by David Gallup | Feb 13, 2023 | World Citizen
Classified documents, top secret files, spy balloons, clandestine surveillance. What kind of world are we living in where we hide information about and from each other, spying to get the upper hand? Why do leaders and legislators feel compelled to keep government secrets from the public?
In the current political system of independent, sovereign states, national governments seek to exact a competitive edge over perceived rivals by hiding information, spying, and governing secretively. Day-to-day governance becomes a zero-sum game. Governmental success comes at the expense of human interdependence, turning our fellow humans into foes rather than friends.
What are the costs of keeping secrets?
Nation-state secrets and spying come with economic, environmental, political, and social costs.
Nearly all countries have their own spies, covert agencies, and departments of “defense,” costing billions of dollars to conduct “intelligence” operations and keep secrets. Furthermore, national governments feel compelled to spend countless billions on embassies, consulates, border walls, and border guards for “national security.” Consider the two trillion dollars total that national governments spend on preparing for and waging wars every year.
Weapons manufacturers, military contractors, government officials, and wealthy shareholders reap the profit from producing and selling tools of deceit and destruction. Meanwhile, a billion people are starving, and millions must flee their homes to survive. Moreover, war preparation and clandestine operations are some of the most devastating despoilers of the environment.
To outmaneuver each other, national governments steadfastly control resources and data, refusing to share information with anyone they consider an outsider. Keeping secrets hampers leaders from governing effectively, causing them to focus on their nation instead of humanity’s survival.
State secrets for “national security” and “public order” allow governments to act extra-judicially and to violate human rights with impunity. Hiding information leads to public mistrust in government. When secrets take precedence over transparency, governing decisions are made without analysis, oversight, or consent. The public is precluded from participating in decision making and mistrust of government grows.
Secrets and the rhetoric of divisiveness – the “us versus them” approach – also take a psychological toll. Overzealous national pride turns our neighbors into enemies and ignites a mindset of fear, distrust, jealousy, and anger. We are constantly looking behind our backs, rather than looking forward.
What are the benefits of humans sharing information instead of privileging secrets?
Human and natural resources would be better spent on environmental, scientific, and technological advancements than on secrets, spying, and information suppression.
Governments, as representatives of the world’s people, could focus on information sharing and unifying humanity. Humans could work together to overcome the divisions that hold us back, rather than maintain nearly 200 separate national departments of defense, and science research, environmental, and intelligence agencies all seeking similar data and advancements. Access to more data would enhance governmental decision-making and lead to quicker scientific, health, and technological progress.
By encouraging the open exchange of information, we would be better equipped to improve understanding among diverse cultures and governing styles, to interact more peaceably and to share resources more equitably. With transparency and accountability as top priorities, we could build a framework of world security.
Resources and funds, historically tied to the military-industrial complex, could be used to feed, house, and educate people. Human and planetary health could take precedence over conflict among people and contamination of the Earth. Global collaboration is far preferable to war or cloak-and-dagger diplomacy.
How can we govern with compassion rather than deception?
Sharing ideas, solutions, technologies, and data would help humanity deal with global problems that can only be handled at the global level – problems that national governments cannot resolve on their own with hushed voices behind closed doors. Eight billion minds are better than one.
People united under one citizenship would see each other as friends with common goals that they implement together. Democratic world federation and world citizenship would provide a holistic framework for uniting our political governing structures and for uniting us as humans. World citizenship and government could liberate us from the shackles of a divided world.
Above all, governments could act like friends do.
Friends are free because they do not compel, restrain, or confine each other. Friends do not keep secrets to feel special or better. Friends share their concerns. Friends are willing to consider others’ perspectives. Friends have empathy and love for one another.
The words “friend” and “free” come from the same Proto-Indo-European root which can mean both to love and to be free.
Friendship, in place of secrecy, would free us to achieve a peaceful, just, sustainable, and united world.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 31, 2023 | Global Justice, Human Rights
The Ukraine War has provided a challenging time for the nations of the world and, particularly, for international law.
