The grand convergence: economic and political aspects of human progress

The Grand Convergence

By the Same Author Socialism Revised and Modernized: The Case for Pragmatic Market Socialism World Union on the Horizon: The Case for Supernational Federation Economic Justice: The Market Socialist Vision Common Progress: The Case for a World Economic Equalization Program On the Political Economy of Market Socialism: Essays and Analyses Capital Management Effort: Theory and Applications Rethinking World Government: A New Approach Political Globalization: A New Vision of Federal World Government

The Grand Convergence Economic and Political Aspects of Human Progress

James A. Yunker

THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

Copyright © James A. Yunker, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10375–7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yunker, James A. The grand convergence : economic and political aspects of human progress / James A. Yunker. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978–0–230–10375–7 (hardback) 1. Globalization—Political aspects. 2. Globalization—Economic aspects. 3. International organization. 4. International economic relations. I. Title. JZ1318.Y863 2010 327—dc22

2009052055

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Dedicated to the Memory of Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) “The Most Trusted Man in America” Recipient of the World Federalist Association’s Norman Cousins Global Governance Award October 19, 1999

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C on ten ts

List of Figures 1

Looking Ahead: The Long View Triumph or Tragedy A Long-Term Trend Nuclear and Other Nightmares What Should Be Done?

2 Political Convergence: Supernational Federation A Pragmatic Blueprint Key Limitations and Authorizations Purposes and Policies

ix 1 1 6 11 19 31 31 41 57

3

Economic Convergence: Global Marshall Plan Economic Realities: Good and Bad Foreign Development Assistance World Economic Equalization Program Evaluation of the Program

71 71 84 92 105

4

On the Practicality of Federal World Government Antecedents of World Federalism Twentieth-Century Proposals The Heterogeneity Bugaboo The Issue of Nationalism

113 113 123 136 146

5

On the Advisability of Federal World Government The Global Governance Myth The New World Order What Is the “Utopian Delusion”? Drift versus Direction

153 153 164 175 185

6 The Next Step: Summary and Conclusion Outline of the Argument

197 197

viii

CONTENTS

How Is It Possible? A Final Word

212 225

Notes

231

Index

239

Figur es

3.1 Per capita income growth: India and China, 1980–2005 3.2 Per capita income growth: United States, Japan, India, and China, 1980–2005 3.3 Potential per capita income growth without a World Economic Equalization Program: United States, Japan, India, and China, 2000–2050 3.4 Potential per capita income growth with a World Economic Equalization Program: United States, Japan, India, and China, 2000–2050

75 75

98

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CH A P T ER

1

Looking Ahead: The Long View

Triumph or Tragedy As the third millennium of human history gets under way, the position of global human civilization is at once quite promising—but also highly precarious. On one side of the path we are now on lie the “broad, sunlit uplands” of Churchillian rhetoric;1 on the other side lies a terrifying abyss of death and destruction. In a thousand years’ time, as the fourth millennium begins, what will be the condition of global human civilization? Will the great majority of human beings be living full, prosperous, secure lives? Or, as a result of ecological catastrophe or nuclear disaster, will the small number of survivors be living lives best described (in Thomas Hobbes’s phrase) as “nasty, brutish, and short”?2 As we look ahead, both of these outcomes seem well within the boundaries of possibility. As far as the human race as a whole is concerned, the future may hold either triumph or tragedy. Any sane and rational person desires that the leaders of the various nations of the world (the current count is a little over two hundred sovereign nations) be doing everything humanly possible to tilt the odds in favor of triumph and against tragedy. Human action cannot determine the future, but it can affect the likelihood of various outcomes along the wide spectrum from darkest tragedy to brightest triumph. Of course, the grim possibility exists that the combination of soaring population, nuclear weapons, and the contemporary sovereign nation-state system (which could fairly, if undiplomatically, be described as a form of anarchy) has already doomed global human civilization to a horrible fate, whatever actions we now undertake or do not undertake. Be that as it may, in this book I intend to put forward the proposition that a properly designed supernational federation (i.e., a federal world government or “world state”) would appreciably improve the odds confronting global human civilization as we face an uncertain future. I hasten to call attention to the critical descriptor “properly

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THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

designed.” The vast majority of the human population today has an absolutely negative opinion of world government. Among the ordinary citizenry, the professional intelligentsia, and the political leadership alike, the conventional judgment is that any sort of world state would set the stage for some awful combination of global tyranny and stifling bureaucracy. This judgment is based on the assumption, among both the huge majority of world government opponents and the tiny minority of world government supporters (the “world federalists”), that any meaningful world government must necessarily be an extremely centralized and powerful state entity that would stand in the same relationship to its component nations as the national government of the United States of America stands in relation to its component states. I hasten to emphasize to skeptical readers that I too share the conventional viewpoint that an omnipotent world government, of the sort typically envisioned today, is almost certainly highly impractical and extremely inadvisable at the present time and in the foreseeable future. But the fact remains that a meaningful and effective world government need not be omnipotent. What is desirable at the present juncture in human history is a limited world government. It is quite clear, just from the standpoint of basic logic, that the undesirability of unlimited world government does not necessarily imply the undesirability of limited world government. With respect to any given area of human activity or organization, it is normally the case that neither of the extreme ends of the spectrum of possibility is desirable—that a “happy medium” somewhere in the middle constitutes the optimal position. This is as true of international organization as it is of many other things. The United Nations of today, of course, is a “supernational organization” but it would be stretching the meaning of the term “government” to call it a “supernational government.” The United Nations was founded in 1945, the final year of World War II. In light of the clear example just provided of the downside of the national sovereignty principle—its tendency toward warfare—the aftermath of the war saw the establishment of the UN as a sort of “proto” world government. Unfortunately, any possibility that the UN would take on the characteristics of a genuine, functional government was immediately thwarted by the emerging conflict between the USSR and the Western allies, a conflict that soon crystallized into the Cold War. Despite the high hopes attending its formation in 1945, the UN soon became little more than a poorly funded and little respected assemblage of speechmaking ambassadors. And so it remains today.

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It is the thesis of this book, however, that somewhere along the wide spectrum between the ineffectual United Nations of today and the omnipotent world state envisioned by traditional world federalists, there exists a form of supernational government that would make a significant positive contribution to the evolutionary development of genuine global governance and the assurance of human destiny, yet would not be so powerful as to represent a serious threat of global tyranny or crushing bureaucracy. At the risk of what Richard Falk described as “premature specificity,”3 I intend to lay out in this book a fairly detailed blueprint for a limited world government tentatively designated the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. The Federal Union is the political component of a two-pronged proposal for improving the future prospects of global human civilization. The economic component of the proposal is for a global Marshall Plan tentatively designated the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP). This program would strike at the roots of the pronounced economic inequality among nations that, in practical terms, is probably the greatest single impediment to international solidarity and cooperation in general, and more specifically to the foundation and successful operation of a federal world government. The various specifics of the envisioned Federal Union of Democratic Nations and the WEEP will be elaborated in considerable detail at various appropriate points throughout this book. But it would probably be a good idea, especially in view of the strong preconceptions against both of these ideas that are so widespread among humanity at the present time, to set forth at the outset some very basic and critically important aspects of these proposals. The intention is a limited world government. This is not simply a matter of formal constitutional guarantees of national and individual rights. First and foremost, the member nations of the Federal Union would maintain direct control over whatever armed forces they deem necessary to their interests, up to and including strategic nuclear weapons. Upon joining the Federal Union, member nations would absolutely not be disarmed. If the development of the Federal Union over the years and decades following its foundation is successful, then most member nations would feel secure enough to gradually reduce their autonomous military forces of their own free accord. But there would be no pressure put on them to do so. Therefore, the envisioned world government would be limited most fundamentally by the fact that it would not monopolize armed force and weapons of mass destruction. The independent armed forces of the member nations would constitute meaningful counterweights to the armed force of the supernational federation.

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THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

Second, membership in the Federal Union would be voluntary, meaning that the member nations would retain perpetually the right to withdraw peacefully from the federation at their own unilateral discretion. If at any time a member nation decided that its own interests would be better served through independence from the world federation, it would be free to implement this decision. The right of a member nation to secede would not merely be a formal constitutional guarantee, but in the last resort it would be supported meaningfully by the nation’s independent military forces. Third, the legislative body of the world government would operate according to a “dual voting” rule. Any proposed legislation would have to be approved by both the “population vote” and the “material vote.” In the population vote, each representative’s voting weight would be in proportion to the population represented. In the material vote, each representative’s voting weight would be in proportion to Federal Union revenues derived from that representative’s district. This voting principle would prevent the world legislature from approving legislation designed to create a worldwide welfare state that would heavily tax the citizens of the wealthy nations in order to provide generous welfare entitlements to the citizens of the poor nations. It would also preclude the passage of legislation that the populous poorer nations would view as reestablishing conditions of colonial exploitation. Now it is an “inconvenient truth” (to borrow the title of Al Gore’s well-known and highly controversial book about global warming4) that the tremendous gap that has opened up between living standards in the wealthiest nations and those in the poorest nations is not only morally indefensible, it is also a cancer upon global human society that if left unchecked will inevitably intensify international conflict and increase the likelihood that this conflict will eventually escalate into catastrophic warfare. While the danger is clear, it is equally clear that this particular problem cannot be solved quickly and easily. It is now and will forever be unacceptable to the populations of the wealthy nations that they be heavily taxed in order to maintain a welfare system benefiting mostly the populations of the poor nations. The World Economic Equalization Program, the economic component of the overall proposal put forward in this volume, envisions a world in which differences in living standards among the nations will be a small fraction of what they are today. But this goal would be approached gradually, over a period of many years—fifty years may be necessary, or one hundred, or possibly even longer. The program would involve a massive expansion of the foreign development assistance expenditures of the wealthy nations. The recipient nations would utilize the

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financial transfers not for current consumption, but rather to expand their stocks of generalized capital. Generalized capital comprises physical plant and equipment, human capital in the form of education and training, and social infrastructure capital in the form of harbors, roads, schools, hospitals, and so on. The purpose of the program would most definitely not be to transfer consumption commodities directly from the rich countries to the poor countries. Rather its purpose would be to augment the productive capabilities of the recipient countries until they can themselves produce sufficient economic output to support living standards comparable to those in the rich countries. Most people today, professional economists and otherwise, are inclined to disparage and dismiss the possibility that a global Marshall Plan of the sort proposed could or would be successful. Surely, goes the conventional wisdom, the resources devoted to such an effort would disappear without a trace into a vast pit of incompetence and corruption and would have little or no effect on the world inequality situation. Despite its very widespread acceptance at the present time, this attitude is based on very questionable assumptions and is best described as a form of psychological rationalization—quite bluntly, as an intellectual justification for selfishness. What is so distressing, even tragic, is that the assumptions underlying this attitude are quite likely erroneous. That is to say, a global Marshall Plan along the lines of the envisioned WEEP need not and probably would not impose excessive economic burdens on the people of the wealthy nations, and at the same time it most likely would have a dramatically improving effect on the welfare of the people of the poor nations. As an economist by profession, I have myself carried out considerable research, to be described later, that suggests appropriately designed transfers of sufficient scale can result in a dramatically higher rate of increase of living standards in the recipient nations while having a minimal impact on the rates of increase of living standards in the donor nations. That is, living standards in the donor nations would not be reduced by the program; rather, they would merely grow at a slightly lower rate of increase. Of course, research based on computer simulations of the world economy might produce misleading results. Moreover, the research itself also indicates the possibility that the pessimists may be right. It will be explained that if certain critical elements of the simulation model take on sufficiently adverse values, then in fact the effect of the program in narrowing the economic gap between rich and poor nations becomes minimal. Therefore, it is proposed that the World Economic Equalization Program be initiated on a provisional basis. That is to say, if after a

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reasonable period of time, say ten to twenty years, the program was not achieving dramatic progress in raising living standards within the recipient nations, or it was seriously deteriorating living standards within the donor nations, then it would be phased out and terminated. The simple fact is that hypothetical arguments can never determine whether or not a real-world global Marshall Plan would be successful. Only a trial—an actual experiment—can provide compelling evidence on the question. The argument I am advancing here is that for the sake of our own and all future generations of humanity, the experiment should be undertaken. If the experiment fails, then so be it. But we ought at least to try. The same applies to the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. Establishing the Federal Union could and should be regarded as an experiment. It is a venture that may or may not turn out to be successful. If it is unsuccessful, then the provision for free exit of the member nations provides a means for peaceful dissolution. There is an “exit strategy,” so to speak. But if the experiment lives up to expectations, this would do a great deal toward assuring that the “human experiment” that nature is currently conducting on this planet—namely the evolution of a species whose self-awareness and intelligence far exceeds that of all other animal life in this world—is a successful one.

A Long-Term Trend An important aspect of human progress throughout history has been political consolidation and amalgamation. From the tens of thousands of fully sovereign and independent tribal units of prehistory, we have evolved down to the two hundred or so fully sovereign and independent nation-states of today. The national governments of these two hundred countries do not permit their citizens to rob and kill each other, and they do not permit subsidiary territorial units, such as cities, counties, states, provinces, and districts, to go to war with one another. The two primal functions of national governments are to protect their citizens from violence perpetrated upon them by other nations, and to protect their citizens from violence perpetrated upon them by other citizens within the same nation. History records the unfortunate fact that the long-term trend toward political consolidation and amalgamation has been accompanied by a great deal of conflict, violence, and warfare. But once any particular consolidation and amalgamation has taken place, there is achieved a great reduction in conflict, violence, and warfare within the territory of the political unit. In peaceful conditions, economic

LOOKING AHEAD

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production flourishes, and so also does social and cultural progress. What rational person living in the world today would want to trade places with the typical human being who lived fifty thousand or one hundred thousand years ago? Our remote ancestors mostly lived short, hard, and unfulfilling lives. The probability that any given person’s life would end prematurely in violence perpetrated by another person, or through privation, injury, or disease was quite high relative to what it is today. The advantages we enjoy today would never have been achieved if governmental structures had not been developed to control the negative aspects of human nature: our unfortunate propensities (whether innate or learned) toward hostility and violence toward other human beings. To enable the positive aspects of human nature—our propensities toward creativity, compassion, and cooperativeness—to come into full fruition, we absolutely require authoritative governments. In light of the clear historical progression from a very large number of small political units to a relatively small number of very large political units, it might be deemed somewhat unperceptive and short-sighted to believe that history is now at an end, that no further political consolidation and amalgamation is possible, and that into the remote and unforeseeable future there will be no significant change in the international status quo situation. As modern history has made abundantly clear, the problem with the international status quo situation is that when warfare does occur among large nations (despite the best efforts of their respective diplomatic corps), the consequences can be devastating. While the upside of large nations is that they enforce relatively peaceful conditions within their borders, the downside is that they create huge concentrations of human and material resources such that when they are armed with the most effective weaponry technology can devise and then unleashed in unrestricted warfare, the outcome can be and often is catastrophic in terms of human and material losses. The risks of warfare would be greatly reduced if many—preferably all—of the major nations were united within a supernational federation. The problem is: How do we get from here to there? Clearly, such a federation cannot be created out of warfare and conquest. There was much concern in the twentieth century that first Germany, and then Russia, had designs on the entire world, and wanted to establish a universal empire under their firm national control. Now, in the early years of the twenty-first century, at a time when the United States of America has emerged as the single most powerful nation in the world in both economic and military terms, there are those who are concerned that the United States might be drifting toward an analogous design. Of course, most citizens of the United States today do not

