“Family of nations” is a time-honored phrase. I haven’t been able to track down when it first appeared. A definition in the Merriam Webster Dictionary (“the group of nations recognized as having equal status under international law”)1 suggests that it derives from the post medieval era when modern international law emerged. A book published in 1960, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations,2 suggests that “‘Family of nations’ is a figurative term originally applied to theWestern European States signing the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648...” Echoing the metaphorical resonance of a term not to be taken literally, the Oxford Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law (3rd edition, 2009) refers to “family of nations” “as an expression, now obsolete, used to describe the community of sovereign States between which the rules of international law applied”.3 More recently, however, the term appears in the title of a 2017 publication by Archbishop (now Cardinal) Silvano M. Tomasi entitled The Vatican in the Family of Nations.4 The book brings together statements to the UN and related international organizations from his time as apostolic nuncio in Geneva. The title suggests that the Holy See has a distinctive vision of the relations between States, a vision that prioritizes “the common good” of these states over and against their competing interests, much as a materfamilias would aim first and foremost at safeguarding the moral fiber of the nuclear family placed under her charge. The Holy See thereby acts “to facilitate coexistence and cohabitation among the various nations in order to promote a genuine fraternity among peoples, in which the term ‘fraternity’ is synonymous with effective collaboration, with genuine cooperation – that is unanimous and orderly – and of a solidarity structured in favour of both the common good and the good of the individual”.5
Taken in conjunction with the dismissal of the family image as applicable to relations between nations, and Cardinal Tomasi’s re-actualization of the phrase, honoring it as still applicable today, points to a deep-seated divergence in international relations theory, perhaps the most fundamental divergence within the discipline itself. This is the difference between those who view the relations between nations as akin to that of a family, and those who think states interact according to the opposing logic of threats, coercion, and force. The stage-setting for this divergence appears in two passages from Plato. The familial view is given voice by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue, the Gorgias: “wise men ... say that the heavens and the earth, gods and men, are bound together by fellowship and friendship, and order and temperance and justice, and for this reason they call the sum of things the ‘ordered’ universe, my friend, not the world of disorder or riot”.6 The contrasting view is voiced by Clineas in Plato’s Laws, who boldly states that “the peace of which most men talk ... is no more than a name; in real fact, the normal attitude of a city to all other cities is one of undeclared warfare”.7
Some twenty years ago, perusing the library at PRIO where I had recently joined the research staff, I came across these lines which startled me, in a book by Raymond Aron:8
Inter-state relations present one original feature which distinguishes them from all other social relations: they take place within the shadow of war, or, to use a more rigorous expression, relations among states involve, in essence, the alternatives of war and peace. Whereas each state tends to reserve a monopoly on violence for itself, states throughout history, by recognizing each other, have thereby recognized the legitimacy of the wars they waged.
Notice how, on this view, relations between states are fundamentally sui generis; the defining feature that sets them apart from other human relations, such as relations within families for instance, is the constant threat of organized violence. The bedrock on which relations between states is built is the ever-present prospect of war. States must prepare for war even when they live in a transitory condition of peace. War is deemed a legitimate practice among them to settle disputes that prove resistant to amicable negotiation.
Around the same time that I read these lines by Aron, I began researching what many years later became my book Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace.9 Despite his many accomplishments, St. Thomas is usually not counted a theorist of international relations. True, he did briefly develop an account of “just war”; yet, on the face of it, this is an unoriginal Augustinian-inspired digression of a mere four pages set within a discussion of charity and its opposing sins. However, in reading Aquinas’s commentary of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I came across a brief statement on international relations that to my mind was striking in its originality.
