Viewing Message #30
Time : Sat 16-Jun-2007
From : newsletter admin
Subject : Newsletter No 26 16/06/07
Message :
Issue No 26. 16/06/07
The newsletter of the Sapiens Movement.
Dear Friends,
I have been away from my desk for several weeks and so apologise for the larger than usual interval between newsletters.
Looking back on the last year of newsletters, I am sorry to see that they mainly consist of little but gloomy reports on the deteriorating state of the globe and the increasing jeopardy of its human crew.
There is indeed a lot to be extremely worried about. However, there is a reverse side to that coin. As the realisation of the gravity of the multiple crises facing us becomes more widespread, the logic of a mundialist solution becomes irrefutable and its chances of acceptance increase. Though the mundialist community is still so small and fragmented in its views that it scarcely makes an impression on the world at large, one can smell a sea-change is in the air.
The mundialist proposal is based on the realisation that the accelerating post-industrial growth in technology has made human survival dependent on the smooth functioning of a globalised economy. In this vehicle, all Earth’s inhabitants are travelling at ever increasing speed. However, there is as yet, no globalised polity designed to control the vehicle. There is no steering wheel, no foot pedals and no designated driver. Clearly this situation will lead to disaster. Though some might argue for anarchic solutions (we have exactly such a system at the moment) all human history to date would argue that if a fatal accident is to be avoided, the controls of the vehicle have to be firmly attached to the economic chassis and the vehicle made to respond as instructed by the appointed driver.
Mundialists share in common the argument that a system of DWG (Democratic World Governance) needs to be established. The word “governance” rather than “government” is often used, as it is thought less scary to those nervous of an Orwellian outcome. However, despite the semantic niceties, all these solutions have in common an end goal, which is a global government and which is protected from Big Brother by a heavy emphasis being placed on its democratic nature.
There are some mundialist schools of thought that offer more idealistic proposals based on a changing human consciousness. I would argue that there is insufficient time available for any reliance to be placed on such untried proposals. Perhaps they will have their day – but only at a time of less urgency and after control of the vehicle has been regained by more conventional instruments.
Most mundialist proposals entail a GPA (Global Parliamentary Assembly) an executive and a judiciary - usually building on the existing UN agencies and international court system. Currently there is a major initiative to try and arrange for a GPA to be attached to the General Assembly of the UN as a democratically elected consultative body. The hope is that its having been elected would allow it to gradually acquire increased legitimacy and thereby, authority, vis a vis the General Assembly itself. That it should gradually accrue increased authority were it to be established, is not an unreasonable hope given that the General Assembly, as currently constituted, is formed entirely of the delegated appointees of the governments of the UN member states. They can only do what they are told to do and have no authority to represent what they, as individuals, might consider to be the best interests of their constituents.
There is no doubt that this is a very sensible initiative, which deserves everyone’s support. However, it is almost impossible to see how, in the present circumstances, no matter how loud the clamour, the veto holding powers on the Security Council will ratify any such proposal. They will rightly see it as designed to increase the legitimacy of the General Assembly and of all those underprivileged states that do not hold the veto. The UN Charter was drawn up by the veto holding great powers to preserve their great power status for all eternity. What could induce them to give it away?
There are other proposals in which most carefully and intelligently constructed constitutions are instituted from scratch. The proponents of these solutions argue that a tipping point will be reached and suddenly an irresistible demand for DWG will sweep away existing institutions and the new world order will be instituted. The Berlin Wall’s unexpected and overnight destruction is cited as an example of this type of serendipitous happening.
It should never be forgotten that all these projects and approaches, even those with only a folorn hope of success, are intrinsically valuable. All of them serve to increase political awareness of the desperate need for a mundialist solution to be implemented by those leaders of nation states, who have the responsibility of wielding political power.
