On the Global Order: Experts Missing the Big Picture

Although the reasoning of government officials in foreign policy can be impeccable, they are susceptible to being so oriented to the intricacies of the “chess” playing that they may actually be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, a ship that sank in the icy Atlantic in 1912. At a talk by American foreign-policy experts at Yale’s School of Global Affairs in March, 2025, Ely Ratner, who served as an assistant secretary of defense, and Celeste Wallander, who was also an assistant secretary, joined Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) to speak mainly on U.S. foreign policy in regard to Russia and China; only scant mention was made of the situation in Gaza even though a holocaustic genocide was well underway there. What the speakers said about the post-World War II world order was most telling; what they did not say, however, spoke volumes.

The talk was incredibly timely. On the very same day, Oscar-winning filmmaker, Hamdan Ballal, who had won for the film, “No Other Land,” was allegedly beaten by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, after which he—not the Israeli thugs—was arrested and detained by the Israeli military, ostensibly so he could get medical attention.[1] Were he in Gaza, where the Israeli military had recently bombed two hospitals, he might well have died getting medical treatment. On the very next day, Euronews reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had told U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic.”[2] Hegseth was doubtlessly referring to Europe’s reliance on the U.S. militarily since the end of World War II. With Russia invading Ukraine, the Trump Administration was urging the E.U., including its state governments, to increase their defense-spending. Hegseth said nothing about Israel’s crimes against humanity in the occupied Gaza territory.

I contend that the impunity that both aggressive Russia and Israel were enjoying are but symptoms of the slow demise of the post-World War II global order. Although Ratner agreed with this conclusion, and the other two speakers at Yale agreed, they all pointed out that elements of the existing order were still working and should be retained. However, such elements were no match for the obvious impunity that by 2025 came with military invasion and none of the speakers proffered an alternative to the existing world order, even though Ratner warned that President Trump’s “spheres of influence” basis for international relations was dangerous, for it could mean that the U.S. could take Greenland and Russia could subjugate Ukraine with impunity.

That none of the speakers mentioned the United Nations at all is significant because that international organization’s utter failure to enforce its own resolutions and even kick out countries that had willfully and repeatedly violated resolutions (e.g., Russia and Israel) attests to dire need for a new international order. That the UN had allowed certain members of the Security Council to shamelessly exploit a conflict of interest in wielding the veto on their own behalf or to protect their allies strongly suggests that a new global organization was urgently needed by 2025. Nevertheless, none of the three speakers at Yale even mentioned the UN. Instead, they were essentially rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic.

People who work too closely within a given institutional order can easily succumb to missing the forest for the trees—focusing minutely on even the design of a leaf and thus missing the forest-fire going on even nearby. Meanwhile, radicals with no vested vocational and monetary interest in the existing order can easily become so utopian that their proposals simply cannot be taken seriously.  In the rise and fall of world orders, people at credible vantage-points issuing realistic proposals that go beyond tweaking existing institutions are needed. A former undersecretary of the UN who spoke at Harvard in 2025 agreed with me that the UN could not be adequately reformed because none of the five veto-powers on the Security Council would agree to give up their power even though doing so would enable the UN to pass resolutions against even governments committing crimes against humanity. Even extirpating the vetoes from the Security Council would not be sufficient; the UN would need military power of its own with which to enforce its resolutions on recalcitrant national governments. Fears of a world government coming from populist fringes, which would likely include religion over-reaching, could shout over realistic explanations that a semi-sovereign federation would not be a world government in the sense of dominating national governments. At the regional level, both the E.U. and U.S. demonstrate that governmental sovereignty can indeed by divided between federal and state governmental systems within a federal system.

Given the human-caused breach of the climate by excessive carbon-pollution, the existence of nuclear bombs many times over, and both the scale and severity made possible by modern technology of crimes against humanity—as perpetrated for instance by Nazi Germany and then Israel—continuing to rely on a global system based on an absolutist version of national sovereignty absent any global-level accountability is nothing short of reckless. In my experience at both Harvard and Yale, I heard nothing said either by the faculty or visiting officials on how humanity could realistically move on from the antiquated world order. Meanwhile, Israel and Russia continued with their toxic military activities unabated.

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1. Elise Morton, “Oscar Winning Palestinian Director Hamdan Ballal Allegedly Attacked by Israeli Settlers,” Euronews.com, March 25, 2025.
2. Tamsin Paternoster, “’Pathetic European Free-Loading’: US Officials Slam Europe in Leaked Chat,” Euronews.com, March 25, 2025.

The E.U.: A Step Toward a World Federation?