8

THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

want an American-controlled world empire. They just want “security and prosperity.” What is troubling is that this is all that ordinary Germans and Russians wanted at their respective moments in history during the twentieth century. It is to be hoped that the quest for security and prosperity by the United States and other large nations in the twenty-first century will not eventuate in the same sort of catastrophic warfare that was visited upon humanity in the twentieth century. Clearly, an effective, functional world government would reduce this threat. But is it possible that a supernational federation be established peacefully through consensual contract among the nations of today? The vast majority of people today would answer this question firmly in the negative. This vast majority is no doubt quite correct if the envisioned supernational federation were to have the same degree of authority over its constituent nations as the typical national government today has over its constituent subdivisions. But it is not necessary to make a giant leap from the sovereign nation-state system of today to an omnipotent world government. We can, if we want, start with small, cautious steps, always keeping in mind that we can retreat to the status quo ante if things are not developing according to our hopes. In light of the lessons of modern history, which has seen several highly idealistic revolutions degenerate into ghastly terror and totalitarianism, it is now an article of faith among contemporary social policy analysts that change must be “evolutionary—not revolutionary.” Although it may at first seem paradoxical, this principle is not violated by accepting the desirability of a properly designed federal world government. “Proper design” means that certain formal and informal restrictions must necessarily be placed on the power and authority of the supernational federation in its early history. But if these restrictions are indeed implemented, there is nothing preventing the present generation of humanity from beginning to enjoy the benefits of increased security and prosperity that may be reaped from a functioning federal world government. The fact is that the political leaders of the various nations of the world (most of them anyway) are doing everything they possibly can to tilt the odds in favor of a benign future for global human civilization. However, their capability to accomplish anything positive is severely constrained—“hamstrung” might not be too strong a term—by the sovereign nation-state system itself. The national leaders are, for the most part, intelligent and well-intentioned people. They are trying their best “to do the right thing.” However, their ability to do so is compromised by the fact that they must necessarily put the interests

LOOKING AHEAD

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of their own national populations ahead of the interests of the world population as a whole. Of course, all national leaders accept, to some extent, the obvious extension of John Donne’s famous phrase “no man is an island” to the nations.5 In this increasingly interrelated and tight-knit world, it is truly the case that “no nation is an island.” Just as in ordinary daily life, human beings must take into account the interests and perspectives of others, so too must nations take into account the interests and perspectives of other nations. The reason why the principles of toleration, compromise, and accommodation are more highly developed and consistently applied in peoples’ daily lives than they are in the international arena is that within nations there are powerful enforcement systems, both formal and informal. Sufficiently uncooperative and disruptive behavior will likely result in imprisonment or ostracism. At the international level, there is no equivalent enforcement system. Therefore nations tend to behave toward one another as people would toward one another if there were no governments in existence: no police, no courts, no prisons. Understandably, the principles of toleration, compromise, and accommodation are less honored and prevalent at the international level than they are at the personal level. There is a greater danger that disagreements and conflicts of interest will escalate into violence. The situation in the contemporary international arena is fundamentally unstable. In a world where technology has presented humanity with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, this instability will quite possibly, sooner or later, eventuate in catastrophe. Most people are quite prepared to concede that world government is a “good idea in theory” and they readily lament the fact that “it wouldn’t work in practice.” They are conscious of the reality that without government and laws, there is a greatly heightened tendency toward “conflict resolution” by force of arms. Obviously what keeps conditions within nations relatively peaceful, cooperative, and productive is the existence of powerful enforcement systems. It is perfectly apparent, therefore, that conditions between nations would be far more peaceful, cooperative, and productive than they actually are if there were an equivalent enforcement system. But at the same time people cannot imagine how such an enforcement system at the international level can possibly come into being. Nations, they feel, will never permit the imposition of such severe constraints on their freedom of action. The Federal Union of Democratic Nations proposed in this book would not impose “severe” constraints. To be sure there would be more in the way of constraints than there are under the contemporary international status quo situation. But there would be compensations. In

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ordinary civil society, people operate under the constraints imposed by the law enforcement system. For example, if they are verbally insulted by another person and rage impels them to physical retaliation, they may become subject to arrest and imprisonment for assault. That is the disadvantage of being constrained by a law enforcement system. But the advantage is that people can verbally vent their feelings about the bad behavior of other people without running as large a risk of being physically assaulted. In other words, we give up some of our freedom of action in some circumstances to gain greater freedom in other circumstances. It is the same thing in the realm of international relations. Should a world government be established, this would place certain constraints on the freedom of action of the member nations. But there would be compensating advantages in terms of a higher degree of security and prosperity for the entire human population of the world, including the population of each and every specific nation. But do we need world government? The answer to this question depends on how one defines “need.” At the present juncture in world history, it seems unlikely, should a federal world government not be established, that global human civilization will come crashing down in ruins within the next ten or twenty years. We probably do not need world government if our only concern is to survive the near term. At the same time, we should bear in mind the reality that if we are very unlucky, global human civilization might indeed come crashing down in ruins within a very short period of time. Although the threat of a nuclear world war has greatly receded relative to what it was fifty or even thirty years ago, it has not vanished entirely. The nuclear arsenals of the superpowers have been considerably downsized over the last twenty years, but they have by no means been eliminated. As long as nuclear weapons are ready and waiting, there exists a possibility that they will be used. Moreover, in the longer term, a possibly even greater threat than nuclear war is the threat of very gradual, almost imperceptible decline owing to the steadily increasing strain being put on the natural environment by the soaring human population. Gradual environmental decline is not as frightening as instantaneous nuclear holocaust, and even the most enthusiastic environmentalists do not regard it with the same ominous dread that most of us feel while contemplating nuclear holocaust. But it should be recognized that the two are not entirely unrelated. Environmental decline leads to economic deprivation (albeit the deprivation is unequally distributed over the nations of the world), and economic deprivation tends to foster attitudes of resentment and hostility—such attitudes as lay the groundwork for warfare.

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A properly designed world government would improve the odds in favor of humanity as we confront an uncertain future in which shortterm nuclear disaster or long-term ecological catastrophe (possibly laying the groundwork for eventual nuclear disaster) are very real possibilities. In short, we need a world government if we are to maximize the probability that our future, and that of our descendents, will be a benign one.

Nuclear and Other Nightmares To many people today, it might seem almost absurdly alarmist to invoke the specter of nuclear war. In the euphoria attending the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was widely assumed by public and pundit alike that the Cold War was totally defunct and the risk of nuclear war thereby relegated to oblivion. Unfortunately, the nuclear war risk within the foreseeable future, although undoubtedly much lower than it was at the height of the Cold War, is by no means negligible. While stockpiles of operational nuclear weapons have been significantly reduced since the early 1990s, they remain quite substantial. As long as the nuclear powers believe that they “need” nuclear weapons to maintain their security, it is inescapable that one day these weapons may be used. Although ideological conflict has been greatly de-escalated by the historically recent renunciation of communism by the USSR and its Eastern European satellites, it is by no means completely extinct in the contemporary world. For one example, there remains a yawning gap between Western ideals of democratic governance and the political institutions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The ebbing of the ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism that fueled the Cold War has greatly reduced the probability that some concatenation of adverse events will precipitate nuclear war within the next five or ten years. But if we look farther ahead, say twenty, fifty, or one hundred years from now, the prospects are not so rosy. The most cursory acquaintance with human history cannot fail to impress upon us the marvelous fecundity with which our innate propensity toward hostility and violence toward one another has produced armed conflicts. We humans have been gleefully charging into warfare, at what often seemed (in retrospect) to have been minor pretexts, throughout recorded history. Long before the ideological opposition between capitalism and socialism became an important aspect of international relations (at the time of the Russian revolution of 1917), nations regularly became embroiled in warfare. There are several major divisive factors, other

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than the ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism, operative within global human society: race, religion, language, political institutions, cultural differences, historical grievances, and economic inequality, to name the most obvious. These factors predated 1917, and they were unaffected by end of the Cold War in 1991. Just as they did in the pre-1917 world, they will continue, in the post-1991 world, to contribute to the us-versus-them attitudes of suspicion and hostility that regularly escalate relatively minor conflicts of interest into violence and warfare. But surely, it might be objected, these propensities have been tamed, in the contemporary world, by the awesome destructive power of nuclear weaponry. An all-out nuclear war would cause mutual assured destruction (MAD); therefore, assuming a minimal degree of rationality, intelligence, and sanity on the part of the political leaders of the nuclear powers, none of them would authorize the use of these weapons, whatever the provocation. Unfortunately, this comforting thought is a dangerous delusion. History contains numerous examples of wars precipitated not by deliberate intention, but rather by miscalculated brinkmanship. One nation imposes demands on another in the confident belief that the other will accede to these demands rather than go to war. If this belief is erroneous, as it often is, then war ensues. It is not at all certain that the introduction of nuclear weapons has permanently reduced tendencies among nations toward brinkmanship. The longer humanity is spared a nuclear war, the more confident people will become that such a war will never occur. This could lead to bolder and bolder brinkmanship, until, eventually, our luck runs out. According to statistics regularly published by the World Bank, the current trend, almost everywhere in the world except sub-Saharan Africa, is toward increasing economic prosperity. The statistics indicate that most nations have been experiencing rising per capita income over the last several decades, and to the extent that per capita income measures economic welfare, economic welfare has been rising. Of course this is good news—but it is not unalloyed good news. One reason is that these same statistics suggest a steadily widening per capita income gap between the richest nations in the world and the poorest. Another reason is that as poor nations become somewhat more prosperous, their capacity to threaten international stability is enhanced. A dramatic example of this resides in the fact that most of the suicide hijackers of 9/11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich, mid-income Middle Eastern nation. In this case, envious resentment against the United States, aggravated by religious enthusiasm inculcated by the dangerous minority of Islamic militants, inspired this group of young

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men to sacrifice their lives in an endeavor intended to humiliate the rich Western nations generally, and the United States in particular. Had the international circumstances on that fateful day been somewhat different, the consequence might well have been nuclear war. Specifically, if the Soviet Union had not renounced communistic millennialism in 1991, but rather had retained as of 9/11 the same confrontational posture toward the United States and its allies that it had maintained throughout the Cold War, there might have been a repetition of what occurred following another fateful day in modern history: June 28, 1914. On that day, a sixteen-year-old Serbian nationalist, one Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife during their state visit to Sarajevo. Today Sarajevo is the principal city of the independent nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But then Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to whose throne the Archduke was heir. Outraged by this offense against their national honor, the Austrian government issued an ultimatum to the independent nation of Serbia (which had designs on BosniaHerzegovina) to allow the Austrian military a free hand within Serbian borders to apprehend the Black Hand conspirators behind Gavrilo Princip. At first, no one expected that the agitated negotiations of July 1914 would eventuate in war. Nevertheless, they did so eventuate. Serbia enlisted its ally Russia in defense of its national honor, and Russia enlisted its allies France and England. Meanwhile, Austria enlisted Germany on its side. Various ultimatums were ignored, and the troops starting marching in August 1914. Thus commenced World War I (1914–1918), known at the time as the “Great War” or the “War to End Wars”—before it was superseded by the even more devastating World War II (1939–1945), which historians agree was a direct outgrowth of World War I. Another consequence of World War I was the communization of Russia in 1917, an event that led eventually to the Cold War of the 1950s through the 1980s, during which global human civilization was perched perilously on the edge of a nuclear volcano. And all this was fallout from a single terrorist act by the teenaged fanatic Gavrilo Princip. The suicide hijackers of 9/11 shared the same sort of nihilistic mindset that had motivated Gavrilo Princip back in 1914. Although there were no important state officials among the three thousand casualties of the 9/11 attacks, the psychological impact was comparable to that of the Archduke’s assassination. In light of strong evidence that the attack had been planned, financed, and orchestrated by the Al Qaeda organization under the titular leadership of Osama bin

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Laden, at that time residing within Afghanistan, an American expeditionary force was soon dispatched to that nation to apprehend or kill bin Laden and his associates. This action was basically comparable to what the Austrians proposed to the Serbs in 1914. Had circumstances been different, the Afghans might have appealed to Russia to defend their national honor against the intolerable impositions of the United States. After all, the Taliban government of Afghanistan took the position that it bore no responsibility for the attacks and that the U.S. incursion was an unjustified invasion of their nation. Fortunately for the peace of the world, Russia in 2001 was not interested in defending Afghan honor and sovereignty, partly because of its own humiliation at the hands of Afghan guerillas during the Soviet incursion there in the 1980s, but more importantly because its abandonment of Marxist ideology in the 1990s had relieved it of the moral responsibility to maintain permanent geopolitical opposition to the foreign policy of the United States and the other capitalist nations of the world. In the cold and impersonal terminology of economics (with which I happen to be familiar owing to my profession), the 9/11 attacks would be termed a “random shock.” It is in the nature of a random shock to be unpredictable, to come “out of the blue,” so to speak. However, there are systematic, observable factors that affect how often random shocks are likely to occur over a given period of time, how severe they are likely to be when they do occur, and what are likely to be their long-term consequences. Applied to the 9/11 attacks, we ask what the systematic, observable factors were that contributed to the psychological makeup of the suicide hijackers and drove them to carry out such a desperate action. At least three interrelated factors come readily to mind: religion, history, and economics. Dating back to the Islamic wars of expansion almost fourteen hundred years ago, there have been numerous wars between predominantly Christian and Muslim political entities. Of course, campaigns of imperial conquest long predated the life of Mohammed, and it is quite speculative to what extent a basic desire to “spread the faith” motivated the Muslim conquerors during the hundred years following the death of Mohammed in 632 AD. No doubt that was part of it, but also very important were the same desires for short-term spoils and long-term security that motivated the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the Huns, the Visigoths, the Franks, and many others during their respective wars of imperial expansion, all of which occurred prior to Mohammed. The violent reaction of Christianity to the Islamic conquests, in the form of the Crusades that extended over the nearly two-hundred-year period from 1096 to 1291, clearly

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demonstrates that Christians also are susceptible to the connection between strongly held religious beliefs and propensities toward warfare against those who hold different religious beliefs. When one adheres strongly to a certain set of religious beliefs, there is a natural tendency to dislike others who adhere to a different one. Any person who adheres to a different religious belief system is implicitly questioning the validity of one’s own religious belief system—and adhering to the correct set of religious beliefs might make the difference between spending one’s eternal afterlife in heaven or in hell. This injects an unavoidable irritant into relations between people who subscribe to different religions. When tangible conflicts of interest arise between such people, the religious irritant makes it less likely that these conflicts can be resolved by compromise and accommodation, and more likely that they will escalate into armed conflict. Of course, the average level of religious fervor is much lower in the contemporary world than it was at the time of the wars of Islamic conquest and the Crusades. At this point in time, the vast majority of people throughout the world are being honest when they proclaim in favor of religious toleration and ecumenicalism. Nevertheless, within every major religion today there still exists a minority of extremists who are ready, willing, able, and veritably eager to strike down infidels. Such were the 9/11 terrorists. In addition to the opposition between the Islamic and Christian religious systems, and the long history of warfare between Muslims and Christians that has left behind a substantial residue of resentment against the perceived barbarism of the other side, there is the economic factor. Several Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia, from which most of the 9/11 hijackers derived, have been blessed with enormous oil reserves. These countries enjoy much higher living standards than would probably have been the case in the absence of oil. Nevertheless, these living standards are very substantially below those of the wealthiest Western nations. According to World Bank statistics, U.S. per capita income is currently about five times greater than Saudi Arabian per capita income. This difference injects an additional irritant into U.S.-Saudi relations. From the point of view of the Saudis, not only do the Christian infidels of the United States fail to worship the one true God, not only are they guilty of countless atrocities in their past wars against Islam, and not only are they engaging in exploitation of the Middle Eastern oil-producing nations (for whose oil they supposedly pay far less than its “true value”), but they enjoy higher living standards as well. How unjust! After all, whose side is the Supreme Being on?

