When Thomas Hobbes described life in a state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” he penned one of the most celebrated sentences in the English language. The 17th century philosopher asserted that without “a common power to keep them all in awe,” human beings fall into a state of nature—a condition of anarchical warfare and lawless predation.
Hobbes’ analysis resonates powerfully at the present time, when states are failing in many parts of the world, leaving