Does the European Union represent a novel paradigm and thus a step in political development? Whether this is so or not, can the E.U. be thought of as a step on the way towards a world federation? In a talk at Harvard in 2025, Anthony Pagden, a professor at UCLA, addressed these questions when the E.U. was just a few years over thirty—comparable to the U.S. in 1820. The question was not whether the E.U. too would lean towards political consolidation around a federal head, but whether the world was making its way institutionally toward the creation by compact of a world federation, which in turn could presumably stave off war. In 2025, the need for global accountability on willful, militarily-aggressive national governments was on at least some minds. The implication is that the global order based on national sovereignty was insufficient, especially given the advanced destructiveness of military weapons.

According to Pagden, the nation-state concept is at its core an ethnic concept that was extended in the 19^th century to include states that had territory extended beyond that of a particular ethnic group.  Although nation-states had existed, the concept came into its own in the 1800s, so the modern notion of the nation-state is ahistoric, and thus perfectly capable of being superseded should political development occur. The related notion of sovereignty only became salient in the 16^th century (e.g., Jean Bodin) and this continued in the next century in Hobbes’ Leviathan.  Hobbes’ assumption was not that governmental sovereignty could not be split like an atom, but that it should not be divided lest civil war break out. Europe was no stranger to war in the 1600s, given the Thirty Years War, which was based on religious differences bearing on political power.

Of course, the atom of sovereignty was split in the U.S. Convention in the following century, with the checks-and-balances in federalism being relied upon to keep the inherently unstable division stable. Although Pagden didn’t mention this point, he did say that relations between nation-states had historically tended to be through empires but more recently (in centuries) has been through federations. In the process, the very notion of sovereignty has been undergoing a gradual transformation. Whereas Russia’s President Putin once claimed that either a country is sovereign or it’s a colony, Pagden claimed that at least as of 2025, sovereignty had reached international organizations. Together with nation-states, the notion of multilevel sovereignty had come into its own. From this notion, Pagden claimed, a world federation would someday be likely. He cited Durkheim’s prediction that at some point humanity would form a global “social order” may be correct, but Kant’s claim that peace would only be possible but not probable under a world federation also deserves attention. Even if the world’s shift from empires to federal governments and international confederations (which actually extend back to antiquity--Sparta and Athens having headed military confederations) makes a world federation more likely, the question of whether having one would stave off war warrants reflection too. I think the key would be whether such a federation has enforcement power, for the U.N. has arguably sidelined itself because it lacks the authority and power to enforce its own resolutions and the veto mechanism on the Security Council is a contributing factor that relegated the U.N. to the sidelines as Russia invaded Ukraine and Israel ravaged Gaza—both cases evincing an utter lack of accountability from beyond the sovereignty of the nation-state.

Pagden stressed that even though historically, empires have shaped the geography of the modern world, federations will likely make an indelible imprint on the world in the future. “Empires and federations have much in common,” he said. Both are legal societies. But with respect to confederal international organizations, including the United Nations, “international law is controversial.” I would add that the lack of enforcement power renders such law de facto impotent in its own right, although such law can be used by nation-states in the exercise of their sovereignty on the world stage.

Even though empires and federations have elements in common—indeed, originally federations were exclusively international--empires are created by conquest, whereas federations begin by consent. In European history, countries that had sovereign states in Medieval times became political sub-units of federal nation-states in the early-modern period. Pagden characterized Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium as “centralized federalism.” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin once told me that Congress delegating functions to the state governments is “decentralized federalism.” Relatedly, Pagden said that the notion of subsidiarity comes from Roman law; only legislation that affects all of the political sub-units should be at the empire level. In his Political Digest (1603), Althusius relates this point to his claim that only the members at a level in a federal system are to be represented at the next-highest level: individuals belong only to the first-level. That Germany and Belgium are themselves states in the E.U. federal system resembles the structure of Althusian federalism, which is based on the Holy Roman Empire. By implication, geographically diverse U.S. states, such as California and New York, could federate and still remain as states in the U.S., just as Belgium and Germany in the European Union. Once you get the levels right, comparative federalism gets very interesting (and contentious, for most people compare apples with oranges—a state in one Union with another Union).

The ECJ says that the EU treaties evince a constitutional order, so common law from the ECJ is indeed law. Pagden disagreed with the European Court of Justice on this point, whereas I agree with the court. Even so, he said, “The E.U. is a federation even if not in name.” The contradiction is only apparent. The E.U., according to Pagden, is an exception—thus instantiating a new paradigm and thus a step in political development. He could have cited the Athenian League and Sparta’s confederation as evincing the close association that federalism has had with distinctly international rather than national political entities. The British Commonwealth too is international, but it being voluntary differentiates it from federalism, which has tended to be treaty-based.

