ABSTRACT
Among political theorists, especially those who have given considerable intellectual weight to the study of security in international relations, Thomas Hobbes provides what is surely one of the most succinct and penetrating accounts of the politics of security: ‘the safety of the people is the supreme law’ (emphasis in original).1 From this single phrase Hobbes derives the duties of sovereigns, including the absolute sovereign that is subject to no (true) law and beholden to no (human) will. The sovereign, though ‘uncompellable’ by any authority on earth, has as his guide the rule of right reason, which dictates that governments are formed for the sake of peace and that peace is sought for the sake of safety. But this condition of safety is not to be confused with the microtheoretical assumption – ‘states seek to ensure their survival’2 – that provides the starting point for neo-realist or structural realist accounts of national security and international insecurity; it is an explicitly normative safety that is tied no less explicitly to the felicity or happiness of persons joined (willingly) in a relationship of civil association. For the word ‘safety’, Hobbes explains, should be understood to mean, not a base condition of mere survival, but ‘a happy life so far as that is possible’.3 Thus, the Hobbesian sovereign is obliged to attend to the safety of the people by enacting laws – civil association being an order of laws – that are directed to external defence, domestic peace, acquisition of wealth, and enjoyment of liberty. Indeed, it is for the sake of these things, that is, things ‘necessary not just for life but for the enjoyment of life’, that men institute commonwealths and submit to sovereign power.4
