Michael Reynolds pens a plea for a world government. His plea is both passionate and reasonable.
The first four graphs seem to be an argument against American isolationism, in terms almost everyone can accept: You can't seal off the borders against a plague and no amount of port security will be 100 percent effective against a determined terrorist. The dirty bomber will get through.Distance is an illusion. Borders are an illusion. Our economy is inextricably linked to the world. Our health is bound up with the health of villagers in the Congo. Our ability to travel and communicate is held hostage by people in Malaysia and Columbia and Timbuktu.All of which is true and well-said. But there's an interesting shift in the fifth graph:
Only governments can cause, and only government can stop, genocide. Only governments can cause, and only government can stop famine. Governments restrict free trade and plunge millions into unecessary poverty. Only government can reverse that fatal protectionism. Only government can stop global warming. Only government can respond when a new disease erupts. Only governments can cause, and only government can stop, war.He's writing now not merely about reacting to problems, but spreading positive good. Excellent! At first I thought he'd gone all neo-con on me. This was supposed to be my schtick, and I thought he was the hard-headed, cynical Democratic realist. But then I noted he said "can," not "should." He's talking about capability, not moral obligation.
The piece turns out to be an argument for overarching international governmental bodies, not for aggressive moral action by existing United States, but the inclusion of moral crusades among the practical problems opens up some intriguing lines of insight.
The time has come, in this interconnected, and vulnerable world, for the civilized nations to consider some form of world government.He takes as his tilting-target a sort of paleo-con or libertarian parody position of letting the world's problems sort themselves out in a sort of free market. This allows him to make an end-run around the neo-con position, whose uncomfortableness I understand because, and I think Michael agrees on this, it co-opts, or outright embraces, so much of what used to be called classical liberalism. Paleo-cons are a lot easier to whack on. So what of it? He's wise enough to disavow at once the bad example that people who make this argument often mistakenly hold up as good one: the U.N.
How in God’s name are we to include the Iranian Ayatollahs in a government with liberal Swedish socialists and Indian capitalists? How could we have a functional democracy in a world where China and India could out-vote the rest of the world? How would we keep the world’s poor from using a world government to confiscate the wealth of North America, Europe and Japan?Ah, how indeed. Calhoun had the answer to the tyranny of numbers, and it was called "concurrent majorities," but no one reads Calhoun anymore because we're all told that everything he wrote was simply meant to justify slavery, so let it pass.
Michael upholds the European Union as a better model, in part because "The EU admits only those countries which meet certain standards on human rights and economic responsibility."
His argument against continued Yankee unilateralism is a bracing mix of arguments from both sides of the current artificial political divide.The American experience in Iraq has demonstrated that we need the “international community.” We’ve tried to be the world’s policeman, and we’ve screwed it up pretty well. And yet, the world needs a policeman. The world needs someone to fight the viruses, and the terrorists, and the famines and genocides, the environmental threats, and to stop wars from starting. The world needs government, and that government cannot be the government of the United States. The world needs a cop, and it can’t just be us.He says this is not pure idealism, and it's not. He says it's less idealistic than the notion of the United States trying to manage world affairs alone, but I'm not so sure about that.As it is now, we give the civilized world a free pass. We jump into the fray and leave the Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, Australians, South Africans, South Koreans, Indians, all sitting on the sidelines offering snide commentary on our performance. We call this leadership. But how is it wise for us to carry the only badge and gun? How does that help us?
A world government would be limited to established democracies. Just as Europe has done, we would carve out large areas of national independence — we wouldn’t stop being the United States. Just as Europe has done, we would set standards for those nations hoping to join that world government. Rogue nations would be ever more isolated. The power of the world government would grow as it gained members. The momentum would become almost irresistable.
His proposal for a starting point is a union of North America (is he including Mexico?), Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand, Israel, South Africa (!), "stable South American democracies," and Europe. "If Russia can reverse its slide into autocracy, they can join. If China can throw off its Communist dead weight, they will be members, too. Every nation that sees three peaceful democratic political successions, controls corruption, and subscribes to standards of human rights and the rule of law, would be eligible."