I contend that to classify the E.U. as an international organization is incorrect. Unlike NATA, the UN, ASEAN, and the AU, the E.U. has a federal government of three branches: the European Court of Justice, a legislature (the Council of the E.U., the European Council, and the European Parliament, which represents E.U. citizens rather than states), and an executive branch (the European Commission). Like the U.S. the E.U. has federal institutions based on national (e.g., the ECJ, the Parliament and the Commission) and international (e.g., the European Council and the Council of the E.U.) principles. The U.S. House is based on national principles whereas the U.S. Senate is based on international principles—the same ones that the UN is based on). Both empire-scale federations, the E.U. and U.S., fall under the rubric of federalism wherein governmental sovereignty is “dual,” or split, whereas the UN and NATO are not, for full sovereignty is retained by the countries. Applicable to the E.U. as well as the U.S., John Stuart Mill claimed not only that federations are not stable over time, but also that a federation can become a nation-state. Indeed, the E.U. and U.S. effectively split the very notion of nation-state between two governmental systems over the same territory.

The basic paradigmatic likeness of the E.U. and U.S. flies in the face of Pagden’s argument that the E.U. evinces something politically sui generis; this point in turn he uses to claim that the new type of federalism is more useful than the American type as a basis for a world federation constructed by regional federations. I submit that the E.U. and U.S. are empire-scale federal systems and thus can be characterized as regional with respect to the global level. The E.U. doesn’t need to be unique for the construction of a world federation by consent to be achieved; the U.S. and E.U. both evince the useful step in that both federations fall under “modern federalism,” which Ken Wheare distinguishes from confederalism because only in the former type is governmental (not popular!) sovereignty split, whether by treaty, basic law, or constitution. Furthermore, that the interstate heterogeneity in both the E.U. and U.S. is a leap from intrastate diversity whether in terms of political ideology or culture qualifies both unions as being a useful step potentially if a world federation is someday to be constructed. The diversity within the E.U. is much greater than is the diversity within Germany, for example. The same applies to France. Hence federalism, in being able to accommodate differences, is more useful at the level of the E.U. (and the U.S.).

Pagden rightly points to Europe’s shared political and legal culture from Roman law, and all of the delegates at the U.S. convention were of European extraction at some point. A world federation would be another leap in terms of inter-state diversity because no such common cultural basis would apply. The distinction between British common law and the French code pales in comparison between ancient Roman and Chinese law. Also, the absolutist interpretation of sovereignty by the governments of Russia and China is a world away from the notion of dual sovereignty that characterizes “modern federalism” as evinced in the E.U. and the U.S, both of whose federal institutions are based on national and international principles depending on the institution. This hybrid is precisely what a world federation might need, and yet the notion of applying federalism to making a nation-state and yet one whose members are semi-sovereign (with residual sovereignty!) was even by 2025 foreign to a Hobbesian notion of sovereignty as unitary and absolute.

Therefore, I do not think that a new paradigm or type of federalism will be necessary for a world federation to be constructed. In fact, the hybrid that is at the federal level in the cases of the U.S. and E.U. can be useful, and even perhaps necessary, for such a federation not to succumb to impotence on enforcement. Yet I suspect this would be the sticking point for countries like Russia and China. Simply put, the absolutist view of national sovereignty must give way to make way for Wheare’s notion of dual-sovereignty in federalism for national governments, whether federated or not, to consent to a global federation. Staving off war is arguably worth scrapping the absolutist view, but try convincing Presidents Xi or Putin of this; after all, a very intelligent man, Immanuel Kant, thought that world peace would only be possible—not probable.

On International Multilateralism: A Harsh Verdict on the UN by a Former Undersecretary

Speaking at Harvard in late September, 2024, Noeleen Heyzer, a former undersecretary of the UN, related the need for multilateral governance internationally to the need for the UN to evolve. The UN Charter created a system in which both large and small nations would be held accountable to international law: a rule-based order. This would protect the weak from the strong. Yet the Security Council has been unable to end wars. The UN is, according to Heyzer, “severely weakened,” so “(t)he strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Peaceful coexistence that rectifies power imbalances was at the time sorely lacking in Ukraine and Gaza. National vetoes in the Security Council were inflicting much damage on the UN's ability to respond. The implications for the UN, she admitted to me after her talk, are not at all good even concerning whether the international organization can reform itself sufficiently to rise out of abject failure.

