The ideal tostrive for in international relations is what in the natural law tradition andCatholic social teaching is called solidarity.On the one hand, this entails respecting the independence of nations and theirright to preserve their own identities, rather than absorbing them into aone-world blob; on the other hand, it entails promoting their cooperation andmutual assistance in what Pope Leo XIV calls the “family of peoples,” ratherthan a war of all against all in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Whereeconomics is concerned, this entails rejecting, on the one hand, a globalismthat dissolves national boundaries and pushes nations into a free tradedogmatism that is contrary to the interests of their citizens; but also, on theother hand, a mercantilism that walls nations off into mutually hostile campsand treats international economic relations as a zero-sum game. From the pointof view of solidarity, neither free trade nor protectionism should be made intoideologies; free trade policies and protectionist policies are merely toolswhose advisability can vary from case to case and require the judgment ofprudence.

Where warand diplomacy are concerned, this vision entails rejecting, on the one hand,the liberal and neoconservative project of pushing all nations to incorporatethemselves into the globalist blob by economic pressure, regime change, or thelike; but also, on the other hand, a Hobbesian realpolitik that sees all othernations fundamentally as rivals rather than friends, and seeks to bully theminto submission rather than cooperate to achieve what is in each nation’smutual interest.

Thissolidarity-oriented vision is an alternative to the false choice between whatmight be called the “neoliberal” and “neo-Hobbesian” worldviews competing today– each of which pretends that the other is the only alternative to itself. Itis the vision developed by thinkers in the Thomistic natural law tradition suchas Luigi Taparelli in the nineteenth century and Johannes Messner in thetwentieth, and which has informed modern Catholic social teaching.

Theprinciple of solidarity is fairly well-known to be central to natural law andCatholic teaching about the internalaffairs of nations (and famously gave a name to Polish trade union resistanceto Communist oppression). But it ought to be better known as the ideal topursue in relations between nationsas well.

(From a post today atX/Twitter)