It's a good start, and more thoughtful than many proposals I've seen. But I can't seem to take it much farther than these baby steps when I try to visualize it.
I know human rights and corruption-free systems when I see them. But have we really even yet defined them in a legalistic sense? Wouldn't there be instant trouble between, say, Europe and America over the death penalty, or Europe and Israel? Even if you ignore the dictators and kleptocracies, the U.N. offers warnings. The involvement of state-owned or controlled European industries and agencies in Saddam's oil-for-food scandals, for instance -- and it wasn't North Korea or Zimbabwe that was throwing up obstacles to U.S.-sponsored resolutions against Saddam -- it was the very democratic French and Germans who had his brass jingling in their pockets.
I suspect even the business of defining "democratic" governments is going to be more tricky than he suspects. First of all, you've got to have someone doing the defining, which immediately presents a problem of something higher than the highest authority. The end of World War II was one of the rare moments in history when the gods arranged for a defined set of "victors" to stand above the world and arrange a peace. And even then it wasn't easy for the victors to decide who was on their team. Should China have been included? Should France? Should Italy?
And today? What about Singapore? Not truly democratic, but scrupulously honest and more deserving of a seat at a world council than many of its nominally democratic neighbors.
Not all the world problems Michael describes admit of military solutions. But most of the ones that actually are happening (as opposed to killer asteroids, etc.) do. And I'm not convinced of the wisdom of going to war with a lot of "Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, Australians, South Africans, South Koreans, Indians," et al in tow. Just because the U.S. is up to its ass in troubles in Iraq doesn't mean it would have gone smoothly if we had ridden in there with troops from 50 other countries piled onto the bandwagon.
And really, even the coalition we had showed me something that military experts have known for years: Individual soldiers from anywhere may fight bravely and well, but except for the British and the Australians and a few others, mostly already at our side, there aren't many nations left on earth that bother to finance a military that can fight 21st century warfare the way the Americans do. You can debate whether we're over-reliant on technology as opposed to pure muscle, but for better or worse, this is now how we do it, and frankly I prefer it, for all its limitations, to area-bombing of urban centers and meat-grinder amphibious assaults a la WWII.
Even if the rest of the world was willing to invest in such militaries, wars are best waged by one head, not by committee. The cooperation even of two allies with the same language and heritage, as the U.S. and U.K. in Europe in 1944-45 (or in Gulf War I) shows how difficult this can be.
But the continental European nations (except France) have deliberately demilitarized themselves and they're proud of it. I question even their effectiveness as police forces in nasty places like Afghanistan, since they are hampered by restrictions in the name of human rights that may be impractical on a battlefield with al Qaida.
And let's face it; the proposed world government would not be an alliance of equals. It would not be divided into teams of large and small states, as the American colonies were in 1776; there would not be a "Big Three" as there was at Potsdam in 1945. There's not even a "big two." It's "U.S.A. and all the rest." What's to keep the other partners in the world government from continuing to see it, as many of them do the current U.N., as primarily a vehicle for restraining American might, even if it involves allowing global wounds to fester?
This is not the time to turn over the reigns to a global committee. Though it might be wise to start erecting one, on principles of democracy, freedom, and human rights, because unchallenged American power won't last forever. But while it does last, it ought to accomplish what can only happen at such rare moments in history.
Here we stand, a virtual empire in which an evangelical desire to do good abstractly forms a significant motive force in our national life, and out self-interest, as we perceive it, includes an aim to see all the world's people more free, more secure, more healthy, and more materially successful.