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THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

As we look into an uncertain future, some disconcerting thoughts are likely to occur. There is nothing to be done about history. History is what it is and cannot be changed. The past barbarities and cruelties on all sides can be minimized and (to the extent possible) forgotten, but they can never be erased. There is also nothing to be done about religion. Religious belief systems can never be proved or disproved by rational logic, scientific inquiry, or empirical investigation. Finally, there is nothing to be done about economics—at least in the short run. Economic inequality is here to stay for a very long time. Even assuming a global Marshall Plan as advocated herein, it will take decades to significantly diminish this inequality. Without a global Marshall Plan, the inequality will most likely persist for an indefinite period measured in centuries. What all this means is that the tangible factors that contributed to the reckless and desperate behavior of the 9/11 suicide hijackers will continue onward indefinitely into the future. Sooner or later, such tangible factors are likely to result in “random shocks” similar to the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Towers, damage to the Pentagon, and the deaths of approximately three thousand innocent persons—the kind of outrage that might easily light the fuse leading to a nuclear Armageddon. Of the three factors religion, history, and economics, the last would seem to hold out the most hope for progress. Every reasonable person in the world is hopeful that the poorer “Third World” nations will experience economic growth that improves the material circumstances of life for their citizens. It is quite apparent to the people of the wealthiest nations that their very high living standards inspire envious resentment throughout the rest of the world, and that this envious resentment would diminish were living standards to improve in these nations. However, to date the citizens of the wealthy nations have been willing to invest only very limited foreign development assistance resources toward this goal. It is also quite apparent to educated, knowledgeable people, whether they live in First, Second, or Third World countries, that the burgeoning human population of the world is placing heavy demands on the natural environment, demands that may eventually overtax the environment and lead to ecological breakdown. The unfortunate demographic reality is that population increase is highest in the nations that can least afford it, that is, in the poorer ones. This rapid population increase retards growth in average living standards in these nations, and makes any kind of significant convergence toward the living standards of the wealthy nations quite unlikely into the foreseeable future.

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Environmentalists lament such things as the loss of wilderness areas, destruction of the rain forests, impending extinction of species, global warming, and so on and so forth. But these things are mostly consequences of the burgeoning human population of the world. They are symptoms of a deeper problem. So long as world population continues its explosive growth, additional environmental rules and regulations are unlikely to solve these kinds of problems. Whatever environmental rules and regulations are contemplated by international agencies will be found by specific nations to be contrary to their national interests. Even if the rules and regulations are formally adopted by these nations, they are unlikely to be enforced with sufficient vigor to make a difference. It is politically much easier for nations whose citizens would be adversely affected by rigorous enforcement of these rules and regulations to honor them in the breach while simultaneously pointing accusatory fingers at other nations that are allegedly doing even more harm to the global environment than they are. As the “blame game” is played with enthusiasm on all sides, the decline of the natural environment continues apace. As we know, an unrestricted nuclear war that unleashed the full arsenals of all the nuclear powers could bring civilization to its knees in a matter of days. All of us hope that if such a war occurs, it will not be in our lifetimes. At the moment, pressures toward unrestricted nuclear war within the near future seem controllable—barring a really overwhelming random shock of the order of a hydrogen bomb detonated by terrorists within one of the world’s great cities. The trouble is that excessive population growth is contributing to an unhealthy economic situation, and that unhealthy economic situation, in conjunction with unavoidable religious, historical, and other factors, is contributing to an international situation that breeds terrorists, and these terrorists are responsible for random shocks, and sooner or later one of these random shocks may eventuate in catastrophe. Of course, the population explosion is a world problem—not just a Third World problem. Even those nations that are today the richest and most powerful will eventually be reduced to weakness and poverty unless the present tendencies toward exponential population growth are brought under control. Even if the rate of exponential growth is very low, the numerical power of the exponential function is so great that eventually it produces gigantic numbers. In fact, it is a virtual certainty that within at most a few hundred years (a very short time span in the overall history of humanity), the present tendency toward exponential population growth will be eliminated. The question pertains to the circumstances and mechanisms of its elimination. Will it be

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THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

by voluntary private choice or social intervention under conditions of prosperity? Or will it be owing to famine and disease under conditions of desperate poverty? Returning to the here and now, there is no doubt that population pressure is the single most formidable obstacle confronted by Third World nations in their efforts to increase the living standards of their people toward the high levels enjoyed in the First World nations. Although the long-term population problem is a world problem, clearly in the short run the problem is most acute in the Third World nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Proper appreciation of the threat to human welfare implicit in the rapidly increasing world population began emerging around the middle of the twentieth century—at about the same time that the development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems were exposing humanity to the possibility of nuclear Armageddon. It could be that exposure to the more obvious and dramatic nuclear threat somewhat deadened the response to the population threat. After all, if the entire population stands a good chance of being annihilated in the near future by means of a nuclear holocaust, does it really matter how large that population is? The alarmist “standing room only” literature of the mid-twentieth century eventually faded away as people became desensitized to the issue. In addition to the fact that the nuclear threat was far more immediate, the various Cassandras of overpopulation, such as Paul Ehrlich and several others, engaged in what was, in due course, perceived as rhetorical exaggeration of the immediacy of the threat.6 As of the 1950s through the 1970s, predictions were commonplace of mass starvation by the end of the century. At various times and places in the last decades of the twentieth century, severe famine has been experienced. But it has never been caused by a worldwide shortage of food, but has rather been caused by the combination of drought conditions with civil war. Another factor breeding complacency on the population issue is that demographers have ascertained significant decreases in the rate of population growth in most parts of the world, so that the overall population growth rate is lower than it was during the earlier part of the twentieth century. While population growth may be lower than it was in the past, and while it may not be exactly describable by the mathematical formula for exponential growth, the human population is at the present time increasing at an increasing rate, as may be ascertained from any time plot covering the last few decades. The current world population is approaching 7 billion, relative to about 2.5 billion circa 1950. Thus within about sixty years, the world population has nearly tripled. No

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one knows the exact carrying capacity of the planet Earth. Of course the carrying capacity would depend on the average standard of living. If this average were bare subsistence, the minimum capable of sustaining life, perhaps 100 or 200 billion people might be accommodated on the planet. If the average living standard is to be significantly higher than subsistence, then the carrying capacity would be significantly lower. Of course, the right to procreate is high on most people’s list of natural human rights. Whether anything can or will be done about population growth at the societal level remains to be seen. The most populous nation in the world, the PRC, has implemented stringent anti-natalist policies that would be politically impossible in most other nations in the world. But the population of the PRC continues to grow briskly. Of course, within any one nation, a suggestion that policies be considered that would discourage fertility, such as eliminating tax exemptions for children, will immediately encounter objections to the effect that impending overpopulation is a global problem, and that reducing population growth in one nation will be meaningless if other nations are doing little or nothing to control their own populations. If economic impediments to children, and the joys that they provide, are a form of misery, it is well known that misery loves company. Sacrifices are more willingly undertaken if they are shared widely. A functioning federal world government would increase the likelihood that population control measures could be implemented on a sufficiently widespread basis throughout the world as to have a meaningful effect on the population growth rate. Clearly, such measures are not needed this year or this decade. They may not even be needed this century. But if we take the long view of history, almost certainly they will become necessary at some point if humanity is to avoid ecological catastrophe.

What Should Be Done? Barring supernatural intervention, perils such as excessive population growth and possible nuclear war cannot be eliminated overnight. Whatever actions we may take or not take, we shall be forced to live with these things for a very long time to come. Obviously, however, we would prefer to do as much as possible to reduce these threats and ensure a benign future for ourselves and our descendents. I will argue in this book that a two-pronged plan will significantly improve the odds in humanity’s favor. The political prong envisions the establishment of a limited federal world government. The economic prong envisions the initiation of a global Marshall Plan explicitly directed

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THE GRAND CONVERGENCE

toward drastically reducing the economic gap between rich and poor nations. However future attitudes toward these proposals might evolve, it must be admitted that at the present time, the large majority of people, throughout all the nations of the world and comprising all strata of society, are deeply skeptical of both world government and foreign aid. While many if not most people consider the United Nations to be, on the whole, a force for good in the world, they regard with horror the idea that it be replaced by a world government possessed of meaningful, effective authority over the nations. As for foreign aid, most people in the rich donor nations believe that a major expansion of foreign development assistance would place a major economic burden on themselves while simultaneously doing little or nothing toward improving economic conditions within the recipient nations. While attitudes toward foreign aid in the poorer nations are not quite so dismissive, they are by no means wholly favorable. People in developing nations are reluctant to believe that their economic progress depends critically on the generosity of the rich nations, and they are also aware that much foreign aid disappears into a black hole of graft and corruption so that the only people to realize any significant material benefit from this aid are the local elites. At the present moment in history, we are living in a profoundly conservative era. It is not, however, a matter of general belief that the present condition of humanity is optimal and cannot conceivably be improved upon. Far from it. Intelligent, educated people the world over are very much aware of the serious deficiencies and liabilities of the contemporary human condition. The printed and electronic media of communication are full of alarmist information concerning everything from genocide in remote areas of poorer nations to the possibility that planet Earth will be struck by an asteroid. In principle, most of these various problems and threats could be confronted and overcome. For example, massive military intervention by the superpowers could suppress genocidal outbreaks wherever they might occur in the world. Incoming asteroids could be destroyed by advanced spaceships armed with thermonuclear bombs. Normally, however, alarmist information is simply shrugged off, almost as if it were a form of entertainment. After all, any superpower undertaking military intervention to suppress genocide in another nation would be assailed by howls of protest from around the world that this was unjustified interference in the internal affairs of another nation. And as for asteroids, the probability that one of them will aim itself at our planet anytime within the next thousand years or so is ridiculously small. So whatever the problem or

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threat, there is always a case to be made—a case that many if not most people find quite compelling—for doing nothing. It is not that those advocating inaction have totally given up on the idea of progress. They do not reject the possibility that a condition will eventually emerge where the various problems and threats of today will no longer be relevant. Perhaps the time will come when genocide will be unknown because it would be instantly suppressed by overwhelming external power, and when mankind will be able to deploy armed spacecraft capable of blowing any incoming asteroid to smithereens. But those in favor of doing nothing do not perceive a need for meaningful, purposive action at the present time toward the elimination of these kinds of threats. Rather, they maintain, our only realistic hope is that there will be gradual “evolution” toward a better, safer world. The implication of evolution in this context is that significant improvement in the human condition cannot be brought about by means of purposeful, organized action by a large number of people. Any purposeful, organized action of this kind is (according to this attitude) more likely to result in harm than good. Such action should be avoided and discouraged as definitely disruptive and probably counterproductive. Personally, I thoroughly reject this pessimistic and defeatist attitude, which is veritably shackling the contemporary human imagination, binding it up in a straitjacket, imprisoning it in chains, and rendering it feeble and ineffective. It is not merely slowing down the achieved rate of progress; far more seriously, it is contributing to a status quo situation that is dangerously unstable, and that may ultimately eventuate in catastrophe for the entire human race. These intellectual shackles could, in due course, literally be fatal. They should be broken off and cast aside—the sooner the better. The future prospects of the human race may well depend on it. This is not to say that there are no risks in undertaking major changes. Most informed people are well aware of the “law of unintended consequences,” and of its closely related propositions: “The probability of any event is inversely proportional to its desirability,” and “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.” Although rhetorically overstated for the sake of humorous effect, these precepts do contain a kernel of truth. That kernel of truth is that any contemplated change of major magnitude should be carefully considered and planned. There must be contingency plans to deal with unfavorable developments. There should be a willingness and an ability to abandon changes that prove to be dysfunctional and counterproductive, to return to the status quo ante if experience shows that that is the best course. But assuming that the contemplated changes are in fact carefully considered and planned,

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and that contingency plans exist, and that the changes are regarded as experimental ventures that may or may not turn out favorably, and that exit strategies are available if needed—then the changes should go forward. Progress inevitably entails change; if we renounce change we abandon progress. Perhaps the clearest example that modern history provides of an idealistic movement toward the betterment of all mankind going horribly wrong is the socialist movement codified by Karl Marx and others around the middle of the nineteenth century. Marx perceived in the capitalistic principle of private ownership of the nonhuman factors of production (land and capital) two very serious problems: exploitation of labor, and business depressions. According to the labor theory of value propounded by pre-Marxian classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, labor is the source of all economic value. However, the classical economists did not perceive an ethical problem with profit and interest because of this, since capital embodies labor and therefore payment for capital, in the form of profit and interest, is in a sense payment to labor, as labor is the ultimate source of capital. Marx, on the other hand, did not accept the classical justifications of profit and interest. To him, profit and interest represented nothing less than theft, by the rapacious capitalist class (the “bourgeoisie”) from the laboring proletariat. But, according to Marx, it was not the moral unworthiness of capitalism that was to be the instrument of the system’s downfall. Rather the downfall would be brought about by steadily worsening business depressions. The surplus labor exploitation mechanism, in Marx’s view, puts huge amounts of income into the hands of capitalists. They are physically capable of personally consuming only a small fraction of this income, but opportunities for profitable investment of the residual are limited by the slow growth of the overall market, since workers are paid only subsistence wages. The result is a succession of business crises, each one of which results in further concentration of capital wealth as the smaller capitalists are bankrupted and their assets gobbled up by the bigger ones. Meanwhile, the general population experiences the miseries of involuntary unemployment and economic deprivation. Ultimately the stresses and strains imposed on the laboring population by a series of ever-worsening business depressions become unendurable, revolution erupts, and capitalism is replaced by socialism: public ownership of nonhuman factors of production. Under planned socialism, surplus labor exploitation and business depressions are eliminated, and a veritably idyllic condition of prosperity and security is achieved for the entire population.

