ABSTRACT
A strange asymmetry prevails in modern writings on Thomas Hobbes's theory of the relations between states. For specialists in international relations theory, Hobbes is a canonical figure, a key representative of one of the major traditions. One influential modern text, Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations, takes what it calls 'the Hobbesian conception of international relations' as the basis of 'skeptical' or 'Realist' theory, and devotes twenty-three pages of detailed argument to refuting it. And yet, if one turns from the international relations specialists to the Hobbes specialists, one finds that such disregard is perfectly normal. In Hobbes's theory 'salus populi', the safety and benefit of the people, is the aim of the sovereign's foreign policy. Overall, Hobbes's account contains many of the ingredients of what modern theorists describe as an 'international society': shared practices, institutions, and values. It is necessary to reject Charles Beitz's assertion that, in Hobbes's theory, the only actors in international relations are sovereign states.