Probably the best proposal yet for bringing about a system of DWG is that proposed by Professor Andy Strauss (in an article which can be found on the Sapiens website.) To quote from it:
An Interstate Treaty Process
Finally, a GPA could be established by way of a stand alone treaty agreed to by whichever internationally progressive countries were willing to be pioneers. Even twenty to thirty economically and geographically diverse countries would be enough to found the parliament. The treaty agreed to by these countries would establish the legal structure for elections to be held within their territories including a voting system and electoral districts. In addition, an operational framework for the parliament including its mandate and limitations on its powers would be included in the treaty as would a provision for future accession by other countries. Any country could later join the parliament so long as it was willing to meet its obligations under the treaty, the most important of which would be to allow its citizens to vote representatives to the Parliament in free and fair elections.
A stand alone treaty organization whose membership may not be the same as the United Nations is not a novel concept. Most major international bodies such as the Bretton Woods organizations, the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization, to name but a few, have been created in this way. Most significant, this approach was used to establish the International Criminal Court whose membership famously does not include the United States nor for that matter Russia or China (though Russia is a signatory). In the case of the International Criminal Court specific treaty provisions align that organization’s processes with those of the United Nations. Most significant are terms providing for the Security Council to refer criminal cases to the Court. Likewise, the GPA treaty could also include provisions defining its initial role vis a vis the United Nations and once established the parliament could enter into a relationship agreement with that body. It would be important to be clear that the parliament, though begun independently of the United Nations, was meant to strengthen, and not replace, that organization. Part of the Parliament’s treaty based responsibilities, for example, could be to weigh in with its own vote on certain specified categories of United Nations General Assembly resolutions. General Assembly resolutions are themselves largely recommendatory, and by insinuating a democratic voice into the process, the resolutions that passed both bodies would be more noticed and deemed more legitimate. Backed by the weight of popular authority over time perhaps the General Assembly and the GPA could evolve together into a truly bicameral legislative system capable of producing binding legislation.
This approach to creating a GPA by interstate treaty process is the one that Richard Falk and I have come to promote as the most promising. It offers strategic advantages as compared to either of the two proposals for creating the Parliament through the machinery of the United Nations. Even under the second relatively less cumbersome process of the General Assembly voting to create the parliament as a subsidiary organ, a core group of sponsoring countries would have to overcome a formidable combination of bureaucracy, indifference and opposition to gain traction within the United Nations. Under the stand alone treaty approach, however, power would shift to those countries that are willing to proceed on their own. No one could stop them. And once it became clear that the GPA treaty initiative had left the station, it would likely gain momentum as other less proactive countries would have an incentive to take part rather than be sidelined in the creation of an important new international organization.
Beyond this strategic leveraging of support, countries that are truly supportive of the GPA’s democratic mission are likely to create the best, most democratic, organization. They would not be forced to make the kinds of anti-democratic concessions that passage in the United Nations might require. Later, if a critical mass of countries were to join the parliament, a time might come when it would become politically untenable for holdout governments to deny their people the right to vote in the only globally elected body. At that point those governments would not be in a position to compromise the integrity of the organization, but would have to join the GPA on its own democratic terms.
Finally, relative to civil society organizing elections, an interstate treaty process does not suffer from the absence of a decision-making structure that would undermine the ability of non-governmental organizations to act collectively. States have a long accepted and highly defined collaborative process for entering into treaty arrangements including those establishing new international organizations. Also, state sanction for the GPA by way of treaty would confer an additional layer of legitimacy upon the organization, and states have access to the resources to finance the project that civil society lacks.
If the above proposal is humanity’s best hope, how can we set about making it happen? It is one hell of an ask to expect to educate the politicians governing thirty or so states that this is “a good idea.” Most of these people will have never heard the word “mundialist” and will have never held a single fleeting thought of DWG in their heads.
One of the proposals currently being debated is that, rather than attempting the lengthy procedure of creating such a grouping of nations from scratch, an attempt should be made to convert an existing grouping of nations to the Strauss proposal. NATO, the Pacific forum, the British Commonwealth, NAFTA and many other groupings have been proposed as possible candidates for conversion. However, all such proposals fail to convincingly answer the “how to persuade the politicians” question. They also tend to overlook the fact that most of such international groupings are formed to represent exclusive interest groups. They depend for their identity and cohesion as much on which nations are excluded from the group as on which are included. As such they hardly seem to represent a sound basis on which to attempt to form a system of all inclusive global governance.