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The conventional contemporary attitude toward Karl Marx is that history has demonstrated that he was wrong on all points. The prosperous condition of working class people in the advanced capitalist nations of North America, Western Europe, and elsewhere demonstrates that capitalism is not necessarily exploitative. While a great deal of economic inequality persists in these nations, particularly with respect to financial capital wealth, the condition of the working class is comfortable, and the social safety net rescues the least fortunate from the worst consequences of poverty. Similarly, the relative success of the anticyclical policy prescriptions of John Maynard Keynes in the post–World War II era, prescriptions that were inspired by the Great Depression of the 1930s, demonstrate that capitalism need not be subject to business fluctuations sufficiently severe to provoke serious social unrest and revolution. While recessions continue to recur periodically to this day, with the help of unemployment insurance, government bailouts, stimulus packages, and so on, their economic consequences are far less baleful than those of the Great Depression and earlier downturns. Perhaps most importantly, Marx was wrong to proclaim that socialism, in the form of public ownership of land and capital, would necessarily cure all the evils associated with capitalism and lead to a virtual utopia on earth. On the basis of such nightmarish historical episodes as the Great Terror in the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Cultural Revolution in Red China under Mao, it would appear that the socialistic cure may be far worse than the capitalistic disease. Not only did socialism inflict severe hardship and injustice on the Soviet and Chinese people at the lowest points in their twentieth-century histories, but the ideological confrontation between capitalism and socialism during the Cold War decades might easily have erupted into a nuclear holocaust that would have devastated global human civilization. While the majority of people today who are familiar with the course of modern history believe that it probably would have been better if Karl Marx had never lived, all the same there is much to be said in defense of the man. Economic historians are unanimous that the condition of urban factory workers during the first half of the nineteenth century was veritably intolerable by modern standards: long hours, low wages, and a total absence of security against such perils as unemployment or disability. The existence of a socialist critique of the capitalist system, with its concomitant threat of revolution, may have been instrumental in persuading the social and political elite to reform the system by such means as labor unions, social insurance, and progressive taxation. While technological progress provided opportunities for improving the material condition of the rank and file of society, it may

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have been the socialist threat that persuaded the leadership to take full advantage of these opportunities. With respect to the losses imposed on society by business depressions, the Marxist critique helped to sensitize the elite to these losses. If it had not been for Marx, it seems unlikely that the leadership would have been so receptive to the interventionist anticyclical policy prescribed by Keynes. As for the horrors imposed on their people by the twentieth-century dictators Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, the unfairness of attributing these to the institution of socialism, in and of itself, is amply demonstrated by the fact that there were several twentieth-century dictators who ruled capitalist nations. Thus far the leading candidate for “the most evil man in modern history” is probably Adolf Hitler, who ruled Germany from 1933 through 1945. Although the word “socialism” was incorporated in the term “National Socialism,” Hitler did not challenge the basic private ownership of capital principle that defines capitalism. Business leaders were regimented in Nazi Germany, they were told what to produce and when and how to produce it. But there was no interference with the financial wealth and privileges of private capitalists. Nazi Germany was a capitalist nation, and the level of totalitarian tyranny during those blighted years 1933–1945 was easily the equivalent to what transpired during the worst periods in Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s PRC. Karl Marx himself was apparently untroubled by any doubts whatsoever as to the rectitude of the socialist prescription for the evils of capitalism. In his eyes, it was a simple matter of black-versus-white. Never once in his voluminous writings advocating the overthrow of capitalism did he hint at the possibility that the socialist economy and society might be in any way inferior to what had gone before. He never imagined that socialism would be an experiment, to be judged on the basis of observable results, and that the possibility existed that socialism would on the whole prove inferior to capitalism, so that socialism should be abandoned and capitalism reestablished. We have learned much since the time of Marx, and we do not need to repeat his errors. One of the most important lessons we have learned is that political and economic changes do not necessarily improve human welfare. Any political or economic change that we undertake should be judged on the basis of achieved results. No assumption should be made that these results will inevitably be favorable. This is true of any social decision issue, no matter how small or large. It applies to whether we are better off under the capitalist principle of private ownership of the nonhuman factors of production or under the socialist principle of public ownership of these factors. It

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applies to whether we are better off under the sovereign nation-state system of today, under which there is no effective political authority in the world over and above the national governments, or we are better off with a functioning supernational federation—appropriately limited but formally superior to the national governments—in existence and in operation. Marx could not imagine socialism coming about in any other manner than violent revolution: his model was the French revolution of the late eighteenth century, whereby the rising industrial bourgeoisie overthrew the land-owning aristocracy of the ancien regime, to the accompaniment of mass executions. But it is important to realize that the worst revolutionary excesses of the French Terror from 1792 through 1794 were not simply a reaction to internal resistance from nostalgic reactionaries to the objectives of the Revolution. The Terror arose when the French people felt that the accomplishments of the Revolution might be reversed through the invasion and conquest of France by other nations. Prussian and Austrian forces invaded France in 1792 and from then on until the defeat of Napoleon on the battlefield of Waterloo in 1815, France was in a nearly constant state of war with various alignments of other European nations that were dubious and fearful about the direction of the French Revolution. In other words, the disruption of French society by the Revolution was not solely the result of the epochal internal changes brought about (changes that in the long term are perceived to have been generally favorable—such as the replacement of the monarchial form of government with the democratic), but was greatly magnified by the fact that France was one nation among many, and its people were fearful of military occupation by foreigners. Similarly, the twentieth-century excesses of various totalitarian regimes were aggravated by apprehensions and anxieties associated with the contemporary sovereign nation-state system. Adolf Hitler rose to power—which he then utilized to terrorize and dominate the people of Europe and to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe—by means of exploiting the grievances of the German people against what they deemed the unduly harsh terms imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles following Germany’s defeat in World War I. Turning to Stalin, it is doubtful that the Great Terror in the Soviet Union during the 1930s would have been as horrific as it was had it not been for fear among the Soviet people and leadership that hostile capitalist nations might contemplate invasion of the USSR, both to nip in the bud the socialist menace to global capitalism, and also to exploit the rich natural resources of the huge Soviet landmass. That these fears were not

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purely imaginary was eventually established by the German invasion of the USSR in June of 1941. Turning to Mao, the suppression of internal dissent in the PRC was most likely far harsher than it would have been had China not experienced foreign invasion by Japanese forces during the 1930s. Although they are laughably mild in comparison to measures undertaken by the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, such recent U.S. measures under ex-president George W. Bush as the Patriot Act and the opening of a prison camp for accused Mideast terrorists at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were direct responses to the heightened level of anxiety following the traumatic events of 9/11. Although the Oklahoma City bombing perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh in 1995 made the American people aware of the fact that major terrorist actions could be mounted by disaffected American citizens, clearly the greater danger stems from terrorists and terrorist sympathizers living in other nations. The McVeigh attack killed 168 people, relative to the almost 3,000 killed by the Islamic terrorists of 9/11 who emanated from the Mideast. Although vastly different in degree, the Bush administration measures had in common with the repressive measures of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong that they were inspired and justified by fears and anxieties that are a natural concomitant of the sovereign nation-state system of today. A world government is widely considered to be fraught with perils of totalitarian repression. Throughout modern history, humanity has, unfortunately, accumulated a great deal of experience with totalitarian repression. Thus far, none of this repression can be attributed to a world government because mankind has not yet established such a government. On the basis of modern history, it would appear that very often the worst cases of totalitarian repression are aggravated and heightened by “international complications” of various sorts. It is exactly these kinds of international complications that would be ameliorated by a properly designed, limited world government along the lines of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations proposed here. Once established, the Federal Union would become an organic part of the future development of global human civilization. It would gradually evolve, in directions that cannot be predicted in advance with any precision. It cannot be denied that a possibility exists that the Federal Union would evolve unfavorably, such that instead of solving problems it would aggravate them. If that were to happen, the federation would be dissolved via the voluntary withdrawal of a sufficient number of nations as to effectively reestablish the status quo ante. This outcome would be unfortunate, a bad omen for the future prospects of humanity. But

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given the constitutional prerequisites of the Union, it would be a peaceful dissolution. Mankind would emerge from the experience sadder but wiser, and otherwise none the worse for wear. Looking to the twentieth-century history of the United States for guidance, consider the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified by the states in 1919, which forbade “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” within the United States and its territories. Prohibition persisted in the United States throughout the 1920s. During that period, the costs of “legislating morality” became obvious. Anyone who wonders what the “war on alcohol” was like during the 1920s has only to look at the “war on drugs” being waged today. After a decade of experience suggesting that in this case the cure was worse than the disease, the pendulum of public opinion swung against prohibition. The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, whose principal purpose was simply the repeal of the 18th Amendment, was ratified before the end of 1933. And that marked the end of what President Herbert Hoover referred to as “the noble experiment.” Whether the episode had been noble or ignoble, Hoover’s use of the term “experiment” is instructive. Throughout the many decades prior to the 1920s during which the controversy had raged, advocates and opponents of prohibition had speculated endlessly about the probable effects of a national ban on alcoholic drink. Advocates forecast the moral regeneration of a nation no longer plagued by intoxication and alcoholism. Opponents forecast a narrow and joyless existence presided over by puritanical religious zealots. But no one really knew what would happen. When the pro-prohibition forces finally got the upper hand and pushed through the national ban, the anti-prohibition forces howled their lamentations. But within ten years, the compelling evidence provided by actual experience with prohibition swung the overwhelming weight of public opinion over to the anti-prohibition side of the controversy. Most social policy historians recognize in the experience of prohibition in the United States during the 1920s an atypical case. The rule is that innovative social policies—policies that are finally adopted after decades of vociferous controversy and bitter resistance—are successful rather than unsuccessful. Of all of the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, for example, only the 18th was later repealed because its effects were obviously perverse. The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, has not as yet had to be repealed; nor has the 19th, which granted the right to vote to women. If a world government were to be established in the real world, I am confident that it

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would very quickly be acknowledged as a positive development by all but a small handful of unusually inflexible people. The key point is, however, that my own personal confidence on this score is not a vital component of the case to be made for world government. What is a vital component of this case is that it would not be impossible, nor even especially difficult, to dissolve a world government that was not developing in a positive way. The formation of a world government along the lines of the proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations should be regarded as no more and no less than a scientific experiment. Such an experiment is the only way we have for achieving reliable, convincing, and compelling evidence on the potential performance of world government. Whether a world government would be a success or a failure simply cannot be determined, to any reasonably satisfactory level of certitude, on the basis of theoretical speculations and hypothetical musings based on the past history of human civilization. The current situation is simply too novel, too unprecedented, and too unparalleled for past history to provide more than circumstantial and inconclusive indications. The only feasible means by which we may ascertain whether or not a world state would make a positive contribution to the future development of human civilization is to set up one and then observe the outcome. Of course, even if one were prepared to agree to the proposition that only a real-world experiment with world government is likely to yield compelling evidence on the performance of world government, one might still regard such an experiment as far too risky to be undertaken. What I am attempting to do in this book is to make the case that a realworld experiment with a properly designed world government would not entail excessive risk. Risk is an inevitable concomitant of any decision, even if that decision is to adhere undeviatingly to the status quo. In some cases, the risk of inaction is greater than that of action. This is the situation with respect to federal world government. Humanity could and should establish such a government. In a larger sense, what is envisioned is a convergence within global human society: a political and economic convergence of such magnitude as to be termed “the grand convergence.” Political convergence would be manifested in the foundation and operation of a federal world government, the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, open to all the nations of the world. Economic convergence would be manifested in the launching of a global Marshall Plan, the World Economic Equalization Program, aimed at drastically reducing the current inequality in average living standards over all the nations of the world.

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“Convergence” refers to a process that occurs over an extended period of time. So it would be with the “grand convergence,” in both its economic and political manifestations. Even with very generous foreign development assistance contributions to the global Marshall Plan fund by the rich donor nations, it will almost certainly require several decades, possibly a century or more, before global economic inequality has been reduced to a level that is manageable in the long term, at which point the program would be phased out and terminated. And in its early stages, constrained as it would be by the retained national rights to independent military forces and free secession, the Federal Union would have to proceed very cautiously and conservatively in its endeavors to improve the condition and prospects of global human civilization. Its initial impact might be more of a psychological than a practical nature, as it gradually lays the basis for what might be termed “supernational patriotism,” a feeling of kinship with and responsibility for the entire human population of the world, rather than the population of one’s own nation. The hope is that as the years and decades pass, and the WEEP makes steadily increasing inroads into the international economic inequality problem, and the Federal Union of Democratic Nations gradually adds to the list of its positive accomplishments in fostering international cooperation and progress, the spirit of supernational patriotism will become stronger and stronger, until at last the constraints imposed upon global human civilization by its division into a host of mutually suspicious and antagonistic nations will be fully abrogated and forgotten. There is a subtle interplay between “real factors” and “psychological factors.” The real factor in this case would be the existence of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, its physical substance in terms of buildings and people, its active participation in the governance of global human society. The psychological factor is the impact upon human mentality of the Federal Union, of its provision of a higher focus of loyalty and allegiance than the national governments. The more successful the Federal Union is in terms of its practical operations, the more rapidly will the psychological attitude of supernational patriotism grow and progress. At the same time, the more developed the spirit of supernational patriotism, the more successful the Federal Union will become in its practical operations and endeavors. The objective is the simultaneous, interactive development of both real and psychological factors in a kind of snowballing process toward a very high level of practical effectiveness and psychological unity. Progress would hardly be continuous and linear. There would be setbacks, periods of retrogression and apprehension, disappointments

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and defeats. But this has been the history of humanity throughout all past ages. Despite all the tragic reverses experienced by humanity throughout its long history, the general trend has definitely been onward and upward. The grand convergence proposed here, comprising economic and political components, offers us an attractive opportunity to consolidate, continue, and accelerate the onward and upward trend established by human history up to the contemporary age. As we know, there are some convergences currently transpiring in the world. Various pop culture superstars are known throughout the world. Coca Cola and MacDonald’s hamburgers are sold almost everywhere in the world. Gigantic skyscrapers are no longer found exclusively in the wealthiest nations, they are now to be found in an increasing number of developing ones as well. English is well on its way to becoming the global common language. But these obvious and impressive realities should not blind us to some less congenial realities. With respect to international economics, while most countries in the world are experiencing rising average living standards, the gap between average living standards in the richest and the poorest nations is becoming steadily wider. With respect to international politics, there has been no progress in the direction of meaningful supernational authority since the foundation of the United Nations in 1945. That organization, launched with high hopes in the immediate aftermath of World War II, was immediately hamstrung by the emerging conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western allies. It was relegated to the sidelines from the beginning, and it has remained there ever since. In a word, we should go well beyond the limited and imperfect convergences we are now witnessing throughout the world. If we wish to maximize the probability that humanity will be surviving and thriving one thousand years from now, ten thousand years from now, and beyond, we should contemplate launching, in the near future, a massive global initiative aptly described as the grand convergence.

CH A P T ER

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Political Convergence: Supernational Federation

A Pragmatic Blueprint The political aspect of the proposed “grand convergence” is a supernational federation (a “world government” or “world state”) of an intermediate level of authority far beyond that of the present-day United Nations, but well short of that exercised by the typical nation-state of today with respect to its subsidiary components (states, provinces, districts, and so on). The idea is to establish a solid political foundation and framework upon which to build. The proposed supernational federation would be something qualitatively beyond an assemblage of ambassadors; it would rather be a legitimate, authentic, full-fledged government composed of legislative, executive, and judicial branches, all subject to democratic accountability. It would have a permanent administrative structure, a capital city, a flag, an anthem, and all the other customary forms and appurtenances of governmental authority. On the other hand, there would be important limitations on its authority, the most important of which would be the constitutionally guaranteed right of each member nation-state to maintain independent military forces, and to withdraw from the federation at its own unilateral discretion. Only slightly less important than these reserved rights would be the dual voting system in the federation legislature, by which laws would require approval on two separate and equal bases: the population basis and the material basis. Each representative would possess two voting weights: the population weight would be proportional to the population of his/her district, while the material weight would be proportional to the federation revenues derived from his/her district. Proposed legislation must be approved on both bases. There would be other restraints on the supernational federation’s authority, but these are the most important.

