Manned and Guided Missiles and a Democratic World Federation

by John O. Sutter, President WFA/NCa

The scenes of the plane-bombings of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on 11 September were heart-wrenching, but call for a well thought-out response. First, let's understand the technology involved. Here were piloted latter-day cruise missiles, more destructive than the V-2 missiles of the Nazis against England during World War II. But they were not the unmanned guided missiles for which a defense proposed by military planners and misguided political supporters in the United States -- a version of Star Wars -- would waste hundreds of billions of citizen-taxpayer dollars. We should write finis once and for all on this backward-looking strategy befitting the French builders of the Maginot Line before World War II.

At the end of World War II, World Federalists and world governmentalists, with the Student Federalists as the advance guard, called for a democratic federal system of governing the world. Like others, they were disappointed in the United Nations Organization, designed and hobbled by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and, to a lesser extent, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom -- the three victors of World War II, who gave their own countries plus the Republics of China and France the privilege to kill by veto any action in the UN Security Council with which any one of them disagreed. There is growing agreement that the Security Council must become more representative, and the absolute veto must be discarded.

Because of the devastating danger from the atom bomb, many World Federalists initially took a minimalist position and called for a world government limited to legislating, executing, and adjudicating world law, primarily to internationalize the control of nuclear energy for the benefit of the people of the world. Others, especially the Student Federalists, insisted also that decolonialization should be given high priority and speeded up so that all peoples throughout the world could benefit politically, economically, and socially.

However, just as the signing of the agreement by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1939 lay the groundwork for the outbreak of World War II by dividing up Poland between the two totalitarian powers, signs of the Cold War were already in evidence during the San Francisco Conference in the spring of 1945, when again the truculent Molotov was already insisting on agreement for the Soviet Union’s establishing a Communist puppet regime in Poland as part of its plan to occupy, impose regimes, even annex part of virtually every country of eastern and central Europe. While one global war led to the birth of the Student Federalists, the Cold War and the dimmed prospects resulting therefrom led to the demise of the movement.

By the end of 1991, thanks inadvertently to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika, the Soviet Empire was no more. Nevertheless, the nuclear arsenals remain great and are more widespread than ever before, while chemical and biological warfare are omnipresent threats.

Reacting to the recent terrorism, cool heads should prevail and understand that this is the product of a religious warlord with followers in many countries, not the act of a particular country. Accordingly, war against one or more countries with possibly innumerable innocent civilian victims is NOT the answer. Instead, a police action against the persons responsible for it should be the response. In a governed entity under the rule of law, that would mean sending in suitably armed police to apprehend the suspected criminals, trying them in a court of justice, and carrying out appropriate judgements.

To help forestall such crimes in the near future Americans should support an all-volunteer United Nations police force. This year on 8 March, Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Amo Houghton (R-NY) introduced the U.N. Rapid Deployment Act of 2001. Concerned citizens should urge their Members of Congress not just to support it, but also to co-sponsor this important bill.

Secondly, the United States Senate should ratify and work to strengthen the International Criminal Court, so that international criminals and other perpetrators of massive crimes against humanity like Slobodan Milosevic (currently being tried at an ad hoc tribunal in the Hague), Saddam Hussain, Fodaj Sankoh of Sierra Leone, Jonas Savimbi of Angola, and now Osama bin Laden, the Arab head of the terrorist fraternity al-Qaeda now hiding in Afghanistan, et al. can be tried for their crimes.

This means encouraging Senators to reject S. 857, the Helms-Delay egregiously misnamed "American Servicemembers' Protection Act, " which would subvert relations with other countries - including allies - who work with the I.C.C. Instead, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Representative William Delahunt (D-MA), our Tom Lantos (D-CA), and again Amo Houghton are championing the desires of the American public with the American Citizen's Protection and War Criminals Prosecution Act of 2001 (S. 1296 and H.R. 2699), which encourages positive engagement with other countries and the I.C.C. Concerned citizens should encourage their Members of Congress to support, if not co-sponsor, these bills.

At the same time, consideration should be given to promoting the establishment of transitional authorities -- administered initially by the U.N. or the European Union -- employing dedicated local and internationally-recruited persons, to reestablish peace and ultimately bring prosperity to failed countries around the world whose oppressed people badly need protection from political hardship, e.g., Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Tibet, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and many other African countries.

It is time for World Federalists to strive again to mobilize opinion -- world opinion -- to appreciate the need for a system of governing the Earth that is democratic and accountable to citizens at all levels -- local, provincial (and at other sub-national regions), country, continental (and at other supranational regions), and the world.

Of course, there will be opposition and attempts at subversion by jingoists, religious fanatics, and other extremists of various colors. (The U.S.A. has an increasing number of homegrown anti-government nihilists and other hate-mongers.) But it is imperative that we get our message out so that the People will realize that it is only by guaranteeing democratic governments in a global federal system, can terrorism be overcome, and peace and the prospect of prosperity for all be.