Since antiquity, far-sighted thinkers have worked on developing rules of behavior among nations in connection with war, diplomacy, economic relations, human rights, international crime, global communications, and the environment. Defined as international law, this “law of nations” is based on treaties or, in some cases, international custom. Some of the best-known of these international legal norms are outlined in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions.
International Law and Ukraine
The UN Charter is particularly relevant to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Article 2, Section 4, perhaps the most important and widely-recognized item in the Charter, prohibits the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” In Article 51, the Charter declares that “nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.”
Ukraine, of course, although partially or totally controlled by Russia or the Soviet Union during portions of its past, has been an independent, sovereign nation since 1991. That year, the Soviet Union, in the process of disintegration, authorized Ukraine to hold a referendum on whether to become part of the Russian Federation or to become independent. In a turnout by 84 percent of the Ukrainian public, some 90 percent of participants voted for independence. Accordingly, Ukraine was recognized as an independent nation. Three years later, in the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine’s government officially agreed to turn over its large nuclear arsenal to Russia, while the Russian government officially pledged not only to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine,” but to “refrain from the threat or use of force” against that country. In 1997, Ukraine and Russia signed the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership, in which they pledged to respect one another’s territorial integrity.
The Russian Military Assaults of 2014 and 2022
Despite these actions, which have the status of international law, the Russian government, in 2014, used its military might to seize and annex Crimea in southern Ukraine and to arm pro-Russian separatist groups in the nation’s eastern region, the Donbas. Although a Russian veto blocked a UN Security Council rebuke, the UN General Assembly, on March 27, 2014, passed a resolution (“Territorial Integrity of Ukraine”) by a vote of 100 nations to 11, with 58 nations abstaining, condemning the Russian military seizure and annexation of Crimea. Ignoring this condemnation of its behavior by the world organization, the Russian government incorporated Crimea into the Russian Federation and, in August, dispatched its military forces into the Donbas to bolster the beleaguered separatists. Over the following years, Russia’s armed forces played the major role in battling the Ukrainian government’s troops defending eastern Ukraine.
Then, on February 24, 2022, the Russian government, in the most massive military operation in Europe since World War II, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although UN Security Council action was again blocked by a Russian veto, the UN General Assembly took up the issue. On March 2, by a vote of 141 countries to 5 (with 35 abstentions), it demanded the immediate and complete withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukrainian territory. Asked for its opinion on the legality of the Russian invasion, the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest judicial authority, ruled on March 16, by a vote of 13 to 2 (with Russia’s judge casting one of the two negative votes) that Russia should “immediately suspend” its invasion of Ukraine.
The Illegality of Russia’s Annexation of Ukrainian Territory
In late September 2022, when the Kremlin announced that a ceremony would take place launching a process of Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “any annexation of a state’s territory by another state resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the principles of the UN Charter and international law.” Denouncing the proposed annexation, Guterres declared:
- It cannot be reconciled with the international legal framework.
- It stands against everything the international community is meant to stand for.
- It flouts the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
- It is a dangerous escalation.
- It has no place in the modern world.
Nevertheless, the following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an accord to annex the regions, declaring that Russia would never give them up and would defend them by any means available.
In turn, the nations of the world weighed in on the Russian action. On October 12, 2022, the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 143 countries to 5 (with 35 abstentions), called on all nations to refuse to recognize Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” of Ukrainian land.
Law Without Enforcement
What, then, after surveying this sorry record, are we to think about the value of international law? It is certainly useful for defining the rules of international behavior―rules that are essential to a civilized world. Addressing the UN Security Council recently, the UN Secretary General declared that “the rule of law is all that stands between peace and stability” and “a brutal struggle for power and resources.” Even so, although it is better to have agreed-upon rules rather than none at all, it would be better yet―indeed, much better―to have them enforced.
And therein lies the fundamental problem: Despite agreement among nations on the principles of international law, the major entities providing global governance―the United Nations and the International Court of Justice―lack the power to enforce them. Given this weakness at the global level, nations remain free to launch wars of aggression, including wars of territorial conquest.