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While most people today are apprehensive that a world government would possess too much power, which it would utilize to oppress the various national populations, some of those among the small minority of traditional world federalists will be inclined to object that the proposed federation would lack sufficient authority to make a meaningful positive contribution to global governance. These people might be inclined toward dismissive assessments along the lines that “this proposed supernational federation would be no better than the toothless, ineffective, veritably emasculated United Nations of today.” I totally disagree. Not only does this assessment do an injustice to the United Nations, but it completely overlooks the qualitative differences, which will be apparent to anyone familiar with the rudiments of political science, between the United Nations of today and the supernational federation being described and advocated in this book. It may be true that in an ideal world, an ideal world government would be possible and appropriate. If all the peoples of the world spoke the same language, subscribed to the same religion, enjoyed the same living standards, shared the same cultural traditions and customs, and most importantly of all were willing to forgive and forget all past impositions, injustices, and outrages committed against their own nation by other nations—then it would be easy to establish a world government subject to no more constraints than are customary for the national governments of today. But clearly the world is not ideal, and therefore the world government cannot be ideal. This does not, however, translate into the proposition that a world government is impossible, impractical, or undesirable. A properly limited world government can provide us with some benefits in the present and, as it evolves and develops, more and more benefits in the future—without creating an unacceptable risk of a totalitarian outcome. In the following, I will describe the proposed supernational federation in considerable detail—some might think in too much detail. My objective is for the reader to form a fairly vivid and concrete mental image of the concept so that it might seem more tangible and attractive. I want the reader to appreciate that this book is not about vague, abstract generalities whose practical significance is nebulous. But at the same time, it is important to emphasize that the various specifics concerning nomenclature, institutional structure and operations, and so on are merely tentative suggestions that are fully subject to revision at a later date. They are intended purely to provide a basis for discussion. So long as certain irreducible principles are embodied in the supernational federation (democratic accountability, tripartite

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governmental structure, reserved national right of secession, dual voting principle, and so on), great latitude exists with respect to specifics. Naming the Federation The proposed name of the supernational federation is the “Federal Union of Democratic Nations.” This name might seem to imply that only fully democratic nations, according to the strict standards set by the nations of Western Europe, Japan, the United States, and numerous other nations around the world, would be eligible to join the federation. No such implication is intended. Regardless of the name, full membership in the Federal Union would be available to every nation in the world, whatever its current political institutions. It would be absolute folly to propose a global federation that would exclude, for example, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a nation encompassing almost one-fifth of the world’s population, on what are essentially ideological grounds. The only stipulation for membership should be that any prospective member nation that does not currently exhibit the central characteristics of strict democracy (freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of political organization, and regular, peaceful, contested elections for the highest governmental positions) will agree to work toward the establishment of these characteristics. No definite time frame should be set for this, but it would normally be expected that within twenty to thirty years, possibly earlier, the citizens of these nations will have been properly prepared for their responsibilities under the strict form of democracy, so that this form may be duly implemented. Although the proposed name of the federation implies a strong and unalterable commitment to democracy, it is important to disassociate the Federal Union proposal from some related ideas. An important figure in the twentieth century world federalist movement was Clarence K. Streit (1896–1986). As the New York Times correspondent at the League of Nations in the 1930s, Streit witnessed the disintegration and collapse of that organization in the face of aggression by the blatantly undemocratic Axis nations Japan, Italy, and Germany. In his best-selling book Union Now: A Proposal for a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic (1939), he proposed a “Union of the Free” encompassing all the North American and Western European democracies, while his equally successful book Union Now with Britain (1941) envisioned the Union restricted to

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the English-speaking democracies. The remarkable success of Streit’s proposals—in terms of widespread familiarity if not in terms of actual implementation—was a function of the war jitters of the period. Union Now was published in 1939, the year in which Nazi Germany commenced World War II by invading Poland, and Union Now with Britain was published in 1941, the year Germany broadened the war by invading Russia, and the United States was drawn into the conflict by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although Streit was widely known at the time (he was the subject of a Time magazine cover story in 1950), his proposals were never seriously considered by the political leadership. The intention of the proposals had been to deter the Axis powers from aggression by creating a super-alliance of the democratic nations. But by the time the proposals were published, the Axis war machine was in high gear and the impetus toward a world war was inexorable. Following the war, Streit continued advocating a global federation open only to democratic nations, starting with the North American and Western European nations (basically the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The envisioned global federation would eventually encompass all nations—but this would be a very long-term process and each prospective member of the union would have to become internally democratic prior to joining. In 1962, Streit joined with others to form the Association to Unite the Democracies (AUD), which continues to function down to this day, along with its sister organization, the Streit Council. The notion of forming an organization composed of the leading democratic nations was picked up by Republican nominee John McCain in his unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the presidency of the United States, in the form of a vague proposal for a “League of Democracies.” Some of the rhetoric in which this proposal was couched suggested that an important motivation for the League would be to strengthen the ability of the democratic nations to organize military action toward common purposes without confronting various obfuscations and obstacles thrown up by presumably undemocratic member nations of the United Nations. Senator McCain lost the election because of the adverse aftermath of the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, in combination with the economic recession; thus the “League of Democracies” proposal had little or nothing to do with the outcome. But the proposal was regarded skeptically by most commentators who took note of it. Critics in the United States tended to view it as a nefarious tool by which the rest of the world would exert more control over the United States, while critics outside the United States tended to view it as a

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nefarious tool by which the United States would exert more control over the rest of the world. In reality, even if it were to be formed the League would most likely exert very little control over anyone or anything, since it would almost certainly be nothing more than a debating society restricted to the democratic nations. From the larger point of view, however, even as a debating society the League of Democracies is probably a bad idea, because it would set up yet another antagonistic division among the nations of the world. Perhaps the McCain campaign thought of the League of Democracies as a means by which more support might be mustered outside the United States for such military operations as the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The problem with this is that many if not most of the democratic nations throughout the world were dubious about the invasion of Afghanistan and definitely opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Iraq especially soon became a quagmire that swallowed up large amounts of human and material resources. While the primary justification given by the Bush administration for the Iraq invasion was to eliminate Iraqi capability to produce and deploy weapons of mass destruction (apparently an invalid justification), an important secondary justification was to replace the oppressive Saddam Hussein dictatorship with a functioning democracy. As soon became evident, Bush’s neo-con advisors had greatly underestimated the military and economic (reconstruction) resources that would have been required to successfully “export” democracy to a nation such as Iraq. The postwar histories of Germany and Japan had in fact established that, in principle, it is possible to “impose” democracy on previously undemocratic nations. However, the military and economic costs of doing so are necessarily gigantic. Such costs only become politically feasible under very exceptional circumstances. Arguably, the use of the word “democratic” in the proposed name of the supernational federation, in and of itself, and even though a mere democratic intention would suffice for membership, sets up an “antagonistic division” among the nations that would hamper prospects for the formation of the organization. A simple solution to the perceived problem—if one is needed—would be to shorten the name simply to the “Federal Union.” To my knowledge, no political organization in the world today has preempted use simply of Federal Union. Thus there would be one and only one Federal Union in the world. Nevertheless, the inherent power of the basic democratic concept, despite numerous setbacks, has been thoroughly demonstrated by modern history. In my view, therefore, it strengthens the case for world government, on the whole, that it be wedded to the democratic principle.

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Federal Union Fundamentals The proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations, founded on the basis of a Federal Union Constitution, would be a full-fledged, genuine, legitimate state entity with clearly defined geographical boundaries (assuming some nonmember nations), a permanent and continuous governmental structure, the power to levy taxes and enact binding legislation, and the authority to maintain standing military forces under its direct control. As the name indicates, it would be a federal rather than a unitary form of government. The member nations would maintain their separate identities, governments, and cultures, and would retain substantial independence, autonomy, and sovereignty in all matters that do not impinge heavily on the welfare of other member nations. No officials of existing national governments would be either appointed or approved by the supernational government; rather these officials would be elected, appointed, or approved by whatever means are currently employed. The Federal Union Constitution would be composed of five principal sections: (1) nature and purposes of the Union; (2) the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial); (3) powers and responsibilities of the supernational government; (4) rights and responsibilities of nations; and (5) rights and responsibilities of citizens. It would also include a Transitional Codicil to remain in effect for the first several decades of operation of the Federal Union. Two absolutely essential components of the articles concerning rights and responsibilities of nations would be: (1) the permanent and inalienable right of a member nation to withdraw peacefully from the Federal Union; and (2) the permanent and inalienable right of a member nation to maintain under its direct control whatever military forces and armaments it deems necessary, up to and including strategic nuclear weapons. These two substantive rights would be the practical guarantors of other national rights. There are three fundamental aspects of governance: the making of laws, the enforcement of laws, and the interpretation and adjudication of laws. The separation of powers principle maintains that responsibility for these three fundamental aspects of governance should be subdivided among three separate and organizationally distinct branches of government, each staffed and administered, independently by its own personnel. The legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch enforces the laws, and the judicial branch interprets and adjudicates the laws. Accordingly, the Federal Union would implement a tripartite division of government power among legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The legislative branch would be embodied in a unicameral

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Union Chamber of Representatives of about two hundred members; the executive branch would be headed by a union chief executive; and the judicial branch, composed of twenty-five justices, would be known as the Union High Court. All three branches would independently and democratically be accountable to the citizens of the federation. It is proposed that world government elections be held on a quinquennial basis (every five years). Each Union District would elect a single union representative to the Union Chamber of Representatives every five years. The entire population of the Union would elect a union chief executive, the head of the executive branch of the supernational government, every ten years. Finally, the elections of the twenty-five union justices serving on the Union High Court would be staggered: the term of office of a union justice would be twenty-five years, so that one-fifth of the members of the Court would be elected in each quinquennial election. It is fundamental that no high-level Federal Union officials be appointed by the national governments, nor would they be subject to any direct control by the national governments. Naturally, as citizens of specific member nations, Federal Union officials would be fully aware of the interests of their own nations. This provides sufficient recognition of the interests of member nations. The regional components of the Federal Union would comprise approximately two hundred Union Districts, of roughly equivalent population. These Union Districts quite possibly would have little or no administrative significance, but might merely be regions from which legislators are elected. Some large nations would contain several Union Districts; on the other hand, several smaller nations might be needed to comprise a single Union District. For the most part, nations in the same Union District would be territorially contiguous—but not necessarily. In some cases, historical, economic, or cultural factors may override geographical proximity. For example, one obvious possibility would be the combination of a large number of very small island nations from around the world into one single Union District. The supernational government would possess the standard symbols and trappings of state authority: a flag, an anthem, emblems, formal protocols, a capital city, and so on and so forth. Of these symbols and trappings, perhaps the single most important would be the capital city. The capital city of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations should not merely be a locus for the operations of the various branches of the supernational government; in addition to that it should be developed into one of the great tourist attractions of the world. To assist this purpose the Federal Union capital should be located close to a major

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existing city that is already an important tourist attraction. This should be a city of fairly central location (in a world sense), and it should also be a city of great historical and cultural significance. Another criterion is that the city should neither be in a very wealthy nation nor in a very poor nation. One obvious possibility is Athens, Greece. Representation and Voting As of the early 2000s, there are slightly over over two hundred sovereign and independent nations in the world. The proposed number of Union Districts is approximately two hundred. The juxtaposition of these two numbers might suggest that it would be natural to define each Union District as corresponding to a single nation. However, owing to the tremendous disparity of population over the contemporary nations of the world, such an arrangement would seem patently absurd to most people. It would mean that there would be one Union Representative from China, a nation with a population over one billion persons, and at the same time one Union Representative from Monaco, a nation of less than forty thousand persons. Therefore, it is envisioned that Union Districts would not coincide with nations. In the case of larger nations, more than one Union District would be encompassed within the national boundaries. In the case of the smallest nations, several nations would be required to form one Union District. On the other hand, we would not want the Union Districts to be defined in such a way that they all have approximately the same population. For if we were to do this, the most populous nations would be disproportionately represented. To illustrate, at the present time, the PRC contains approximately 20 percent of the world’s population. If the Union Chamber of Representatives were to number two hundred representatives from Union Districts of approximately equal population, there would be approximately forty representatives from China. This seems to be too high a number from a single nation, even if that nation is by far the most populous in the world. Another problem with requiring all Union Districts to have nearly the same population is that it would mean that a great many nations would not have even one complete Union District within their boundaries. World population as of the year 2009 was estimated to be approximately 6.8 billion. If we assume two hundred Federal Union Districts, the average population over the Districts (had there been a Federal Union in existence in 2009) would have been 34 million. As of 2009, of the two hundred odd sovereign and independent nations in the world, only thirty-three had populations of 34 million or greater.

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One possibility would be to specify that every nation with a population over a specified minimum (such as 6 million) would have at least one complete Union District within its borders, while for nations with populations substantially over 6 million, the relationship between population and number of Union Districts would be specified in such a way that the number of Union Districts would be a positive but diminishing function of population (a “concave” function). For example, if we divided each national population (for the year 2009) by 6,000,000, raised the result to the power of 0.35, and rounded the result downward to the nearest integer, then China and India would each have six Union Districts, the next seven most populous nations would have three Union Districts each, the next twenty most populous nations would have two Union Districts each, and the next seventy-four most populous nations would have one Union District each, for a total of one hundred and forty-seven Union Districts. This would allow one hundred and thirteen nations to have at least one full Union District within their borders. The remaining fifty-three Union Districts would be allocated over the remaining nations, which number approximately ninety. In cases where smaller nations have to “share” their Union Representative with other nations, obviously every effort should be made to ensure that the nations thus sharing one representative will be homogeneous in important respects, so that their national interests would be relatively uniform. Nevertheless, it is certainly conceivable that some nations would decline to join the Federal Union of Democratic Nations on grounds that owing to their small populations, they would not have representatives in the Union Chamber of Representatives devoted exclusively to their own national interests. If this is an issue for a substantial number of small nations, one way to deal with it would be to inflate the number of Union Districts, and hence the number of Union Representatives in the Chamber. The obvious problem with this is that the more the individuals are in the legislature, the more difficult it will be for them to achieve consensus and make operational decisions. In the final analysis, it must be recognized that there is no possible way to determine representation in the Chamber, and voting weights of Union Representatives, in such a manner that every citizen of every potential member nation will be completely happy. Quite possibly a significant number of nations will in fact decline membership in the Federal Union for one reason or another—including issues of representation and voting weight. This need not compromise the effectiveness of the Union as far as its larger purposes are concerned. For example, if some small nations stay out of the Union because they are worried

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that their interests will not be adequately served, this is not necessarily a serious problem. A table entitled “List of countries by population” provided by Wikipedia contains population estimates for 193 sovereign states, mostly for 2008 and 2009, but some slightly earlier. There were 42 sovereign states on this list with populations under 1,000,000, and 13 with populations under 100,000. If a number of these small nations were to stay out of the Union, the Union could operate effectively without them. Representation and voting are conceptually separate issues. “Representation” refers to the number of individuals within the overall jurisdiction who are present in the legislature, while “voting” refers to the voting weight exercised by each of these individuals. In most national legislatures throughout the world, the one-person-one-vote principle is observed. This principle collapses the representation issue and the voting weight issue into one issue. It is a commendably democratic principle—but to attempt to implement such a principle in the legislature of a world government would make such a government most unlikely both at the present time and into the foreseeable future. Assuming that the representation and voting weight of each district within the world federation is proportional to the district’s population, this would mean that voting in the legislature would be heavily dominated by representatives from the populous poorer nations. This would almost certainly be unacceptable to the richer nations. According to World Development Indicators (WDI), a database maintained by the World Bank, the per capita income of the United States for 2005 in current dollars was $43,210. For that year, the WDI database provides estimates of per capita income for 179 nations with a combined population of 6,278,014,934 (representing 96.9 percent of the estimated total world population for 2005). Of those 179 nations, 120 (67.04 percent) had per capita income less than $5,000 in current U.S. dollars, and 79.51 percent of the total population mentioned earlier resided in those nations. In light of these fundamental statistical realities, it is quite evident that commendably democratic legislative decision-making in a world government would lead to dominant legislative voting weight in the hands of the poorer nations. There may be, and probably would be, a temptation for the world legislature to establish a global welfare state whereby the populations of the richer nations would be taxed heavily in order to finance various entitlements that would mostly benefit the populations of the poorer nations. The “dual voting” principle proposed for the legislative branch of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would circumvent this problem. Dual voting requires that legislation be approved both on the basis

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of the population vote (where the voting weight of each representative would be proportional to the population of the Union District represented), and on the basis of the material vote (where the voting weight of each representative would be proportional to Union revenues derived from the Union District represented). This system is also advantageous to the populous poorer nations, because it would preclude the passage of legislation that is opposed to their interests as well. The economic aspect of the grand convergence outlined and advocated in this book involves a global Marshall Plan, designated the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP), the goal of which would be the drastic reduction in differences in living standards among the nations of the world, and the means to which would be large-scale transfers of new investment capital from the richer nations to the poorer nations. If this effort is successful, then results from the population and the material votes would eventually be the same, because revenues derived from each Union District would be closely proportional to its population. However, even according to the best-case scenario, it will require a minimum of several decades before this goal is reached. It cannot be reached quickly, and until it is there should be some means by which the world government can cope with inevitable conflicts of interest between the richer and the poorer member nations. Of course, even if the dual voting system were not adopted for the Federal Union legislature, there would still exist an important deterrent to any potential move by the world government toward a global welfare state. This deterrent lies in the interrelated reserved national rights to free withdrawal from the federation, and to the maintenance of independent armed forces. If the richer nations were confronted by a world government determined to enact a global welfare state, they could simply announce their decision to depart from the federation, and they would possess the military means to enforce this decision should it be necessary. Of course, a crisis of this nature, even if it did not result in actual secessions, would inevitably have a devastating impact on attitudes toward the world government. It would severely damage whatever spirit of supernational patriotism had been achieved. The dual voting principle proposed for the Federal Union legislature is designed to forestall the emergence of such a traumatically damaging event.