Not since Britain after the fall of Napoleon has the world been ordered this way. Before that, you can look to the Roman Empire at its height for another example. For the latter, I'll recommend the "What did the Romans ever do for us?" scene from "Life of Brian."Reg: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers. ... And what have they ever given us in return?!But I'm more interested in the British example, as it's more recent and more relevant. British evangelical busybodies browbeat their government into outlawing slavery, which was making a lot of money for a lot of British people. Having outlawed slavery, British self-interest required that it make an effort to see that its economic competitors did so too. Self-interest and humanitarian idealism merged, backed by a modest fleet of three-decker capital ships each of which could hurl a 2,000-pound broadside and shred anything else on the high seas.Xerxes: The aqueduct?
Reg: What?
Xerxes: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
Commando 3: And the sanitation.
Loretta: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
Reg: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
Matthias: And the roads.
Reg: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--
Commando: Irrigation.
Xerxes: Medicine.
Commando 2: Education.
Commandos: Ohh...
Reg: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
Commando 1: And the wine.
Commandos: Oh, yes. Yeah...
Francis: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
Commando: Public baths.
Loretta: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
Francis: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.
Commandos: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
Reg: But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
The British Navy -- itself a bastion of evangelicalism and full of officers who hated slavery in the abstract with a righteous zeal -- went to war against the African slave trade with a will and by aggressive and essentially unilateral action it accomplished the great good of virtually extinguishing the international slave trade in the 19th century, everywhere but in the Islamic world.
Michael writes, "The American experience in Iraq has demonstrated that we need the 'international community.' ” As painful as that experience has been and as tragically as every lost life is, I think history won't judge it quite so harshly. History casts a colder eye on these things, and perhaps it is unwise to stand amid the events and predict what people will make of them after we're gone. But the British, in the period I wrote about, lost whole armies in Afghanistan, and the Middle East, and even when they won they usually had their resources over-stretched and faced protracted insurgencies. History does not judge them to have been failures.
It's called "imperialism" now, and it's taught as a dirty word. British imperial and corporate interests unilaterally forced "Western values" down the throats of societies where piracy, raiding, and slave-taking were culturally ingrained, as they once had been for the Viking forefathers of the men who manned the British Navy. If instead the British had formed a committee in 1815 with the French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese to "solve" the slavery "problem," slave ships might still be plying the Atlantic today.
Callimachus,
World Government is about as realistic a notion as perpetual motion and cold fusion. It ain't gonna happen. So debates on all these topics are equally fruitful.
You are absolutely correct. There isn't a dime's worth of difference between the old imperial system and what Reynolds is proposing. Both the old imperial system and Reynold's proposed "world government" serve the self interests of the modern powers, justified by the modern-day equivalent of bring civilization to the savages.
If instead the British had formed a committee in 1815 with the French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese to "solve" the slavery "problem," slave ships might still be plying the Atlantic today.
I suspect you intended this to be a tongue-in-cheek comment. But it is so close to reality that I have to consider the possibility that it was an allusion:
1815
At the Congress of Vienna, the British pressure Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands to agree to abolish the slave trade (though Spain and Portugal are permitted a few years of continued slaving to replenish labor supplies).
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/timeline/atlantic.slave.trade.html
As it happens, the Brits did form a "committe" in 1815 to solve the slavery problem. Yet the problem was solved in spite of this.
Finally, thank you for pointing out that the British efforts to end the slave trade were not motivated purely out of altruism. To extend the concept a little further, I'll also point out that after American independence, the Brits no longer had much use for the slave trade. The rest of the British Empire, most notably the Indian crown jewel, came with its own labor pool. It was only after American independence that altruistic motives outweighed the utility of the slave trade.
So if we want to go back and consider alternative history that might result in the Atlantic slave trade continuing today, then I would suggest that American independence was the essential pre-condition to abolishing slavery.
Callimachus,
This is a fascinating BBC piece about British slavery:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4742049.stm
I find this article fascinating because of the naked socialist myth-making it displays. First, it omits any reference to the Christian roots of the abolitionist movement. Then it attempts to claim the virtues of the Christian abolitionists on behalf of modern-day feminists and political activists.
I wonder what Orwell would say about this?
