The right of a state against an unjust enemy has no limits, at least in respect of quality as distinguished from quantity or degree.In other words, the injured state may use- not, indeed any means, but yet- all those means that are permissible and in reasonable measure in so far as they are in its power, in order to assert its right to what is its own.But what then is an unjust enemy according to the conceptions of the right of nations, when, as holds generally of the state of nature, every state is judge in its own cause? It is one whose publicly expressed will, whether in word or deed, betrays a maxim which, if it were taken as a universal rule, would make a state of peace among the nations impossible, and would necessarily perpetuate the state of nature.Such is the violation of public treaties, with regard to which it may be assumed that any such violation concerns all nations by threatening their freedom, and that they are thus summoned to unite against such a wrong and to take away the power of committing it.But this does not include the right to partition and appropriate the country, so as to make a state as it were disappear from the earth; for this would be an injustice to the people of that state, who cannot lose their original right to unite into a commonwealth, and to adopt such a new constitution as by its nature would be unfavourable to the inclination for war.
Further, it may be said that the expression "an unjust enemy in the state of nature" is pleonastic; for the state of nature is itself a state of injustice.A just enemy would be one to whom I would do wrong in offering resistance; but such a one would really not be my enemy.
61.Perpetual Peace and a Permanent Congress of Nations.
The natural state of nations as well as of individual men is a state which it is a duty to pass out of, in order to enter into a legal state.Hence, before this transition occurs, all the right of nations and all the external property of states acquirable or maintainable by war are merely provisory; and they can only become peremptory in a universal union of states analogous to that by which a nation becomes a state.It is thus only that a real state of peace could be established.But with the too great extension of such a union of states over vast regions, any government of it, and consequently the protection of its individual members, must at last become impossible; and thus a multitude of such corporations would again bring round a state of war.Hence the perpetual peace, which is the ultimate end of all the right of nations, becomes in fact an impracticable idea.The political principles, however, which aim at such an end, and which enjoin the formation of such unions among the states as may promote a continuous approximation to a perpetual peace, are not impracticable; they are as practicable as this approximation itself, which is a practical problem involving a duty, and founded upon the right of individual men and states.
Such a union of states, in order to maintain peace, may be called a permanent congress of nations; and it is free to every neighbouring state to join in it.A union of this kind, so far at least as regards the formalities of the right of nations in respect of the preservation of peace, was presented in the first half of this century, in the Assembly of the States-General at the Hague.In this Assembly most of the European courts, and even the smallest republics, brought forward their complaints about the hostilities which were carried on by the one against the other.Thus the whole of Europe appeared like a single federated state, accepted as umpire by the several nations in their public differences.But in place of this agreement, the right of nations afterwards survived only in books;it disappeared from the cabinets, or, after force had been already used, it was relegated in the form of theoretical deductions to the obscurity of archives.
By such a congress is here meant only a voluntary combination of different states that would be dissoluble at any time, and not such a union as is embodied in the United States of America, founded upon a political constitution, and therefore indissoluble.It is only by a congress of this kind that the idea of a public right of nations can be established, and that the settlement of their differences by the mode of a civil process, and not by the barbarous means of war, can be realized.
III.The Universal Right of Mankind.
(Jus Cosmopoliticum)
62.Nature and Conditions of Cosmopolitical Right.
The rational idea of a universal, peaceful, if not yet friendly, union of all the nations upon the earth that may come into active relations with each other, is a juridical principle, as distinguished from philanthropic or ethical principles.Nature has enclosed them altogether within definite boundaries, in virtue of the spherical form of their abode as a globus terraqueus; and the possession of the soil upon which an inhabitant of the earth may live can only be regarded as possession of a part of a limited whole and, consequently, as a part to which every one has originally a right.Hence all nations originally hold a community of the soil, but not a juridical community of possession (communio), nor consequently of the use or proprietorship of the soil, but only of a possible physical intercourse (commercium) by means of it.In other words, they are placed in such thoroughgoing relations of each to all the rest that they may claim to enter into intercourse with one another, and they have a right to make an attempt in this direction, while a foreign nation would not be entitled to treat them on this account as enemies.This right, in so far as it relates to a possible union of all nations, in respect of certain laws universally regulating their intercourse with each other, may be called "cosmopolitical right" (jus cosmopoliticum).
