Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Critics of the neo-conservative movement in the U.S. White House have identified the philosopher Leo Strauss as their mentor . Strauss however has his most ardent followers in the neo-conservative movement not in the U.S. but in Canada. The real Straussian School is at the University of Calgary.

They are political advisor's to the Alberta Government and to the Federal Harper Conservative Government. Both governments which practice a Straussian politics of secrecy and elitism combined with a Schmitt authoritarianism of the strong man as leader. They are known as the Calgary School of right wingers who teach political science, and military history etc.at the University of Calgary; Barry Cooper, Tom Flanagan, David Bercuson, Ted Morton, et al.

The Calgary School has both European and American roots and sources. Three leading Europeans have done much to shape and form the Calgary School. Those of us who spend a good deal of time teaching political theory cannot avoid the names of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and Frederick Hayek. Hayek and Voegelin were Austrians. Hayek was a great fan of free trade, and Voegelin was an opponent of Hitler. He fled Austria when Hitler came to power; he came to the USA and taught there for much of his life. Leo Strauss fled Germany, like Hannah Arendt, when Hitler came to power, and both came and settled in the USA. These Austrian and German refugees, for different reasons, saw the USA, as the great and good place. It was, was it not, the country that defended liberty and freedom against the totalitarianism of Germany, Italy, Japan and Communism. The Calgary School is very much indebted to those like Strauss, Voegelin and Hayek for their inspiration, and many within the Calgary School are well known scholars in the area of Strauss, Voegelin and Hayek. The point to note here is that the Calgary School does not take its lead from the indigenous Canadian tradition. They turn elsewhere for their great good place. Such is the nature, DNA and way of the compradors. But, there is more to the tale than this.

The Calgary School also has strong American roots. Again, the comprador way comes to the fore and front stage. Tom Flanagan is well known in Canada for his revisionist read on Louis Riel. He was also born and bred in the USA, and he has strong American republican leanings. Barry Cooper is yet another of the clan. He is a Canadian, but he did his graduate studies in the USA, he did not find much support for his republican leanings at York University, hence he turned to the political science department at the University of Calgary. Cooper is a well-known Voegelin scholar. David Bercuson, Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff fill out the ranks quite nicely. At a more popular level, of course, Ted and Link Byfield have played their roles in shoring up and defending the American republican way. The comprador class in Alberta did much to both bring Preston Manning to power and to dethrone him. Stephen Harper was more the ideologue that served their purposes; hence he was offered the crown he now wears.

In the dance of the dialectic the most ardent critic of Strauss and Straussian politics of the neo-con right is also a graduate of the University of Calgary; Shadia Drury. Her work the result of being in a school dedicated to real Straussian politics.

As with Strauss the Calgary School is well versed in Marxism and critiques of Marxism as we can see in the publications of its major proponent Barry Cooper. Cooper admire's Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin and see's them as the political alternative to Marxism, and ironically these political philosophers are far more statist than Marx was.

It was very difficult to read Leo Strauss (1). But I did manage to wring out some ideas. He says if political philosophy wants to do justice to its subject matter, it must strive for "genuine knowledge" of "true standards" (2). This absolutist idea may be at least in part the reason Straussians (and neoconservatives) are willing to force a political system on countries, using war, lies, and the like. He begins to discuss Machiavelli (3) and says Karl Marx was a Machiavellian, which moves me toward the edge of my seat (even though this is no surprise) and this movement continued as I read more of Strauss on Machiavelli. The latter continually made me think of Bush and his neoconservatives.

Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin are Anti-Hegelian, like Karl Popper, declaring that Hegel is the end of history, that philosophy thus needs to return to its ancient sources. In Hegel they see Gnosticism, and attack his and Marx's dialectics as heresy, embracing the fundamentalist and literalism of the evangelical Christian right.

There are four major periods in Hegel’s life during which he seems to have been strongly under the influence of Hermeticism, or to have actively pursued an interest in it. First, there is his boyhood in Stuttgart, from 1770 to 1788. As I shall discuss in detail in chapter 2, during this period Württemberg was a major center of Hermetic interest, with much of the Pietist movement influenced by Boehmeanism and Rosicrucianism (Württemberg was the spiritual center of the Rosicrucian movement). The leading exponents of Pietism, J. A. Bengel and, in particular, F. C. Oetinger were strongly influenced by German mysticism, Boehmean theosophy, and Kabbalism.

This is no abstract philosophical debate, the social conservative protestant right wing has a new political theology. It opposes liberal society as Gnostic, and blames liberalism, relativism, values laden education, etc. as the basis for Totalitarianism. Strauss, Voegelin and Schmidt argued that Hegel was the source of the Nazi's political power and thought, as did Karl Popper, then the same argument was applied against Marx, Marxism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Today their followers like the Calgary School and others use it against the pluralistic social democratic polity in Canada, they indeed loathe Canadian society as it is.

Hegel is known largely through secondary sources and a few incriminating slogans and generalizations. The resulting myth, however, lacked a comprehensive, documented statement till Karl Popper found a place for it in his widely discussed book, The Open Society and Its Enemies. After it had gone through three impressions in England, a revised one-volume edition was brought out in the United States in 1950, five years after its original appearance. Walter Kaufmann


Hegelian Dialect is a perfect example of what J. Budziszewski (What We Can't Not Know, pp. 187) termed the "black magic spells of imposture and unraveling." Hegel's form of dialectics is itself an impostor. It effectively unravels truth and norms and then replaces them with a 'new truth' which is yet another impostor.

Whence came the deformed conceptions of anti-Constitutional, regulatory government and judicial activism?

American liberal-socialism is the gnostic descendant of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror. The genealogical connection begins with Henri de Saint-Simon, the French intellectual who codified the doctrine of socialism in the first decades of the 1800s, shortly after the Revolution.

His colleagues and followers, including Auguste Comte, formed a body of disciples known as the Saint-Simonians. They spread the Gnostic gospel to German universities, where it became mixed with the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel.

Hegel studied alchemy, Kabbalah (caballa, kaballa, etc.) and theosophy. He "read widely on Mesmerism, psychic phenomena, dowsing, precognition and sorcery. He publicly associated himself with known occultists.... He believed in an Earth Spirit and corresponded with colleagues about the nature of magic.... He aligned himself, informally, with 'Hermetic' societies such as the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians" and embraced their symbolic systems of sacred circles, mystical triangles and astrological signs.[3]

Considering Hegel's occult connections, it's not surprising that his teachings would undermine Biblical faith and all opposing facts. Nor is it strange that the postmodern generation has been largely immunized against genuine Christianity. After all, Hegel's revolutionary dialectic process was the center-piece of Soviet brainwashing. It effectively purged God's unchanging truths and filled the vacuum with evolving "truths" and enticing dreams.

While Communist leaders embraced Hegel's process, they ignored his occult beliefs. In contrast, the Western world began to restore those pagan roots long before revolutionary baby-boomers began shouting their demands for sensual freedom and earth-centered spirituality. In other words, the sixties didn't initiate this radical change; the turmoil of the sixties was the result of the psycho-social program of "re-learning" which had begun to transform America decades earlier.

These are the arguments of the Cold War, which while now over, remains the bugaboo of the right. One does not invest fifty years of constructing anti-liberal, anti-socialists, anti-secular, anti-humanist arguments to abandon them with the mere collapse of the Berlin wall. Today the arguments used against socialism and liberalism by Strauss, Voegelin and Schmitt are now used in day to day editorials and arguments from the Right.

In Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche, Drury regards the contemporary political problem as "thoroughly Biblical." "Each (civilization) is convinced that it is on the side of God, truth and justice, while its enemy is allied with Satan, wickedness, and barbarism."

"A civilization can .. advance and decline at the same time-but not forever. There is a limit towards which this ambiguous process moves; the limit reached when an activist sect which represents the Gnostic truth organizes the civilization into an empire under its rule. Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization." Eric Voegelin.

In the realpolitik's of Cooper and the Calgary School the fundamentalist protestant right wing are the foots soldiers in their cynical attempt to restore a new age of Plato's Philosopher King through the creation of right wing populist political movements and parties. They created it in the autarchic leadership of Preston Manning over the Reform Party and now in the autarch in Ottawa who rules in the name of a reborn Conservative party, which is the ultimate Big Lie.

Strauss taught that an elite, wise ruling class must rule the unsophisticated masses by telling them noble lies for their own good.

Strauss loved Plato, interpreting his teachings to mean, “... true democracy is an act against nature and must be prevented at all costs.”

“Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed,” Strauss wrote. “Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united - and they can only be united against other people.” Leaders must always provide an enemy.

Straussian teachings spark delusions of grandeur in neocon intellectuals, who imagine themselves as the wise ruling elite, set free of the bonds of honesty and equality.

While publically declaring themselves libertarians of the right, they are anything but, again the Straussian deception and lies that cover their realpolitik. They want Plato's Philosopher King, the supreme ruler, and they see him sanctioned by the politics of social conservative Christianity.

What are we to think of Strauss? Murray Rothbard addressed this question more than forty years ago, in several reviews of Strauss’s works, written for the William Volker Fund. The situation that Rothbard confronted differed entirely from the present. Strauss did not then appear, whether rightly or wrongly, as the supposed mastermind behind an aggressive American foreign policy. Quite the contrary, to most American conservatives in the 1950s and 1960s, Strauss seemed a valiant battler against positivism and historicism in political science. In their stead, he wished to revive the study of the Greek classics; and he appeared to defend natural law against its modern detractors. Would Rothbard, himself a champion of natural law, find in Strauss a welcome ally?

Rothbard located a fatal flaw in Strauss’s work. He was no friend whom libertarians should rush to embrace: his view of natural law was entirely mistaken. Further, his mistake was not a mere theoretical failing, of interest to no one but a few scholars. The misunderstanding of morality that ran through Strauss’s work might lead, if applied in practice, to immense harm. Strauss wished to replace the ironclad restrictions on the state, imposed by natural law rightly understood, with the "prudential" judgments of political leaders who aim to enhance national power.

Murray N. Rothbard – writing over forty years ago – had Strauss's number:

"As Strauss sees matters, classical and Christian natural law did not impose strict and absolute limits on state power; instead, all is left to the prudential judgment of the wise statesman. From this contention, Rothbard vigorously dissents. 'In this [Straussian] reading, Hobbes and Locke are the great villains in the alleged perversion of natural law. To my mind, the 'perversion' was a healthy sharpening and development of the concept.' … Strauss's rejection of individual rights led him to espouse political views that Rothbard found repellent: 'We find Strauss . . . praising 'farsighted', 'sober' British imperialism; we find him discoursing on the 'good' Caesarism, on Caesarism as often necessary and not really tyranny, etc... he praises political philosophers for yes, lying to their readers for the sake of the 'social good'…. I must say that this is an odd position for a supposed moralist to take.'"

The Calgary School promotes the politics of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmitt, secrecy, power in the hands of a strong man, power must be held at all costs, and the cynical use of the religious right/ social conservatives as your base. Even if it means lying to the public and hiding your real agenda. Harper fits that bill as much as Bush does.

In fact I would argue that Harper has taken the ideological political formula that the right has devised from the works of Strauss and Schmitt to heart more so than his Yale counterpart. For an analysis of the influence of Carl Schmitt on the Harper autocracy see my; Post Modern Conservatives.

Despite the Conservative five priorities, their economic or environmental policies, Harpers regime comes down to two key right wing elements; Militarism and increasing the power of the Police and the Security State; Heil Hillier, Maintiens le droit.

The secrecy of the state, the rule of elite, the mobilization of your base against perceived enemies is the neo-conservative politics of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party in practice. Which was ok to gain power, but now that they are in power the continuation of the secret strong man state has shocked it's conservative base speechless.

Strauss's thinking seems in important respects tailor-made for a rising elite that wants, on the one hand, to justify its own claim to power and, on the other, to discredit an older elite that it is trying to replace.

Under Harper the Reform Party populist democratic renewal project is but a shadow of itself; take Senate Reform, still a matter on the agenda, but it is not the Triple E Senate of the Reform Party. The Reform shadow play is there to satisfy the base that this is still Manning's old party, which of course it isn't.

Beginning almost twenty years ago, "the Calgarians" cultivated a relationship with the nascent Reform Party. Although the latter was perhaps too populist and plebiscitary in tone for their comfort, both Calgarians and Reformers were possessed of a conviction that the western provinces were being shortchanged within confederation as successive governments in Ottawa concentrated so heavily on the festering Québec issue.

Harper, unlike Preston Manning, was a student of the Calgary School. Harper's political practice is influenced more by this than Manning was. Hence Harpers surprise; the recognition of Quebec as a nation, giving it the separatism it wants within a decentralized federal state. That is more the nuanced politics of the Calgary School than the Reform Party demand that the West Wants In. The old anti-bilingualism of the Reformers is replaced with the subtle Two Distinct Languages policy of the Conservatives. Which again appeals to Quebecois nationalism, while also keeping the rest of Canada happy with one language; English.

And it is clear that the Calgary School influenced the Conservatives Environmental policy more so than Green Conservative Calgarians; Preston Manning and Joe Clark, since Barry Cooper is a founder of the climate change denier group the Friends of Science (sic). Science has nothing to do with it they are Friends of the Oil Patch. And in typical Straussian fashion all the Conservatives discussions with stakeholders on the environment were held in secret.

Also see my;

Whigs and Tories

Right to Life = Right To Work

Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor

by Shadia B. Drury

There is a certain irony in the fact that the chief guru of the neoconservatives is a thinker who regarded religion merely as a political tool intended for the masses but not for the superior few. Leo Strauss, the German Jewish émigré who taught at the University of Chicago almost until his death in 1973, did not dissent from Marx’s view that religion is the opium of the people; but he believed that the people need their opium. He therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit.

Not all the neoconservatives have read Strauss. And those who have rarely understand him, for he was a very secretive thinker who expressed his ideas with utmost circumspection. But there is one thing that he made very clear: liberal secular society is untenable. Religion is necessary to provide political society with moral order and stability. Of course, this is a highly questionable claim. History makes it abundantly clear that religion has been a most destabilizing force in politics—a source of conflict, strife, and endless wars. But neoconservatives dogmatically accept the view of religion as a panacea for everything that ails America.

Leo Strauss

By John Gueguen, 13 May 2003. A memo in which Gueguen provides background for anyone wanting to investigate whether there may be substance to the allegations of Leo Strauss's complicity in the political work of contemporary “Straussians”.

1. The past decade has produced a ferment of critiques and defenses of Strauss in respect to several themes having to do with the general tenor of his work and of its particular aspects. I maintain a substantial file on this part of Strauss research, along with a larger collection of materials that extend back to my own study with him at Chicago in the early 1960s when I was pursuing the Ph.D. there.

