“Hostis Humani Generis”

     It’s always a special day when I get to use my Latin. The title phrase means “enemy of all Mankind.” It originally denoted the sort of predator who plies his trade where “the writ of law does not run:” i.e., a stateless region. These days, the principal stateless regions are the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the “high seas.”

     When Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provided Congress with the power:

     To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

     … it addressed the “hostis humani generis” known to that time: oceangoing pirates. Trials for “war crimes” – a famously underdefined phrase – partake of the concept, though I don’t know if it’s ever been made explicit. Similarly, when a nation-state is declared to be “failed,” predators who operate in that region become “enemies of all Mankind,” and are therefore punishable by anyone who has the means and deems the effort worthwhile.

     Of course, that opens the question of what constitutes a failed state, and whether there’s general agreement on it.

     I’ve written about the “failed state” concept on several occasions:

1. Final Stages
2. Pretending As Policy
3. Legitimacy, Its Departure, And What Follows
4. And also at Liberty’s Torch V1.0

     Probably the closest I’ve come to defining the concept is here:

     The defining characteristic of a state is an organization that possesses the pre-immunized privilege of coercion over those within its scope. Note the qualifier pre-immunized. Many non-state organizations can and do use coercive methods to attain their objectives. However, they remain liable to pursuit and penalty under the law, whatever it might be, should the state decide to act against them. Only the agents of the state are granted immunity – i.e., the presumption of lawfulness – for specified uses of coercion.
     Many organizations seek to become immune to punishment for their coercions. That’s one aspect of the dynamic of corruption: such an organization – assuming it can’t or won’t simply overthrow the existing state and take its place – will attempt to acquire such immunity through bribery, blackmail, or exchange of favors.
     A state which can operate under the presumption of immunity for its deeds is a functioning one. Regardless of the laws it promulgates and whether or not it chooses to enforce them, it has not failed. It maintains its defining difference from the other organizations within its jurisdiction. Inversely, a state whose agents and other subunits are routinely punished for their actions by non-state actors is at the very least in danger of failure. A state some of whose subjects have mounted a credible insurrection against it is in the critical stage that precedes failure, though complete failure might yet be averted. Should the insurrection persist despite the state’s attempts to suppress it, the verdict would become definite.

     Note that by the criteria above, the United States of America was itself a failed state during the Civil War / War Between The States. During that period, there were two states in the region that once constituted the U.S.A.: the Union and the Confederacy. After the war, when reunification had been accomplished, something much like (but not exactly) the original U.S.A. was again a functioning state.

     But what of a state that declines to enforce its laws? Does the reason it declines to do so have anything to do with its being a functioning or a failed state? And what if the enforcement is selective, such that certain groups know they can break the law with impunity, while others must expect it to be enforced upon them?

     Now things get interesting.

     Of course, the reason I who condemn all governments am interested in exploring under what conditions a nation-state can legitimately be deemed failed isn’t because I want to see governments flourish and prosper. But like it or not, governments do cover the habitable land surface of the Earth. Their existence and their power determine a great part of what people must, may, and must not do. One of those things is the punishment of miscreants.

     This story, from Aschaffenburg, Germany, should raise the hair on any decent man’s neck:

     On Wednesday, an Afghan migrant who was living in an asylum center was arrested for stabbing to death a two-year-old child and 41-year-old man on a playground. Two others were injured in the knife attack.
     28-year-old Enamullah O had a history of violent attacks and was in Germany despite having an order to leave the country.
     Workers at a nursery, or what we call a daycare center here in America, noticed the man acting suspiciously and decided to move the children inside. It was at that moment that the Afghan migrant attacked the children killing a two-year-old and then killing a 41-year-old man who attempted to rescue the children.
     It was the latest mass killing by a migrant in Germany.
     Then, at the funeral, Antifa showed up and reportedly insulted family members and friends, accusing them of being fascist.

     Talk about miscreants! Two groups are represented above: Muslim immigrants to Europe, and AntiFa. Both behave in a fashion that would make me comfortable classifying them as enemies of all Mankind and gunning them down wherever they appear. But then, I’m not a state, functional, failed, or anything in between. Most states take a dim view of citizen-imposed punishments. They make the state look less necessary. But wherever the state appears to be falling down on its job of protecting life and property, the impulse is there.

     In America Alone, Mark Steyn wrote:

     ‘Soft power’ is wielded by soft cultures, usually because they lack the will to maintain hard power. Can you remain a soft power for long? Maybe a generation or two. But a soft culture will, by its very nature, be unlikely to find the strength to stand up to a sustained assault by blunter, cruder forces…. On the night of September 11 Muslim youths in northern England rampaged through the streets cheering Islam’s glorious victory over the Great Satan. They pounded on the hoods of the cars, hammered the doors, and demanded that the drivers join them in their chants of “Osama bin Laden is a great man.”
     Try that in Texas, and the guy will reach into his glove box and blow your head off…. But in Britain you’re not allowed to own a gun or even (to all intents and purposes) resist assault. So the unfortunate burghers of Bradford went home cowed and terrified, and the Muslim gangs went swaggering off with their self-esteem enormously enhanced. The bullying, intimidating side of Muslim immigration seems to be largely absent in America, in part at least because the assertiveness of the individual American citizen makes it a riskier undertaking.

     Steyn, a New Hampshire resident, knows what he’s talking about. The contrast he draws is striking. What goes unremarked in that passage is the willingness of many local authorities to condone, sotto voce, such citizen-imposed punishments even as they officially deplore them.

     Such places quietly acknowledge that even on the individual level, some crimes tar the perpetrator as an enemy of Mankind, and therefore fair game for anyone with the will, skill, and armament. Sometimes the police are even candid about it. I know of one locale where the gendarmes have made it known that a homeowner who kills a burglar or trespasser will have police assistance in contriving the appearance of “imminent danger to life or limb,” which justifies a homicide. It’s a very orderly neighborhood.

     This is not an argument that all lawbreakers should be regarded as enemies of all Mankind. But it does point at the tension that exists between those who putatively make the laws and employ the public enforcers, and those who must suffer when those others fail at their duties. At some point – some degree of carnage and theft – law enforcement, the public face of the state, will be popularly deemed to have failed and vigilantism will kick in. Ironically, that recourse to citizen enforcement is the thing that both criminals and states dread most. For then, they are symbiotes in predation. They acquire a common membership in hostis humani generis.

     The government of Germany should ponder its policies toward Muslims and AntiFa before that day comes.