The Law of the Jungle and the Balance of Power

Chas Freeman deplores the Trump administration’s lawlessness. He say that Russia and China are trying to preserve the system of international law created by the US when it founded the United Nations, and which the Trump administration is now ruining. This perspective comes from a very senior diplomat who started his career as a translator in Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, and who operated by the rules of international law for his entire career. He says that the basic purpose of the law is to protect the weak against the strong, but now the US is operating by “the law of the jungle”.

All this is very true. Nevertheless, I would like to ask an irreverent question. What is “the law of the jungle”? As Chas means it, it is the principle of might makes right. As brought out by Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, the corollary is that laws are made by the strong for their own benefit and to oppress the weak. The idea that laws are to protect the weak is propaganda put out by the strong to cause the weak to accept their oppression. We certainly have seen a lot of this in the course of history. But this “law of the jungle” expression reminds me of the great story-teller and poet Rudyard Kipling, who wrote a poem about the law of the jungle.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back — For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

This is a national law for a wolfpack, so to speak, and yet it was a law, a code of behavior for the wolf citizens of the pack. It was also an international law for the the whole jungle governing the pack’s relations with animals outside the pack, like elephants and bears and panthers and pythons. The wolves are meat eaters and they do prey on herbivores like zebras, but this is all part of the great balance of nature. For them, success is to avoid being eaten at least long enough to reproduce their species. Some powerful animals, like elephants, are herbivores, not predators, but they can’t be hunted and must be respected because of their power. Indeed, Kipling’s “law of the jungle” seems to be the same concept as that of the “balance of nature” in which all living things are part of an ecological system. This might also suggest that human history since humans emerged from that jungle to create civilization, they have really lived under the same natural law as other animals. They, too, are part of the balance of nature, and if they defy that natural law, they too must die. The national and international laws that humans make last only as long as their particular countries, but natural law is as eternal as the laws of physics.

Individual humans no longer eat each other; we have gotten past cannibalism. But history has a long record of people and countries preying on each other in all sorts of other ways. In Kipling’s law, wolves may not prey on other members of their pack. Human societies are organized by nature into packs that are formalized as nations, and it is natural for strong nations to prey on weaker ones. Predation is part of the balance of international power as well as the balance of nature. This is also true on the individual level. We also are predators, scientifically evolved ones, and even in our own countries, there are people who try to prey on us in all sorts of ways, and we have no other choice but to be strong and resist being exploited by such predators. If we are weak, we will be eaten, that is exploited, oppressed, enslaved and killed . This is the real world.

Where does Trump’s Greenland policy fit into this theory? Chas Freeman is horrified by Trump’s open contempt for international law. However, Trump supporters could say that the UN and its Charter has only existed for 80 years and is no longer effective. Trump does obey the balance of nature, which in human relations is called the balance of power. In this case, Greenland looks to Trump like a Zebra. Yum, delicious! Is that so bad? I don’t think the American people think so, other than sticklers for international law, like Chas Freeman, which I suspect are a small minority. Not only are most Americans OK with it, but so are Russia and China. It’s only natural, and they understand this despite their support for international law and the Treaty of Westphalia.

What about the people living in Greenland? They just have to find a way to coexist with this predator. In the scheme of nature, you could say they are more like mice that are not worth the trouble of a large predator. They might find a way to survive and even outlast it, the predator, who will die if he can’t find enough to eat.