2. This memo will consist primarily of a bibliographical review of the most interesting pieces I have collected that may have some relevance for this topic, at least to provide a sense of direction by indicating what has been done in recent years.

3. The leading critic of Strauss in N. America has been a sprightly young lady whom I met at a conference about a dozen years ago in Chicago—Shadia B. Drury, of the Univ. of Calgary. She came to the notice of colleagues with a substantial article in the journal, Political Theory (13/3, August 1985), “The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss” (pp. 510-535). It was followed two years later by a second article in the same journal (15/3, August 1987, pp. 299-315), “Leo Strauss’ Classic Natural Right Teaching.” This time the editors asked two prominent political philosophers to append their comments: “Dear Professor Drury” (by Harry V. Jaffa, one of Strauss' former students and major allies), pp. 316-25; “Politics against Philosophy: Strauss and Drury” (by Fred Dallmayer, who had been a critic of Strauss), pp. 326-37. Drury's severe critique was judged to be of sufficient potential to upset the standard perception of Strauss that it could not be ignored, even though it was by a relatively young and inexperienced author. She presents the case that Strauss was a dangerously deceptive ally of the modern philosophers he himself had spent his life criticizing because he elevated the philosopher above justice, thus making himself unaccountable.

The full-length critique Drury was working on at the time appeared at the end of 1987 as The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 288 pp.). I quote from the publisher's notice: “This is the first book-length study. . .. In a portrait of the philosopher at odds with his general image, Drury maintains that Strauss has presented his thoughts wrapped in a veil of scholarship because he believes that the truth undermines religion and morality, and so is bound to wreak havoc on political society. . ..[She reveals] the extent to which Strauss' ideas are indebted to Nietzsche, Freud, and Machiavelli. . .and challenges many accepted beliefs about ‘the founder of a movement, a school of thought and even a cult.’..[and the] increasingly important influence [of the “Straussians”] on the present-day political thought. . ..”

This book generated many thoughtful reviews (mostly by Strauss' students and defenders), of which I have a collection. One says: “Drury means to convey that the reputation of Strauss as a natural right political philosopher with a high-minded approach to political life is simply false in all its essentials.” One reviewer admits that “as a philosopher, Strauss was moved by the sting of the awareness of lacking an adequate answer to the question of questions: Should I live theologically (morally-politically) or philosophically (serious questioning of the morality-piety informing my ‘cave’)?” The most substantial reviews include: Rev. Ernest Fortin A.A., “Between the Lines: Was Leo Strauss a Secret Enemy of Morality?”, Crisis (Dec. 1989), 19-26 (a vindication of Strauss which was rebutted by a letter in the March 1990 issue by a Drury supporter); and Marc Henrie, “The Ambiguities of Leo Strauss,” which reviews the Strauss “legacy” from his death in 1973 up to 1988.

Drury had a chance to rebut her critics in a review of Strauss' The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989). It appeared in the same journal which carried her original critiques, Political Theory, 19/4 (Nov. 1991), 671-675.

Critics of Strauss also accuse him of elitism and anti-democratic sentiment. Shadia Drury, author of 1999's Leo Strauss and the American Right, argues that Strauss taught different things to different students, and inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders that is linked to imperialist militarism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury accuses Strauss of teaching that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Drury adds, "The Weimar Republic was his model of liberal democracy... liberalism in Weimar, in Strauss's view, led ultimately to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews." However, Strauss was hardly alone in arguing that liberalism had produced authoritarianism. Many German émigré, most notably among them Hannah Arendt, Theodore Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, made similar claims.

Strauss’ students are aware of the impression their admiration for him makes on outsiders. Allen Bloom was the best known of those students thanks to his best-selling 1987 anti-egalitarian diatribe The Closing of the American Mind, and more recently to his having been “outed” by his old friend Saul Bellow in Bellow’s novel, Ravelstein. In his tribute to his former teacher, published after Strauss’s death, Bloom observed that “those of us who know him saw in him such a power of mind, such a unity and purpose of life, such a rare mixture of the human elements resulting in a harmonious expression of the virtues, moral and intellectual, that our account of him is likely to evoke disbelief or ridicule from those who have never experienced a man of this quality.”[i] Bloom’s rhetorical strategy here of appropriating a projected criticism—the fawning admiration Straussians have for their teacher/founder and turning it around—also has the effect of demarcating an “out-group” that does not understand from an in-group that has experienced the truth, which is another characteristic feature of the style and substance of what makes a Straussian.

It is partly the aura that emanates from Strauss that gives credence to the claims of conspiracy when Straussians are involved in something, if that is in fact the claim that people make. More particularly, the prominence given to the notion of a charismatic founder within the Straussian fold means that it quickly begins to look like a cult.

		Faith and Political Philosophy The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964 Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper, eds. 1993 Political Theory, Political Philosophy Hardback ISBN-10: 0-271-00883-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-271-00883-7 Out of Stock Indefinitely
Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin were political theorists of the first rank whose impact on the study of political science in North America has been profound. A study of their writings is one of the most expeditious ways to explore the core of political science; comparing and contrasting the positions both theorists have taken in assessing that core provides a comprehensive appreciation of the main options of the Western tradition. In fifty-three recently discovered letters, Strauss and Voegelin explore the nature of their similarities and differences, offering trenchant observations about one another's work, about the state of the discipline, and about the influences working on them. The correspondence fleshes out many assumptions made in their published writings, often with a frankness and directness that removes all vestiges of ambiguity. Included with the correspondence are four pivotal re-published essays-Jersualem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections (Strauss), The Gospel and Culture (Voegelin), Immortality: Experience and Symbol (Voegelin), and The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy (Strauss)-and commentaries by James L. Wiser, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Stanley Rosen, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Timothy Fuller, Ellis Sandoz, Thomas L. Pangle, and David Walsh.
Peter C. Emberley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Carleton University and editor of By Loving our Own: George Grant and the Legacy of Lament for a Nation (Carleton, 1990). Barry Cooper is Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary and author of several books, including The End of History (Toronto, 1984) and Action into Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Technology (Notre Dame, 1991).

BARRY COOPER
B.A. (UBC), A.M., Ph.D (Duke), F.R.S.C.

Political theory and Canadian politics, political thought and public policy.

Author of Merleau-Ponty and Marxism, Michel Foucault: An Introduction to His Thought; The End of History: An Essay in Modern Hegelianism; The Political Theory of Eric Voegelin; Alexander Kennedy Isbister, A Respectable Critic of the Honourable Company; Action into Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Technology; Sins of Omission: The Making of CBC TV News; The Klein Achievement; and Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science. Co-author of the controversial best seller, Deconfederation: Canada Without Quebec; and of Derailed: The Betrayal of the National Dream. Articles have appeared in several philosophy and political science journals.

Dr. Cooper is affiliated with the Friends of Science. They have produced a video called "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change". In addition, Dr. Cooper hosts the McNish Lecture Series for the Advancement of Western Civilization. The inaugural lecture was given by His Excellency, Martin Palous, former Czech Ambassador to the USA, and Czech Ambassador Designate to the United Nations. The lecture was entitled Freedom of Expression in the New Europe.

Leo Strauss and the neoconservatives

By Shadia B. Drury

The Straussians are the most powerful, the most organised, and the best-funded scholars in Canada and the United States. They are the unequalled masters of right-wing think tanks, foundations, and corporate funding. And now they have the ear of the powerful in the White House. Nothing could have pleased Strauss more; for he believed that intellectuals have an important role to play in politics. It was not prudent for them to rule directly because the masses are inclined to distrust them; but they should certainly not pass up the opportunity to whisper in the ears of the powerful. So, what are they whispering? What did Strauss teach them? What is the impact of the Straussian philosophy on the powerful neoconservatives? And what is neoconservatism anyway?