Four global problems demonstrate the weakness of the United Nations as a multilateral institution by which countries can be held accountable. The UN’s response to the Covid virus pandemic was slow, and entirely in effective in getting China to share vital information with the world as the disease spread. China’s national interest—and the “face-saving” cultural reflex—was a threat to the interests of the global commons—the public health of the species, which should outweigh national interests even if not every national government is convinced. The climate crisis has demonstrated that binding multilateral governance has become necessary in part because of the growing power of MNCs, which are oriented to short-term profit and pushing costs to society (i.e., externalities.[1] Cybersecurity against hackers from abroad also demonstrates that the rule of law is needed internationally. Lastly, international security, which was severely compromised by the 55 conflicts going on in 2024, demonstrates just how damaging the national vetoes in the Security Council can be to international peace. The US invasion of Iraq, Russia of Ukraine, and Israel in Gaza leave us with the unhappy conclusion that no enforcement mechanism for international law exists. Impunity has been blatant, such that international law itself risks being utterly discredited. Ignoring international law and the use of national vetoes by allies of belligerent countries preempt international law, resulting in a heightened sense of unfairness globally.

Put in place in 1945, “(t)he current international system is out of date," she said. "We face a breakdown or breakthrough. Collective rethinking to make anther historical pivot is needed," she added. Diffusion of power has occurred since the UN’s founding. Fifty-one countries were initially in the UN. By 2024, the figure had reached 193 countries as members of the international organization. “The UN needs to evolve to reflect the shift in global power from the unipolar world of the US to a multipolar world,” she said. Global stakeholders include non-state actors; they should be included, she advocated streneously. “Solidarity is an act of enlightened self-interest,” she said. 

She reported that the UN was fundamentally rethinking how it could evolve to fit the reality of the twenty-first century.  A shift from a state-centric approach to one that engages diverse actors outside of the UN was needed, she argued, to protect our global commons. Economic inequality and social injustice undercut global stability, and thus should be emphasized more in the UN, she argued, as it evolves in the future. She emphasized throughout her talk that the UN should assume more of a role in rectifying economic inequality and patriarchy in countries that are members of the UN.

Thus far, I have briefly sketched Heyzer’s argument. I turn now to critiquing it. Although addressing economic inequality was a leitmotif in her talk, she said nothing of the impact of the UN’s humanitarian work around the world in alleviating economic inequality. To be sure, that humanitarian work has been a benefit to the species, especially in terms of food and disease, and the organization’s ideals too are of value, but I contend that neither saves the organization from the verdict, which I share with Heyzer, that the UN has failed overall.

Most significantly, a vague reference to the General Assembly working on how the UN could evolve does not reflect the severity of the impotence of the Security Council and the General Assembly in regard to restraining national interests that compromise or even eviscerate collective action on the four major problems discussed above. The countries having vetoes in the Security Council cannot be expected to willingly give up their respective vetoes. Political realism says as much. So, it is difficult to see how the major problem in the UN could be solved short of the non-veto members forming a new international organization—a substitute for the UN sans vetoes.

Even such a solution leaves the impotence in enforcement untouched. Putin in Russia and Netanyahu in Israel beginning in 2023 highlight the need for international law to “have teeth” (i.e., have credible enforcement mechanisms). By this I mean something more than mere embargoes, as those of the E.U. and U.S. against Russia in 2024 demonstrate just how difficult it is for embargoes to have sufficient economic impact to result in political/militaristic change in the embargoed country. I submit that vesting UN troops with more authority in using force to stop countries like Israel and Russia within their respective sovereignties geographically would be necessary for international law to be able to live up to the name of law. Theoretically, if international law is indeed law, then political realism should include the strategic interests not just of countries, but also whatever international organization(s) promulgate and presumably enforce international law.  

After her talk, I spoke with Heyzer to present my critique, which I said I would publish. She agreed with me that the veto powers on the Security Council would not agree to unilaterally give up their respective vetoes, so the non-veto countries of the UN would have to form another international organization sans vetoes, which the veto-holding countries of the UN could join. By implication, the discussions then underway in the General Assembly to reform the UN can be viewed as superficial rather than as serious attempts to reform the UN out of its paralysis in promulgating international law. She also agreed with me that without going further to address the impotence in enforcing the UN resolutions on the UN’s willful countries that violate UN resolutions doubtless with a sense of impunity, even a non-veto substitute organization would not be a viable solution unless viable enforcement mechanisms “with teeth” could be formulated and implemented. I suggested to Heyzer that in addition to not permitting the most powerful countries to wield veto-power in the Security Council, which would not improve enforcement, the UN troops would need additional authority to literally push back or arrest countries that violate UN resolutions or verdicts of the UN’s court by invading other members other than in self-defense. She did not reply to my suggestion itself, which likely means that she did not agree with it. Instead, she said, “creative thinking is needed.” I agreed wholeheartedly, and pointed out that even though our species has developed technology and economically both in terms of fiscal and monetary policy, having learned lessons from the Great Depression so another would not occur in the financial crisis of 2008, there has not been much in the way of political development since the Enlightenment. Heyzer agreed with me on this point, and that a burst of thinking was needed in 2024 due to the four emergent threats to our collective interests internationally discussed above. As I have already stated, she said the following crucial sentence during her talk: “Collective rethinking to make another historical pivot is needed.” I submit that such a pivot would go beyond, though be related to, merely voiding the vetoes and creating a mechanism of enforcement at the extant UN. Deep political principles are reexamined and shifted around for there to be a fundamental change sufficient to constitute a historical pivot.  

