be judged as being one who is engaged in popularizing bestial conduct of politics, manifested in never-ending bloodshed and warfare. He is only a messenger, someone who brings ugly truth out in daylight. He simply offers a high vantage point in order to glimpse at what is really transpiring in politics, and this scenery definitely is not for the fainthearted! Over and over again he is the first in sophisticated approach to the study of the issue. Most certainly, the results of his work and his ideas can be confirmed through observation of the real world, even with the naked eye. He straightforwardly suggests that his writings are “useful to whoever understands it.”32
Niccolo Machiavelli has been the subject of numerous interpretations by statesmen, scholars and plain propagandists alike, and most of the time has caused more contention than consensus. And yet he lives today with a vitality that few other political thinkers can boast. More remarkably, he has enjoyed this vitality uninterruptedly since the sixteenth century. In contrast to other great thinkers of the past, there has never been a need to revive him, because he has never died. Niccolo Machiavelli elevated politics to such heights that passion for life and passion for politics became indivisible. His longevity owes to the fact that his ideas have proven to be as applicable to those living in the era of the emergence and spread of the nation-state system as to dwellers of the tumultuous modern world. Niccolo Machiavelli’s writings can be as relevant to modernity as Roman politics were to sixteenth century Italian states, despite any contrast to analogous features such as fortresses, moats, etc. A vector of human behavior, and the effects resulting from it, lies in a heart of Machiavelian realism, which can be regarded as constant as ever. Everything that happens in the world at any time has a genuine resemblance to what happed in ancient times…”who bring such things about are men, and that men have, and always have had, the same passions.”33
As a matter of fact, an extreme form of realpolitiks has become the way modern politics is conducted, and a raison d’etat — modern politicians’ sole moral foundation. Sorrowfully, the powerful on this earth today are drilled in Machiavelli without even realizing it, and assume the works of the Florentine secretary as a mere recipe for gaining success in their never-ending pursuit for power, and in the process sometimes commit outright crimes, justifying them by “necessity” and disregarding the great Florentine’s essential high-minded pronouncement—“…to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can acquire power but not glory.”34
When speaking of Machiavelians, Joseph Stalin can not be ignored. Instead, he can be awarded a champion’s title. He knew his Machiavelli well. Applying deceit, assassinations, mass violence and warfare, a sinister Georgian boy became greatest emperor ever, by some estimates greater than Ghinghis Khan or Caesar. “Cold calculator” (of power) as he is referred to by many, can be credited with the founding of “new orders and modes.” According to the Florentine’s teachings, he prevailed in something which is “more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success … more dangerous to manage.”35 Stalin had never forgotten Machiavelli’s maxim—“he who builds upon the people builds upon the mud.” He never did. Instead, he built his empire on the mighty Red Army. Having defeated, killed and exiled the enemies, he moved the world on a scale greater than anybody before or since. Moreover, the great dictator managed to die in bed. As far as his bloody legacy is concerned, if one asks Russians: What do you think about Stalin? They will cut it short: Slava Staliny! That means—Glory to Stalin! Niccolo Machiavelli is over and again accurate in his observations—people love winners!
Constituting of armies and keeping them faithful represented the matter of utmost importance to Niccolo Machiavelli, which he tirelessly taught in almost all of his works. Today, as ever, the states are divided into those that do this successfully and those that fail. Fidel Castro and Kim-il Sung, who failed at everything still managed to maintain their regimes under the worst circumstances by concentrating on the armed forces. By contrast, Mikhail Gorbachev may be the ultimate example of how personal incompetence can render useless the greatest concentration of power in the history of mankind and ruin the state. He was good at “climbing the greasy pole” and grabbing power, but at the same time he proved to be an ineffective leader. Having lost the reigns of control on the army and the KGB, he plunged the Soviet people into a conflagration of civil war and eventually resigned as president of a nonexistent state. If one asks Russians: What do you think about “Gorbi”? The majority of them will answer: Disgraceful! Gorbachev is liked in America, but he is despised in his own country. People can not stand losers!
Niccolo Machiavelli’s approach to human nature can well explain not only behavior of humans but also the institutions they create. The state, whether big or small, capable or weak, is in a permanent struggle for survival due to the constant threat of ultimate violence—domestic revolution that can manifest itself in numerous guises. In such conditions, the better question to ask may not be: “Why does violence occur?” but rather, “Why does violence cease at times and not occur more frequently than it does?” Power is the only means of protection for the state from the perpetual menace of plunging into anarchy. It is a substance, which can neutralize centrifugal forces and holds sovereign political system—the state, in one piece. Therefore, power has been, and will long remain, as a central factor that molds politics.