Surely the Russian invasion of Ukraine should convince us of the need to strengthen global governance, thereby providing a firmer foundation for the enforcement of international law.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 18, 2023 | Disarmament
The development and the deployment of nuclear weapons are usually based on the assumption that they enhance national security. But, in fact, as this powerful study of nuclear policy convincingly demonstrates, nuclear weapons move nations toward the brink of destruction.
The basis for this conclusion is the post-World War II nuclear arms race and, especially, the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. At the height of the crisis, top officials from the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union narrowly avoided annihilating a substantial portion of the human race by what former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an important participant in the events, called “plain dumb luck.”
The author of this cautionary account, Martin Sherwin, who died shortly after its publication, was certainly well-qualified to tell this chilling story. A professor of history at George Mason University, Sherwin was the author of the influential A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies and the co-author, with Kai Bird, of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which, in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Perhaps the key factor in generating these three scholarly works was Sherwin’s service as a U.S. Navy junior intelligence officer who was ordered to present top secret war plans to his commander during the Cuban missile crisis.
The Rise of Nuclear Weapons in International Affairs
In Gambling with Armageddon, Sherwin shows deftly how nuclear weapons gradually became a key part of international relations. Although Harry Truman favored some limitations on the integration of these weapons into U.S. national security strategy, his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, significantly expanded their role. According to the Eisenhower administration’s NSC 162/2, the U.S. government would henceforth “consider nuclear weapons as available for use as other munitions.” At Eisenhower’s direction, Sherwin notes, “nuclear weapons were no longer an element of American military power; they were its primary instrument.”
Sherwin adds that, although the major purpose of the new U.S. “massive retaliation” strategy “was to frighten Soviet leaders and stymie their ambitions,” its “principal result . . . was to establish a blueprint for Nikita Khrushchev to create his own ‘nuclear brinkmanship.’” John F. Kennedy’s early approach to U.S. national security policy―supplementing U.S. nuclear superiority with additional conventional military forces and sponsoring a CIA-directed invasion of Cuba―merely bolstered Khrushchev’s determination to contest U.S. power in world affairs. Consequently, resumption of Soviet nuclear weapons testing and a Soviet-American crisis over Berlin followed.
A Crisis Emerges Over Cuba
Indeed, dismayed by U.S. nuclear superiority and feeling disrespected by the U.S. government, Khrushchev decided to secretly deploy medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba. As Sherwin observes, the Soviet leader sought thereby “to protect Cuba, to even the balance of nuclear weapons and nuclear fear, and to reinforce his leverage to resolve the West Berlin problem.” Assuming that the missiles would not be noticed until their deployment was completed, Khrushchev thought that the Kennedy administration, faced with a fait accompli, would have no choice but to accept them. Khrushchev was certainly not expecting a nuclear war.
But that is what nearly occurred. In the aftermath of the U.S. government’s discovery of the missile deployment in Cuba, the Joint Chiefs of Staff demanded the bombing and invasion of the island and were supported by most members of ExComm, an ad hoc group of Kennedy’s top advisors during the crisis. At the time, they did not realize that the Soviet government had already succeeded in delivering 164 nuclear warheads to Cuba and, therefore, that a substantial number of the ballistic missiles on the island were already operational. Also, the 42,000 Soviet troops in Cuba were armed with tactical nuclear weapons and had been given authorization to use them to repel an invasion. As Fidel Castro later remarked: “It goes without saying that in the event of an invasion, we would have had nuclear war.”
Initially, among all of Kennedy’s advisors, only Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, suggested employing a political means―rather than a military one―to secure the removal of the missiles. Although Kennedy personally disliked Stevenson, he recognized the wisdom of his UN ambassador’s approach and gradually began to adopt his ideas. “The question really is,” the president told his hawkish advisors, “what action we take which lessens the chance of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure.” Therefore, Kennedy tempered his initial impulse to order rapid military action and, instead, adopted a plan for a naval blockade (“quarantine”) of Cuba, thereby halting the arrival of additional Soviet missiles and creating time for negotiations with Khrushchev for removal of the missiles already deployed.