Key Limitations and Authorizations As described in the previous section, the envisioned Federal Union of Democratic Nations would without any doubt be a genuine, authentic

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government authority, and as such it would be a qualitative advance over the United Nations of today. At the same time, if such a supernational authority is to be created in which most (perhaps even all) of the nations of the world will voluntarily enroll as founding members, it must be subject to certain limitations that are not customary among contemporary nation-states. The most important of these are the right of member nations to depart the world federation without opposition at their own unilateral discretion (the “open door” policy), and the right of member nations to maintain under their direct, independent control whatever military forces they desire, armed with whatever weaponry they desire, up to and including nuclear weapons. This section will first consider these two key limitations on the Federal Union, following which we will take up the two key authorizations that define any genuine government: the authority to maintain a military force, and the authority to levy mandatory taxes toward its own financial support. The “Open Door” Policy It cannot be overemphasized that if there is to be any possibility at all that a Federal Union of Democratic Nations will be established anytime within the foreseeable future, the Union Constitution must specify clearly and forcefully an open door policy by which any and all member nations will be allowed to withdraw peacefully and without opposition from the federation at any time at the nation’s own unilateral discretion. To skeptics, such a provision would surely doom the Federal Union to a very fleeting and ephemeral existence. As soon as any appreciable difficulties are encountered through which the immediate interests of a given nation are perceived to be counter to the longterm interests of the federation as a whole (according to the skeptics), that nation will opt to depart. Very soon (continuing according to this pessimistic scenario), the supernational federation will be reduced to a ridiculous rump state of no consequence whatsoever in world affairs. The skeptics may be right, of course. But it is far more likely that the Federal Union will never be established in the first place if there is no constitutional provision for free exit. If, on the other hand, the Union is established on the basis of such a provision, there is a possibility, in my view an excellent one, that the free exit option will never be exercised by any appreciable number of member nations. The possibility of free exit will ensure relatively cautious and conservative policies on the part of the supernational government, while at the same time the knowledge that they are free to leave at any time, should they so desire, will enable the various national populations to relax, to calmly

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weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of continued Federal Union membership. Just as individuals can easily become irrational through claustrophobia when they are enclosed in rooms with no windows and locked doors, so too can nations. If someone yells “Fire!” in a crowded room with no exits, panic and pandemonium will inevitably ensue. But if someone yells “Fire!” in a room where the doors are wide open and egress is free and easy, then people will tend to look around a bit to see if there is some basis for the warning—and if there is not, they will turn angrily upon the malicious prankster. Separatism has played an important role in the political and military history of human civilization throughout recorded history.1 Many have been the wars fought to achieve independence from what was regarded by the residents of a certain territory as distant and oppressive governance. Such wars for independence are especially likely when the residents of a certain region come to believe that they are being burdened, oppressed, and exploited by a distant and malevolent government over which they have no appreciable control. From the ancient empires of China, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, down to the European colonial empires of the recent past, wars of independence, some of them successful and some otherwise, have been numerous and bloody. It so happens that although the United States of America, at about 250 years of age, is a relatively young nation-state in long-term historical perspective, it has already experienced two hard-fought and extremely costly wars of independence. The first, from 1775 to 1783, known as the American War of Independence, was fought successfully against the Kingdom of Great Britain to achieve independence from the British colonial empire. The second, from 1861 to 1865, was fought unsuccessfully by eleven southern states, organized in 1861 into the Confederate States of America, to achieve independence from the United States of America. To skeptics of world government, these numerous wars of independence can imply only one thing about world government—that it is impossible. According to this shallow perspective, these wars demonstrate clearly the everlasting, abiding, and unquenchable thirst among all humanity for “freedom and independence.” But while it is undeniable that each individual nation, no less than each individual person, desires as wide a range of autonomous and discretionary action as is reasonably possible, this desire does not rule out a world government any more than it does national governments. The large majority of individual persons who are part of functioning larger societies recognize the need for some restraints on their personal freedom, because these restraints, applicable to all, are the foundation stone of civilization.

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The same situation applies to higher political organizations within the nation, such as towns, cities, states, provinces, and so on. If the thirst for untrammeled freedom and independence among all humanity were actually “unquenchable” as per the argument, it would never have been possible for towns, cities, states, provinces, and so on to acknowledge the authority of their respective national governments. When we look back at the long history of wars of independence, the obvious common element is that the people who undertook these wars viewed the government against which they were rebelling as remote and oppressive, as a government that did not take adequate account of their interests. The slogan “No taxation without representation!” manifested the fundamental grievance of the American colonists, prior to the American War of Independence, that they were not able to send voting representatives to the British Parliament. The same feelings and motivations of the American colonists at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were shared by the peoples of India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and many other nations at the time of the post– World War II liberation movements against the remaining vestiges of European colonialism—with aggravating factors of racial, linguistic, economic, and cultural differences between the “metropolitan” nations and their colonies. If we go back to the ancient and medieval empires, there were further impediments to their long-term success. In those times there was very little in the way of democratic accountability of the central government even for the citizens of the central regions, let alone for the inhabitants of remote colonies and subject states. In addition to that, communication and transportation were painfully slow by modern standards. Even if the central governments had been commendably benevolent and fully desirous of providing beneficent governance to all the peoples of their sprawling empires (which of course they were not), long delays in communications and transportation prevented the central governments from being aware of and reacting properly to conditions in the remote areas of their empires. As a result, the interests of subject peoples were poorly observed in the formulation of laws and policies, and there were permanent tendencies toward independenceseeking revolts. Five thousand years of recorded human history have provided some important lessons, and the marvelous achievements of modern technology offer us unprecedented opportunities. Thus there are some major advantages that a future world government would have relative to the many failed efforts in the past toward universal governance. Probably the most important of these is the democratic basis of the Federal

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Union. At a minimum, every national population would have a voting representative in the Union Chamber of Representatives, the legislative branch of the supernational government. Many if not most nations, at any given point in time, would have additional representatives in the executive and judicial branches. Thanks to electronic communication through the Internet, all nations within the Federal Union would be in instantaneous contact with the central government. Contemporary aircraft can bring representatives from the various nations physically to the Federal Union capital within a day or two. Similarly, representatives of the Federal Union government can travel quickly to member nations as and when the need arises. The democratic accountability of the Federal Union central government, in conjunction with instantaneous communication and rapid transportation, will militate against this government becoming “remote and oppressive” in the eyes of any significant proportion of its diverse and widely scattered citizens. Nevertheless, in the view of skeptics, the Federal Union would quickly splinter in the face of numerous conflicts of interest among its member nations. Such conflicts can emerge even in the absence of aggravating factors such as language, religion, and historical grievances. A perfect example of this is allegedly provided by the American Civil War of 1861–1865, fought between the southern states allied in the CSA against the northern and border states allied in the United States. The current constitutional form of the United States of America dates from its ratification by the required number of states in 1788. At that time, there were numerous similarities between the thirteen original states and seemingly relatively minor differences. However, the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 set the stage for a major bifurcation in the economic development of the northern and southern states. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, the southern plantation economy became steadily more dependent on slave labor from Africa. Meanwhile, it became more and more intolerable to the northern states that the persistence of human slavery within the nation was making a mockery of the solemn proclamation of the 1776 Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Aside from slavery, there were other conflicts of interest between the northern and southern states. Most importantly, northern industrialists, citing the “infant industry” argument, wanted a high tariff on imported manufactured goods, while southern planters wanted these tariffs kept low. However, the strong emotions aroused in both condemning and defending

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slavery lent an element of moral fervor to this issue, which ultimately made compromise impossible. Slavery made the American Civil War unavoidable.2 The evidence provided by this historical event underscores the absolute necessity of providing in the Federal Union Constitution a clear and unambiguous enunciation of the right of member nations to withdraw from the federation at their own unilateral discretion. An inescapable reality of today’s world is that there exists an abundance of nuclear weapons, and furthermore there is no reasonable possibility that the nuclear powers will divest themselves of these weapons within the near future, whether or not we move forward to establish a Federal Union of Democratic Nations. In a world armed with nuclear weapons, we cannot afford to allow the possibility of a conflict as severe as the American Civil War was in its day. Far better that the Federal Union be dissolved than that its members become enmeshed in an internecine struggle comparable to the American Civil War. We may of course hope that no deep-rooted, emotionally charged conflict of interest will emerge equivalent to the conflict over slavery in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. But if one does, it is essential that preservation of the Union does not become a casus belli among the member nations. Had the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1788 contained an explicit proclamation of the right of individual states to secede from the United States at their unilateral discretion, quite likely the American Civil War would not have occurred, since “preservation of the union” would not have been as compelling a motivation for war within the northern states. Had slavery been permitted to die a “natural death” via its voluntary renunciation by the southern states, it might well have persisted for another fifty or more years in the face of virtually universal condemnation throughout the civilized world, and it might well have led to the dissolution of the union owing to the unwillingness of the northern states to be associated, even indirectly, with this moral abomination. But against these costs, there quite likely would not have been a war that caused the premature deaths of well over six hundred thousand of the young republic’s citizens. In the nuclear age, we cannot afford a civil war among the member nations of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations whose costs would dwarf those of the American Civil War. Should such a war “go nuclear,” the consequence could be the collapse of human civilization on this planet. It is in the paramount interest of avoiding this calamity that the open door policy must be guaranteed by the founding document of the proposed supernational federation.

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National Military Forces Among the small minority of world federalists, the conventional viewpoint has always been that the foundation of a genuine world government would coincide with general and complete disarmament of all the nations of the world. After all, the principal purpose of world government is to eliminate international wars, and without international wars there would be no reason for any nation to maintain a significant military force. For the most part, armed force would be restricted to local police forces whose mission would continue to be the suppression of crime. A certain amount of military force might be retained by the world government to forestall backsliding among the nations incorporated into the world federation, but since the member nations would be completely disarmed, this force could be quite small. Certainly it would have no need for weapons of mass destruction such as ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. This childishly naïve scenario is an important reason why, following a brief flourishing in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the world federalist movement quickly lapsed into ineffectiveness and irrelevance. At the present time, of course, many nations throughout the world, especially the so-called superpowers, maintain very substantial military establishments armed with heavy weapons of all kinds, including nuclear. But it is simply a fantasy to propose that general disarmament be an immediate concomitant of world government. If a formal commitment toward definite, specific, and comprehensive disarmament is required of the nations prior to their formation of a world government, such a government is not likely to be formed within the foreseeable future. If the sovereign nation-state regime of the present day is continued indefinitely into the future, there is of course the possibility that peaceful evolution will proceed gradually to the point of vestigial military forces relative to today’s levels. It is also quite possible that evolution will not be peaceful, and that mankind will instead slide down the slippery slope toward a nuclear Armageddon. An appealing option for reducing the threat of ultimate disaster, in a way that is consistent with the unalterable realities of the present day, is to proceed with the formation of a world government, but to permit the member nations to maintain direct, independent control over whatever military forces they desire. This would enable the member nations to maintain the same sense of national security they have today, while at the same time creating a global governmental structure that will enhance the probability of peaceful development in the future.

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Throughout the recently completed twentieth century, a century that witnessed two devastating world wars and the threat of an even more devastating World War III, there were intermittent efforts at disarmament. Despite the honorable intentions and seemingly compelling rationale underlying these efforts, they had very little apparent effect on the course of events. The notion of reducing the threat of war through formal disarmament treaties among nations became prominent toward the end of the nineteenth century. A runaway arms competition had developed among the major European powers in the wake of German unification at the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. By the 1890s, all the major European powers found themselves obliged to maintain massive military forces armed with increasingly destructive weaponry. To the more perceptive people of the period, the arms competition, in and of itself, was augmenting the threat of war. And if war did break out among nations with such formidable military forces, the costs would be devastating. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, appeals for international measures to slow or even halt the accumulation of military power were becoming increasingly common. Finally the leader of a major European power, Czar Nicholas II of Russia, called for an international conference to control armaments. Two Hague Disarmament Conferences were held, in 1899 and 1907, but a planned third conference was cancelled because the would-be conferees were busily fighting World War I (1914–1918), a devastating conflict very nearly as horrible as had been warned by those who saw the Hague Conferences as a shining ray of hope amid thickening war clouds. The futility of the Hague Conferences provides a lesson on the limited effectiveness of disarmament efforts—in and of themselves—in those situations where nothing is done (or can be done) to alleviate the root causes of hostility and conflict among nations. In medical terms, disarmament efforts are an effort to treat symptoms of the disease, as opposed to treating the disease itself. The disease in this case is the normal suspicion, distrust, hostility, and conflict that naturally emerges from a system of sovereign and independent nation-states, all of whom are keenly aware of their perceived legitimate national interests, and all of whom are determined that armed force will be utilized against any nation that presumes to frustrate these interests. Simply put, arms competitions are a consequence of bad attitudes. In an environment of nationalistic hostility and distrust, with an arms competition in full swing, disarmament negotiations accomplish little of value. These negotiations do not address the fundamental issues dividing nations, but rather merely the derivative military aspect of the

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confrontation. Even were a strong will toward disarmament to exist, there are very serious practical obstacles to reaching arms limitation or reduction agreements. One obstacle is the possibility that one side will secretly violate the agreement (“cheat”), thus giving it a decisive advantage over the other side when war finally occurs. The solution to this problem, as perceived by disarmament experts, lies in some kind of inspection or surveillance system. The difficulty is that extremely reliable inspection or surveillance systems—sufficient to deter even the most determined and amoral nation—have never existed and probably never will. A second obstacle is the great variety and complexity of modern weapons systems, together with uncertainty as to how they will perform on the future battlefield. This makes it virtually impossible to find a numerical formula that will guarantee a certain balance of power among the participants. A third obstacle is the rapid rate of technological advance in weaponry. So even if a numerical formula could be found that would guarantee a certain balance of power with current weapons, the development of new weapons will soon upset that balance. The post–World War I history of the twentieth century provides further evidence on the limited effectiveness of disarmament efforts in the absence of progress toward the amelioration of basic sources of conflict. During the two decades separating World War I (1914–1918) from World War II (1939–1945), the major powers, shocked by what they had done to themselves in 1914–1918, endeavored to forestall a repetition of the catastrophe. Unfortunately, they left fully intact the root cause of the “Great War”: the sovereign nation-state system. They established a League of Nations, but this was not a functional world government, but merely a formalized and institutionalized international alliance. The long history of international alliances in human affairs had demonstrated their frailty when one or more major participants—as normally occurs in the evolving course of events—decides that it is no longer in their immediate national interest to participate. The interwar period witnessed several multilateral disarmament conferences in the tradition of the Hague Conferences.3 These were held variously in Washington, London, and Geneva. The Washington conferences of the early 1920s set limits on the number of battleships in the navies of the great powers. These capital ships were regarded by the disarmament experts of the time as especially promising candidates for arms limitation agreements, owing both to the high costs of production, and to the virtual impossibility of concealing these huge ships. A 1924 treaty established a five-five-three ratio as between Britain, the United States, and Japan. That is, for every five battleships possessed