Strauss is not as obscure or as esoteric as his admirers pretend. There are certain incontestable themes in his work. The most fundamental theme is the distinction between the ancients and the moderns - a distinction that informs all his work. According to Strauss, ancient philosophers (such as Plato) were wise and wily, but modern philosophers (such as Locke and other liberals) were foolish and vulgar. The wise ancients thought that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty; and giving them these sublime treasures was like throwing pearls before swine. Accordingly, they believed that society needs an elite of philosophers or intellectuals to manufacture "noble lies" for the consumption of the masses. Not surprisingly, the ancients had no use for democracy. Plato balked at the democratic idea that any Donald, Dick, or George was equally fit to rule.

In contrast to the ancients, the moderns were the foolish lovers of truth and liberty; they believed in the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They believed that human beings were born free and could be legitimately ruled only by their own consent.

The ancients denied that there is any natural right to liberty. Human beings are born neither free nor equal. The natural human condition is not one of freedom, but of subordination. And in Strauss's estimation, they were right in thinking that there is only one natural right - the right of the superior to rule over the inferior - the master over the slave, the husband over the wife, and the wise few over the vulgar many. As to the pursuit of happiness - what could the vulgar do with happiness except drink, gamble, and fornicate?

Praising the wisdom of the ancients and condemning the folly of the moderns was the whole point of Strauss's most famous book, Natural Right and History. The cover of the book sports the American Declaration of Independence. But the book is a celebration of nature - not the natural rights of man (as the appearance of the book would lead one to believe), but the natural order of domination and subordination.

In his book On Tyranny, Strauss referred to the right of the superior to rule as "the tyrannical teaching" of the ancients which must be kept secret. But what is the reason for secrecy? Strauss tells us that the tyrannical teaching must be kept secret for two reasons - to spare the people's feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals. After all, the people are not likely to be favourably disposed to the fact that they are intended for subordination.

But why should anyone object to the idea that in theory the good and wise should rule? The real answer lies in the nature of the rule of the wise as understood by Strauss.

It meant tyranny is the literal sense, which is to say, rule in the absence of law, or rule by those who were above the law. Of course, Strauss believed that the wise would not abuse their power. On the contrary, they would give the people just what was commensurate with their needs and capacities. But what exactly is that? Certainly, giving them freedom, happiness, and prosperity is not the point. In Strauss's estimation, that would turn them into animals. The goal of the wise is to ennoble the vulgar. But what could possibly ennoble the vulgar? Only weeping, worshipping, and sacrificing could ennoble the masses. Religion and war - perpetual war - would lift the masses from the animality of bourgeois consumption and the pre-occupation with "creature comforts." Instead of personal happiness, they would live their lives in perpetual sacrifice to God and the nation.

Arendt and Strauss

She appears to have been genuinely uninterested in acquiring or counseling power, another virtue increasingly scarce among our "public intellectuals." Witness her long-running feud with fellow-émigré Leo Strauss, who became a colleague of Arendt's at the University of Chicago. Besides rebuffing his amorous advances (what minor nightmares they must been), Arendt saw in Strauss' careful attitude toward the Nazis all the signs of a sniveling opportunist, especially when, as a Jew, he could hardly expect any favors. In the 1960s, Arendt became a grossmutter of sorts to many student radicals, while Strauss helped concoct the intoxicating blend of powerlust and esoterica that evolved into neoconservatism. His intellectual spawn now occupy editorial offices, university faculties, and the Bush Administration, and their Platonic noble lies, having issued in a needless and protracted war in Iraq, have stoked the flames of hatred and recrimination throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. Having seen the Master in action, Arendt would have known what to make of the Straussian cabal of sycophants and mediocrities.

Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: February 2006

As I indicate in Darwinian Conservatism, the arguments for "intelligent design theory" as an alternative to Darwinian evolution were first stated in Book 10 of Plato's Laws. Leo Strauss's book on Plato's Laws raises questions about intelligent design in Plato's political theology. Those questions suggest the possibility that there might be a natural moral sense in at least some people that does not depend on the cosmic teleology of Plato's intelligent design theology. And if so, that suggests the possibility of justifying natural right as rooted in a moral sense of human nature shaped by natural evolution, which would not require an intelligent design theology.

In Plato's dialogue, the Athenian character warns against those natural philosophers who teach that the ultimate elements in the universe and the heavenly bodies were brought into being not by divine intelligence or art but by natural necessity and chance. These natural philosophers teach that the gods and the moral laws attributed to the gods are human inventions. This scientific naturalism appeared to subvert the religious order by teaching atheism. It appeared to subvert the moral order by teaching moral relativism. And it appeared to subvert the political order by depriving the laws of their religious and moral sanction. Plato's Athenian character responds to this threat by developing the reasoning for the intelligent design position as based on four kinds of arguments: a scientific argument, a religious argument, a moral argument, and a political argument.

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New tool predicts the Earth's landscape as sea levels rise

By Lauren Fox, Accuweather.com

Cars are left stranded on the Long Island Expressway due to flooding from a massive downpour of rain from Hurricane Ida on September 1.

 File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

How will climate change alter the landscape of the Earth over the next few hundred years? New interactive tools developed by researchers at Climate Central can paint that picture.

The tools demonstrate how much sea levels could rise if changes are or are not made in carbon pollution levels. If changes aren't made, Ben Strauss, CEO and chief scientist of Climate Central, a consortium of independent scientists and journalists based in Princeton, N.J., said that millions of people living along coastlines will be at-risk, and Asia will be the region of the world that will be most at-risk. Among all the nations at-risk, Vietnam has the highest risks from rising sea levels.

In the United States, South Florida, Boston, New York City and the Bay Area in California are most at risk of "a great deal of threats as well," Strauss said.

Hanoi, Vietnam, the nation's capital, could become below sea level if the current rate of warming on Earth continues. Image courtesy of Climate Central

The graphics reveal what various landmarks across the world will look like in 2100 with 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming and 3 C (5.4 F) of warming. With 1.5 C of warming, research suggests that ocean levels will rise 1.5 feet by the year 2100, compared to if the Earth warms 3 C, which would result in sea levels rising 21 feet by 2100.

"This study really looks at long-term sea levels where the threat would be permanent and complete inundation," Strauss said. "There a possibility to build defenses for sure, but we have to ask how deep a bowl they want to live in the bottom of."

The sections in yellow show which parts of Florida would be under water if global warming continues to rise at a rate of 3 degrees C, while the purple shows which parts would be underwater if global warming was scaled back to just 1.5 degrees C. Image courtesy of Climate Central
Some 50 cities across the globe are at risk of losing their most-developed areas to rising sea levels.

"Even the low end is serious, but we'll have some time to deal with it," he said.

Under the "best-case scenario," Strauss said, sea levels could rise from 5-10 feet in the next few centuries, with 30 feet or more being the worst-case scenario.

"The whole point of our research was to show how large a choice we have," Strauss said. "It's really a choice between a manageable future and one where there would be so much sea level rise that many of our great coastal cities are likely to be lost."

According to Climate Central, some of the "most ambitious" goals from the Paris Climate Agreement would cut exposure by around 50.