U.S. military leaders, among other ostensible “wise men,” were appalled by what they considered the weakness of the blockade plan, though partially appeased by Kennedy’s assurances that, if it failed to secure the desired results within a seven-day period, a massive U.S. military attack on the island would follow. Indeed, as Sherwin reveals, at the beginning of October, before the discovery of the missiles, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were already planning for an invasion of Cuba and looking for an excuse to justify it.
Sliding Toward Disaster
Even though Khrushchev, like Kennedy, regarded the blockade as a useful opportunity to negotiate key issues, they quickly lost control of the volatile situation.
For example, U.S. military officers took the U.S.-Soviet confrontation to new heights. Acting on his own initiative, General Thomas Power, the head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, advanced its nuclear forces to DEFCON 2, just one step short of nuclear war―the only occasion when that level of nuclear alert was ever instituted. He also broadcast the U.S. alert level “in the clear,” ensuring that the Russians would intercept it. They did, and promptly raised their nuclear alert level to the same status.
In addition, few participants in the crisis seemed to know exactly what should be done if a Soviet ship did not respect the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Should the U.S. Navy demand to board it? Fire upon it? Furthermore, at Castro’s orders, a Soviet surface-to-air battery in Cuba shot down an American U-2 surveillance flight, killing the pilot. Khrushchev was apoplectic at the provocative action, while the Kennedy administration faced the quandary of how to respond to it.
A particularly dangerous incident occurred in the Sargasso Sea, near Cuba. To bolster the Soviet defense of Cuba, four Soviet submarines, each armed with a torpedo housing a 15-kiloton nuclear warhead, had been dispatched to the island. After a long, harrowing trip through unusually stormy seas, these vessels were badly battered when they arrived off Cuba. Cut off from communication with Moscow, their crews had no idea whether the United States and the Soviet Union were already at war.
All they did know was that a fleet of U.S. naval warships and warplanes was apparently attacking one of the stricken Soviet submarines, using the unorthodox (and unauthorized) tactic of forcing it to surface by flinging hand grenades into its vicinity. One of the Soviet crew members recalled that “it felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel while somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer.” Given the depletion of the submarine’s batteries and the tropical waters, temperatures ranged in the submarine between 113 and 149 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was foul, fresh water was in short supply, and crew members were reportedly “dropping like dominoes.” Unhinged by the insufferable conditions below deck and convinced that his submarine was under attack, the vessel’s captain ordered his weapons officer to assemble the nuclear torpedo for action. “We’re gonna blast them now!” he screamed. We will die, but we will sink them all―we will not become the shame of the fleet.”
At this point, though, Captain Vasily Arkhipov, a young Soviet brigade chief of staff who had been randomly assigned to the submarine, intervened. Calming the distraught captain, he eventually convinced him that the apparent military attack, plus subsequent machine gun fire from U.S. Navy aircraft, probably constituted no more than a demand to surface. And so they did. Arkhipov’s action, Sherwin notes, saved not only the lives of the submarine crew, “but also the lives of thousands of U.S. sailors and millions of innocent civilians who would have been killed in the nuclear exchanges that certainly would have followed from the destruction” that the “nuclear torpedo would have wreaked upon those U.S. Navy vessels.”
Although the Crisis is Resolved Peacefully, the Lesson is Lost
Meanwhile, recognizing that the situation was fast slipping out of their hands, Kennedy and Khrushchev did some tense but serious bargaining. Ultimately, they agreed that Khrushchev would remove the missiles, while Kennedy would issue a public pledge not to invade Cuba. Moreover, Kennedy would remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey―reciprocal action that made sense to both men, although, for political reasons, Kennedy insisted on keeping the missile swap a secret. Thus, the missile crisis ended with a diplomatic solution.
