Louis René Beres
Folly Redux?: The Deeper Meanings of a Second Trump Presidency
Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.”
-Tertullian
Macrocosm and Microcosm
One thing is certain. If Donald J. Trump should decide to run again, various condemnations and justifications would instantly spring forth from absolutely every...
Preventing Nuclear War in the Middle East: Science, System and “Vision”
“A scientist, whether theorist or experimenter, puts forward statements, or systems of statements, and tests them step by step.”-Karl R. Popper -The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)
For the moment, informed global concerns about nuclear war avoidance...
International Law in the “State of Nature”: A Contradiction in Terms
“Where there is no Common Power, there is no Law….”
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII
The “State of Nature” as “State of War”
From its modern beginnings in the seventeenth century – more precisely, since the Peace of Westphalia in...
Perils of Belligerent Nationalism: The Urgent Obligations of Planetary Community
“…the worst are full of passionate intensity, while the best lack all conviction.”-William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
By definition, former President Donald J. Trump’s doctrinal emphasis on “America First” signified a rejection of human community...
Avoiding Nuclear War in the “State of Nature”: America’s Responsibility
“So the nature of war consists not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.”-Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
The “time” to which the seventeenth century...
Existential Perils From Iran: Israel’s Options in Law and Strategy
Abstract: Eleventh-hour diplomacy notwithstanding, few tangible barriers remain in the way of an Iranian nuclear capability. If Israel should decide that it no longer maintains any reasonable self-defense alternative to launching selective military attacks against...
Reason, Science and Empathy: Interrelated Foundations of American Survival
“Science, by which I mean the entire body of knowledge about things, whether corporeal or spiritual, is as much a work of imagination as it is of observation….-Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958)
Reason,...
Natural Law and the United States Constitution: Still Vital Connections
Abstract: Ideas of Natural Law were crucial in drafting the US Constitution. These seminal ideas were made known to document “framers” largely by way of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. The Commentaries represent...
Reason Versus Anti-Reason: America’s Primal Struggle
“The enemy is the unphilosophical spirit which knows nothing and wants to know nothing of truth.”-Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time (1952)
After the Second World War, Karl Jaspers identified a crucial but neglected bifurcation,...
Counter-Terrorism, Martyrdom and the ‘Hunger of Immortality’
“Nothing is real that is not eternal.”
Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life (1921)
Though inconspicuous and easily misunderstood, there is no conceivably greater power in world politics than power over death. On its face, this preeminent form of...