Strauss said that while the rise will occur over multiple centuries, the study mainly focused on how much sea levels will rise -- not how quickly -- as the speed of the rise can be very difficult to predict.

"Think about your freezer. If you unplug your freezer, you know it's going to thaw, but you don't know hour by hour how many things will melt or when it will all finish melting," Strauss said. "The same thing is true when you do scientific projections of sea-level rise."

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The rise may not reach its full effects for a few centuries, but what is done now to mitigate it is important. Strauss said the actions that are taken in the next few decades will "lock-in" the future for many of these historic locations that once seemed destined to last the test of time.

In many cities, the mitigation efforts may be too expensive or sea levels could be too high to fight back against, so saving them could be unrealistic at that point in time. Once the carbon is in the air, Strauss said it will continue to warm the planet for centuries to come.

"We would see relocation and loss of the great heritage we have and all of those coastal places," Strauss said. "It's up to us to prevent that."

We now know how badly our cities will be flooded due to climate change
Matthew Rozsa, Salon
October 16, 2021

A rescue workers walks in a flooded area to help residents as the Charente River overflows in Saintes after days of rainy weather causing flooding in western France, France, February 8, 2021. REUTERS - STEPHANE MAHE

When it comes to climate change, the point of no return has already passed.

That is the message of a new report published in the esteemed scientific journal Environmental Research Letters. It paints a picture of a future Earth in which, regardless of actions taken today, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. The carbon dioxide emissions already released into our atmosphere will linger for hundreds of years, warming the oceans and thus causing sea levels to rise. The only question now is whether the damage can be limited.

The answer, according to the report, is yes — but humans will need to take specific, drastic actions as soon as possible.

"Meeting the most ambitious goals of the Paris Climate Agreement will likely reduce exposure by roughly half and may avoid globally unprecedented defense requirements for any coastal megacity exceeding a contemporary population of 10 million," the authors write. (The report was co-written by Benjamin H. Strauss and Scott A. Kulp of Climate Central, DJ Rasmussen of Princeton University and German scientist Ander Levermann.) The long-term goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit the mean increase in global temperatures to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Even if that happens, however, oceans will continue to swell, meaning there will be millions upon millions of drenched city dwellers.

"Roughly 5 percent of the world's population today live on land below where the high tide level is expected to rise based on carbon dioxide that human activity has already added to the atmosphere," Strauss told AFP. With roughly 7.8 billion human beings alive today, this means approximately 390 million currently live on land that will be under the high tide level as a result of climate change.

That said, reducing the temperature rise is crucial, experts say. If Earth's average temperature increases by even half a degree Celsius, an extra 200 million people will be vulnerable to the effects of sea level rise and increased storm surges. Each successive degree only increases the damage, as sea levels progressively rise and thereby displace more people.

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In the report, the scientists offer detailed projections for the 20 most-affected large countries (those with at least 25 million people) in terms of the percentages of their populations that currently occupy land below high tide lines based on different warming scenarios. If the planet merely warms by 1.5°C, 2.8 percent of the population of the United States could be directly impacted. Increase that by half a degree, and suddenly 5.9 percent of Americans could deal with rising sea levels. If it goes up by 3°C or 4°C, 7.9 percent or 9.9 percent of the American population could see rising sea levels where they live.

Things will be particularly bad in New York City, where officials are already considering sea walls and other measures to fortify its population against rising sea levels. Even under the most ambitious Paris Agreement target, land will fall under the high tide line that is currently home to 6.7 percent of the population. At 2°C, that rises to 13 percent; at 3°C, it reaches 19 percent; and at 4°C, it hits 28 percent.

The most vulnerable region, however, is Asia. Nine of the ten megacities at the highest risk are on that continent, and many of the countries with the starkest projections are also located there. The jump from 1.5°C to 2°C makes the difference, in Vietnam and Bangladesh, between more or less than half of their total populations living below the high tide line. If the planet's temperature rises to 4°C above pre-industrial levels, more than 60 percent of those nations' populations could fall below the high tide line. More than 30 percent of the populations of Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan and Myanmar would also suffer that fate in a scenario where the temperature rises by more than 4°C.

Climate Central has also released visual illustrations of how prominent American landmarks will look after sea level rises. Almost all of the land around the Statue of Liberty National Monument will be submerged, as will the area surrounding Space Center Houston. Yet these and other major landmarks would almost certainly have to be abandoned long before sea levels rose that high, as there will be an increase in heavy rainfalls and storm surges.

The Straussian Character of Post-Soviet Russian Statecraft

The behaviour of post-Soviet Russian statecraft is poorly understood in the Western world. Long gone is the age of clever Kremlinologists.

BYJOSÉ MIGUEL ALONSO-TRABANCO
DECEMBER 19, 2023

Photo: Sergei Bobylev, TASS


The behaviour of post-Soviet Russian statecraft is poorly understood in the Western world. Long gone is the age of clever Kremlinologists —men like George Kennan— whose sober insights shaped Western strategies and policies in the second half of the twentieth century. In the post-Cold War era, it was expected that Russia would follow the path of Westernisation by embracing liberal democracy, free markets, human rights, the so-called “rules-based order” and even the most emblematic flagships of postmodernism. However, Russia has not become a post-historical state like much of North America and Western Europe. Instead, in the last couple of decades, it has acted as an increasingly assertive, revisionist and self-confident great power that does not seek to emulate Washington or Brussels or join the collective West as a junior partner. Since this course of action does not respond to the overzealous gospel of Western liberalism, Russia is often portrayed as a “rogue”, “backward”, “outdated”, “evil”, “un-European” or even “irrational” state. For those unable to transcend such narrow horizons, Russia will always remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

The prevalence of such oversimplistic and Manichean views reveals an overall lack of a genuine intellectual effort. Without this element, uncovering the reasons and perceptions which have influenced Moscow’s political trajectories in the last couple of decades is an exceedingly arduous undertaking. Far from being only a cognitive shortcoming, these limited opinions have been directing policymaking in much of the collective West. The results —including the eastward expansion of NATO, the invasion of Ukraine, the unprecedented level of intense antagonism between Russia and the West and the strategic reproachment between Russia and China— speak for themselves. Needless to say, Russia can hardly be described as a charitable or altruistic state. In fact, Moscow does not even bother hiding its predatory ruthlessness in contested theatres of engagement. Yet, as an imperial great power that has played a key role in the Eurasian geopolitical Grossraum for centuries, the sources of its conduct deserve to be examined from a more accurate perspective.

Few Western intellectuals have tried to explain contemporary Russia in accordance with a more nuanced and unjudgmental viewpoint. American representatives of political realism —such as Professor John Mearsheimer, Kenneth Waltz and Henry Kissinger— have offered analytical assessments based on the logic of Realpolitik in order to understand Russian statecraft through the lens of national security, high politics and grand strategy. In turn, Canadian scholar Michael Millerman has highlighted the connection between Russian foreign policy and Russian philosophical thinking. Specifically, Millerman’s work has scrutinised the theories of Aleksander Dugin, the leading ideologue of Eurasianism as an alternative geopolitical project which intends to position Russia as civilisational and strategic counterweight to Atlanticism. These contributions represent valuable stepping-stones towards a better and deeper understanding. However, the development of a more in-depth scrutiny requires the integration of complementary perspectives. The purpose of this analysis is not to contradict the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers, but to offer additional elements than can sharpen, strengthen and calibrate the existing explanatory arsenal that is used to study the evolution of post-Soviet Russia. A more holistic guide for the perplexed is needed.