Ironically, continued secrecy about the Cuba-Turkey missile swap, combined with illusions of smooth Kennedy administration calibrations of power spun by ExComm participants and the mass communications media, led to a long-term, comforting, and triumphalist picture of the missile crisis. Consequently, most Americans ended up with the impression that Kennedy stood firm in his demands, while Khrushchev “blinked.” It was a hawkish “lesson”―and a false one. As Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis . . . is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”
Although numerous books have been written about the Cuban missile crisis, Gambling with Armageddon ranks as the best of them. Factually detailed, clearly and dramatically written, and grounded in massive research, it is a work of enormous power and erudition. As such, it represents an outstanding achievement by one of the pre-eminent U.S. historians.
Like Sherwin’s other works, Gambling with Armageddon also grapples with one of the world’s major problems: the prospect of nuclear annihilation. At the least, it reveals that, while nuclear weapons exist, the world remains in peril. On a deeper level, it suggests the need to move beyond considerations of national security to international security, including the abolition of nuclear weapons and the peaceful resolution of conflict among nations.
Securing these goals might necessitate a long journey, but Sherwin’s writings remind us that, to safeguard human survival, there’s really no alternative to pressing forward with it.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 1, 2023 | Disarmament, World Federation
Russia’s war upon Ukraine should remind us that violent international conflicts not only persist, but constitute a plague upon the world.
Over thousands of years, wars have brought immense suffering to people around the globe. In addition to the widespread annihilation of human life, wars have produced vast material losses, including the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, entire cities, the environment, and much of what people value as civilization. They have also channeled enormous financial resources into military buildups that, even if not employed in battle, deprive other public and private programs of adequate attention and funding. Also, since World War II, when nuclear weapons were first developed and used with terrible effect, the means of waging war have entered a new dimension, giving it the power to destroy virtually all life on earth.
Although, in recent centuries, many people have lamented war’s squandering of blood and treasure, as well as the suicidal nature of modern war, they have not yet found an effective way to stop it.
Public Efforts to Avoid War
One popular response to war is isolationism, which is designed to keep one’s nation out of the conflict. But this policy (labeled “America First” in the United States) ignores the suffering of other people and, of course, does nothing to stop a war elsewhere. In addition, it is often accompanied by a military buildup of one’s own nation, a policy that has a poor track record when it comes to preventing war.
Pacifism is on a higher ethical plane, for it deplores the horrors produced by militarism and war. Furthermore, if most people around the world accepted the absolute pacifist position (which rejects military force in all circumstances), pacifists might be able to prevent wars from occurring or continuing. But this is not the case and, given widespread public support for “just wars” (including defense against invasion), seems unlikely to become so. Nonviolent resistance, a form of radical pacifism, has greater potentiality as an alternative to war or surrender, although its full promise has yet to be realized in coping with international war.
Effective Governance and Violent Behavior
By contrast, within nations there are alternatives to violent behavior that, although not always totally effective, do reduce it substantially. Legislative bodies enact laws, while police and judicial institutions enforce these laws. Unfortunately, on the global level, these institutions are so rudimentary and limited in power that they fail to produce an effective check upon violence. Thus, on the national level, governments can restrain violence by individuals, mobs, or insurrectionists. But, on the international level, things proceed much as they did in the American Wild West of yesteryear. In this state of international anarchy, strong nations all too often threaten or wage war upon the weak, and nations often feel insecure unless they maintain a substantial capacity for war.
In short, while nations have established useful governance at the national level, the world lacks effective governance at the international level. As a result, when nations have an international conflict, they are tempted, in the absence of the force of law, to invoke the law of force.
Strengthening Global Governance
Even so, the nations of the world could unite in the interest of their common security and bolster institutions of global governance. To strengthen the UN Security Council, they could abolish the veto and substitute a rotating membership for the permanent membership of Russia, China, the United States, Britain, and France. To strengthen the General Assembly, they could give it additional legislative power, including the power to fund the United Nations through taxation. To enhance the democratic nature of the United Nations, they could establish a world parliament, with representatives elected by the public rather than selected by national governments. Additional power could also be granted to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court of Justice to conduct investigations, deliver judgments, and enforce their rulings.