Climate change alone demonstrates that continuing with the principle of absolutist national sovereignty at the expense of multilateral international governance is nothing short of foolish. Continuing to rely on the UN to address the four pressing and dire problems impinging on international relations even though the consensus is surely that the UN itself has failed in its principal missions reflects very badly on humanity in its cognitive functioning. The lack of any significant public discourse on the need for a replacement for the UN is itself a red flag, or indication that our species is akin to race horses wearing blinders. Unlike the horses, we can take ours off. I don’t believe the problem is that we have hit the ceiling of the human brain’s ability to think; rather, too many people, even among the political and economic elites, have been giving things exogenous to thinking, such as ideology, stubbornness, and sheer complacency, too much weight in being able to distort or even displace reason.  

I submit that it is telling that a former undersecretary of the UN admitted that a substitute organization would be necessary—that a former high-ranking UN official has come to the unhappy conclusion that the UN is not able to adequately reform itself, given the hegemony of the veto-wielding member-countries (which are not member-states, as some reporters erroneously claim, since the UN is an international organization rather than a federal government). The implications are indeed dire for the UN.

Simply put, unless or until another international organization or government is established for multilateral international relations funneled by an institutional structure and procedures, the international arena will continue to instantiate the state of nature. Ultimately, the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty must give way for multilateral international relations to rise from the barbaric state of nature. Although the UN’s ideals were still of value as late as 2024, it can be argued that the UN itself had dropped to the status of a dead corps still twitching, as evinced by the sheer dismissive impunity of Russia and Israel as they both ravaged exogenous territories not permitted by the UN, which also had no ability to constrain countries violating the Paris Agreement on carbon emissions. If the UN had become impotent in preventing or stopping war and in literally saving the species from possible extinction (not to mention saving coastal cities around the world), is this not a stark indication that the international organization had failed and thus that a substitute or alternative was already warranted?

That an organization that was so clearly failing would continue nonetheless to function as if it were viable and be treated as such by national leaders points to a basic flaw in the human brain. To act as if and not even cognitively recognize that the route is futile goes beyond cognitive dissidence as a mental error. The lack of any public discourse on replacing the UN after Putin and Netanyahu had so easily dismissed strictures set by the UN is itself problematic. If someone tells people not to cross a line in the sand and yet they do anyway, and with impunity, to treat the teller as at all credible is nothing short of pathological.

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1. In the case of democracies, governments have an electoral interest in increasing GNP even by refusing to constrain fossil fuel extraction, refining, and consumption. Autocracies have a cash-flow interest in maximizing exports, which may include oil and conventional vehicles. During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia sent its embargoed oil through Saudi Arabia and India, which were then able to sell the oil to the West without disclosing the source.

Nuclear Power: Rendering War Too Dangerous in a World of Nations

Increasing integration of the global financial and business sectors and the global need to combat climate change by restricting carbon emissions are just two reasons why the impotence of the UN, which has not touched the doctrine of absolutist national sovereignty, has become increasingly problematic. The risk to nuclear technology in power-generation from war argues strongly for not only the obsolescence of war between countries, but also the benefits of transferring some governmental sovereignty from the nation-states to a global-level government, which the UN has never been. The case of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, in the midst of Russia’s invasion in 2024 is a case in point.

In August, 2024, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) notified the world that safety at Zaporizhzhia was deteriorating. A drone strike had recently hit a perimeter access road used by employees, and a fire had been set at the plant. The plant had been subject to repeated attacks since the invasion began, with both sides accusing the other of carrying out the attacks. So it is significant that the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in August, “Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing . . . the power plant.”[1] It was not as if the plant had been in a safe condition, so the escalation is significant. With both sides of the war having been blaming the other for the attacks on the plant, there was a real danger that both sides would see continued blaming as a way to ignore Grossi’s call for restraint. “I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant,” he stated.[2] Especially because of the option of simply blaming the other side, it could be said to be utopian to have confidence that those principles would be upheld in the context of the war.