One more thought on this. If any modern day ideology could claim a pedigree from the British anti-slavery efforts, it would be the Neocons.
So we can trace the lineage of Reynold's suggestion from its origins in the "altruistic" imperialism of the 19th century British through to the today's Neocons. What Reynold's is proposing is multi-lateral neoconservatism.
We're all Neocons now.
The idea of "world government" has been around for quite a while, and it isn't likely to come to fruition anytime soon. And until all the parties involved in such an exercise start thinking about the big picture and "positive sum games," it simply won't happen. Even the European Union experiment is looking more and more like it is doomed.
For a world government to happen, it can't simply be about stopping terrorism or ensuring world prosperity... we need to have peoples of common values, shared expectations, and united vision for the future. The world we are in is achingly far from that starting point.
Just my $.02
DRK
In the hyperconnected age of global broadband, as social networks expand and take on a life of their own, global allegiences will be made by individuals more than governments.
It is possible that the idea of sovereignty is in decline. 'One World Government' expands the idea of sovereignty to a large confederation of democratic nations taking responsibility for the planet's management. This is not a new idea, and it ignores the real cultural momentum of our time that is moving in the opposite direction from vast alliances.
Robust global networks are routing around obstacles in global trade, pitting Indians in Bangalore against Americans in San Francisco for high tech work. Networks are allowing the emergence of a global, virtual umma of radical Islamicists. They're toying with Chinese autocrats, who will never really get on top of dissent because of the Internet -- they'll only be able to stave it off like clearing a space in a small room full of large sacks of water. The radical nature of connecting everyone in the world on private networks is that they will take political creativity into their own hands and route around what they consider to be obstacles -- authority by any name. This whole notion is nascent, like a billion vine sprouts emerging from the soil among a few redwoods.
I think the age of large, encumbered, lumbering institutions that we call countries and alliances are in decline. And I don't necessarily laud this, because I don't truly understand what it means. But one world government? That's simply not the trend as I see it.
Does it strike anyone else as odd that after the miserable failure that is the United Nations, the horror that was the Soviet Union, and the paper kitten that is the European Union that anyone is still seriously talking about creating a World Government? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised since we’re dealing with people who still promote labor unions in a dynamic age where most jobs are created by small employers and union membership is really only feasible in static industries.
Why is it that self-styled “progressives” continue to wed themselves to ideas and institutions whose time has long since passed – if it was ever there at all?
Britain's efforts to end the international slave trade are a good example of unilateralism. It was done with diplomacy, bribery, gunpowder, and Methodist propaganda, all of which was British. I doubt if you could point to any cooperation by other European powers that added anything significant to British efforts.
Of course, it did not end Britain's dealings with slaves. Slave cotton continued to flow to the largest industry in the world: the British textile mills. Britain remained the major consumer of slave products.
When it came time to end that slavery, the United States had to act entirely alone, while carefully avoiding war with Britain at the same time. Emancipation was not the result of international pressure - on the contrary, it was pressure in the other direction. Lincoln knew that European governments could not side with the Confederacy in a war that was openly proclaimed to be about slavery.
With the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln appealed past governments to the people they ruled - an increasingly educated European citizenry that was increasingly hostile to slavery. Especially British subjects, who invented abolitionism. Tories and mill owners could not afford to be on the wrong side of that struggle any longer.
So "the world" (feh) did not abolish slavery, and still hasn't. A couple of countries ended slavery, while under the leadership of factions that were denounced as extremist warmongers (because they didn't have the word "neoconservative" in those days).
World government? Some kind of global monopoly on politics or just a cartel?
No thanks! Our differences are our strength.
Industrial revolution abolished slavery. We are all consumers. Soon we all may become workers of the same global firms, but that doesn't mean that our political structures should merge, just the contrary, if we want to preserve our individual freedom. A Total State is not the solution, but the problem.
BTW, the EU, with all its defects, has provided peace and economic development for fifty years. It is not bad when so much people is knocking on the door.