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by Britain and the United States, Japan could have three. When in the 1930s, the Japanese government was swept away by the concept of a Japanese quasi-empire in Asia (the “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”), it withdrew from disarmament negotiations and commenced building all the battleships it wanted. In any event, naval warfare in the Pacific theater during World War II established the dominance of the aircraft carrier, a type of capital ship ignored by the naval disarmament conferences of the 1920s. Those conferences also neglected submarines, which were a major factor in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II. In 1932, after nearly ten years of preliminary discussions under the auspices of the League of Nations, a World Disarmament Conference was commenced in Geneva. The intention was to establish numerical limitations on all types of weapons: land, sea, and air. Any and all hopes for this were quickly wrecked by the determination of Germany, controlled from January 1933 onward by Adolf Hitler, to throw off the arms limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler ordered the German delegation home from the Geneva disarmament conference, withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, and commenced a massive and comprehensive rearmament drive. Germany’s determination to rearm forced the other great powers (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States) to do likewise. One very salient lesson from the futility of interwar disarmament efforts is that it does not matter if almost all nations behave in a prudent and reasonable manner in pursuing their national interests—if even one nation pursues its national interests in a reckless and unreasonable manner, then catastrophic warfare is liable to be the outcome. The aftermath of World War II was, in many respects, a carbon copy of the aftermath of World War I. Humanity was shocked and horrified by what it had just done to itself, and was determined to avoid future repetitions of catastrophic warfare. The advent of nuclear weapons intensified the sense of urgency. Despite intensified apprehensions regarding the potential consequences of unrestricted warfare, however, humanity regretfully concluded that no viable alternative existed to the sovereign nation-state system. The post–World War I League of Nations was replaced by the post–World War II United Nations, an organization based on essentially the same principles as the defunct League. Just as hopes for major disarmament in the interwar period eventually foundered on German intransigence, hopes for major disarmament in the postwar period foundered on Russian intransigence. Russia, a member of the victorious “Grand Alliance” of World War II, was armed to the teeth by war’s end, and owing to its bitter ideological

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conflict with the noncommunist nations, it was most uninterested in disarmament. By 1950, Russia was a nuclear power, and by 1960 it was well advanced in missile technology. By the early 1960s the basic groundwork had been laid for instantaneous nuclear Armageddon. For more than thirty years, humanity lived in the shadow of a possible nuclear world war of catastrophic destructiveness. Just as the pre–World War I era had its Hague Disarmament Conference and the interwar period had its World Disarmament Conference, so too the post–World War II era had its disarmament negotiations, mostly conducted between the United States and the Soviet Union, and mostly concerned with strategic nuclear arms.4 Some agreements were reached, notably the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT) of 1972 and 1979, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) of 1991 and 1993. The problem with treaties such as SALT and START is that even if their provisions are fully observed, the remaining stockpiles of nuclear weapons are quite large. Just as the naval arms limitation agreements of the 1920s had little effect on the destructiveness of World War II, quite likely the nuclear weapons agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union would have had little effect on the destructiveness of World War III—had one occurred. The carnage wrought by ten thousand nuclear explosions probably would not have been noticeably less than that wrought by twenty thousand such explosions. What did finally cause a significant reduction in war-risk had nothing to do with disarmament negotiations and disarmament treaties. Rather it was the renunciation of Marxist ideology by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. The dissipation of this direct and bitter ideological confrontation among the superpowers reduced international tension and made possible additional arms reduction. Disarmament did not lead to ideological harmonization—rather the other way around. If the antagonisms among nations are reduced, international hostility and suspicion will be reduced, and mutual disarmament will tend to proceed naturally, without need of formal negotiations and treaties. The foundation of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would be similar to the renunciation of Marxist ideology by the Soviet Union in the sense that it would dramatically manifest a new spirit of international understanding and cooperation. By its very existence, the Federal Union would constitute a solid institutional foundation on which to build steadily improving global governance. Among the benefits of this would be that nations would no longer need to devote such substantial proportions of their scarce economic resources to the

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maintenance of armed forces for the purpose of protecting their vital national interests. But this benefit can only be achieved gradually, over a substantial period of time. It will be achieved not through laborious formal negotiations and published treaties, but rather through the free, voluntary, and independent decisions of the member nations of the supernational federation. The pragmatic proposal for world government being offered here does not, therefore, envision any appreciable amount of formal disarmament among the nations either at the time of the foundation of the Federal Union or immediately thereafter. It is a bedrock principle of this concept of world government that each member nation would be permitted to retain direct and independent national control over as much military force as desired, armed with as much weaponry as desired up to and including strategic nuclear weapons, for as long as it desires. The Federal Union should not even undertake “moral suasion” nudging the member nations toward disarmament. Obviously in the long run, a great deal of disarmament would be desirable both for economic and psychological reasons. But this is a long-term goal, and short-term pressure toward it is likely to be ineffectual and possibly counterproductive. As far as disarmament is concerned, the sole purpose of the Federal Union would be—through its regular activities and established goals—to facilitate the evolutionary development of institutions, policies, and attitudes that will facilitate gradual, voluntary disarmament among the member nations, of whatever nature and at whatever pace the individual nations desire. The Supernational Military Force It is an essential component of the contemporary idea of “government” that it be provided with some sort of armed force. In order to be taken seriously as a government, the Federal Union of Democratic Nations should maintain a non-negligible military force, which we tentatively designate the Union Security Force (USF). The USF would be a substantial military force armed with heavy weapons, possibly including a nuclear capability, under the direct control of the chief executive of the Federal Union. The military capability of the USF might be equivalent to that of one of the smaller nuclear powers of today, such as Great Britain. Of course, at the present time all substantial military forces are controlled by the various national governments. It might be unduly burdensome in an economic sense to propose a brand new military force on top of all the military forces already existent in the world. There is

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also the consideration that any military force has to be stationed on the territory of an existing nation. A possible approach would be to designate some fraction of existing national military forces, possibly 5–10 percent, representing a wide range of nations, as components of the Union Security Force. In other words, the supernational government would appoint the top officers of these forces, and direct them as desired without gaining prior approval of the respective national governments. This would not, of course, be the case for military forces under the direct control of their respective national governments. Clearly, given the existent realities of today, the authority of the Federal Union over the various units of the USF would be somewhat tenuous in the short run. If we were to imagine, for example, the Federal Union ordering a USF unit stationed in the United States and consisting mostly of military personnel who are citizens of the United States to undertake some military action of which the national government of the United States strongly disapproves, it seems obvious that the action would not be undertaken—at least with that unit, though there might be other USF units in other nations that would be amenable to it. Since the central purpose of the Federal Union is global peace and prosperity, one might ask whether a USF is actually necessary, especially since several large member nations would maintain substantial military forces of their own for a significant length of time following formation of the federation. We have mentioned the symbolic significance of military force as a hallmark of governmental authority. But aside from symbolism, what actual military actions might potentially be undertaken by the USF? Or more precisely, under what circumstances would the Federal Union be prepared to utilize the USF—although the hope would be that this preparedness would prevent these circumstances from coming about? The most direct and straightforward motivation for the USF would be to deter aggression against member nations by nonmember nations. Since the Federal Union would be a voluntary association of nations from which member nations could depart at will, it is quite likely both that some nations would decline to join the federation at its inception, and that others might opt to leave the federation at a later time. In fact, an important component of the executive branch of the supernational government would be a Ministry of Non-Union Affairs, which would be analogous to the various foreign ministries of the national governments of today, such as the State Department of the United States. Conflicts of interest between territorially contiguous member and nonmember nations might tempt the latter to invade the former.

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An example of this kind of thing was the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990. If at that time there had been a Federal Union of Democratic Nations in which Kuwait was a member nation and Iraq was a nonmember, Iraq would more likely have been deterred since military support by the USF to protect Kuwait could have been more quickly mustered than the support actually mustered at that time through the United Nations. More reliable security against foreign invasion could be an important benefit from Union membership to many of the smaller nations around the world. What about Federal Union military action to suppress civil wars and other localized conflict situations within nations? Since World War II, there have been several horrific humanitarian disasters in various nations including Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan, to mention the better known cases.5 In some of these cases, the United Nations has intervened. One lesson that has been learned from the UN missions is that unless a massive amount of military force is sent onto the affected regions, the intervention is likely to be ineffective. Another lesson is that very frequently strong political opposition to these interventions is aroused within nations whose military personnel are suffering substantial casualties, especially if there is any possibility of blaming these casualties on the incompetence of officers from other nations appointed by the United Nations to lead the mission. In light of the none too successful historical record of UN peacekeeping missions, serious questions might be raised concerning possible USF interventions in localized conflict situations in nonmember nations, at least during the first few decades of the Federal Union’s existence. During its early decades, the primary mission of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations should be directing the global Marshall Plan toward a successful conclusion. It probably should not squander too much of its limited economic and political capital in trying to avert humanitarian disasters in nonmember nations. Of course, the long-run goal is to achieve a world in which localized conflict situations will be unimaginable because if they did occur, they would be instantly suppressed by overwhelming military force, and the instigators severely punished. But the probability of reaching this long-run goal will be enhanced if the Federal Union, in its early development, is very cautious about committing military forces to suppress armed conflicts in nonmember nations. If we look farther ahead into the more distant future, to a time when organized warfare between and within nations anywhere in the world would be virtually impossible, might there still be some justification for a USF, perhaps even one armed with nuclear weapons? Well, if we allow

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ourselves considerable latitude for speculation, we might consider that invasions of Earth by hostile aliens have long been a staple of science fiction, as exemplified in the movies by such blockbusters as War of the Worlds and Independence Day. In addition, other recent science fiction movies such as Deep Impact and Armageddon have made us more aware of inanimate threats from outer space: incoming meteors, comets, and asteroids. An encounter between Earth and a substantial hunk of space debris is not only somewhat more likely than intelligent aliens coming to Earth, but also there is no such thing as a “benevolent” space object heading for Earth. If such a thing ever happened, our best hope would reside in nuclear tipped missiles that might atomize or deflect the object. Such a consideration might merit keeping a few nuclear bombs in storage—just in case. But lest this discussion stray too far into an apparent fantasyland, we should recollect that decisions on these kinds of questions can safely be relegated to the future, since they have very little bearing on the immediate question of whether humanity should move forward to establish a world federation right now. Federal Union Finances The Federal Union of Democratic Nations would possess fiscal powers similar to those of the national governments: the power to tax, and the authority to issue such financial instruments as bonds and notes. In addition, it would receive “directed contributions” from member nations. These would be voluntary contributions that are “directed” in the sense that the contributing nation would designate specific Federal Union programs and activities to which they are to be applied (directed). In the early decades of the Union, directed contributions would mainly consist of support for the World Economic Equalization Program by the wealthy nations. A political incentive to directed contributions resides in the fact that these contributions are counted as Union revenues derived from a specific district in determining the voting weight of that district’s representative in the material vote. The more generous nations are in their directed contributions, the more influence they would exercise in the world legislature. The Federal Union Constitution should carry an appendix called the “Transitional Codicil” that would limit the taxing power of the supernational federation for a certain length of time following its foundation, say fifty years. The Codicil might stipulate, for example, that Federal Union tax revenue cannot exceed 1 percent of global income for the first ten years following its formation, 2 percent for the next ten years, and so on up to 5 percent in the fifth decade. It would probably

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not be a good idea to extend a limitation of this sort beyond fifty years. Exactly what would be the appropriate long-term fiscal role of the world government in the world economy cannot be foreseen with any accuracy. One consideration is that for purposes of administrative efficiency, the world government might take over some governmental functions currently performed at the national government level. The well-known principle of subsidiarity holds that governmental functions should be undertaken by the lowest (most local) government unit capable of adequately performing them. But the extent to which lower units can “adequately” perform certain functions is affected by another important principle: administrative economies of scale. Given the size of the human population, and the scale and complexity of business enterprise throughout the world, it would probably be impractical for the supernational government to collect tax revenue directly from private households and businesses. Instead Federal Union tax revenue should be collected from the national governments of the relatively small number of member nations. Progressive income taxation is a widely applied principle in the contemporary world, and it seems reasonable that it be applied at the supernational level. The percentage of each member nation’s national income to be paid to the supernational government would be positively related to that nation’s per capita income. For example, the poorest nations in terms of per capita income might pay one-quarter of 1 percent of their national income, while the richest nations might pay 2 percent, with a sliding scale for nations in the intermediate range. These percentages might increase gradually according to the provisions of the Transitional Codicil. Of course, no one likes to pay taxes, whatever the level of government collecting them. Given the realities of human nature, it is impractical for governments to rely on voluntary payment of taxes. Within nations, therefore, tax evasion is necessarily a crime subject to severe penalties including imprisonment. In the final analysis, it is the police power of the state that ensures compliance with the law and payment of taxes. In a well-functioning society, on the other hand, only a tiny fraction of total police effort need be allocated to enforcement of the tax laws. This is because time and custom have sanctioned most taxes, and people pay their taxes not so much to stay out of jail as to retain the respect of their fellow citizens. Because the Federal Union would be a political innovation, and one that will inevitably be initially regarded with considerable suspicion and mistrust by many of its citizens, it will not be able to rely so heavily on “time and custom.” This raises the question of what, if anything, can be done in the case of member nations becoming delinquent in

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their taxes. In the case of national and lower-level governments confronted by nonpayment of taxes, the police can be dispatched to arrest the offenders. But it would most likely be politically unacceptable to order the USF to dispatch elements into a member nation to arrest national government officials for nonpayment of taxes. This might also be militarily infeasible in the case of large, powerful member nations with substantial military forces under their direct control. The Federal Union should have the authority to expel member nations for nonpayment of taxes, but this would be a last resort. In any case, such a problem is rather unlikely to occur, because any national government that believes that the Union’s tax burden is excessive and unjustifiable will probably have seceded from the federation long before expulsion is contemplated. Let us consider, however, a case where a certain member nation has become delinquent in taxes, but not so much so that expulsion is being considered by the Federal Union, or that secession is being considered by the nation. Given that arrest and incarceration of the responsible national government officials is ruled out, is there anything less confrontational that could be done that might be effective? One possibility would be to impose financial fines on citizens of the delinquent nation when they are traveling in other nations outside their own. The fines would be appreciable but not exorbitant, just heavy enough, hopefully, to get these citizens to put pressure on their national government officials to honor their tax obligations to the Union. To make it easier on the citizens who have paid fines during the period of delinquency, the amounts of the fines might be returned to them once their respective national governments have paid their back taxes. This is certainly an unusual and unprecedented method of tax enforcement, but just as a federal world government is inherently innovative, there will have to be many other, lesser innovations in order to make it work.