In fact, as Hobbes theorized in The Leviathan, without one sovereign, whether a single person or an assembly, the chances for peace are nil, with life being short and brutish. It was in the context of the wars in the 17^th century that Hobbes lived, and he wrote to obviate war by urging all political and religious power be vested in the same person or body. In Ukraine in the midst of the war in 2024, the country was not under the control of one sovereign, as the Russian incursions prove. In such a state of nature devoid of an overarching sovereign power, the danger to the nuclear plant was very real.

Given the magnitude and severity that a nuclear accident can inflict on land and human beings, taking such a risk is arguably so much to be avoided that it is worth it to countries to delegate some of their sovereignty to an international body. Although Kant advocated a world federation, by which world peace would only be possible but not probable, it is not clear whether such a federation would have any of its own sovereignty apart from that of countries. Without such a delegation of sovereignty, I’m not sure peace would even be possible, given the impotence of the UN as belligerent countries have easily been able to ignore resolutions and even verdicts from the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice.

Of course, even were a world government to have some sovereignty and thus to ability to enforce its resolutions against warring countries, Hobbes would say that unless that sovereignty is complete, with countries no longer having any, war would be likely. But Hobbes lived prior to the invention of modern federalism in Philadelphia in the 18^th century, and so he could not have been able to consider the checks-and-balances feature by which a federal government and state governments can hold each other accountable or at least within limits such that neither devolves into tyranny. In the early 21^st century, both the E.U. and U.S. federal systems contain internal structural and procedural checks on federal and state power, though the U.S. had come so close to consolidation by the U.S. Government that it could hardly be argued that the state governments could act as a constraint on the federal government. So splitting governmental sovereignty between a world government and national governments would not be without its own risks and weaknesses.

Even so, the conduct of war in a state of nature amid nuclear power plants is such a toxic cocktail that the impotence of the UN as against the Russian invasion (and the Israeli onslaught in Gaza) could no longer be tolerated by 2024. Dangers in advanced technology in the context of a war argue against unfettered war being tolerable by our species any longer, and the UN sans any governmental sovereignty could not be the solution, given how easy it has been for belligerent members of the UN to ignore resolutions and verdicts with impunity and even continued membership in good standing. In short, technology even aside from that which is used in weapons had fundamentally changed the danger from war to the species itself, even as the world has continued to rely on the feckless UN in failure after failure as if the status quo were working anyway. It is unfortunate that so much energy of political will is necessary for a leap in political development for the species; we are so much better at incrementalism. 

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1. Saskia O’Donoghue, “IAEA Says Safety at Ukraine’s Nuclear Plant Is ‘Deteriorating,” Euronews, August 18, 2024.
2. Ibid.

A World Eschew: National Sovereignty Eclipsing Climate Change

U.S. President Obama announced after he left the UN global climate conference at Copenhagen in 2009 that five major nations—the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa—had together forged a climate deal. He called it “an unprecedented breakthrough” but acknowledged that the agreement was merely a political statement and not a legally binding treaty and might not need ratification by the entire conference.  Essentially, it was merely a statement of the five countries’ respective goals, as if someone had announced, “I want to lose ten pounds.”   The political statement did not meet even the modest expectations that leaders set for this meeting, notably by failing to set a 2010 goal for reaching a binding international treaty to seal the provisions of the accord.  Nor does the plan firmly commit the industrialized nations or the developing nations to firm targets for midterm or long-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Claiming that the conference was a success was not to stop the spin. Obama, for example, said, “For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.” To be sure, the accord does provide a system for monitoring and reporting progress toward those national pollution-reduction goals, a compromise on an issue over which China bargained hard, and it calls for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow from wealthy nations to those countries most vulnerable to a changing climate.  That is, the political statement is not a binding treaty, but the document does lay out a framework for verification of emissions commitments by developing countries and for establishing a “high-level panel” to assess financial contributions by rich nations to help poor countries adapt to climate change and limit their emissions. Lastly, it sets a goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2050, implying deep cuts in climate-altering emissions over the next four decades.

However, in a news conference, Obama said the accord was only a tentative start down a long road. The accord sets no goal for concluding a binding international treaty, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. In other words, any developing country can opt in or out of the monitored pot of money, and China may well still view the monitoring aspect as voluntary—meaning to be determined by the Chinese Government what can be examined.  The Chinese had been intransigent on the matter of verification by non-Chinese.  Citing national sovereignty, the Chinese had claimed that the rest of the world should take Chinese law as being a sufficient basis for verification.  This, I submit, is an extremely odd proposition—that people extrinsic to China should rely on Chinese law when the legitimacy of such law stops at the country’s borders.  The statement is telling because it demonstrates how antiquated the Bodinian notion of absolute national sovereignty is in the modern world.  The interdependence occasioned not only by global warming, but also nuclear proliferation and an increasingly global financial system, makes an insistence on the absoluteness of national sovereignty an extremely dangerous proposition.   The fecklessness of the Chinese approach to “verification” and the resulting diluted “political statement” (rather than a treaty) coming out of the conference suggest that we urgently need to thwart the historical insistence from our global vocabulary and institutions. 