As you certainly must know much better than I do, J Aguilar, the European Union as such has existed for fourteen years—since 1992 and consequently, cannot be held to have been responsible for “peace and economic development” for twenty years let alone fifty (although prior arrangements such as the Common Market of which the EU considers itself the successor have been around since 1951).
During the entirety of the period the umbrella of American power has maintained the peace there with significant numbers of American troops installed in Western Europe for much of the period. After World War II most of the economies of Europe were in collapse. I believe that it's fair to give at least a little credit for Europe's post-War recovery to the American economic aid provided under what's referred to as The Marshall Plan whose recipients can be seen in this map. Spain, still under a fascist government at that time, did not participate.
It may be a pleasant fiction for Europeans to believe that the peace has been maintained and economies re-built by unaided European tenacity and ingenuity but it's just that: a fantasy. And it's one of which I'll remind our European allies who have, indeed, showed tenacity and ingenuity, when they show signs of forgetting.
although prior arrangements such as the Common Market of which the EU considers itself the successor have been around since 1951
1958, the Common Market; 1952 the Coal and Steel Common Market, why do you stop in names and don't go to the bottom of the matter? No such prosperity as today's could have been attained in Europe without a Common Market (simply resumed in freedom of commerce, freedom of investment and freedom of working in any country).
During the entirety of the period the umbrella of American power has maintained the peace there
I meant peace among Europeans. You know, those people that used to trigger a world war each thirty years...
I believe that it's fair to give at least a little credit for Europe's post-War recovery to the American economic aid
I do, but that was sixty years ago. Moreover, Spain, under Franco regime DID participate, but the plan did not carry the name of the Secretary of State.
It may be a pleasant fiction for Europeans to believe that the peace has been maintained and economies re-built by unaided European tenacity and ingenuity but it's just that: a fantasy.
As it is to think it was only America's work. There are many examples where economic aid has been futile.
And it's one of which I'll remind our European allies who have, indeed, showed tenacity and ingenuity, when they show signs of forgetting.
You are right reminding it.
In my opinion one thing is common structures to assure international freedoms, such as commerce (administratively, the WTO; militarily, the NATO) and a very different one to have a common centralized government, which nobody controls as the corruption in the UN shows.
Where was the slave cotten.
An example of different rules of engagement is the Belgiun military role in Afghanistan If the enemy turns aroun they have to stop shooting.
Rather than world government, what's needed is a change of mind -- one person at a time -- recognizing what is important and why. See: Measured steps toward civilization which helps explain that members of any culture can deduce humility and reciprocity as both requisite characteristics of successful societies and threads that can pull societies together. In their absence, there is reason to be on guard.
The idea of starting a world government that Russia and China arent qualified to join is pretty funny on its face.
Almost as funny as wanting to live under a world government in which the PRC would have an equal or greater say than the United States.
Don't you know anything? We'll never have a world goverment until 2063, well after WWIII.Earth is recovering from World War III, A brilliant inventor named Cochrane will develop the world's first warp drive, which will let the vulcan's know that we've advanced enough for their attention! (That is, if the borg doesn't stop them first)
Then the world will work together to better all mankind!
Sorry, everybody's got a pipedream.
Love live the Empire!
;)
As the author of the original piece I'll just make a few quick remarks.
I note that in comments above I'm called both a progressive and a neo-con. I think both groups would find me lacking in the proper degree of utopianism. I don't call for a gradual move toward a world government because I think it would make the whole world a swell place. I call for it because there are certain problems and threats that, because they are global in scope, would be better handled by some form of government other than that which is funded solely by US taxpayers. It's not about building a paradise on earth, it's about getting someone to pick up the garbage and set speed limits.
It is of course not news to me that the world is not ready to set up a world government tomorrow.
I don't see why a world government -- and I'm using that as a shorthand term -- necessarily implies the elimination of national governments. There's an EU, and also a France. There a United States and still a California.
