The transformation of the global strategic architecture is well advanced, bringing with it the slow death of some of the structures begun in the Industrial Revolution, and the slow birth or rebirth of identities seeking sovereign security.
Thomas Hobbes, in his “Leviathan” (1651), noted: “Nothing can be immortal, which mortals make.” The past two centuries witnessed the mortality of many monarchies when they were once the state structure’s predominant form.
The global transformation—upheavals—of the early 21st century seemed, however, to augur a new cycle of history: a decline of republics and a potential rise of monarchical states in forms that would not have been recognized before the industrial revolutions, as we will discuss.
In terms of individual human lives, this seems a slow process, like watching the hands of a clock move before an important deadline. But the inertia is brief in historical terms.
The birth and death of states have been a preoccupation of scholars since humanity began to structure into durable communities. In 2006, I created—with the help of Greek Cypriot scholar Marios Evriviades—the words “cratocide” (the murder of nations) and “cratogenesis” (the birth of nations) for the book, “The Art of Victory.” Shortly afterward, we added the word “cratometamorphosis” to describe the total reorganization of societies.
Perhaps we are not yet seeing the cratocide of some of the recent republics, but rather their cratometamorphosis through a period of upheaval and change, leading in some cases to the more traditional—and yet modernized and streamlined—monarchical form of society. But, in the process, a number of ancient countries and cultures are reemerging, just as we saw with the breakup of the USSR and the Russian Empire, and the breakup of Yugoslavia. We will see this in the breakup of former colonial structures of Africa and possibly other regions.
It is usually only wars that cause nation-states to appear or disappear in an instant, even though the historical evolution of their appearance or disappearance is there. At the end of 2023, for example, it was possible that conflict could conceivably eliminate the modern, republican geopolitical entity of the Palestinian Authority from the prospect of statehood. When, in history, had it been a sovereign entity, even though it was a constant cultural identity in the Levant for millennia?
Other modern, multi-societal states may escape breakup in such a fashion by the process of cratometamorphosis in which failing, dysfunctional, or internally convulsed states abandon divisive political republicanism and seek reunification under a common cultural umbrella through the restoration of hierarchical symbolism, streamlined for modern conditions. Again, we will discuss.
What is significant is that history is mostly understood through the progress of ancient and iconic forms of monarchy, the ones that Mr. Davies describes, for example, in “Vanished Kingdoms,” which dealt largely with European monarchies. But the vanished republics of history rarely make their marks in history. And given the temporal approach of most republics and their focus on immediate gratification, perhaps their societies and leaders do not care. Yet despite the short-term approach of most republics, most individuals gain personal stability and purpose by believing in the long-term, embedded aspects of their culture, values, and families.
The transformation of the world away from its recent cyclical trend favoring republicanism and toward the refreshed version of monarchism will never be absolute, just as the republican trend was not sweeping all of the world. Indeed, the concept of republicanism per se was never cohesive and, therefore, lacked specific or successful champions for it as a globally applicable solution. Mostly, its adherents moved in the direction of republicanism based on a denial of a failed, failing, or oppressive form of monarchism and were given great impetus by the success of the United States of America.
And even as major republics begin to crumble as empires, they will, in many instances, break into components that may themselves be splinter republics, just as the fratricide of Imperial China after the death of Empress Dowager Cixi in 1908 saw greater China polarize into warlord fiefdoms, kingdoms, and regional emperors, not least being the Manchukuo Empire (1934–45). The nominal shaping of the first generation of splinter states as republican empires break up may well be thought of as republican. Still, they have the opportunity to create hierarchies that identify the specific national characteristics—the cultural identity—of the origins of the society that sought to break from the recent republic.
Significantly, the United States, as well as the League of Nations, fought hard to maintain the “territorial integrity” of China in the 1920s and 1930s, and the whole canon of the United Nations after World War II has been on preserving the “territorial integrity” of its member states. But is that what people desire?
And yet these identities are reluctant to go away, as we see from the rapid restoration of some levels of historical identity of the post-Soviet/post-Russian Empire Central Asian states. Or as we continued to see with the urge by some Scots to restore Scottish sovereignty. Indeed, China may well have had greater success in reducing “Chinese” identification with a range of cultures and languages and in ensuring the dominance of the Han peoples over the Manchu and other societies.
How will China once again break up, as it has done on numerous occasions over the millennia? Will it, like Yugoslavia, break open a Pandora’s Box of suppressed identities, bringing forth a violent resurgence of real and imagined historical claims?
To say that this could not happen—that China could break apart, or that the United States would remain “united,” and so on—is to say, or pretend, that we as individuals cannot die because we choose not to think upon death. We have already seen the creation of more than 60 “new” countries since the end of World War II, and numerous others as hatchlings attempting to survive as independent states (Somaliland, Palestinian Authority, etc.).
Many of these new or revived states emerged after World War II as constitutional monarchies (Brunei, Papua New Guinea, many of the Caribbean states, Libya, Cambodia, and so on). So why can we not imagine the future or remember the past?
Former communist states in the Balkans, in particular, were anxious for their restoration as monarchies but were thwarted by politicians, mostly once-communists who became conservative and were reluctant to share power. But the 2023 elections in Serbia, for example, saw the monarchists begin to take seats in parliament three decades after the collapse of the Cold War and of “monolithic communism” in much of Eurasia and Eastern Europe.
The Russian nationalists who were instrumental in destroying the power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1990–91 were not opposed to the restoration of the Romanov Imperial Family, and, at that time, it was the Romanov family itself that was unprepared. Even well into the first decades of the 21st century, Russian President Vladimir Putin was rebuilding the physical memorials of his nation’s crowned past, as well as rebuilding respect for it.
In Libya, still in ruins in 2023 after the foreign interference in the domestic movement of 2011 to remove the republican dictatorship of Muammar al-Gaddafi, there were finally moves to restore the properties of the former Senussi royal family, and—even at a United Nations level—to look again at the 1963 Constitution to bring legitimacy and national acceptance back to governance. Such a move would restore the unifying role of the Senussi crown.
In many areas of the world, the move toward the restoration of monarchies reflects the declining influence of the United States. Countries such as Egypt and Ethiopia, for example, are in a position to rebuild their sense of national pride and unity by restoring their historical crowns without necessarily radically reshaping their political or governmental structures.
As with Malaysia, a post-World War II creation, the monarchy can be the constitutional and psychological glue that dampens internal divides and adds to the prestige of the state. In the case of Ethiopia, for example, the process could be as simple as replacing the non-executive office of the president with the Solomonic Crown. Even in Egypt, the executive presidency could remain with the Crown serving as a symbolic focus above political office.
The options are as varied as the nations and societies of the planet. At its core, however, most people crave an idealized ethos: values and nobility, which transactional politics denies them. In states such as the United States of America, while there may be a splintering of traditional (native American) societies seeking actual sovereign recognition of their ancient hierarchies, or Hawaii may seek the restoration of its historical monarchy and sovereignty, much of the amalgam of U.S. peoples seek something more intangible: the restoration of the “crown” of an untarnished Constitution.
The question is whether the United States can return to that status.
But it is in Africa that the outrage is most palpable against the banality of ignoble politicians in many states that had been created colonially to transcend their historical identities, seeking power merely for corrupt purposes. There, we see a revival of respect for traditional leadership, which exemplifies what many regard as important as food and shelter: nobility. This is a wealth of a different dimension, creating productivity and national prestige and, in turn, creating national security and stability through the rise of national influence.
It is happening, but not overnight. The mills of God grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.
