Hungarian Conservative

Jabotinsky was an old-fashioned nineteenth-century national liberal and a committed democrat, but it is still a matter of debate whether the same can be said of his supporters. The Zionist writer described his early worldview as ‘liberal anarchy’ in which ‘every individual is [worth as much as] a king’. The free market, freedom of the press, equality for women and respect for minority rights were fundamental tenets of his thinking. But there is good reason why there is an intense historiographical debate concerning Jabotinsky’s views.

In the absence of a peace treaty with Russia, Japan has not yet practically ended WWII—and now it is acutely feeling the ominous signs of another global conflict. The island nation is trying to take control of its destiny under the shadow of today’s superpower militarisation and the war in Ukraine.

The debate here is not one of having a strong military, which, to borrow President Woodrow Wilson’s famous phrase, is necessary to make ‘the world safe for democracy’. Rather, it is how military expenditure, or militarism, becomes an end in itself.