It needs to be acknowledged as an irrevocable fact that, for whatever reason, when a state fades away, deplorable consequences follow almost instantly. It results in unprecedented criminal rampages, warlordism, bloodshed, looting, rape, murder and the much-celebrated free soup kitchens. The naïve supporters of “direct action” and “movement of movement” simply are swept mercilessly aside by forces of chaos. According to a foreign scientist statements who worked in a facility located next to the Superdome in New Orleans, which allowed him a safe vantage point to observe the state of nature which ensued after the disappearance of the state, the shocking events which transpired there can be easily reconstructed. The first reflexive reaction he had from the statelessness was to send children back to Europe and to abhor even the idea of raising them in the United States. Niccolo Machiavelli realized earlier than anybody else the treacherous nature of anarchy within a state. Regardless of a cause, whether it is a party strife or class discontent, when the state recedes and conditions of anarchy advance, unleashed violence uncontrollably sweeps throughout the political system, devastating everything in its way. In the Florentine History Niccolo Machiavelli puts creepy warning into the mouth of an anonymous leader of the workers, who had many genuine grievances and were exploited in disputes between parties: “let no one initiate a revolution in a city in the belief that he can then stop it at his pleasure, or regulate it in his own way.[!!]”36
Expectations that the nation state exhausted itself do not sound persuasive and the statement that “the era of state development as a plausible goal has ended” is groundless. Those celebrating the fading away of the modern nation-state and creation of a “fragmegration” in the turbulent conditions of the modern world do not realize that states have never been as powerful and intrusive as they are now. They have become far more sovereign than in Niccolo Machiavelli’s era, or as anybody could have ever thought possible. Their exercise of control over every field of human activity is almost absolute and unprecedented. They enforce laws on everything from walking dogs to raising children. They set curricula for schools and standards for foods. As a result, an idea of the state being a casualty of the new age is at the very least naïve.
Interestingly, Michel Foucault claims that “we live in the era of ‘governmentality.” He defines the phenomenon as a “governmentalization” of the state, which originated from the administrative state, which in turn derived from the territoriality of a feudal type. Its main characteristic feature is radically opposed to the Machiavellian prince, whose primary aim is to retain his principality and sovereignty. The state’s evolution is determined by “the mass of the population, with its volume, its density, with the territory that it covers, to be sure, but only in a sense as one of its components.”37 Population becomes the ultimate end of government. As a result, “in contrast to sovereignty, government has as its purpose not the act of government itself, but the welfare of the population, the improvement of its condition, the increase of its wealth, longevity, health, and so on.”38 According to Michel Foucault, sovereignty simple entitlement to exercise a power regardless of the ends, over territory as a fundamental element in Machiavellian principality, cedes to the art of government—“a right manner of disposing things so as to lead … to an end that is ‘convenient’ for each of the things that are to be governed.”39
Though Michel Foucault’s assertion that “governmentalization’ has permitted the state to survive”, notwithstanding the above mentioned elaborate evolution of state offered by the distinguished theorist, seems a bit exaggerated. The analysis lacks in defining a power and its most extreme materialization, violence, as an original and enduring feature of the nation-state that never ceased to be a decisive factor, which glues the state together, as well as neutralizes centrifugal forces and as a result, turns the state into a kind of self-perpetuating device. The analysis above excludes traditional Machiavellian power dynamics inside the state, e.g. subjects who have no prior reason to recognize the government rule, competition of individuals and groups to use the state’s machinery in their interests, or many other relatively milder manifestations of the struggle for power.
