At 12:55 PM 10/20/2002 -0700 d.brin wrote:
>Again I ask, do you envision Planet Earth still being divided into
>completely separate sovereign nations with capricious right-of-war
>and subject to no overall legal authority, say, 1,000 years from now?
>When you squint at our future, sending starships across the cosmos
>and dealing with aliens, do you honestly envision that?
Actually, I find a future similar to this more likely than you might think.
Throughout human history, it is competition that has driven us to our
greatest heights. I would expect any world government, like monopolies,
like yea, the Roman Empire, to become weak and stagnant. Thus, if and
until humanity makes contact with alien races, if we truly do send
startships out into the cosmos, I think that it will likely be the result
of competition. After all, the Cold War brought us the landing on the
moon, and the Pax Americana brought us Space Station Alpha.
>Given the frequency of irrational tyrants andzealots and the
>proliferation of WMD, do you envision such a situation holding even
>50 years?
Indeed, I believe that unless the US acts now to make the world safe for
democracy, I envision the proliferation of WMD over the next 50 years to
create a truly unstable and dangerous situation.
>If not, then how do you envision a world of law coming about? If not
>via the UN, then in what way?
>
>Yes, Americans feel a reflexive fear of such a coalescence... and for
>dozens of very good reasons! I share those reservations. Indeed,
>out of all the types of WorldGov we might get, only a very narrow set
>would seem acceptable to me.
>
>I've taken more time than I should. Reductio: If you don't like the
>UN, what would you suggest instead?
First of all, just because the world needs a multilateral "rule of law" in
the long term, I do not agree that the United States needs to work directly
towards this goal in the short term. Indeed, I would say that the world,
in its current state, is completely incapable of assembling such a
mulitlateral "rule of law." This is because the world, right now, is
principally composed of elements that do not have the rules of law, do not
have free markets, and are burdened by high levels of corruption.
Without the rule of law, free markets, and relatively modest levels of
corruption, such a multilateral "rule of law" is impossible. Thus, the
most important thing for the United States to do in the current situation,
is to create a push for the expansion of democracy around the world, so as
to create a world situation whereby the risks you cite might be minimized,
as quickly as possible.
Additionally, I believe that the United Nations is singularly ill-suited
for forming the multilateral "rule of law" in the long long term. I would
assign a greater probability to the rest of the world apply to join the
United States in gradual accession than the United Nations producing such a
result. This is because the United Nations was designed as a
talking-shop among all nations, not as the foundation for world government.
After all, this organization was founded in the aftermath of WWII, in the
opening stanzas of the Cold War. The goal was hardly eventual world
governance - the goal was to prevent us from annihiliating ourselves.
Thus, the UN was founded upon a fiction that is well-suited for the
prevention of self-annihilation, but compeltely imappropriate as the
foundation of world governance - that of all States being equal.
If there is one lesson of his brave new world of pravalent WMD's that we
are just now entering, it is that not all States are equal. Some States
act responsibly and with a predominant tendency towards the general good.
Other States starve their citizens of food and medicine in order to pursue
weapons of ever greater destructive power with which to threaten their
neighbors. They are not equals.
So, what alternative is there? Well, if I had to choose an
extant-organization, I would pick NATO. Even moreso than the EU, NATO has
been the true leader in integrating the former Warsaw Pact States into
Western Civilization. Moreover, as you have often noted, NATO was the
architecht behind one of the greatest human achievements of the 20th
Century - the interventions in the breakup of Yugoslavia. In
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and FYR of Macedonia, NATO repeatedly
demonstrated the ability of Western Civilization to affirm that some States
are rogues, and their actions - even within their own borders - will not be
tolerated as affronts to all of humanity. Meanwhile, the United Nations
was utterly paralyzed by inaction.
More broadly speaking, Madeline Albright has previously proposed a
"Democracy Club" of nations. Once that idea's time has come, it would no
doubt be a very good one. However, that idea will *never* come, so long
as everyone keeps playing the United Nations' game. Thus, the US would do
the world a tremendous favor by calling a spade a spade, pointing out the
UN's utter limitations in dealing with a situation like the present one,
and preparing the world to move on to the successor of the UN, just as the
UN succeeded the League of Nations.
JDG
P.S. It is no accident that the most effective multilateral rule of law we
have in the world today - the World Trade Organization - was constituted
almost entirely outside the UN architecture.
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
People everywhere want to say what they think; choose who will govern
them; worship as they please; educate their children -- male and female;
own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor. These values of
freedom are right and true for every person, in every society -- and the
duty of protecting these values against their enemies is the common
calling of freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages.
-US National Security Policy, 2002
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