The statement is made apropos of a passage in Aristotle’s wider treatment of friendship. Upon enumerating the benefits that friendship brings to human life, Aristotle observes that its importance is not confined to the private sphere but extends even more crucially to the public sphere as well, “For polities (civitates)”, he writes, “are held together by friendship”.10 Friendship is the glue, as it were, that holds political communities together; in this respect it is even more important than justice.Thus “legislators”, Aristotle adds, “are more zealous about friendship than about justice; this is evident from the similarity between friendship and concord (concordia); for legislators most of all wish to encourage concord and to expel discord as an enemy of the polity”.11
Interestingly, and this is what caught my eye, whereas Aristotle had referred solely to concord among citizens of the same polity, Aquinas discretely adds that this condition of friendship could encompass the mutual relations of distinct polities as well:
Aristotle shows how concord is related to friendship among citizens. He notes that political friendship, either between citizens of the same polity (civium unius civitatis ad invicem), or between different polities (inter diversas civitates), seems to be identical with concord. And people usually speak of it this way: that polities or citizens (civitates vel cives) in concord with one another (concordes) enjoy mutual friendship (habent amicitiam ad invicem).12
It is difficult to identify what might have prompted St. Thomas to speak of friendship between distinct polities in a commentary to a text that is exclusively framed in terms of the concord that can arise within a single polity. It is possible that it resulted from a Stoic influence. This however would not in itself explain Aquinas’s addition to Aristotle’s text, since the Stoics typically conceptualized the theme of concord at the macro level of the entire human race (or even the whole cosmos), constituted as a unity under a single law, rather than specifically in terms of the relation between separate political units. St. Thomas could have taken inspiration likewise from the idea of Christian unity in Europe, wherein the independent principalities and kingdoms were joined together into one community under the spiritual leadership of the pope. By contrast, his clear distinction between schism on the one hand, and sedition,13 on the other, shows that he conceptualized the unity of Christians in the supranational Church as essentially different in kind than the temporal unity of citizens in a civil polity.The former derives from supernatural and the latter from natural principles.14
Hence, when St. Thomas speaks of the relation of friendship between civil polities, in a philosophical text which makes no mention of shared faith, it seems clear that his thought was not moving in the direction of the supranational Christian republic, of the sort articulated some fifty years later in Dante’s Monarchia. Under the modest cover of a literal commentary, it seems altogether possible that Aquinas had in fact launched an original idea, new to medieval Europe: by their concord, premised on ties of friendship, the nations of the world constitute a natural community.15 This is a special sort of community, analogous (but not reducible) to the one constituted by the friendship of citizens within a single polity, or of the (supernatural) ecclesial society of faith and charity.
At work here is the fundamental idea that states exemplify a pattern of relations that are analogous to modes of friendship16 that are found elsewhere in human life, within individual political communities, for instance, and within families.17 In fact, writing within the same commentary, Aquinas, following Aristotle, explains how the reality we term “family” is constituted by a distinctive set of friendship ties: ties of parents to children (and vice versa), as well as “fraternal” ties between siblings.18 I don’t have time here to delve into the details, although it should be clear that relations between siblings, by reason of their equality, rather than the unequal relations of parents to children, constitute the best platform for thinking about relations between states.The parental imagery risks moving us in the undesired direction of colonialism. What matters for my analysis is the fact that Aquinas takes friendship as a lens from which to view the relations that arise within the full range of human communities, from the community of the family, through the community of the nation, to the community of nations.
The tradition of “political realism” takes the relation of states to be sui generis; it is an imposition of order onto an original condition of anarchy, a grouping of impermeable monads that are defined by their latent opposition of the ones to the others. By contrast, for the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition voiced by Aquinas, independent political communities (what we today call states) exemplify a pattern of relating that is analogous to what is found in families and similar groupings. On this understanding, the term “family of nations” does not involve a superficial resemblance of nations and nuclear families, that is to say an ultimately misleading equivocation on the word “family”. Nor, by contrast, should we conceive of friendship within and between states as identically of the same type as found in nuclear families. Rightly understood, the resemblance is analogous, not univocal. Ethno-nationalism, as exhibited today by invocation of the Russkii mir (Russian world),19 of “fraternal peoples” originally of the same stock, is advanced by the Russian leadership as justification both for the denial of Ukrainian statehood and intervention on behalf of its “persecuted minority” in Ukraine. The examples could be multiplied, for instance the related notion of “Turkic nations and communities”20 that Turkey used to buttress its “peace intervention” on the island of Cyprus in 1974 and its unwillingness up to the present day to allow the island to reunify and go its independent way. This shows the danger of univocal predications of “fraternal friendship” to civic relations. By the same token, we should not “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by denying any continuing relevance of fraternal friendship to relations between states.