Monopolized violence, or the threat of it, without any pretence of a fair deal, is a major factor which keeps a state in one piece, and forces of chaos at bay. Suffice it to say that acts of the state always conform to vested interests of powerful individuals or groups. A pursuit of these interests by dominant actors— whether they be parties, groups, individuals or classes—is the defining dynamic in the state. Politics seems to be about might rather than right. Overwhelming evidence shows politicians believe that to govern is essentially to succeed in asserting one’s will over others. As a consequence, a seizure of reins of government is the ultimate goal for any political force competing in the political arena. Why? Because control over decision-making grants the comfortable and legitimate means to exercise power. In other words, by compelling others, obedience, one promotes his own interests. Regardless of a system, whether it is “old” or “new,” relations within a state are determined by a struggle for power and constant threat of “legitimate” violence. Ironically, leitmotiv of this enterprise is: “It is all done for the good of the people.” An essence of good government is the strengthening of a population’s welfare, health, education etc. However, these improved capabilities of population are automatically translated into the enhancement of power of those who dominate the state. The evolution or “governmentalization” of state, and its modified organization that provides a population with “benefits” can not be the decisive factor for the survival of the state. What has been decisive for survival of state since its inception remained unaltered. This is, first and foremost, exercise of power in all its dimensions along with other factors (territoriality and legitimacy as Max Weber observes). Its faculty of maintaining the system from falling apart is comparable to a gravitation force which holds planetary systems together. It is expedient to mention that power is of indispensable value, even in Rousseau’s idyllic commonwealth, because “whoever refuses to obey … [is] forced to be free.”40
It is customary to think that the modern nation-state protects the weak against the strong, and that governance of the state is based on honest public debates about the common good. However, it is a remarkable fact that so many architects of modern politics find Niccolo Machiavelli’s ideas on politics as a source of inspiration. At close inspection, it appears that the state represents not an instrument for the advancement of the vast majority of its citizens, but a proving ground for domestic power seekers. In this competition stakes are always high. Occasionally, even the lives of presidents and prime ministers are being sacrificed. Evidence of it can be found in recent events which have been taking place in Russia. When the dominant group or individual’s political authority is seriously threatened by the former prime minister or retired bureaucrat almost certainly an assassin is called to action. Here come the Florentines words to mind: “You can get away with murder.” If you succeed, you will not even have to face the infamity of murder, because when “men acquire who can acquire, they will be praised or not blamed.”41
Those students of politics, who are convinced that political realism and its concepts launched by Niccolo Machiavelli are reminders of times long gone and forgotten and claim the dawning of a new era and changes in the conduct of politics are simply amiss. The changes take place all the time. But, basic power dynamics in a state virtually stays intact. If it were transformed, it would mean abandoning mankind’s one of most defining character and as a result politics—the principal element in human affairs would cease to exist as such and ensuing new activity would be called by other name.
If, by some inconceivable reason catastrophic breakdown brings about global statelessness it is going to initiate rapid degeneration into pandemonium where famines, pandemics, floods, desertification, and even slavery will be a fact of life. Jonestowns, warlord-controlled settlements, tupes of Ugandan Lord’s Liberation Armies entertained with juvenile sex slaves and manned with child soldiers roaming vast territories, the communities bent on public executions, and last but not least, attempts made to establish “coercive Utopias” resulting in inevitable “Megadeaths” would be the shape of things to come for the unfortunate inhabitants of the lands permeated by chaos and relentless conditions of “war of all against all.” In any rate, only a modern state is going to shield its residents from the eventualities. So, irrespective of the epoch on whose threshold we stand— globalized or even postdemocratic, the survival of the nation-state is guaranteed. The principles and norms on which its internal structures and functions are founded,more or less unchanged, will continue to exist for an undetermined period of time. Accordingly, a politics in its Machiavellian ampleu is here to stay for a long time to come without any revolutionary shifts in its conduct and functions.
Prolonged existence of the nation-state does not render political realism, and in turn Niccolo Machiavelli’s precepts, obsolete because the world and human beings have not been transformed. Transformation, however, awaits the day when the state for some inconceivable reason withers away. Until this takes place, the Machiavellian approach to politics rooted in human motives and possibilities, and devoted to advancing the interests of a state without regard for moral or religious considerations, will reign unchallenged.
In this paper, despite extreme constraints of space, I have made a modest attempt to view some of the crucial components of political realism presented by Niccolo Machiavelli in his works, such as self-interest and the origins of conflict in terms of thedynamics of power politics, prudence, and expediency as prime motivators in the conditions of the ever-present threat of internal revolution and external anarchy in which politics takes place. Also, we have been acquainted with the opinions of distinguished scholars. Furthermore, I demonstrated manifest instances of modern “Machiavellian” conduct in politics. Subsequently, in a light of numerous facts and after careful study, I have argued that Niccolo Machiavelli’s views seem as relevant as ever after almost five hundred years, and determined that a modern political realism as a theoretical approach launched by him can explain rationally the inner-most workings of politics as in the era of the Florentine secretary as well as in this day and age. His notion that political arrangements may be judged only by success and failure stays almost unchallenged. In the end, I have come to the conclusion that Niccolo Machiavelli’s works owe their longevity to the sole fact that the gamut of ideas conveyed in them continue to prove as applicable in the tumultuous condition of the modern world, as in the era of the emergence and spread of the nation state.
19 December 2006
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