There are alternative ways in which this Inter-state Treaty Process could be initiated. Here are two such, either of which has the potential to result in the formation of the initial core group of nations required. The first is the initiative of a Canadian based organisation called Vote World Government www.voteworldgovernment.org
VWG is attempting to carry out a massive world-wide referendum on DWG in the hope that were millions, or even billions, to sign the petition, the national political elites would be unable to resist such a massive and widespread demand and in consequence, a global government would inevitably come about. This is clearly a very difficult and hugely expensive petition to organise throughout the world. It might take many years to implement and, even if the effort were successful and the outcome were an indisputable popular demand for global governance, the deal would still by no means be done. The present holders of power are going to be very reluctant to hand over the reins to such a new and popular entity.
However, VWG’s campaign doesn’t need to be universally successful before use could be made of its results. Were VWG’s petition to gain majority status in just the thirty countries that Strauss suggests as his initial group, a great step towards instigating the Interstate Treaty Process would have been made.
If any of our New Zealand members have time available, an attempt to put VWG’s petition through New Zealand’s “petition leading to referendum” process would be well worth the effort. (Incidentally, if you come across VWG using the same logo as Sapiens, be not dismayed – they asked permission. Our logo is even more appropriate to their endeavour than it is to ours.)
The second workable proposal would seem to me to be Simpol. Simpol’s Simultaneous Policy initiative does not in itself offer a mundialist solution. What Simpol offers is a precursor mechanism by which any of the other mundialist solutions may, or may not, be achieved. From previous newsletters, you will be familiar with the Simpol concept. If Simultaneous Policy pledged MPs were to become the majority group in the governing parties of thirty counties, there would be nothing to prevent any SP Adopter or pledged politician putting forward Strauss’s proposal as a simultaneous Policy measure to be implemented by that group of states.
So that’s it for this month folks.
Look after yourself - and everyone else.
Hugh
Determined
The newsletter of the Sapiens Movement.
Dear Friends,
I have been away from my desk for several weeks and so apologise for the larger than usual interval between newsletters.
Looking back on the last year of newsletters, I am sorry to see that they mainly consist of little but gloomy reports on the deteriorating state of the globe and the increasing jeopardy of its human crew.
There is indeed a lot to be extremely worried about. However, there is a reverse side to that coin. As the realisation of the gravity of the multiple crises facing us becomes more widespread, the logic of a mundialist solution becomes irrefutable and its chances of acceptance increase. Though the mundialist community is still so small and fragmented in its views that it scarcely makes an impression on the world at large, one can smell a sea-change is in the air.
The mundialist proposal is based on the realisation that the accelerating post-industrial growth in technology has made human survival dependent on the smooth functioning of a globalised economy. In this vehicle, all Earth’s inhabitants are travelling at ever increasing speed. However, there is as yet, no globalised polity designed to control the vehicle. There is no steering wheel, no foot pedals and no designated driver. Clearly this situation will lead to disaster. Though some might argue for anarchic solutions (we have exactly such a system at the moment) all human history to date would argue that if a fatal accident is to be avoided, the controls of the vehicle have to be firmly attached to the economic chassis and the vehicle made to respond as instructed by the appointed driver.
Mundialists share in common the argument that a system of DWG (Democratic World Governance) needs to be established. The word “governance” rather than “government” is often used, as it is thought less scary to those nervous of an Orwellian outcome. However, despite the semantic niceties, all these solutions have in common an end goal, which is a global government and which is protected from Big Brother by a heavy emphasis being placed on its democratic nature.
There are some mundialist schools of thought that offer more idealistic proposals based on a changing human consciousness. I would argue that there is insufficient time available for any reliance to be placed on such untried proposals. Perhaps they will have their day – but only at a time of less urgency and after control of the vehicle has been regained by more conventional instruments.