On the standard political realist account, friendship/amity/fraternity (I’m using these terms interchangeably) between nations is usually relegated to a normative claim about what should be. It does not describe what states are doing; realists claim a monopoly over this description. They maintain that despite paying lip service to friendship – say in the so-called “treaties of amity” that have been signed for example between the US and Iran21 – states operate in a shadowland of threats, usually tacit, but sometimes explicit as today between the US and Russia. Among the more sophisticated orchestrations of the realist view of international relations is the one proposed by Thomas Schelling. He explains how states prefer not to resort to armed force, and usually content themselves with threats as a more economical way to achieve the same end. This is the difference between brute force and coercion, overt versus latent violence. Having written myself on the language and ethics of threat-making,22 I’ve learned a lot from Schelling. His analysis of the different modalities of threats, deterrent and compellent, is indeed very nuanced and sheds light on historically significant incidents in international relations, the Cuban missile crisis, for instance. Interestingly for our purposes, Schelling often uses examples from family life, parent-child relations especially, in his writing about international affairs. My favorite example (now I’m quoting from memory) is one in which he wishes to show how a threat is more potent before it is implemented (“A successful threat is one that is not carried out”23). He tells his kids: “if you don’t stop horsing around I’ll get really angry”, to which his son replies, “dad you’re already really angry”, with the implication that dad’s threat has now become impotent.
Schelling has the virtue of recognizing that above the realm of threats there exists a domain where states interact in the mode of friendship, what he characterizes as “peace”, “stability”, “quiescence of conflict”, “trust”, “faith”, and “mutual respect”.24 But he cautions us not to place much weight on these noble terms, and adds that “where trust and good faith do not exist and cannot be made to by our acting as though they did, we may wish to solicit advice from the underworld, or from ancient despotisms, on how to make agreements work when trust and good faith are lacking and there is no legal recourse for breach of conflict”.25 The point of international relations theory then becomes to examine “the efficacy of some of these old devices, suggest the circumstances to which they apply, and discover modern equivalents that, though offensive to our taste, may be desperately needed in the regulation of conflict”.26 So even though he acknowledges that a better, a more fraternal way of state interaction exists, its dynamics are taken for granted and are never explored. Absent an interest in this “overworld”, analyses based on the “underworld” predominate and remove all the oxygen from the room. Surreptitiously the underworld becomes the norm, and fraternal relations the exception. A huge vacuum opens, fed by confirmation bias; since the surgical manipulation of threats is of primary interest, in the end that is all one notices, with the result that the fraternal ways of relating become invisible; and because they are hardly noticed fraternity ceases to function as an ideal that can draw us forward. There is no theory of the passage from enmity to amity; states that have hostile relations are condemned to remaining in this state and the only “sane” strategy is to find effective means of achieving the dominance or at least a “containment” of the one vis-à-vis the other.
How can we describe the fraternal mode of state-to-state interaction? Let me note in passing that promotion of “fraternity between nations” (folkens förbrödrande) is one of three criteria (alongside “the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”) laid out by Alfred Nobel in the testament that established his peace prize.27 I live in the same neighborhood as Gier Lundestad, the former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which confers the annual peace prize. One day waiting for the tram I asked him whether, being a historian of political affairs, he had come across literature that elucidates the distinctive dynamics of fraternity between nations, as highlighted in Nobel’s will. Pausing for a moment, he said, “well not directly, however there is an abundant literature on international cooperation”.Yet, and this is my point in relating the anecdote, cooperation is not the same as fraternity or friendship. Sworn enemies sometimes cooperate in achieving mutually beneficial ends, negotiating cease-fire agreements and the like, without there being the least love lost between them. Adversaries locked in prisoners’ dilemma can play cooperative games, as Schelling shows for instance his discussion of “negotiation in warfare”.28
Friends often do cooperate, to be sure. But friends can have few opportunities to cooperate while nonetheless remaining close friends. Thus, friendship and cooperation are not one and the same. So what is friendship? Having more time at my disposal I could rehearse Aristotle’s analysis of friendship as mutually recognized and reciprocated benevolence,29 a benevolence that finds expression in shared activity, a “communication” or “living together” as the Stagirite calls it.30 Can nations “live together” in this way? Aquinas seems to think so, as this was his very reason for speaking of a supra-national community of independent polities who enjoy this amical commerce of mutual benefit and cultural exchange.
