THE URGENT NEED FOR WORLD GOVERNMENT

by Prof. Errol E. Harris

For more than fifty years I have been stressing in books, articles, and letters to editors, the urgent necessity for the establishment of an appropriately constituted democratic World Federal Government. I have been drawing attention to the mounting threats to human survival of nuclear holocaust, climate change resulting from global warming caused by human activities, the loss of bio-diversity, and the general deterioration of the environment. Now Chuck Woolery [in “Biothreats Necessitate New Thinking about Funding for Global Institutions” in the Autumn 2003 T.D.W.F.] has extended this list with the appalling menace of biological and cyber self-replicating weapons. As if this were not enough, he adds the security threat from economic instability from the free flow of capital. These evils are, we may hope, not yet irremediable, but none of them can be effectively reduced except by global measures which cannot be ensured by anything less than a World Government administration with genuine legislative, executive and juristic systems.

To me, Chuck Woolery seems rather unduly sanguine about the probability that these "horrific scenarios… will persuade pragmatic individuals into thinking about the benefits of harmonized and enforceable global law" (undeniably necessary as that is). The international scene, with the side-stepping of the United Nations by the United States administration and the British Prime Minister, the failure of the Rio Agenda 21 and the consequent Tokyo and Johannesburg Summits, the futility of efforts to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, the difficulties of pacifying and stabilizing the Middle East, and the general in effectiveness of the United Nations, hardly seems to indicate that there are many "pragmatic individuals" at all cognizant of the need for the one practical precondition of coping successfully with the problems of global terrorism, global warming and the other above-mentioned horrors threatening our immediate future.

That precondition has been clearly and accurately stated by Eric Schultz: "The only way to ensure the future success and continued survival of humanity is by joining together to form a federally structured, super-national governing system capable of democratically creating and justly administering enforceable world law." The indispensable condition is the Rule of Law world-wide in place of the present unavoidable rule of military force – unavoidable as long as nations claim and exercise their assumed right of sovereign independence, which sets them above any superior legislative. While nations remain sovereign they can defy the resolutions of the Security Council (as Israel, Saddam Hussain, and others have done), and cannot be brought to book except by resort to military force, itself a violation of the Rule of Law and always with the risk of escalation and universal conflagration. What is needed is a law that can be enforced upon individuals, not states, by a World Police Force.

Even such developments as have been hailed as advances in the direction of world government, such as the International Criminal Court, have been frustrated by the intransigence of sovereign states like the US which refuse to recognize its jurisdiction over their citizens. The International Court of Justice is subject to the same limitations, for its jurisdiction can be, and has been, rejected or ignored by states that consider its decision contrary to their national interests. Similarly, the US and Russia are hesitant, or refuse outright, to ratify the Kyoto agreement. The new institution, as well as the old (and for that matter, the U.N. Charter itself) are simply international "agreements," which like all treaties, even when signed and sealed, can be renounced at will, or are liable to be ignored or wantonly violated by their signatories whenever their perceived national interests are at stake.

A serious obstacle to persuasion of "pragmatic individuals," the general public and their political leaders, of the urgent need for the establishment of democratic World Federal Government is the prevailing concentration by most World Federalist organizations on the so-called "reform" of the U.N. (whether as a sufficient remedy to its obvious shortcomings, or as a first step towards world federation). The suggested reforms, even if they could be achieved, would not improve the situation or make a significant difference to the effectiveness of the United Nations. Alleged democratization through a popularly elected assembly advisory to the General Assembly, which is itself no more than an advisory body, can have little or no greater influence on the Security Council than at present. Increasing the membership of the Security Council will not deter the permanent members from exercising their veto. Nor will any of these suggested reforms prevent sovereign states from defying the resolutions of the Council whenever they consider it in their national interests to do so. No reform short of the elimination from the Charter of Article 2 and its conversion into a genuine Constitution for World Government will be of any use. Even if what is being proposed could be regarded as a first step towards that end, the desired process would be far too slow. The alarming bio-threats described by Chuck Woolery will not wait for unlikely gradual political developments, nor will global warming, which scientists warn us has probably already proceeded so far as to be irreversible.

Surely the obvious first step should be for all advocates of World Federalism to endorse and ratify the Constitution for the Federation of Earth (drawn up by the World Constitution and Parliament Association) pending its review and amendment -- for which it provides -- as thought necessary by an established World Parliament. This, after all, is the natural first and most practical step toward what all world federalists aim to achieve; and unless and until the World Federalist organizations speak with one voice there will be little prospect of their persuading others of the need for world government. The objection some have made to this Constitution, that it has not been written by a democratically elected constituent assembly, is irrelevant. What makes a constitution democratic is not its authorship, but its willing acceptance by a popularly elected representative body of those who will be subject to its provisions. To have the draft constitution ready and available for ratification by governments and peopls is clearly the first practical necessity.

In 1945 the conference held at Dublin, New Hampshire [link], considering the prospects of atomic warfare, declared that world federation capable of preventing war and with genuine legislative power, responsible executive, and adequate tribunals to enforce enacted law was the sole means of averting global catastrophe. There was (declared the delegates) no time to be lost -- "the necessity of immediate action is urgent. There is not a moment to lose." Since then we have lost more than half a century! If we delay any longer we shall lose everything.