The immediate implication is that the veto in the UN Security Council is no longer legitimate.  Further on, the binding nature of international law backed up by international governance structures that do not include vetoes needs to be developed and applied to the domains determined to be rightfully global.  Countries still insisting on the absoluteness of their national sovereignties, such as China on pollution-controls and the US on international criminal law, would have to bend or be boycotted by the rest of the world.   In other words, international relations and economic exchanges ought to be dependent on being subject to a governance structure beyond the nation-state.  If China is left as the only country insisting that nothing can supervene Chinese law, then no one in the world should have anything to do with that country.   In contrast, those subject to a governance structure that supervenes in particular enumerated powers (with sufficient safeguards against their encroachment…given the history of the US) should be able to enjoy benefits beyond the binding nature of such powers, such as privileged positions in trade and visas.   I would argue that governments that insist that their law is insurmountable deserve to be marginalized by the rest of the world.  I write this as an American knowing that the US may well be marginalized under this scenario unless there is some movement on international criminal law (i.e., being subject to the International Criminal Court, which in turn would be given the ability to go into any country and extract defendants).  

The technological development during the twentieth century means that political development is necessary in the twenty-first century.  We are so used to viewing change in terms of technology that we are perhaps unaccustomed to the sort of change that should ensue in order to obviate the new dangers from the technology.   In other words, we need to shift gears in terms of the domains wherein change is expected or thought to occur.   In some respects, we are still in the dark ages, and being in the dark when the planet could come to equilibrium unsuitable for human habitation—whether via carbon or radioactivity—represents a level of danger that ought to move us to action against the default of national sovereignty.  In some respects, we are so primitive; we tend not to see this because we identify change and development with technology.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/science/earth/19climate.html?_r=1&hp

The International System: Undermining a Ban on Nuclear Weapons

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for the group’s work on behalf of a global ban on nuclear weapons. Just a few months earlier, two-thirds of the U.N.’s General Assembly approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. “The risk of nuclear war has grown exceptionally in the last few years, and that’s why it makes this treaty and us receiving this award so important,” Beatrice Fihn of the group said.[1] Unfortunately, the stance to ban rather than merely limit nuclear weapons was already being marginalized as utopian and even potentially counter-productive even though ongoing efforts to limit the proliferation were falling short. I submit that the international system itself had become problematic, given the relatively new global threat of nuclear war.  

Even amid “rising global alarm about a potential nuclear conflagration” between the United States and North Korea, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that “we have to be realistic” about the spread of nuclear weapons—meaning that a total ban could actually increase the risk of nuclear war.[2] Yet with Pakistan having an estimated 140 nuclear warheads and India having 130, Israel having an estimated 80, and North Korea presumably working on developing warheads, the status-quo policy of the U.S. could be said to be insufficient to stave off the risk of nuclear war. Put another way, as proliferation was already underway, non-proliferation policies could be reckoned as faulty.

Why do human beings continue to hold onto a boat that is sinking while seeking to undercut an alternative that actually could work? The tyranny of even a deficient status quo is such that the answer may lie with human nature itself. The risk of nuclear war has such a gigantic downside (i.e., nuclear war) that drastic measures to eradicate the risk may be necessary, and yet none of the nuclear powers in the U.N. would be bound by the treaty. Why even ratify it then? The exercise could be said to evince the impotence of the world body even in the face of such a horrible risk. Given the propensity of human nature to ingratiate itself and the existence of grave global risks, the very survival of the species may have already come to depend on a reform of the nation-state system wherein nations hold a monopoly on governmental sovereignty such that some of it is moved to the global level. National governments face a conflict of interest in this regard, as they would be ceding some power. Even if the survival of the species depends on advancement from the nation-state hegemony, national governmental officials may demur out of sordid self-interest.

---

1. Michael Birnhaum of the Washington Post, October 6, 2017.

2. Ibid.

For more on conflicts of interest that governments (and businesses) face, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest. 