Aquinas didn’t fill in the details, and his message hasn’t resonated in contemporary political theory, to say the least (dominated as it is by political realism), although that is beginning to change, as I will indicate in my conclusion. However, Aquinas’s idea has been quietly present beneath the surface in modern political thought, via what has earlier been called “the Catholic tradition of the law of nations”.31 In fact, the idea of friendship was placed at the heart of a five-volume work entitled A Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Resting on Fact that the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio published in 1843.32 The part of the work that concerns international relations is organized around the idea of “ethnarchy”,33 “an organization... of relations between civilized peoples of all parts of the world”.34 He further describes ethnarchy as “a society between societies”,35 in which the individual members (national states) are “essentially and originally equal”,36 and wherein each nation has a natural duty (i.e., born of nature not agreement of convention) of benevolence toward the other nations in the community.37 This benevolence38 is founded in turn on a recognition that nationhood is an inherent good: on his understanding nations are of the natural law: in this sense they are willed by God. Significantly, while he thought that Christian nations, under the motion of God’s grace could form the highest ethnarchy, he didn’t think ethnarchy was a privilege of the Christian “commonwealth” alone. All nations could, in principle, join in ethnarchy: this “society between societies” was to his mind a natural good and as such was not premised on shared faith, even though shared faith would make it stronger.39 This mutual benevolence amounts to more than lending one another aid in times of trouble, although this too matters. Benevolence first and foremost entails mutual appreciation, namely recognition of each other’s qualities, physical beauty of the land, cultural and scientific traditions, and the distinctive ways of their respective peoples.
Diplomats, he acknowledges, have for formal role to cement the bonds of interstate friendship, when they exist, and prompt them when they don’t. Nonetheless it would be a mistake to assume that inter-state friendship is a function of high-level diplomacy alone, for which it suffices that the top leaders bond.
The mutual love of societies and their sovereigns qua sovereigns does not consist in personal friendship [amitié personelle], but in a love [of friendship] that wills the general good of [each other’s] society, a good that is nonetheless subordinated to the good of individuals. The mutual love that unites sovereigns is very different in its immediate effects that which joins together simple individuals.40
In his book on Kissinger (Master of the Game and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy),41 Martin Indyk praises the statesman’s ability to strike up friendship with Middle East leaders, establishing trust with them and in the process negotiated a new political order in the Middle East, but Indyk faults Kissinger for his lack of interest in fostering interaction between the conflicting peoples. Never reaching below the top leadership circle, on Indyk’s assessment Kissinger’s the new order lacked resonance within the respective communities, and thereby remained artificial, thus fragile. A reviewer puts this well:
Kissinger nurtured a set of relationships among powerful leaders that brought order to a tumultuous landscape ... His manipulations, however, did not change the societies that remained in conflict ... Heroic diplomacy, on the model of Prince Metternich, brings peoples together beyond just their leaders. ... Kissinger’s diplomacy focused so much on the few men at the top that those who lived under them were neglected and frequently provoked. Among other things Indyk’s book is a brilliant account of how the mastery of personal diplomacy can depart from the diplomat’s true mission of peace.42
The same top-heavy leadership approach can be seen operative from the contrasting side of sanctions. When political leaders and their diplomats have little or no relations, as say in the case with Iran and the US, the leaders give little care to relations existing between the peoples as well. Whether intended or not, sanctions have for significant collateral damage the drying up of valuable cultural exchanges and even friendships, say around shared scientific pursuits, that over time could point a way out of the morass of division. In the absence of cultural interaction, negative stereotypes take root and are taught in schools, further fueling division, dehumanization, and in the worst case, war. This is starting to happen today between Russia and the West, and is exacerbated by the exclusion, not just of Russian teams and official organizations, but of individual athletes and musicians as well, even ones that publicly oppose their governments military initiatives.43
