Cooperation, Not Force, Is the True Engine of Human Progress and International Order
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/by/the-ezra-klein-show. "Opinion | Yuval Noah Harari on the Mistake Strongmen Keep Making - The New York Times." May 26, 2026. www.nytimes.com
The Gist
Harari argues that politicians like Trump are wrong when they say power and force drive human progress. Instead, our ability to cooperate with strangers is what made civilization possible. When countries try to rule through strength alone, everyone ends up spending more on weapons and feeling less safe.
Conclusion
The strongman vision that power and force are the fundamental drivers of human society is both historically false and practically destructive, while cooperation remains the true engine of human progress and the foundation for sustainable international order.
Premises
- Human history demonstrates that cooperation, not brute force, enabled humans to progress from small hunter-gatherer bands to complex civilizations
- If only brute force mattered, humans would still be living in tiny bands on the African savanna, unable to achieve large-scale coordination
- The force-based international system championed by strongmen forces all nations to arm themselves heavily, wasting resources on military spending instead of health, education, and welfare
- Historical evidence shows that force-based hierarchical systems lead to constant miscalculations, endless wars, and imperial cycles rather than stable peace
- The liberal international order of recent decades achieved unprecedented security, allowing nations to spend more on healthcare than defense for the first time in history
- Nationalism at its core is about caring for strangers within your nation, not hating outsiders, and true patriots build unity rather than division within their nations
Assumptions
- Large-scale human cooperation requires shared stories and trust, not just coercion
- International systems based on 'might makes right' are inherently unstable and self-defeating
- The liberal international order, despite its flaws, represents genuine moral and political progress
- Government budget allocations reflect societal priorities and security levels
- Historical patterns of empire and warfare provide reliable lessons for contemporary politics