Libya and the World in 2011: A Higher Calling

On February 21, 2011, Libyan military aircraft fired live ammunition at crowds of anti-government protesters in Tripoli. "What we are witnessing today is unimaginable," said Adel Mohamed Saleh, an activist in the capital. "Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead." Arabiya television put the number killed on that day alone at 160. Gadhafi's son had vowed on television the day before that his father and security forces would fight "until the last bullet." I suspect that few people were surprised to find that Gadhafi would mount a sustained vituperative effort against the pro-democracy movement that was sweeping through the Middle East. "These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst. "But I think Gaddafi is going to put up a fight ... in Libya more than any other country in the region, there is the prospect of serious violence and outright conflict," he said. As the world received reports of the massacre, a latent question not being asked was whether the world (or even a coalition therein in case of a holdout like China) has the right or an obligation to intervene militarily to stop the offending regime against its own defenseless people. I contend that there is such a right and moral obligation--meaning that national sovereignty does not extend to crimes against humanity. Sadly, at the time of the Libyan protests and Gaddafi's retaliation, the world's government offiicals were still largely impotent and disorganized.

Even if not sufficiently for his regime to collapse, Gadhafi's obstinancy was being undercut right out from beneath him. As the the military was escalating its attack on unarmed citizens inside Libya, something else--something rather astonishing--was happening. Rather than putting up a united front to the world against the opposition, the government showed itself to consist of men whose participation in Gadhafi's government was not unconditional. Could it be that the Nuremburg verdicts against the Nazis in 1948--the ruling that blind obedience is not excuse for even government offiicals and employees being held accountable--was finally being heard?  That is to say, might it be that in addition to conscience, the emerging judicial enforcement at the International Criminal Court was having a slight (but significant) impact even as crimes against humanity were being committed?Libya's former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, Abdel-Moneim al-Houni, who a day earlier resigned from his post to side with protesters, issued a statement demanding Gadhafi "be put on trial along with his aides, security and military commanders over the mass killings in Libya." Were the former ambassador's warning having a real impact in real-time on government offiicals, this would evince real progress for the human race. Specifically, the realization by oificials while they are in power that they might be held accountable for their role in harming their own people could, with the help of conscience, mitigate how far a regime can go in "punishing" its people for their natural proclivity to protest injustice.  There is some evidence that government officials who might have held tough a decade earlier were having second thoughts and, crucially, acting on them.

For example, as the Libyan military was trouncing on marching mourners, Justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil reportedly resigned from his post to protest the "excessive use of force against unarmed protesters." Also, at least two Libyan air force pilots defected to Malta rather than shoot on defenseless citizens. Lastly, Libyan diplomats abroad explicitly backed off supporting the country's dictator. For example, a Libyan diplomat in China, Hussein el-Sadek el-Mesrati, told Al-Jazeera, "I resigned from representing the government of Mussolini and Hitler." Even more astonishing, Libya's ambassadors at the United Nations called for Gadhafi to step down as the country's ruler. Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi said that if Gadhafi does not relinquish power, "the Libyan people will get rid of him." The staff of Libya's mission to the United Nations declared allegiance to the people of Libya, instead of to Gadhafi, a spokesman said on the day on which Libyan jet fighters turned on the citizens they were to protect. Traditionally, it has been thought that governments are the members of international bodies such as the UN.  That it might actually be the people of a country who are represented in a confederation would be revolutionary (this is typically thought to be in part the case in a federal government, rather than in an alliance or strictly international organization). Ambassadors representing a regime conditionally goes along with al-Houni's statement even on the day when bullets sprayed on the Libyan people from the air, "Gadhafi's regime is now in the trash of history because he betrayed his nation and his people." In other words, Gadhafi's regime had already lost its legitimacy, and thus its right to represent the people abroad (and at home). 

To be sure, autocratic regimes are not necessarily populated by people of concience or even foresight (e.g., concerning possible prosecution at the ICC or even domestically). When Gandhi was asked how non-violent non-cooperation could ever hope to work against an invading and occupying Nazi force, he acknowledged that many would be harmed for the sake of truth, but ultimately the dictators are already destined to the trash-bin of history. Progress comes by painfully slow steps in this world of flawed humanity.  One novelist on the American Civil War observed, if we are angels, then surely we are killer angels. Was it some cruel joke? one might ask God.  Why?  Yet if the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East could teach us--meaning all of us--anything, it might be that we, acting together, can push the boulder a bit further up the hill. We need no longer accept the existence of regimes that betray their people, and in February of 2011 the world realized its efficacy in making this so. It is as if in one voice we finally exclaimed, "No, we will not go softly into the night. We will stand up and they will back down!"

As the people in the Middle East were pushing up against the dead weight of history, the rest of us were with them--indeed, being transfixed and humbled by them as they marched against dazed tyrants who had not yet realized that their day had already passed quietly into the night to be replaced by the first light of another dawn. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a progression in the eternal recurrence of night and day.

Source:

"Gadhafi: 'I'm in Tripoli, not Venezuela," February 22, 2011. NBCNews.com.