In this regard, this assessment holds that the teachings of German-American philosopher Leo Strausss provide an analytical framework that is helpful to interpret Russian statecraft. At first glance, Professor Strauss is an unlikely and maybe even counterintuitive candidate as a prophet of Kremlinology. First and foremost, Strauss was as a scholar of classical political philosophy. As such, his work seldom addressed the leading issues of the twentieth century. He had more to say about the lessons found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Xenophon, Maimonides, Al-Farabi and Machiavelli than about the Cold War’s geopolitical, strategic or ideological realities. Furthermore, his ideas are often maligned because of their supposed association with the militant neoconservative movement and its responsibility for disastrous endeavours like the Anglo-American of Iraq. However, said connection is inaccurate and, if anything, based on a distorted vision of his thought. Strauss believed in wisdom and moderation as cardinal virtues in statesmanship, not in a neo-Trotskyist permanent revolution inspired by a megalomaniac messianic fervour. In fact, his ideas were more influenced by the wisdom of the ancients and key authors who developed —directly or indirectly— the so-called ‘conservative revolution’ in Weimar Germany (Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, Spengler and Schmitt) than by the Kantian acolytes of Wilsonian idealism. Leo Strauss was hardly the herald of people like Annalena Baerbock, Anne Applebaum or Victoria Nuland. Furthermore, he never endorsed a worldwide crusade to remake the world’s political systems. In fact, he supported a plurality of political models rather than uniformity. For Strauss, the prospect of global homogeneity literally represented the end of man and the ultimate death of philosophy, understood as intellectual contemplation.

This analysis constitutes an attempt to understand Russia through a perspective that does not respond to the commonplace views of conventional Westernist ‘democratism’. This pursuit is pertinent, not just as an intellectual quest, but as necessity of pragmatic expediency. Relations between Russia and the collective West are likely to remain adversarial for the foreseeable future because their geopolitical imperatives are incompatible under the current status quo. Even the end of the Ukraine War will not diminish strategic competition in Eastern Europe and several corners of the post-Soviet space. However, perhaps this rivalry can be managed so that strategic stability within the international system can be preserved. Hence, Straussian thinking can be instrumental for the rise of a new school of Kremlinology that brings more clarity for policymaking. Specifically, there are four theoretical principles found in Straussian teachings that can enlighten emerging generations of Western Kremlinologists: 1) the reassertion of traditionalism; 2) elite rule; 3) the rejection of unipolar cosmopolitanism and 4) the dangerous nature of the human condition. The ensuing contents discuss why and how each of them is relevant for a serious reading of post-Soviet Russian statecraft. In each case, a summary of key Straussian philosophical teachings is followed by observations that explain their empirical reflection in today’s Russia.

The Reassertion of Traditionalism

Leo Strauss was an outspoken opponent of liberal modernity and everything it stands for. According to Straussian thinking, modernity is the vulgar age in which frivolity, entertainment, degradation, comfort, triviality, emptiness, permissiveness, leisure, commercialism, pacifism and complacency have triumphed. Therefore, the Nietzschean ‘last man’ —the quintessential avatar of modernity— is a contemptible creature in whose nihilistic existence there is nothing worth fighting for. Rather than the fulfilment of a grandiose promise of ‘progress’, modernity represents a major crisis that has brought the fall of man and eclipsed the wisdom of the ancients. Therefore, abandoning the metaphorical caves of liberalism requires the rediscovery of pre-modern wisdom. Specifically, Straussian teachings emphasise that relearning the philosophical lessons from classical antiquity is the key source of inspiration for the restoration of vitality, resolve, morale and purposefulness. Yet, this is not only an intellectual journey. The chains of modernity must be broken so that the Promethean pursuit of human excellence can flourish. Moreover, Straussian teachings underscore that the weight of history —and the scrutiny of its instructive lessons— matters as a navigational compass for statesmanship.

Likewise, Strauss is an opponent of the so-called ‘open society’, one of modernity’s most worshipped totems. The values of an open society impoverish the seriousness of political life and embracing them can only lead to terminal decline. In contrast, Strauss holds that a closed society encourages exceptional qualities that raise the strength of the human spirit, including loyalty, virtue, wisdom, discipline, patriotism, the nobility of effort and honour. Rather than seeking wealth or prosperity, a closed society is focused on the collective pursuit of political outcomes, even if that quest leads to sacrifices for the sake of the greater good. As the concept suggests, the existential horizon of a closed society is confined to the substance of a particular national state whose cultural heritage, unique identity, traditional values and historical sources of inspiration are to be cherished. A polity whose closedness is extinguished is headed in the corrosive direction of decay, weakness, dissolution or even external predation. Only the martial virtues of a closed society can nurture the Spartan-like warrior ethos that a polity needs to ensure its greatness.

If is debatable if Russia is a modern national state. A long-range appraisal reveals ambivalent answers. Russia has experimented with recipes derived from two ideologies born in the cradle of modernity: socialism during the decades of the Soviet era and liberalism in the late 20th century. However, the results of experiments based on both models turned out to be counterproductive. First, the implosion of the Soviet Union was not just a tectonic “geopolitical catastrophe” for Russian national interests. It also represented the death knell of a declining and decrepit system —anchored to the ideological prism of Marxist-Leninist socialism— whose contradictions, failures and bankruptcies had become impossible to overcome. Second, the ensuing liberal era of ‘Weimar Russia’ exacerbated existing problems like political turmoil, economic stagnancy, corruption, interethnic tensions, falling birth rates, substance abuse, disarray, organised crime and prostitution. In contrast, post-Cold War Russian statecraft has had favourable experiences with non-liberal aspects of modernity. In fact, the complex nature of the Kremlin’s geopolitical strategies in this period can be described as exceedingly modern. In the increasingly confrontational chessboard of strategic competition, Moscow relies on sophisticated policies which embrace technological change, adaptation to the changing Zeitgeist of international politics, and the weaponisation of various vectors of complex interdependence (such as energy, social media platforms, migratory flows, finance and money).

On the other hand, Russian policy no longer intends to remake the national character in accordance with the liberal ideological tenets preached by the high priests of modernity in Washington, Davos and Brussels. In fact, the Russian state is rejecting Western trends like secularism, technocratic policymaking, open borders, feminism, the LGBT movement and militant “wokeness”. Some of these are even regarded as instruments of political, propagandistic and ideological subversion ran by Western powers. From the Russian perspective, the Western world is akin to a fallen angel that —driven by intellectual pride— has forsaken its heritage, identity, traditions and religion, all of which have been sacrificed at the altar of ‘progress’. Russia is not interested in sharing the post-historical fate of Western ‘open societies’. In opposition to such creed, Russia has embraced a return to older traditions as sources of guidance, authority, inspiration, symbols and referential frameworks that can fuel the revitalisation of the Russian national state.

This emerging neo-traditionalist Weltanschauung —which seeks to emphasise the uniqueness of the country— encompasses a series of overlapping identitarian underpinnings. Russia is evoking its legacy as the heir to the Byzantine Empire, which outlived the Western Roman Empire for a millennium. With Moscow as the ‘third Rome’, the Russian Federation intends to position itself as an Eastern great power, bulwark of Orthodox Christianity and multi-ethnic empire. In addition, the doctrine of Eurasianism states that Russia is more than a national state. According to this vision, Russia is a natural conservative tellurocracy which operates as an organic civilisational pole whose historical development has blended European and Asian components. Likewise, Russia is also harnessing the strength of nationalism to encourage pride and morale. Such course of action includes the heroic portrayal of Russian historic achievements —such as military victories and acts of conquest— and the celebration of figures like Peter the Great.