Most mundialist proposals entail a GPA (Global Parliamentary Assembly) an executive and a judiciary - usually building on the existing UN agencies and international court system. Currently there is a major initiative to try and arrange for a GPA to be attached to the General Assembly of the UN as a democratically elected consultative body. The hope is that its having been elected would allow it to gradually acquire increased legitimacy and thereby, authority, vis a vis the General Assembly itself. That it should gradually accrue increased authority were it to be established, is not an unreasonable hope given that the General Assembly, as currently constituted, is formed entirely of the delegated appointees of the governments of the UN member states. They can only do what they are told to do and have no authority to represent what they, as individuals, might consider to be the best interests of their constituents.
There is no doubt that this is a very sensible initiative, which deserves everyone’s support. However, it is almost impossible to see how, in the present circumstances, no matter how loud the clamour, the veto holding powers on the Security Council will ratify any such proposal. They will rightly see it as designed to increase the legitimacy of the General Assembly and of all those underprivileged states that do not hold the veto. The UN Charter was drawn up by the veto holding great powers to preserve their great power status for all eternity. What could induce them to give it away?
There are other proposals in which most carefully and intelligently constructed constitutions are instituted from scratch. The proponents of these solutions argue that a tipping point will be reached and suddenly an irresistible demand for DWG will sweep away existing institutions and the new world order will be instituted. The Berlin Wall’s unexpected and overnight destruction is cited as an example of this type of serendipitous happening.
It should never be forgotten that all these projects and approaches, even those with only a folorn hope of success, are intrinsically valuable. All of them serve to increase political awareness of the desperate need for a mundialist solution to be implemented by those leaders of nation states, who have the responsibility of wielding political power.
Probably the best proposal yet for bringing about a system of DWG is that proposed by Professor Andy Strauss (in an article which can be found on the Sapiens website.) To quote from it:
An Interstate Treaty Process
Finally, a GPA could be established by way of a stand alone treaty agreed to by whichever internationally progressive countries were willing to be pioneers. Even twenty to thirty economically and geographically diverse countries would be enough to found the parliament. The treaty agreed to by these countries would establish the legal structure for elections to be held within their territories including a voting system and electoral districts. In addition, an operational framework for the parliament including its mandate and limitations on its powers would be included in the treaty as would a provision for future accession by other countries. Any country could later join the parliament so long as it was willing to meet its obligations under the treaty, the most important of which would be to allow its citizens to vote representatives to the Parliament in free and fair elections.
A stand alone treaty organization whose membership may not be the same as the United Nations is not a novel concept. Most major international bodies such as the Bretton Woods organizations, the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization, to name but a few, have been created in this way. Most significant, this approach was used to establish the International Criminal Court whose membership famously does not include the United States nor for that matter Russia or China (though Russia is a signatory). In the case of the International Criminal Court specific treaty provisions align that organization’s processes with those of the United Nations. Most significant are terms providing for the Security Council to refer criminal cases to the Court. Likewise, the GPA treaty could also include provisions defining its initial role vis a vis the United Nations and once established the parliament could enter into a relationship agreement with that body. It would be important to be clear that the parliament, though begun independently of the United Nations, was meant to strengthen, and not replace, that organization. Part of the Parliament’s treaty based responsibilities, for example, could be to weigh in with its own vote on certain specified categories of United Nations General Assembly resolutions. General Assembly resolutions are themselves largely recommendatory, and by insinuating a democratic voice into the process, the resolutions that passed both bodies would be more noticed and deemed more legitimate. Backed by the weight of popular authority over time perhaps the General Assembly and the GPA could evolve together into a truly bicameral legislative system capable of producing binding legislation.
This approach to creating a GPA by interstate treaty process is the one that Richard Falk and I have come to promote as the most promising. It offers strategic advantages as compared to either of the two proposals for creating the Parliament through the machinery of the United Nations. Even under the second relatively less cumbersome process of the General Assembly voting to create the parliament as a subsidiary organ, a core group of sponsoring countries would have to overcome a formidable combination of bureaucracy, indifference and opposition to gain traction within the United Nations. Under the stand alone treaty approach, however, power would shift to those countries that are willing to proceed on their own. No one could stop them. And once it became clear that the GPA treaty initiative had left the station, it would likely gain momentum as other less proactive countries would have an incentive to take part rather than be sidelined in the creation of an important new international organization.