And I don't think a world government would necessarily come to be dominated by the largest state. Our most recent presidents have come from Texas, Arkansas, Connecticut, California and Georgia. Our current Senate majority and minority leaders are from Tennessee and Nevada. We seem to have found a way to avoid being bullied by our half dozen largest states. It's a problem, but an insoluble one.
There was a reference to the EU as a paper kitten. That's a bit over the top, but let's accept it. I'm fine with my World Government having very limited powers. Again, I'm not a utopian. I don't want them teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. I want them dealing with transnational threats. I want this government to be able to coordinate international responses to terrorism and contagious disease and environmental threats, to take three obvious examples.
As to the likelihood of this idea succeeding, the easy thing is always to predict the failure of any idea. The odds are on your side: most plans fail. And of course I also predict the failure of this idea: I didn't just roll off the back of a turnip truck. But occasionally I like to take a few moments off from practicing my world-weary, seen-it-all look in the mirror and think about ways to solve problems. Call it a hobby.
What I note in the above comments is that no one seems to have any better suggestion for how we deal with a list of global threats. Kind of seems to me that when you have local problems you go to local government, statewide problems state government, nationwide problems national government, worldwide problems . . .
Michael Reynolds (#17):
Thanks for writing in with the amplifications and clarifications.
Your idea, of course, is by-and-large a restatement of the thoughts that were turned into action in San Francisco in 1944. Last month, Mark Steyn wrote another scathing, example-rich essay about what has become of the organization that was founded then.
A world government is, I think, attainable. The more dystopian the future I imagine, the easier it is to foresee desperate people building such an institution, faute de mieux.
What I cannot envision is an organization outside of history, or human nature. Many people like bossing other people around. Many cultures genuinely believe they are superior to all alternatives. Such strains even run through some major religions. I am told.
Darfur isn't a phenomenon that's just happening--there are living, breathing human beings who want the janjaweed to finish cleansing, who plan and finance their activities, who celebrate their victories. Because it's right.
This problem and the dozens of similar ones are not amenable to visualize-whorled-peas bumper-sticker-slogan solutions. Here's the Hobson's Choice for WG: ignore the wicked problems and focus on the ones people are solving anyway, or bullets to the back of the head. Whether you choose A or B, don't expect much lasting gratitude for your Anglosphere/League-of-Nations enforcers.
And this doesn't even touch the squalid reality of bureaucracies beyond the reach of audit. For WG, take Steyn's account of the UN and multiply by ten.
Remind me again why World Government seemed like a good idea?
The fact that a problem has not been solved in the past, or that attempts to solve the problem failed, does not mean that every subsequent attempt must also fail. We should certainly consider past efforts and try to learn from them. But we failed many times to develop a theory of infectious disease, and failed some more, then hit upon the idea of germs. Failed to create flying machines, theen succeeded. Failed to develop a government with limited powers then, hey, what do you know, succeeded.
It is easy to attack every new idea -- every new idea, without exception -- by citing historical precedent. Even easier when the idea bears a superficial resemblence to some earlier fiasco. But this is in an intellectual dead end. Progress requires us to occasionally attempt things which wiser heads dismiss as improbable, doomed to failure.
I'm 51 years old. I was around when it was ridiculous to believe that whites and blacks could live together. And I was alive when it was ridiculous to believe that women could do the same jobs as men. And still around to hear that society would never tolerate open homosexuality. And then there was the clear fact that communism would maintain its grip on Eastern Europe. And of course you'll recall the foolishness of believing that an esoteric military/academic instrument like the internet might be of some interest to ordinary people. I could sit here all day and add to the list of things I thought would happen in my life time, that did in fact happen, that wise old heads poo poohed.
Of course there would be problems in creating a world government. There were problems putting together a government of gentleman farmers, merchants, tradesmen, and slave-drivers in a land claimed by the world's greatest power, bordered by the world's second greatest power, and rendered barely habitable by severe weather, disease and angry natives. It goes without saying that there would be problems.