Needless to say, these views are not merely ideological. They are consistent with the Kremlin’s foreign policy in the ‘near abroad’, the projection of Russian ‘soft power’ and its strategic opposition to the league of liberal Atlanticist thalassocracies. Ultimately, Russia aspires to emulate the triumph of Sparta —a militaristic and aristocratic monarchy— against Athenian cosmopolitan democracy in the Peloponnesian War. Therefore, a neo-traditionalist revival must be pragmatically read as an attempt to restore the status of Russia as a key player in international politics and to revert the strategic setbacks provoked by the dissolution of the USSR, but also to counter pressing societal problems such as an impeding demographic contraction. Furthermore, the worldview of Russian neo-traditionalism is also reflected in the implementation of domestic policies. In fact, the Russian state officially supports religiosity, family values and traditional gender roles.

Elite Rule

For Professor Leo Strauss, the distinction between democratic and authoritarian political mores is often a cartoonish oversimplification. According to Straussian thinking, everything that overzealous liberal democrats disapprove of is portrayed as ‘authoritarian’. Much like Plato, Leo Strauss revers the figure of philosopher kings as ruling elites. Their position is determined not by their privileged upbringing, heritage or wealth. Instead, philosopher kings are exceptional men who embody the traditional archetypes of both the warrior (action) and the ascetic (intellectual contemplation). As such, they are enlightened by their superior knowledge of greater truths that the vulgar are unable to grasp. Their profound understanding of complex matters, hidden realities, dangerous affairs, and harsh revelations that the uninitiated are not aware of gives them a worldly wisdom for the masterful practice of statesmanship. These rulers are able to gaze into the depth of abyss without losing their unperturbed stoic temper and to still perform diligently. Their rule does not seek to please the fluctuating whims of public opinion, but to do what is needed to satisfy the national interest of the state.

During the 90s, Russia tried to reform its system of political governance and the structure of its economy in accordance with Western standards. However, said experiment failed to deliver essential public goods like order and prosperity. Judging by their disappointing outcomes, such efforts were largely discredited. For all intents and purposes, Russia rejected liberal democracy as a model worth replicating because it was utterly dysfunctional for its geopolitical, historical, societal, idiosyncratic and strategic conditions. Russian scepticism about the universalisation of Western liberal political dogmas is unapologetic. Actually, it seems that, from the Kremlin’s perspective, the march towards ‘the end of history’ —championed by the so-called ‘Davos men’— is a sanctimonious “cocktail of ignorance, arrogance, vanity and hypocrisy”.

In this regard, the regime built by President Vladimir Putin and the Siloviki clan can be described as a neo-Caesarist securocracy. This hermetic ruling elite is integrated by former KGB spooks involved in foreign intelligence activities during the Cold War. The rise of these cadres to power in a moment of deep crisis is not surprising if once considers that they represented —by far— the most competent and better trained personnel of the Soviet regime. Unlike Commissars and Party apparatchiks, KGB operatives were pragmatists whose fierce performance responded to the necessities of raison d’état rather than to ideological abstractions or preferences. Their word-class expertise was also forged by fire in some of the world’s most challenging flashpoints. Accordingly, the esoteric tradecraft of these people includes the arcane arts of espionage, covert action (‘active measures’), duplicity, conspiratorial intrigues, unconventional warfare and psychological operations. In fact, their fateful takeover of the Russian government at the dawn of the 21st century can likely be explained not just as the result of impersonal forces, but as a political masterstroke orchestrated thanks to the clandestine operational dexterity of these men.

Moreover, an exegesis of the policies implemented by this ruling elite indicates a worldview shaped by the principles of hardcore political realism. The members of the Russian ‘deep state’ live in a Machiavellian intellectual universe in which malice, secrecy, ruthlessness, threats, Faustian pacts, amoral calculations, deception, skullduggery and all sorts of ‘dark arts’ are necessary ingredients of politics and statecraft. In contrast, self-righteousness is a recipe for disaster in such cloak-and-dagger world. Hence, the authority of this elite has not been justified through democratic processes or by political popularity. In fact, the willingness and ability of doing what it takes to secure order, retain control, pursue the national interest and confront enemies is perhaps the strongest source of legitimacy for the Siloviki cabal. As the spectre of Leo Strauss is haunting Moscow, the rule of the Russian spy kings is seemingly here to stay.

Rejection of Unipolar Cosmopolitanism

Contrary to what is commonly believed, Leo Strauss was not a supporter of Quixotic quests for global imperial domination by any regime. He never endorsed any crusade to remake all political systems in accordance with a homogeneous blueprint. In fact, he was fiercely opposed to the prospect of a supranational state populated by ‘citizens of the world’ that have been detached from any connections to particular polities. For Strauss, the hypothetical fulfilment of liberal or socialist cosmopolitanism as a model of world order would represent a dystopian tyrannical threat that could only exist under the ironclad control of a Soviet-like bureaucratic dictatorship. Even worse, according to Straussian thinking, such nightmare —seen as unnatural because it neglects key traits which define the human condition— would lead to the ultimate death of philosophy. Under such conditions, the pursuit of intellectual contemplation, the proliferation of inquiry and the discovery of greater truths would never be possible. In short, Straussian teachings are antithetical to the ideas pushed by the likes of Immanuel Kant, Karl Popper, George Soros, Klaus Shwab or Yuval Noah Harari.

Far from preserving diversity, the globalisation of the ‘open society’ would bring an enforced uniformity that abolishes distinctions, plurality, contrasts, the need for noble deeds and identities, as well as both history and politics. Once history has been buried by the tempting promise of everlasting universal happiness, there would be no need for political struggles under the grey rule of a global tyranny presenting itself as ‘benevolent’. However, Leo Strauss prophesises that plans fuelled by globalist aspirations will invariably elicit the backlash of those that refuse to submit. In fact, he anticipates the prospect that growing opposition to universalist schemes and their sophistry will eventually ensure their demise. Even if this project were to be launched by a democracy, that would not make it any better or sugarcoat its undesirability. Strauss himself acknowledged that even democracies can give birth to imperialistic projects. Together, these arguments convincingly show that Straussian teachings reject the convenience and feasibility of a unipolar hegemonic configuration.

In this regard, the Soviet Union was a superpower interested in the pursuit of global hegemony. In contrast, the Russian Federation does not intend to achieve world domination or even to recreate the USSR. However, Russia is trying to reassert itself as the leading power of the post-Soviet space, especially throughout the so-called “Russian world”. Although it is nowhere near the US and China in many fields of national power, Moscow has the strength, assets and influence to operate as a major player in the global geopolitical chessboard. As such, Russian statecraft has been incrementally challenging Washington’s attempts to establish a hegemonic unipolar order and to remake the world in its image and likeness. Russia does not seek to overtake the US, only to advance a multipolar correlation of forces under which it can act as one of the key epicentres. Interestingly, the Kremlin is willing to partner with anybody —including state and nonstate actors— interested in undercutting US power, regardless of their civilisational, ideological or religious affiliations. In this Schmittian rejection of Western Atlanticism and everything it stands for, the beliefs held by the regimes of states like Brazil, China, Cuba, India, Iran, North Korea, Serbia, South Africa, Syria, Turkey or Venezuela are inconsequential as long as they oppose unipolarity and its pretensions to freeze history. This course of action reveals not just the pragmatic calculations of traditional Realpolitik, but also a resolved struggle to rollback the influence of a project focused on the universal expansion of the ‘open society’.

