Sooo, you wanna know what I learned this week?
In political science, you talk about how states or international institutions work with hard or soft power. The work of the EU, guided by principles, norms, human rights, and the bigger picture in mind, is the role model for soft power. The work of the USA, especially as depicted at the beginning of this new year of 2026, is seen as the epicenter for hard power, with military force being the highest principle of all, used to enforce whatever principles they see fit. To get back to our little theories, you have the EU with an idealistic worldview, with hope in the benevolence of humankind, and the USA with a realist worldview, anticipating evil around every corner.
The realist theory quickly finds a problem with the realist worldview: the security dilemma (coined by Mister Herz), where the extensive military buildup of one state to gain more security for their country is seen as a threat by other countries, which therefore also build up their military. And voilà, you have manifested a world where evil actually is around every corner. Through history, humankind has seen this security dilemma crop up multiple times, but after the Second World War you would think the institution that was put into place to stop that very problem would kind of help. Well, the UN hasn’t been so helpful in that sense. It could have been the perfect mix of an institution guided by an idealistic worldview, but with the power to defend that worldview. But the realist worldview has been woven into the UN so tightly that that wasn’t possible.
How, you ask yourself? Well, I always saw the UN as this magical institution that tries to keep the peace around the world, with different organizations working on societal problems to stop the threats to peace in the first place, and a big political discussion happening at the top, with basically all countries of the world (depends who counts the countries, of course) being part of it. Well, technically yes. But where the realist approach comes in is the Security Council of the UN. Constant members, that are impossible to kick out because only they could decide that, are the USA, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France. Why, you ask yourself? Well, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin sat in very comfy chairs and decided that after the Second World War, with China and France being invited to the club as the great defenders of the world in the Second World War. Over time, as I said, nearly all countries of the world joined them, but only in inferior positions. The decision of whether a threat to world peace is upon us and how to respond to it lies in the hands of these five countries, that obviously need to decide unanimously. Well, you can imagine how useless that is when the great rivalry in the past and present is happening between the first three countries. So, the realist worldview was put into the UN from the start, with the idealistic one only put on the surface.
I don’t want to discredit the work of the “surface” of the UN; great things have been done to change some of the situations of the world, UN troops have helped in many situations (even though they came too late at some points), but the structures of the world were not changed. And here we need to take a schematic approach. The UN couldn’t change the structures of the world because it is dependent on the states to give it the power to do so. By doing that, states would have to give up some of their independence to that higher level and let the institution work on the decided principles. States don’t really like to do that. In literature, the terms community method vs. intergovernmental are used to describe the different methods of states working together, that honestly on the surface look the same but make the difference in the actual work. The described process of states giving up power so institutions can work on the decided goal would be the community method, making it possible to act without the states weighing in on every action. The intergovernmental method, on the other hand, keeps the deciding power with the states. The work is being done by them finding a compromise they can all agree on, or, like in most cases, not deciding at all because every compromise is one too much in the realist worldview.
And, you know, fair enough; the critiques of the community method have a point. Like those of the EU, which has some competencies where the common interest of the EU is priority and not all states have to agree with it 100% (obviously in reality the EU doesn’t just implement things, but in some areas it technically could. Big technically, though). Critics tell the EU they can’t possibly see all possible problems their policies can cause in the different states, and therefore always weigh in. And fair enough, some EU policies have caused way too much bureaucratic work, stalling many economic processes.
Here I get back to my weekly thought, “The whole point.” I think the idea and work of the EU is always reduced to a mere point, and only that point is the reference point for implementation. With national offices being put into place to build the point up again to fit into the state, and most of the time being spent shrinking and enlarging the point, rather than simply building up the big picture. I think I lost you now.
I think what I am trying to say is we humans always struggle to put the big picture to the ground, even when we build institutions for it, because the structures of the institutions were never built to work that way. Institutions were never put into place to look at the big picture, just a small part of it. On the international level, they didn’t because the states want to hold onto power. On the national level, they didn’t because the different state offices, with their individuals, parties, stories, and creations that have built up over the years, want to hold onto power. On the private sector level, they didn’t because claiming a position is the whole point. And on the individual level, we would simply crumble from the weight of it. So, we all hold onto our corners of creation, merely blinking towards the other spheres, getting a point of it and acting upon that. And in that loop, we run through history.
