Beginnings of the Imaginary of a Permanent Global War

Since WWII, the U.S. official doctrine is that it is the legitimate guardian of freedom in the world. To Sheldon Wolin, this signs the ideological drift from an open “constitutional imaginary” to a dictatorial “power imaginary.”

According to Sheldon Wolin, a citizenry sees itself through two distinct but complementary ways: a constitutional imaginary and a power imaginary. This chapter examines how the latter has justified a state of permanent global war in U.S. policies.

“The constitutional imaginary prescribes the means by which power is legitimated, accountable, and constrained (e.g., popular elections, legal authorization). It emphasizes stability and limits. A constitution partakes of the imaginary because it is wholly dependent on what public officials, politicians in power, and, lastly, citizens conceive it to be, such that there is a reasonable continuity between the original formulations and the present interpretations.” By contrast, “The power imaginary seeks constantly to expand present capabilities. Hobbes, the theorist par excellence of the power imaginary and a favorite among neocons, had envisioned a dynamic rooted in human nature and driven by a ‘restless’ quest for ‘power after power’ that ‘ceaseth only in death.’¹ But, according to Hobbes, unlike the individual whose power drives cease with death, a society can avoid collective mortality by rationalizing the quest for power and giving it a political form.”

Hobbes’ political theory unfolds this way: Power is exercised among individuals to their overall detriment because man is a wolf to man. The solution for a stable and secure state of living is to entirely confide our individual power to one common entity. And in order to definitively avoid the dread of permanent aggression between people, this political authority must never be disputed once established. Hobbes referred to this absolute authority as the Leviathan, the overpowerful mythical creature mentioned in chapter 41 of the Book of Job in the bible.²

To him, therefore, political authority is anything but natural. The government of men has to be the object of a contract because the ravages of raw power from all individuals, in the state of nature, prevent everyone’s durable satisfaction. The legitimacy of power takes shape with Hobbes, says Sheldon Wolin, under the form of “a permanent contract, a constitutional imaginary, which provided the basis for the power imaginary.”

To him, therefore, political authority is anything but natural. The government of men has to be the object of a contract because the ravages of raw power from all individuals, in the state of nature, prevent everyone’s durable satisfaction. The legitimacy of power takes shape with Hobbes, says Sheldon Wolin, under the form of “a permanent contract, a constitutional imaginary, which provided the basis for the power imaginary.”

It remains, however, that seeing power as all there is to man’s destiny allows the governing entity to do away with all forms of accountability. Lying is not only acceptable; it might prove to be one of the most convenient ways of ruling. As Sheldon Wolin points out about the invasion of Iraq, “One consequence of the pursuit of an expansive power imaginary is the blurring of the lines separating reality from fancy and truth telling from self-deception and lying. In its imaginary, power is not so much justified as sanctified, excused by the lofty ends it proclaims, ends that commonly are antithetical to the power legitimated by the constitutional imaginary.”

Another important consequence of seeing power as the fundamental principle of human interactions is that the resulting necessity of absolute power over individuals cannot stop at national borders. Foreign countries must also be submitted to the rule of one main power, or at least be kept in check. “You are either with us or against us” is the logic emanating from the idea that peace is a delusion, as the U.S. historical allies were notably reminded by an administration concocting for them, at the time, its Weapons of Mass Destruction big lie.

Hobbes addressed the logic of war inherent to human nature by the idea of all individuals forfeiting their will to power in the hands of one single entity. After WWII, the U.S. similarly proclaimed its status as the sole legitimate world power by assuming that the nation was democracy’s definite embodiment. The enemy was not everyone anymore, as with Hobbes, but those who would defy the shining city on the hill. Most importantly, war was yet again the absolute reference to be had in the course of human affairs.

“The prime example of a power imaginary and the best indicator of the turning point from a politics of social reform to the pursuit of a global politics is an official report to President Truman by the National Security Council in April 1950.” This report is the NSC-68, titled United States Objectives and Programs for National Security.³ A leading scholar has described it as “the bible of American national security and the fullest statement of the new ideology that guided American leaders” during the Cold War.⁴ Let’s then open this bible of American national security and see how its doctrine has influenced U.S. policy up to the so-called “War on Terror” and beyond.

1. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, n.d.), 64, 112, 113.
2. “Leviathan and Hobbes’s sovereign are unities compacted out of separate individuals; they are omnipotent; they cannot be destroyed or divided; they inspire fear in men; they do not make pacts with men; theirs is the dominion of power.” Mintz, Samuel (1989). “Leviathan as Metaphor” in Hobbes Studies.
3. NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (April 14, 1950)
4. Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron, 12.