By Gideon Rachman
Published: December 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: December 8 2008
19:13
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html
I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot
to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering
in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I
think the formation of some sort of world government is
plausible.
A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation
between nations. It would be an entity with state-like
characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has
already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which
could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands
of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy
military force.
So could the European model go global? There are three reasons
for thinking that it might.
First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues
facing national governments are international in nature: there is
global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on
terror”.
Second, it could be done. The transport and communications
revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an
eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in
human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr
Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some
point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time
horizon for the average newspaper column.
But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere
suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that.
The financial
crisis and climate
change are pushing national governments towards
global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that
are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.
Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the
Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and
treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued
that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its
power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of
conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.”
The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the
fact that he has appointed
Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as
America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the
cabinet.
A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is
offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity
project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the
man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the
president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just
emerged.
The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner
for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change
agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation
of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had
pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call
upon them.
These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their
rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political
sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing
language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses
the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for
international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding
phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks
about “global governance” rather than world government.
But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is
going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy
of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for
global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global
government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core
of the international financial crisis is that we have global
financial markets and no global rule of law”.
So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since
homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument,
an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world
government.
But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that
some sort of world government might emerge over the next century,
any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a
painful, slow process.
There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a
lack of will and determination on the part of national, political
leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in
peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next
election, at home.
But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why
making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in
the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the
idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating
defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have
been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed
fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and
politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to
the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only
when it is anti-democratic.
The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be
international in nature, but the average citizen’s political
identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this
problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked
away in a safe at the UN.