While I am writing this, I am looking out of the window where snow is slowly covering all the little creations, leaving a peaceful blank slate. When you look out into untouched nature, the ocean, you get a feeling of ease. Because everything just fits, flows together. Then you look out into the human world, and you see corners, pressed figures, and density. Nothing flows, nothing works, nothing fits. Well, not nothing. If you zoom in enough, some things flow. Families do. Communities do. But they struggle when they try to hook onto the next sphere. If we could just build up from that. Build guiding principles that make all the structures flow together and not simply struggle in our own timeline.
I wanted to write now that if we worked together on our individual problems, brought the small problems to the societal sphere, and built from there, maybe it could work. But just as we need to change our worldview, we need to change our individual principles too. Not personal gain (or the gain of only my closest) is the goal in that, but collective gain. Because let’s finally admit: personal gain will always be short-lived when it doesn’t aim towards collective gain. Because the security dilemma and fear of others acting just like I do will just put us into the same place we started from. It’s the point we are at now. Where the idea of democracy, that tried to put that collective gain into a structure, reduced it to the point of being representative democracy, with institutions to prevent power imbalance and therefore reinforcing the realist worldview. It put the work towards collective gain on a next level, with only a small percentage of people working on it, leaving the rest again working towards individual gain. You can’t work together in these spheres if you are working towards different things. So, the political level took on the drive towards individual gain and now is using it for exactly that—be it money, recognition, or simply the feeling of power. Gone out the window is the idea of collective gain. Well, not completely; it is still being used as the curtain of narrative, but even that less and less (looking at you, Donald). Put together with the critique of democracy that the problems of collective gain seem to need a longevity approach that the legislative periods of representative democracy don’t provide, and you have an even shittier picture of going back to a system we all should know is a sprint away from process. Like Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” And instead of working on new ones, we go back to the already proven wrong ones.
We don’t seem to take the lesson that the democracy we need is not no democracy, but rather much more. Not representative democracy, voting for people that represent us and speak for us (while they and we don’t even know what we need, and especially not in those systems the questions are being asked), but rather participative democracy. Because we cannot just shove off the work of collective gain while we continue working against it. It would also help to de-radicalize problems. When the people actually facing problems are working on them, the solutions will be much simpler, and honestly some problems would not even exist. The book I am reading currently draws conclusions from history for problems we face today, and in many cases he sees that collective work on problems as the solution. If people that are facing the problems caused by climate change would have the authority to decide the next steps, the world would look very different. For example, when faced with water scarcity, in history, instead of implementing a rule from the top, a town in Spain implemented a water tribunal, which basically holds jurisdiction for the water sources of a region and decides collectively on the appropriate and needed usage, with disregard for those decisions being sanctioned. The farmers in the region therefore decide collectively and work together. Why is this so special? How can we not see the gain? Yes, of course, I don’t have the answer on how to put this collective democracy on a global scale, especially with existing structures in place. But can we not just imagine a clean slate of a snow-covered world, where we can start building structures that just fit with each other?
And sometimes I think the problem with my thoughts is that there is no point. It’s everything at once and maybe therefore nothing. But maybe there are enough points in the world, so just flow here.
**Other thoughts I had this week:**
• How none of these thoughts will catch people that are not thinking about these things already. People that are making creation in their routine, their circumstances, and have opinions on points. As they should and can. But they will look at my thoughts and just think it’s a lot of mush. How do we communicate together?
• How does religion play into all of this? Sometimes I feel like we criticized religion so much (with many, many valid points) that we discredited some of the good parts too. Like a story that binds together and gives us principles to live together and guidance. How can we learn from it without repeating the same mistakes?
• Individuals that put their individual creation into the societal/political sphere are the problem. Creation on the societal sphere cannot be guided by the same principles. But where do we find those principles? Looking at old white men at the front of the US government gives me the chills. I see no moral and no way to talk about the “right” morals without being condescending.