These kinds of reform measures have been advocated for years by the World Federalist Movement/Institute for Global Policy and by its U.S. member organization, Citizens for Global Solutions. Strengthened governmental authority on the global level is also supported by world public opinion.
A stronger array of international institutions is not a cure-all for international war. But, like the enforcement of gun control within nations, it would significantly reduce the number of violent incidents. It would help prevent international aggression. And it would save the world from nuclear war by enforcing the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. After thousands of years of blood and plunder, topped off in recent decades by the looming danger of a nuclear holocaust, isn’t it time to give strengthened global governance a try?
Nations of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your wars.
by Jacopo DeMarinis | Dec 23, 2022 | World Federation
A world government is in the making, and we desperately need one. Why?
The world today is in turmoil, and our current global governance infrastructure (the UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), etc.) has proven itself unable to rise to the challenge, despite its best efforts. The undemocratic and ineffective UN Security Council, where five permanent members wield a veto that can block any binding resolution related to peace and security, routinely fails to prevent international political conflict. For example, Russia, a permanent member of the Council, has repeatedly blocked resolutions related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Individual countries, especially the US, Russia, and China, are not sufficiently held accountable when they don’t adhere to the provisions of international climate change or nuclear weapons control/disarmament treaties. This was the case when the US pulled out of the Paris Accords and Russia refused to support a recent UN version of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Human rights violations abound despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Why are our international institutions incapable of addressing these threats to global security?
The reason is that one desperately-needed element is missing from the global security architecture: international law. As esteemed world federalist and Nuremberg War Crimes Trial prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz stated, “the only way to… solve the problem of war… is to replace the law of force with the force of law.” The law of force characterizes today’s international system as countries exercise absolute sovereignty and can invade other nations, disregard international treaties, and abuse their citizens or migrants with impunity. And, when other countries attempt to de-escalate a crisis or urge the offending government to obey international norms and declarations, there is little that can be done beyond condemning the country at the UN or imposing sanctions, which hurt the entire country. And that is the way of a world governed by the law of force… injustice leads to more injustice.
A democratically elected world government can end this cycle of injustice by providing stability and security in a chaotic international environment desperately in need of some sanity. It would do this by requiring that each country’s national military be reduced to what is required for internal policing, diverting military budgets into domestic infrastructure that will enhance citizens’ quality of life. An “international peacekeeping force” would be created to enforce world law and prevent interstate conflict as part of an international “executive branch.”
But do not despair! A world government is more than feasible; it is in the works.
History has demonstrated that, as economic and technological change transformed countries, their political system likewise changed to safeguard people’s rights and security. Sovereignty resided in clans and tribes, then towns, cities, dynasties, and nation-states as socioeconomic conditions obligated people to entrust their security to more centralized governments with greater jurisdiction, capable of preventing internal conflict. The most recent “socioeconomic conditions”- the Industrial Revolution, the development of the atomic bomb, and the digital revolution- have given rise to a technological, economically, and physically interconnected world that needs an interconnected world government capable of protecting us all from the ripple effects of the abuses caused by absolute sovereignty. The most extreme case of absolute sovereignty annihilating the world is a country unilaterally starting a nuclear war.
This historical and inevitable transfer of authority to higher levels of government with greater jurisdiction is exemplified by American history when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 formed a federal government despite some delegates’ objections. This federal government worked to ensure internal unity and stability by preventing the South from destroying the United States to preserve slavery and- despite failing to prevent many human rights abuses against African Americans and other marginalized groups- eventually successfully passed landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that moved the needle toward greater justice and equality for all. And this was done while protecting states’ rights, just as a world government would protect national sovereignty. Were it not for a strong, centralized government, the separate states would probably have failed to effectively address the secession challenge and slavery might not have been abolished. So, while a world government, like the US government, would not be perfect, it would provide internal stability and unity and make universal declarations of human/civil rights- in addition to international treaties that address shared global challenges- legally binding.