Good points all, Michael. Being your age, I had many of the same reactions to same developments. Alas, Steyn's assertion, with which I concur, is that "what's wrong with the UN" isn't really wrong, but rather the natural state of affairs of that system.
Set up and fund a large and expanding bureaucracy to deal with a host of pressing and mostly "wicked" problems. These agencies at the pinnacle of world government are by definition far removed from citizen audit (the Victor Davis Hanson sense of the term). You will predictably get two things:
(1) Corruption, misdirection of funds, sloth, waste, inefficiency. See Food, Oil for.
(2) Ineffectiveness, because coercion is required to implement a just solution, and WG's backers are unwilling to see its enforcers execute its plans by way of executing millions of people who stand in their way. Or, Ineffectiveness, because WG is willing to coerce, and the would-be coercees use 4G warfare tactics to Fight The Power.
These aren't bugs in the system, they are innate features. Implement WG, and this is what you get.
Put another way:
(1) What are the characteristics of bureaucracies that enable them to perform their missions to specifications, without experiencing increasing degrees of waste of funds, abuse of power, and corruption? How could these traits be built into a WG?
(2) What is the template for WG's approach to fundamental, high-stakes conflicts not amenable to compromise? Random examples:
If you can't outline a WG design that can manage this grim reality on a recurring basis, what you will end up with is a Super-UN, with all the miserable features Steyn describes, writ large. For many of us, the 20th century suggests that this therapy is worse than the disease it purports to cure.
A vignette from Wretchard's review of a forthcoming article by Robert Kaplan on anarchy in Iraq is here"Belmont%20Club" (then to 3/8/06, "A Place Like Many Others"):
That, succinctly described, is the sort of challenge that a transnational institution would need to master.
I made the point in the initial post that the UN was exhibit A for those doubting the feasability of a world government. The UN is a mess.
But I never called for an inclusive world government. On the contrary, I used the loaded word "civilized" to describe the nations that would be invited to participate. (Later I softened that a bit to "established democracies.") I'm not looking for a unipolar world. I'm looking for a way for the adults in the room to take care of business.
My model is the EU, and the case that interests me is the effort by Turkey to join the EU. Turkey is straining every muscle to comply with EU standards on economic responsibility (hah!) and human rights. I find that interesting. The EU isn't demanding that mostly secular but still very definitely Muslim Turkey jump through hoops -- it's the Turks who are demanding the opportunity to jump through those hoops.
There are no demands placed on UN members to do much of anything. The UN celebrates diversity, welcoming democracies (unless they're a Jewish state), one-party states, autocracies, kleptocracies and thugocracies. There's little doubt that the UN would accept a membership bid from an ice floe run by a talking penguin.
But the UN model is not what I have in mind. So Mr. Steyn's remarks -- cogent as always -- do not apply. I have in mind something closer to the EU though with perhaps something short of their 1:1 ratio of bureaucrat to citizen.
I understand the UN model and reject it. I understand the faults of the EU. Going beyond those examples, I understand that most governments across all time and space are miserable failures. I understand that it is likely that in the future most governments will be miserable failures. And yet, there are problems which only government can address.
I fail to see why we must conclude that the experiment in self-government can reach the national level, but must never be allowed to reach the multinational level. We're fine with the idea that Cuba, China, Myanmar, Sudan, and North Korea have national governments, but are terrified that the Americans, Canadians, Australians, Japanese and Europeans might get together and work some things out?
Thoughtful response, Michael; again, thanks. Appreciate you considering these points seriously and with good humor.
I'm glad we had the exchange. I toss out ideas from time to time to see how people respond. Win or lose, I'm happy because either way I learn something.
I found this blog by way of Callimachus, and I will add it to my blogroll at www.mightymiddle.com. I haven't put much work into figuring out categories, so I'll slide you in under "moderates" if that's all right with you.
Oops. Already had you in the blogroll but with a messed up link. Now fixed.