Another text in the Catholic tradition I very much like is a short essay by Jacques Maritain, “L’essence de l’internationalisation” that appeared in 1930.44 Citing Taparelli, Maritain orchestrates many of the same themes that I’ve already mentioned. The added value of Maritain’s treatment was his insistence (in opposition to Marxism) that international amity must proceed proximately, not from the simple recognition that we are all of the same “stock” (“the generic unity of humanity”), but rather from a conviction that nations, as “complete societies” in the Aristotelian sense of the term, have a kind of moral personhood (“personnes morales de structure juridique”), ‘thick identities’ we would say today. And between these distinctive moral persons, there should be fostered “solidarity, not just of a material and economic kind, but also of moral character, founded on relations of justice and friendship”. Maritain’s point about the moral thickness of national communities merits emphasis today if only because much resentment has accrued in parts of Europe, and perhaps in some measure rightly so, against cosmopolitan discourses that denigrate national identities in the rush to join people together around universalist values (in Maritain’s words, “to absorb all the nations into the human genus”).45
Another text that draws from the same rich vein of Catholic internationalism is of course Pope Francis’s 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship. While cautioning against “narrow forms of nationalism” (no. 141), the Holy Father emphasizes that “there can be no openness between peoples except on the basis of love for one’s own land, one’s own people, one’s own cultural roots”. Cautioning similarly against a “false openness to the universal” (no. 145) he notes how we “can welcome others who are different and value the unique contribution they have to make, only if I am firmly rooted in my own people and culture” (no. 143). Francis calls on us to develop a “new network of international relations, since there is no way to resolve the serious problems of our world if we continue to think only in terms of mutual assistance between individuals and small groups” (no. 126). The call to inter-state fraternity he sums up thus: “global society is not the sum total of different countries, but rather the communion that exists among them” (no. 149). “An appropriate and authentic openness to the world presupposes the capacity to be open to one’s neighbor within a family of nations” (no. 151).
Earlier in this paper I observed that political realists typically assume that the friendship conception of international relations reduces to a normative claim, and an unachievable one at that. There is, however, a small but growing group of political scientists, including international relations theorists, who view friendship as an empirical reality that is worthy of study. Notably, the volume Friendship in Politics46 includes various perspectives on the topic, mostly focused on intrastate friendship, but also examined are friendship’s interstate dimensions. A chapter on “Friendship, Mutual Trust and the Evolution of Regional Peace in the International System” explains how IR realism, the dominant theory on the field over the last 60 years, “has resulted in a biased research agenda”. Relative to “enemy” the concept of “friend” is under theorized, such that a “substantial literature exists on enemy images but little on friend images, on enduring rivalries but little on enduring friendships, on the causes of war but little on the causes of peace”.47 The author, Andrea Oelsner, proceeds to show how interstate friendship, and the positive peace that follows from it, is a dynamic process in that its maintenance “requires an active effort on the part of governments”.48 When a stable relationship of peace is thus achieved, a “we-feeling” among states develops along with high levels of mutual confidence whereby “the use of threat of force has become unthinkable to resolve disputes and disagreements and indeed all parties perceive it in this manner”.49 “Such perceived certainty makes positive peace resemble friendship, despite the constraints of the international system”.50 I would add that the relationship now enjoyed by the Nordic states exemplifies this phenomenon of intrastate friendship and peace.
Another chapter in the same volume, “The Institutionalization of International Friendship”, explores how friendship between states is something more than a “temporary agreement to bypass enmity” or “to solve a security dilemma”. This the author, Antoine Vion, illustrates by reference to the role played by municipal dialogue initiatives (e.g., the Union International des Maires) in establishing friendship between states, for instance France and Germany during the years after World War II. He shows, quite convincingly how institutionalized social outreach (including, I would add, scientific diplomacy and interfaith initiatives) can provide a vital supplement to standard diplomacy, fostering the process by which erstwhile state enemies can become stable friends.
In conclusion, I simply want to say that this sort of research into nature, causes, and effects of inter-state friendship is highly valuable; it merits closer attention and warrants our active collaboration.
1 Merriam Webster: Family of Nations
2 Immanuel C.Y. Hsü, with subtitle The Diplomatic Phase 1958-1880 (Harvard University Press, 1960).
3 https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195389777.001.0001/acref-9780195389777-e-829
4 Cambridge University Press, 2017.
5 Ibid., p. xv.
6 507e-508a11.
7 Plato, Laws, I, 626a. See Martin Ostwald, “Peace and War in Plato and Aristotle”, Scripta Classica Israelica 15 (1996): 102-118.
8 Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 5-6.
