Kissinger is Dead, Long Live Realpolitik
By: Sam Vaknin, Brussels Morning
It is time to give up on the failing liberal democracy project and its attendant ideologies: human rights, sanctity of life, rule of law, civic engagement, international community, and other such infantile inanities.
Liberal democracy is fading everywhere because exactly like Communism it is founded on a counterfactual view of human psychology and on a fallacious reframing of human history.
Ideologies are inflexible and self-defeating straightjackets. Adherence to such fantasies ineluctably and inexorably leads to conflict and mayhem.
As the USA’s Founding Fathers knew, universal franchise democracy is a dangerously flawed idea. It empowers the nescient and the dumb, gives rise to demagogues, and elevates ruthless, populist antisocial leaders.
Similarly the human and civil rights agendas are totalitarian victimhood doctrines that abrogate the inalienable and primordial right for self-defense and the meritocratic allocation of resources, among many other consequent distortions.
We need to get rid of all this delusional enlightenment baggage and revert to Realpolitik: the consummate use of power, hard and soft, to create and maintain peace and to regulate conflict.
Contrary to deliberate misrepresentations by bleeding heart acolytes of the liberal democracy religion, Realpolitik does not equate might with right nor does it do away with a civil discourse among interest-holders. It merely recognizes reality, adapts to it transigently, on the fly, without preconceptions, and aspires to optimize outcomes in a game theoretical manner.
Where is the place of existing structures in a Realpolitik world?
Human institutions are founded on the preservation of utilization of power: its dissemination, its management, and its maintenance. Realpolitik is about honestly admitting to this fact, not about instigating a revolution.
What about the rule of law? It is a natural derivative of Realpolitik because the state possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
But will not Realpolitik sacrifice niceties such as human and civil rights? Not necessarily and not always. But it will dispense summarily with the self-imputed right to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereigns. Let domestic power matrices within polities determines the local admixtures of the rights and obligations of the populace and the shape and functioning of their institutions.
By far the greatest impact of Realpolitik will be the pacification of international affairs. In a Realpolitik world, powers — global and regional — would recognize each other’s spheres of influence and rarely trespass for as long as overt, unambiguously signalled might is the regulating and organizing principle of international affairs.
Time to resurrect Henry Kissinger and the long line of wise statesmen who preceded him throughout history and who served as his intellectual inspiration.
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. is a former economic advisor to governments (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, North Macedonia), served as the editor in chief of “Global Politician” and as a columnist in various print and international media including “Central Europe Review” and United Press International (UPI). He taught psychology and finance in various academic institutions in several countries (http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html )