Beyond this strategic leveraging of support, countries that are truly supportive of the GPA’s democratic mission are likely to create the best, most democratic, organization. They would not be forced to make the kinds of anti-democratic concessions that passage in the United Nations might require. Later, if a critical mass of countries were to join the parliament, a time might come when it would become politically untenable for holdout governments to deny their people the right to vote in the only globally elected body. At that point those governments would not be in a position to compromise the integrity of the organization, but would have to join the GPA on its own democratic terms.
Finally, relative to civil society organizing elections, an interstate treaty process does not suffer from the absence of a decision-making structure that would undermine the ability of non-governmental organizations to act collectively. States have a long accepted and highly defined collaborative process for entering into treaty arrangements including those establishing new international organizations. Also, state sanction for the GPA by way of treaty would confer an additional layer of legitimacy upon the organization, and states have access to the resources to finance the project that civil society lacks.
If the above proposal is humanity’s best hope, how can we set about making it happen? It is one hell of an ask to expect to educate the politicians governing thirty or so states that this is “a good idea.” Most of these people will have never heard the word “mundialist” and will have never held a single fleeting thought of DWG in their heads.
One of the proposals currently being debated is that, rather than attempting the lengthy procedure of creating such a grouping of nations from scratch, an attempt should be made to convert an existing grouping of nations to the Strauss proposal. NATO, the Pacific forum, the British Commonwealth, NAFTA and many other groupings have been proposed as possible candidates for conversion. However, all such proposals fail to convincingly answer the “how to persuade the politicians” question. They also tend to overlook the fact that most of such international groupings are formed to represent exclusive interest groups. They depend for their identity and cohesion as much on which nations are excluded from the group as on which are included. As such they hardly seem to represent a sound basis on which to attempt to form a system of all inclusive global governance.
There are alternative ways in which this Inter-state Treaty Process could be initiated. Here are two such, either of which has the potential to result in the formation of the initial core group of nations required. The first is the initiative of a Canadian based organisation called Vote World Government www.voteworldgovernment.org
VWG is attempting to carry out a massive world-wide referendum on DWG in the hope that were millions, or even billions, to sign the petition, the national political elites would be unable to resist such a massive and widespread demand and in consequence, a global government would inevitably come about. This is clearly a very difficult and hugely expensive petition to organise throughout the world. It might take many years to implement and, even if the effort were successful and the outcome were an indisputable popular demand for global governance, the deal would still by no means be done. The present holders of power are going to be very reluctant to hand over the reins to such a new and popular entity.
However, VWG’s campaign doesn’t need to be universally successful before use could be made of its results. Were VWG’s petition to gain majority status in just the thirty countries that Strauss suggests as his initial group, a great step towards instigating the Interstate Treaty Process would have been made.
If any of our New Zealand members have time available, an attempt to put VWG’s petition through New Zealand’s “petition leading to referendum” process would be well worth the effort. (Incidentally, if you come across VWG using the same logo as Sapiens, be not dismayed – they asked permission. Our logo is even more appropriate to their endeavour than it is to ours.)
The second workable proposal would seem to me to be Simpol. Simpol’s Simultaneous Policy initiative does not in itself offer a mundialist solution. What Simpol offers is a precursor mechanism by which any of the other mundialist solutions may, or may not, be achieved. From previous newsletters, you will be familiar with the Simpol concept. If Simultaneous Policy pledged MPs were to become the majority group in the governing parties of thirty counties, there would be nothing to prevent any SP Adopter or pledged politician putting forward Strauss’s proposal as a simultaneous Policy measure to be implemented by that group of states.
So that’s it for this month folks.
Look after yourself - and everyone else.
Hugh