9 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
10 Nic. Ethic., bk. 8, chap. 1 (1155a22-23); cited in Super Ethic., p. 441.
11 Super Ethic, at 1155a22-26 (p. 441).
12 Super Ethic., p. 521, lines 74-80.
13 Summa theol. II-II, qq. 39 and 42 respectively.
14 See ST I-II, q. 87, a. 1, where Aquinas sets up a contrast between two forms of governance, “spiritual” (spiritualiter) and “temporal” (temporaliter). The latter is subsequently divided into two forms, “political” (politice) and “familial” (oeconomice).
15 See ST II-II, q. 59, a. 1, where Aquinas speaks of the common good of humanity (bonum commune humanum).
16 On the analogicity of “friendship”, see Super ethic, bk. 8, lect. 3.
17 For discussion of friendship (qua caritas) in families, see Summa theologiae II-II, q. 26, aa. 8-11.
18 Super Ethic, bk. 8, lect. 7.
19 https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/
20 Wikipedia: Friendship, Brotherhood and Cooperation Congress of Turkish States and Communities
21 The Treaty entered into force in 1957 and persisted despite the severance of diplomatic ties between the two states. The US withdrew from the treaty in 2018. The first article states that “There shall be firm and enduring peace and sincere friendship between the United States of America and Iran”.
22 Gregory M. Reichberg and Henrik Syse, “Threats and Coercive Diplomacy: An Ethical Analysis”, Ethics and International Affairs 32.2 (2018): 179-202.
23 The Strategy of Conflict, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 177.
24 Ibid. p. 20.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/the-last-will-of-alfred-nobel
28 Arms and Influence, 2nd edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 215-220.
29 “[G]oodwill when it is reciprocated being friendship” (Nic. Ethics, bk. 8, chap. 2 (1155b33).
30 Nic. Ethics, bk. 8, chap. 5 1157b18-19: “There is nothing so characteristic of friends as living together”.
31 The title of a book edited by John Eppstein (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1935).
32 Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto. I quote from the French translation (reviewed by the author): Essai théorique de droit naturel basé sur les faits (Paris: Casterman, 1875).
33 Ibid., book 6, chap. 5, no. 1362, p. 58: “Pour mieux distinguer la societé internationale qui repose sur les faits naturels, je lui donnerai le nom d’ethnarchie; tandis j’appellerai les autres societés internationals, confederations, unions, etc., parce que la volonté de l’homme est ici le principe d’association, it importe sutout d’éviter toute confusion dans les concepts”. Later he sums this up as follows: “nous pouvons donner le nom ethnarchie à l’association internationale qui résulte de la nature et de la nécessité des choses” (ibid., book 8, chap. 6, prop. 13, p. 292).
34 Ibid., book VI, chap. 7, no. 1395, p. 76.
35 Ibid., book VI, chap. 5, no. 1363, p. 59.
36 Ibid., book 4, chap. 7 no. 1395.
37 Ibid., book VI, chap. 5: “La matière que je dois actuellement traiter est une matière encore neuve: c’est à peine si quelques auteurs ont ébauché la théorie de la societé internationale” (p. 54).
38 On benevolence, see the summary in book 8, chap. 6, prop 1, p. 285-286 “Les nations se doivent une mutuelle bienveillance”.
39 He thus speaks about the “veille ethnarchie des musulmans, “le panslavisme gréco-russe”, and the “union évangélique allemande” (ibid., book VII, chap. 1, no. 1438, p. 102).
40 Ibid., book VI, chap. 2, no. 1253, p. 8.
41 New York: Knoph, 2021.
42 Jeremi Suri, “Henry Kissinger and the Puzzle of the Middle East”, New York Times, 26 October 2021.
43 “Banning Russian Tennis Players Won’t Stop the War. So Why Is Wimbledon Doing It?”
44 Text in Oeuvres complètes Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, vol. IV.
45 See Paul Kubicek, “Illiberal Nationalism and the Backlash against Liberal Cosmopolitanism in Post-Communist Europe”, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 2022 (DOI: 10.1080/13537113.2022.2029082).
46 Edited by Preston King and Graham M. Smith (London: Routledge, 2007). For a related treatment see Paul W. Ludwig, Rediscovering Political Friendship: Aristotle’s Theory and Modern Identity, Community, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
47 Oelsner, citing Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 298).
48 Friendship in Politics, p. 151.
49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.