By Anthony Akinwale
How are nations to relate with each other? By the philosophy of might is right or by multilateralism, by just laws or by unilateral use of force?
Imagine you lived in a neighbourhood where might is right. The most powerful neighbour dictates and imposes on everyone in the neighbourhood what he alone considers right. He wields power without accountability. He considers himself as under no obligation to be accountable neighbours. Whatever he wants he gets through use of his might. If he sees crude oil or palm oil or lithium or uranium on your land, he must have it. If you refuse, he will subdue you and take over your land.
Since the fall of Adam, that has been the story of humanity, the story of interpersonal and intercommunal relations, of intranational and international relations. Nations relate with each other in the manner of might is right. Military might is acquired, boosted with increasingly sophisticated weapons of war, used to invade your land, and, possibly, abduct your leader, especially if the leader himself already has a bad name because of his own gross misconduct, his privation of legitimacy. With your land invaded, resources on your land and below your land are taken from you. Your land becomes impoverished, while the land of invaders is enriched. And the invading nation enacts and applies harsh immigration laws to discourage and disable you from migrating, even when you desire to migrate legally.
This has been the narrative: every war is fought over possession of precious commodities, military might is used to acquire profit, profit is used to maximise pleasure, the weakest nations are the poorest nations, their citizens live in abject poverty, and the mighty legislate what is good for the mighty as good for the entire world.
Here in Africa, this was our story before our encounter with the whites. Clans and kingdoms fought over lands and wealth. There was the Yoruba Civil War about which very little is known by Yoruba millennials and GenZs.
There was an intra-African slave trade before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The British, in the mid-19th century, used abolition of slavery as pretext to conquer and colonise Lagos. They deposed Oba Kosoko, the slave dealer King of Lagos, which appeared quite humanitarian. But they took over the land from their rightful owners after deposing Oba Kosoko because they wanted palm oil to lubricate machines in the industrial revolution in Europe, and for soap to prevent spread of disease in Europe. The Sokoto Caliphate was conquered to access cotton and groundnut.
It was not just the British. The French and the Portuguese, the Belgians and the Italians, the Spaniards and the Germans, all scrambled for Africa in what Thomas Pakenham captured in the title, subtitle and content of his book published in 1991: The Scramble for Africa: The White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. It makes some wonder: would nations of the northern hemisphere have attained their level of affluence if they had not colonised Africa? Would Africa have remained impoverished if her past and present indigenous leaders had been working for the common good, if Africa had not been sandwiched between foreign and indigenous exploiters?
The scramble for resources continues. Once again, humanitarian motives are declared to justify conquest of lands, peoples and their resources. The conquered peoples themselves are divided. And, out of resentment for indigenous rulers, some would prefer foreign conquerors.
After the devastating consequences of the First and Second World Wars, the League of Nations, then the United Nations was formed. The purpose was to prevent or at least manage the propensity for conquest of weak nations by mighty nations. It was thought, perhaps naively, that the United Nations Charter would forestall a Hitlerian reincarnation of power without accountability in the hands of strong men of blind but unhinged hegemonistic nationalism. The idea is for nations to work multilaterally to bring about peace and security. But the United Nations Organisation has fallen into the hands of the mighty, its noble intentions reduced to pious wishes. The world witnesses disdain for multilateralism by mighty nations.
In comes Pope Leo XIV. Eloquently re-echoing Catholic social teaching, his address to the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See on January 9, 2026, his very first to that body of diplomats as Pope, is a clarion call to return to multilateralism. In it, he said inter alia: “In our time, the weakness of multilateralism is a particular cause for concern at the international level. A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.
War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading. The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.
Peace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good in itself, or in the pursuit of ‘the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men and women.’ Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion. This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.”
Pope Leo XIV, son of the Order of Saint Augustine, has Saint Augustine of Hippo as his spiritual and intellectual mentor. His reading and application of Saint Augustine’s monumental work City of God is clearly discernible in that address. Quoting Augustine, he went on to say: “Furthermore, as Saint Augustine notes, ‘there is no one who does not wish to have peace. For even those who make war desire nothing but victory; they desire, that is to say, to attain to peace with glory. For what else is victory than the conquest of those who resist us? And when this is done there is peace… for even those who intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them better. They do not, therefore, wish to have no peace, but only the peace that they desire.’”
World leaders need to know that peace cannot be imposed by guns-a-blazing. It cannot be achieved by conquering others but by conquering oneself. To paraphrase Saint Augustine, peace is achieved in the tranquility of the rightly ordered self. The self is conquered when it is ordered to what is true, what is truly good, and what is truly loving. We often disagree on what these mean. However, precisely because the human being is rational, it is possible to enter into dialogue. Willingness to dialogue depends on willingness to conquer the self.
In the current resurgence of Machiavellianism, manifest is a desire to conquer every self except oneself. Deployed is power limited only by autonomous morality, flaunted is power of the absolutised individual who determines what is right and what is wrong, and uses his might to impose his self-centred determination on others. Such use of despotic and unaccountable power is domination of the weak by the mighty, an arrogant disdain for multilateralism which is inimical to the common good. Such power renders us all unsafe, and violates human dignity.
The words of Pope Leo call our attention to these dangers. They remind members of the United Nations the provisions of Art 2 (4) of the UN Charter which say: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
One does not need to belong to Pope Leo’s Catholic faith community to understand this. But will his words be heeded? He has no army.
Father Akinwale is of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.
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