Fortunately, people are recognizing the inevitability of a world government.
Already nations are demanding UN Security Council reform to challenge the undue influence afforded to a handful of lucky countries, urging that the more democratic General Assembly play a greater role in UN resolutions regarding peace and security. There are vibrant global campaigns to establish a UN Parliamentary Assembly whose decisions would be binding, and to strengthen international courts like the International Criminal Court. The movement for world federalism, led by the World Federalist Movement/Institute for Global Policy, is rapidly growing, with thousands of politicians all over the globe supporting the movement and new organizations like Atlas and Young World Federalists joining the cause.
When enough people exert enough pressure on their national governments to call for a world government, there will be a world government. Let’s hope, for the sake of the coming generations, that enough people wake up before it’s too late.
by David Gallup | Dec 19, 2022 | Human Rights
If we want a world where our human and environmental rights are elevated, we must place as much importance on our responsibilities to humanity and the planet as we put on our rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) sets forth the fundamental rights belonging to every individual in the world. The UDHR celebrated its 74th anniversary on December 10, 2022.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Declaration on the Human Environment and the 5th anniversary of the Declaration of Ethical Principles of Climate Change. These declarations call for the preservation, enhancement, and equitable use of the environment for present and future generations.
The UN Conference of Parties that occurs every year, the most recent being COP27 in Egypt last month, develops additional accords to enforce environmental rights, such as the Loss and Damage Fund intended to assist people in places most negatively affected by climate disasters.
Distressingly, humanity has yet to fulfill the duties that arise from these global meetings of national governments and from these rights declarations. Celebrating these declarations and international agreements builds an understanding of human and environmental rights. Rights awareness is the first step. The next step is to implement the goals of the declarations, especially for people living in the most vulnerable situations.
Refugees, the stateless, the indigenous, the economically disadvantaged, and those facing war, discrimination, and oppression suffer the most from deleterious human impacts on the environment. Close to 100 million internally/externally displaced and stateless persons in the world – one out of every 80 persons – have had to flee their homes to seek safe places to live. As environmental destruction worsens, climate refugees will multiply this number exponentially.
Civil society has been present during the development of human and environmental rights declarations, but individual humans do not yet have a vote in world affairs. As national citizens, individuals can vote on local issues, but we have limited or no say in how governments and corporations around the world treat the oceans, the forests, the land, the atmosphere, and other species.
In the nation-state system, governments and their leaders can violate human and environmental rights with impunity, because individual accountability for global violations does not yet exist in human and environmental rights law spheres at the world level.
But there are legal and societal measures that we can implement to realize the promise of human and environmental rights declarations.
Global institutions of world law, such as a universal rights court and a people’s world parliament, are tools that can help realign humanity’s priorities to be in sync with the needs of the Earth.
Attempts to address environmental rights judicially are in process. For example, ecocide – severe, widespread, or long-term damage to the environment – is under consideration as a crime within the jurisdiction of the existing International Criminal Court and a future International Court for the Environment. An environmental rights court would adjudicate ecocide, but not the human rights violations of people living in affected areas. A global judicial system that adjudicates violations of both human and environmental rights, a World Court of Human and Environmental Rights, would provide a holistic solution.
World law institutions are one component to realizing universal rights. The other component is empowering individual action by recognizing our legal status as world citizens. With the right to vote directly in world referenda or through world parliamentarians on issues that affect the entire world, we would increase our individual engagement and our personal responsibility.
Seeing the Earth as one, world citizens understand how our actions affect our fellow humans and the environment. Together, we can develop strategies for sustainable living based not just on human needs, but also on the needs of the Earth.
Human rights and environmental rights are intertwined. Without a safe and sustainable environment, our rights become meaningless. Without just and peaceful interactions among humans, the Earth becomes a victim of human violence, for war is one of the worst destroyers of nature.
As the brain and conscience for the planet, we world citizens have the duty to use our intelligence and empathy to harmonize the needs of humanity with the needs of the Earth.