Considering the bilateral balance of power, Moscow’s response to American hegemonic pretensions is asymmetric, but its intensity has grown. This is reflected in the reliance of the Kremlin’s revisionist schemes on an arsenal which includes covert means, a myriad of unconventional power projection vectors, military force and even nuclear sabre-rattling. In short, Russia is aggressively contesting the vision of a unipolar world order undergirded by cosmopolitan liberalism as its official missionary ideology. Accordingly, rather than adopting post-historical Western models as a follower, Russia’s ‘heretical’ attitude seems determined to overturn them. Yet, there is an important nuance that deserves to be highlighted. For Russia, this rivalry is no Apocalyptic crusade or kamikaze mission. Actually, Moscow has hinted that perhaps a deal for the redistribution of spheres of influence can be negotiated in order to achieve a reasonable accommodation with the West. Thus, from the Kremlin’s perspective, it would be preferable to deal with pragmatic Western nationalist forces rather than with the uncompromising apostles and inquisitors trying to convert barbarians to the “one true faith” of universalist liberalism.

The Dangerous Nature of the Human Condition

Leo Strauss was no scholar of contemporary international relations or geopolitics, let alone Kremlinology. Nevertheless, as a student of political philosophy, the exegesis of his teachings reveals a mindset that is close to what the so-called realist school has to say. Not unlike hardcore classical realists, Strauss acknowledges the existence of hierarchies, the subordination of the weak by the strong, the amoral character of statecraft, human baseness and the propensity for conflict as permanent features of politics. As a crypto-realist with a Nietzschean twist, Strauss supported the views of Thrasymachus, Thucydides and Machiavelli about the rule of the powerful as the natural order of things in the political sphere. In accordance with this logic, justice is little more than the advantage of the mighty. Under such conditions, political lifeforms have no choice but to fight in order to pursue their interests, enhance their preparedness, preserve their vitality and uphold what they believe is right. In other words, polities can either embrace danger or perish as a consequence of their folly and/or cowardice. As a result, the practice of statesmanship responds to the particular priorities and preferences of a polity, but not to universalistic expectations. Nevertheless, Strauss never glorified warmongering. He simply recognised politics as an intrinsically confrontational realm whose circumstances often require the decisive ability to overcome risk-aversion in matters of life and death. These perspectives are fully compatible with the philosophical underpinnings of what classical realist thinking is all about. Yet, unlike most realists, Strauss emphasised the importance of ideological motivation to strengthen national morale in engagements which demand a substantial mobilisation of effort.

Interestingly, there are other revealing connections between Straussian teachings and realism as a school of thought. Leo Strauss was an avid student of Thucydides’ writings about the Peloponnesian War. For the German-American philosopher, the work of Thucydides was more than a foundational treatise of realist theory. In his view, such source of ancient wisdom imparted timeless lessons about statecraft, history, human nature and the virtues of the warrior spirit, as well as the importance of attributes like prowess, resolve, and courage in the quest for greatness. In addition, Hans Morgenthau thanked Leo Strauss for his contribution to the introduction of Politics Among Nations, a seminal text which presents the theoretical principles of classical realism. The intellectual cornerstone which underwrites this specific branch of realism is an anthropologically pessimistic conception of human nature due the sinfulness of man and his quintessential condition as a political creature. As Carl Schmitt observed, “all serious political theories presuppose man to be evil”. Moreover, the quasi-Nietzschean concept of the ‘Animus Dominandi’ —put forward by Morgenthau and understood as the natural inclination of humans to subordinate their peers— is fully aligned with the spirit of Straussian teachings.

Post-Cold War Russian statecraft is a textbook example of Darwinian Realpolitik. This inclination is the natural consequence of Russian history, shaped by imperial traditions, intense geopolitical rivalries and the constant threat of invasions. Moscow’s foreign policy, national security and grand strategy are driven by the need to prepare for confrontation against hostile forces and to prevent an eventual encirclement of the motherland. As an assertive and self-confident player in the arena of high politics, the Kremlin believes that being feared is a wise course of action that will deter potential enemies. In turn, Russia intends to subordinate neighbouring weaker states by integrating them into its orbit in one way or another and, at the same time, it refuses to capitulate before stronger counterparts like the US. When Moscow’s arm-twisting tactics do not produce the expected outcomes, the Russians are willing to flirt with danger by embracing war as an instrument of statecraft. From Moscow’s perspective, it is preferable to fight in a vicious jungle as a predator than to assume a subservient role in a neo-Edenic garden in which rules made by others are selectively implemented. Better to reign in its own hell than to serve in the Westernist heaven. Unsurprisingly, the proportion of Russian citizens willing to fight for the country is way higher than in many Western European states. Rather than following the path of the ‘last man’, Russian wants to be amongst the last men standing.

In some cases —including Chechnya, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Syria— Russian military interventions have been successful. Concerning the invasion of Ukraine and its fallout, President Putin and his ruling elite made a risky gamble, but they are convinced that the conflict is worth fighting. The war offers a window of opportunity to remake the global balance of power and to achieve beneficial facts on the ground even if that comes with the risks and costs of challenging NATO. However, the Russians are not suicidal or megalomaniac. Moscow’s pragmatic aims are rather limited. The idea of Russian tanks overrunning Warsaw or even Lviv is out of touch with reality. Russians lack the appetite for an ominous conflict which might directly spark a nuclear Armageddon. Nonetheless, if necessary, they are prepared to fight to make sure their national interests prevail, especially in the so-called ‘near abroad’. As a neo-Spartan polity, Russia expects to prevail against Athen’s spiritual heirs in the West because the balance of resolve and its pool of resources favour the commitment of its war effort. Still, as is often the case in the art of war, only time will tell if this aggressive bid leads to glory or to ruin. If the war effort backfires or in the case of a pyrrhic victory, Vladimir Putin will have a lot to answer for, both politically and historically. But if Russia eventually manages to prevail in any meaningful way, he will be seen by posterity as a successful —and implacable— statesman that performed proficiently.

Conclusions

Understanding post-Cold War Russian statecraft under the Vladimir Putin is a challenging intellectual task whose complexity requires transgressing the myopic and self-righteous horizon of liberalism. In fact, an in-depth examination reveals that contemporary Russia has followed an increasingly Straussian trajectory in more than one respect. Certainly, that does not mean that Leo Strauss is somehow the posthumous sinister mastermind of Moscow’s behaviour. Strauss passed away nearly three decades before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Likewise, President Putin and his court of spy kings may not even be remotely familiar with Strauss’ obscure writings, especially considering his undeserved reputation as the patriarch of neoconservatism. Yet, there is a substantial degree of uncanny resemblance between key Straussian principles and the behaviour of the Russian state. Accordingly, the instructive insights found in the philosophical teachings of the German-American Professor offer a sharp referential framework whose interpretative merits can help decipher the underlying logic and qualities of the Kremlin’s strategic playbook. The Straussian philosophical worldview has turned out to be a powerful key which can unlock some of the cryptic matters of contemporary Kremlinology and perhaps also to recalibrate the examination of other illiberal states, including China and Iran. This usefulness highlights the relevance of the far-sighted lessons of Straussian thinking not just for scholars, but also for practitioners involved in foreign policy, intelligence analysis and national security. An increasingly illiberal world in which illiberal states are acting in accordance with illiberal rationales requires a profound knowledge of illiberal political science for analytical, predictive and prescriptive purposes.