This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
When I’m feeling mischievous my answer to the question “who is your Christian hero” is Cardinal Richelieu. He is the author of the line: “Man is immortal, his salvation is hereafter; the state has no immortality, its salvation is now or never.” That a state doesn’t have a soul is correct. The United Kingdom is not going to be greeted with a hearty handshake by St Peter at the Pearly Gates.
And yet a state has the ethical authority to do things which individuals do not. The most obvious of these is to kill. Whether in war, before a child’s birth, at the end of a person’s life, or as a punishment for crime, the question of whether the state can authorise its agents to end a life is not a matter of legitimacy — a state can kill, almost everybody agrees with that; it is a question of whether this is a reasonable use of that power. A man, acting on his own conscience, does not have this latitude. He cannot just choose to kill somebody. His salvation is hereafter (even if his prison sentence is now).
Does that mean that a state has no ethics? Does it matter if people think the actions of a state have a moral code? This has become a vital question as the United States pivots from being the leader of the Free World, with Reagan’s (one of President Trump’s supposed heroes) vision of being “a city upon a hill”, to being a state where “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
It’s worth exploring that last quote a little further. Thucydides uses it in what is known as the Melian debate. Athens, fresh from leading the free Greek cities to victory over the Persians, sets up the Delian League. This was a defensive alliance of those city states more inclined towards democracy. Members offered money, ships, and manpower — under the control of Athens — and in return got peace, an end to piracy, and mutual defence. A rival treaty organisation was set up, the Peloponnesian League, under Sparta, which wanted a world safe for autocracy.
Slowly the Delian League morphed into being an Empire. First, the freedom to leave was removed — as Athens invaded and reoccupied Naxos and Thasos when they tried — and then cities were compelled to join the league if Athens demanded it.
Such was the island of Melos, a city friendly to Athens but which Athens besieged in order to force it into its League. The debate between ambassadors from Athens and Melos is known as the Melian Debate. It was put to paper by Thucydides, and it is the source of the Athenian ambassador’s “the strong do what they can” statement. The Melians refused to surrender their freedom, and Athens attacked. When they won, they slaughtered every adult male and enslaved all the women and the children.
The strong did as they could; the weak suffered what they must. But it shamed Athens. And Athens’ treatment of its allies became its great weakness. When Corinth whipped up Sparta and its allies to war, it was able to use the resentment of Athens’ tributary allies as a justification. Corinth’s prediction that members of the Delian League would rebel against Athens, and others would not fight for them when asked, proved true. It took almost three decades, but Athens was humiliated and defeated.
You can see why this is a relevant analogy. A state that has significant technological and financial advantages may well be able to dominate smaller states for a while, especially those reliant upon it. The strong can indeed do what they want.
Will you stand by your friends when they are in trouble?
But wheels of fortune change. You’re up then you’re down, as the song goes. All powers need allies. Persuading people to risk their lives and their prosperity for your interests involves persuading them that you have their interests at heart too. And this is where morality comes into the picture: is what you are doing right and just? Will you stand by your friends when they are in trouble?
Britain lost 457 men and women in Afghanistan, and it did so not for any uniquely British interest. We were there because an attack upon the United States was seen as an attack upon her friend and ally, the United Kingdom.
In the end, empires survive because the vision of themselves is one which people want to be a part of. Britain raised the largest volunteer army in history from British India during the Second World War, without which we would have lost the war. America has been able to call on the willing support of its friends up until now.
Richelieu’s maxim cuts both ways. A state has no immortality, but therefore it does not have the luxury of an absolution. The question of its salvation truly is now or never, and a state which has squandered its moral legitimacy and betrayed its allies may find that salvation harder to guarantee.
A state relies on its reputation, and a power which abandons its friends may find that reputation goes before it, when it needs to call on those friends in times of need.