Purposes and Policies The central purpose of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, from which all subsidiary purposes are derived, is to provide a global political institution to facilitate international cooperation toward the goal of enhancing the future security and prosperity of global human civilization. There are a number of divisive factors operative within global human civilization at the present time that constitute impediments to the formation of a supernational federation, and assuming one is nevertheless formed, that will thereafter constitute impediments to the achievement of its goal. These divisive factors include ideology (by no

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means extinct despite the end of the Cold War), economic inequality, nationalism, language, religion, and race. The more these various impediments can be diminished, the more success the supernational federation will achieve in the pursuit of its central goal. Obviously, two of the “impediments” on the aforementioned list are impervious to any meaningful reduction through coordinated human action, and these must therefore be taken as given: religion and race. With respect to race, the obvious physical differences between the races may eventually be entirely smoothed away by intermarriage and interbreeding, but at a minimum this will require several centuries. In the meantime, we must all share the viewpoint—with respect to the physical differences between the races—that “variety is the spice of life.” Of course, the Federal Union will do whatever it can to discourage and deter racial prejudice and to suppress various institutions and policies based on racial prejudice, but it cannot eliminate the physical differences themselves. It is in this sense that “nothing can be done” about the divisive factor of race. With respect to religion, perhaps the ecumenical tendencies of today will proceed to the point where there will be no significant operational distinction between the various religions in terms of their personal and social prescriptions, but only differences in abstract theological doctrines without any concrete implications (e.g., the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, etc.). That day is apparently still a long way off. For example, the position of the Roman Catholic Church against most of the conventional methods of contraception, even though many Roman Catholics disregard it, is still very much relevant from a practical standpoint because many Roman Catholics do not disregard it—and this constitutes a serious obstacle to economic progress in poorer nations that are predominantly Roman Catholic. Eventually, probably, the Roman Catholic prohibition of most contraceptive methods will go the way of certain other prohibitions of the past (such as eating meat on Fridays), and that will be most welcome. But under the religious freedom principle, the Federal Union would have no control over the Papacy, in the same way that it would have no control over any other religious authority in the world. In this sense, again, nothing can be done about the divisive factor of religion. Proceeding on up the list of divisive factors, we come to language. As discussed in some detail later, the Federal Union should adopt English as its sole official language, and should work toward the longrun objective of universal fluency in that language. But this would be a very long-run objective, and whatever “work” is done toward it must be very gradual and unhurried. Language and religion have in

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common that they are very sensitive and very personal matters. Any citizen of the Federal Union who feels that he or she is being imposed upon linguistically by the supernational government will become no less hostile than if he or she were being religiously oppressed. Hostility of this sort against the Union threatens its stability. Humanity has lived with a great deal of linguistic variety for many millennia—it has slowed us down but not stopped us. We can continue to live with it for as many additional decades, centuries, or millennia as it takes. With respect to nationalism, it will be the objective of the world government to gradually supplant national patriotism with what we might term “supernational patriotism.” Once again, this cannot be done quickly. It must be done patiently and gradually. The very fact of the existence of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, the fact that its citizens in all its member nations take part in regular elections for the high offices of the Union, the fact that it takes an active, tangible part in global governance—these facts, in and of themselves, will tend to promote supernational patriotism at the expense of national patriotism. The Federal Union would provide a visible, meaningful, tangible focus for a higher loyalty to the entire human race, as opposed to that subset of the human race that happens to be resident in each citizen’s particular nation. Most educated, enlightened people of today, people who are aware of and properly appreciative of the lessons provided by history, are in favor of “cosmopolitanism”—a sense of unity and common purpose with one’s fellow man that extends across national boundaries, a spirit that recognizes that respect and cooperation, rather than disrespect and conflict, are the true basis for whatever success the human race has thus far achieved on this planet. The Federal Union would constitute a physical, concrete reality totally supportive of the cosmopolitan ideal. On the other hand, it is fully apparent simply from the fact that the envisioned supernational government would be a federal rather than a unitary state, that there is no intention of “suppressing” nations themselves. Although the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would play a predominant role in coping with global issues, nations and their respective national governments would continue to play a major role with respect to the numerous issues that do not involve significant global ramifications. One may expect the continuation of a substantial amount of variation among the nations in how they operate their respective national societies, just as within nations today there is frequently great diversity among their subsidiary states, provinces, departments, and so on. The two factors at the head of the foregoing list of divisive factors are ideology and economic inequality. During the twentieth century,

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the two major ideological issues were socialism versus capitalism, and democracy versus oligarchy (frequently in the form of dictatorship— which is essentially absolute monarchy without the hereditary aspect). Clearly from the name, the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, the proposed supernational federation comes down on the side of democracy, but this is not a serious problem because the antidemocratic tendencies within humanity were dealt a terrific blow by the military defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. From the standpoint of centralization of power, there was not much difference between Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany during the Third Reich period, and Stalin’s dictatorship in the USSR from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. But at least the communist nations were never as openly scornful of democracy as were fascist dictators in the mode of Hitler and Mussolini. Even today, while the PRC is highly oligarchic in the political sense, it studiously refrains from propagandistic denunciations of the political system of democracy. With respect to socialism versus capitalism, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s marked the return to the market capitalist world mainstream of the various successor states to the USSR, as well as the eastern European satellite nations. This event dealt a terrific blow to the concept of socialism, to the point where references to the “death of socialism” in human affairs are commonplace. Nevertheless, there are still a few who perceive promise in some form of democratic market socialism not yet implemented anywhere in the real world. (The PRC would probably qualify as “market socialist” but not “democratic market socialist.”) Therefore, the situation on socialism versus capitalism is perhaps not yet fully resolved. It would not be a good idea, for example, to name the supernational federation the “Federal Union of Democratic Capitalist Nations.” The Federal Union need not and should not take any position on the issue of private ownership of the capital means of production (capitalism) versus public ownership of the capital means of production (socialism). Each member nation should have complete autonomy on this issue. Most member nations will be capitalist in nature, but there should be no discrimination against nations such as the PRC, and several others that remain socialist. In a practical sense, the number one impediment to world government throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century was the ideological confrontation between communism and other socioeconomic and political systems. But since the decline of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the number one impediment has become the global economic inequality situation. It is an unfortunate reality that this particular impediment cannot be quickly and easily eliminated—as was

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the ideological conflict situation—by a sufficient number of people simply changing their minds. Global economic inequality is based on differing underlying productive capacities among the nations, and these differences cannot be quickly and easily overcome. However, it remains imperative that they be overcome in the long run, because if they are not, the cause of international harmony and cooperative effort will be greatly undermined, and the probability of a disastrous denouement of human history will be correspondingly increased. By far the most important policy of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, throughout the first several decades of its existence, will be the organization and direction of a massive global Marshall Plan, tentatively designated the World Economic Equalization Program, aimed at drastically reducing the gap between average living standards in the rich and the poor nations. This effort will be discussed in detail in the following chapter. But there would be other economic policies of the Federal Union, aside from its involvement in the global Marshall Plan. The basic objective of all these various policies would be to increase economic efficiency and productivity throughout the Union, both to reduce the difficulty of the equalization program, and to further enhance the economic welfare of Union citizens in the richest nations. Some of these policies, such as the establishment of a free trade area within the Union, are directly and obviously economic in nature. But the policy of fostering a common language might also be considered “economic” in a broader sense. This is because differences in language operate as an impediment to human comprehension and cooperation throughout the world, and thus they constrain economic performance. The language issue is sufficiently important in its own right to merit an extended discussion. Following this discussion, we will proceed to consider various economic policies that are not directly related to the global Marshall Plan, but that are nevertheless quite relevant to the question of whether a Federal Union of Democratic Nations is indeed practical and advisable. Language According to Chapter 11 of the biblical Book of Genesis, at one time in the very distant past, “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” But then, the people of the city of Babel (the Hebrew name for Babylon), in a paroxysm of foolish pride, took it upon themselves to build a tower so immense that it would have “its top in the heavens.” The purpose of the “tower of Babel” was not to honor God but rather

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to glorify mankind. Understandably offended by this impertinence, God said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” Not satisfied with rendering the Babylonians incapable of understanding one another, God went on to “scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” This, according to the Book of Genesis, was the origin of linguistic multiplicity in the world. The point of the biblical myth is the humbling of humanity, and a more effective means of accomplishing this goal would be hard to imagine. Lacking a means of verbal communication, any two human beings, taken at random, would have great difficulty in accomplishing anything significant that requires agreement and coordinated activity. The same is true of any two politically organized groups that speak different languages. Language is an inherently divisive force that has impeded the advance of human civilization throughout all its history, and continues to do so today. It is an impediment to world government—not a major impediment, but an impediment all the same. There are a great many languages utilized by people throughout the world today. According to Microsoft Encarta, there are no less than sixty-six languages spoken as a first language by ten million people or more. The top ten, in order of number of “native” speakers, are Mandarin, Arabic, English, Spanish, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and German. French is number thirteen on the list, and Italian number twenty-one. As is well-known, English, by accident of history, has become dominant as the primary second language throughout the world. In addition to approximately three hundred and fifty million people for whom it is the mother tongue, there are estimated to be about six hundred million people who speak English fluently as a second language, plus many more who possess a smattering. Moreover, English has become dominant in all areas of business, scientific, and professional communication. It has gotten to the point where if a person wishes to pursue an international career, or to participate in serious professional research, knowledge of English is a veritable necessity. There is no doubt about it: for many of the billions of people around the world whose mother tongue is not English, this situation is irritating. It is probably even more so for people whose mother tongue happens to be one of the historically important languages other than English: Spanish, French, Russian, German, and so on. As far as world government is concerned, language is a problem that has no fully satisfactory solution. Any Federal Union policy in this area can only be determined on the basis that it is the least undesirable of the available options. My suggestion on this issue—and it is only a

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suggestion—is that English be specified as the sole official language of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. The problem with the Federal Union having multiple official languages is essentially that there are too many languages. There is no feasible way to avoid inconveniencing or offending those who speak something other than one of the official languages. Let us say that we decide to have six official languages. The arguments would then be endless for a seventh, an eighth, and so on and on. The operations of the Federal Union would be in danger of becoming bogged down in a multilingual morass, while at the same time even with numerous official languages there would still be billions of people around the world who do not speak any of them. Learning any language is laborious, and learning a second language is even more so. Those whose first language is something other than English might well have objections, therefore, to the specification of English as the sole official language of the Federal Union—no matter how compelling may be the utilitarian arguments for this policy. Is there any way to mute these objections sufficiently to permit the implementation of the policy? I would propose that as far as possible throughout the world, children study a second language: English in nations whose mother tongue is not English, and something other than English in nations whose mother tongue is English. From casual observation as well as the findings of experts on the subject, it appears that young children have little difficulty in learning a second or even a third language in addition to their mother tongue. If English is the sole official language of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, this would provide an extra incentive, in addition to all those already operative, for young children in nations whose native language is not English, to study English as a second language. This obviously puts an additional intellectual burden on these children (albeit not a heavy one, according to the experts), and there might be resentment in these nations against nations whose mother tongue is English. The ancient proverb “misery loves company” may point the way to an accommodation. Children in English-speaking nations should study some other language than English to the same extent and intensity that children in non-English-speaking nations study English. Of course, describing the acquisition of a second language as “misery” greatly overstates the case, especially where young children are concerned. A second language provides its possessor with a degree of freedom and flexibility in international travel and communication that is unknown to those with command over a single language. And if study of the second language is commenced early enough in childhood, its acquisition is not unduly burdensome.

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One of the very long-term goals of the Federal Union would be to achieve virtually universal knowledge of English as the common language of humanity. History has clearly demonstrated that a common language is a powerful force in support of both political unity and economic prosperity. It has equally clearly demonstrated that different languages are frequently a potent divisive force. More often than not, the curse of separatism (as in Canada’s province of Quebec) is linguistically based—or based on several factors, of which one is language. Tendencies toward separatism will be a problem for the Federal Union for a very long time into the future. But language is one area in which these tendencies might be gradually reduced. It would most likely require a period of many decades, if not many centuries, before the overwhelming majority of humanity becomes fluent in a single language. In this area as in many others, patience must be the watchword. It is not important that progress is slow—what matters is that progress is being made. Free Trade Area Ever since the time of David Ricardo (1772–1823), economists have waxed lyrical in support of free trade. An essential characteristic of the contemporary nation-state is that there are few if any obstacles to the free exchange of goods and services within the boundaries of the nation. The benefits are both economic in terms of increased efficiency and prosperity, and psychological in terms of fostering a spirit of common endeavor and shared purpose. The idea of gaining some of these benefits among groups of nations, as opposed to within a single nation, has a long history. The best-known example from early modern history was the German Zollverein, initiated by Prussia in 1818 and gradually extended to include the majority of principalities within the German Confederation, Austria being excluded owing to its protectionist policies. Tension between Prussia and Austria culminated in the AustroPrussian War of 1866, following which Prussia became the unchallenged preeminent state within the German Confederation. Shortly afterward, the Franco-Prussian War precipitated German unification in 1871. This marked the birth of the German nation as it is known today. The Zollverein as such ceased to exist in 1871, since no significant trade barriers are permitted within the boundaries of a nation. The Zollverein was actually a “customs union” rather than a “free trade area.” A free trade area consists of a group of nations that have agreed to eliminate among themselves various trade impediments such as tariffs, quotas, and preferences. However, these nations do not

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necessarily maintain the same trade policies relative to nonmembers. In a customs union, on the other hand, the member nations maintain exactly the same trade policies with respect to all nonmember nations. In other words, their trade impediments against nonmembers are consistent. In this sense, a customs union is a step beyond the free trade area. Another step beyond the customs union is the “common market,” wherein the member nations adopt common policies on product regulation and factor mobility. Still more advanced is the “single market” in which the member nations adopt common fiscal and technical policies. The single market goal is to achieve a condition in which economic mobility and the business environment are virtually the same within the group of member nations as they are within any one member nation. There are a number of actual and proposed free trade areas and common/single markets around the world, including the African Free Trade Zone, the Central European Free Trade Agreement, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, the Latin American Integration Association, and so on. By far the best known and most advanced of these efforts is the European Union, which had its origins in the 1951 formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the founding members of which were Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The ECSC was expanded into the European Economic Community (EEC or “Common Market”) by the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The single most important accession to the Common Market thereafter was the United Kingdom in 1973. The present structure of the European Union (EU) was formally established by the Treaty of Maastricht that came into force in 1993. The EU currently counts twenty-seven full member nations, plus three candidate members. Several of the more recent accessions are ex-Soviet bloc nations, but the Russian Federation itself has not joined. As of 2002, the euro replaced national currencies in twelve member states, not including the United Kingdom. Although the EU incorporates a democratically elected European Parliament, this body is not a genuine legislature but is more in the nature of an advisory forum to the European Commission, the true focus of power, whose members are not elected but rather appointed by the national governments of the member states. The Parliament has the authority to dismiss the European Commission, an authority that it has never exercised. Should the Parliament dismiss the Commission, the replacement commissioners would again be appointed by the national governments. In this and other respects, the EU is still a long way from a genuine government as usually understood. The term “United States

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of Europe” is sometimes bandied about, as if the EU were analogous to the United States of America, but this term grossly exaggerates the governmental authority of the EU. Despite its limitations, the EU has come to exercise an impressive amount of de facto authority, especially in the areas of economic and social policy including business regulation and consumer protection. Much of the grumbling against the EU among the populations of its various members has to do with what is perceived as excessively restrictive paternalism. “Guest workers” from poorer regions within the EU tend to be another sore point, such workers only being warmly welcome during the most prosperous points of the business cycle. So also are programs of financial support for less developed regions within the EU. As a result of these and other issues, the smooth historical development of the European Community ran over something of a pothole when in June 2005 voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a proposed “European Constitution.” Work is continuing on a revised constitution intended to respond to various objections to the original version. But it may be that the EU has gone about as far as it can given the residual nationalistic leanings of many of its five hundred million citizens. This is not to denigrate the achievements of the EU, which are clearly remarkable to anyone cognizant of European history up to and including World War II. In fact, much of the success of the EU may be attributed to the ironclad determination among Europeans to avoid any repetition of the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century. Another factor was the sandwiching of Western Europe between the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, throughout the long and perilous decades of the Cold War. Europeans realized that any further internecine conflict among themselves would even further reduce their prestige and their ability to control their own economic and political destiny within human civilization. But as memories of the two world wars of the first half of the twentieth century fade, and as the Cold War confrontation between the nuclear superpowers also fades, latent dissent against European unification, based on good old-fashioned nationalism, is intensifying noticeably. Even so—and while the EU is not now and perhaps never will be a genuine “European government”—its continuing efforts over more than half a century toward European integration and harmonization have culminated in a situation today in which actual armed warfare between any two EU member nations is veritably unimaginable. Against this background, what might be suggested as the appropriate level of economic integration within the proposed Federal Union

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of Democratic Nations? I would suggest that, initially, economic integration be along the lines of the free trade area rather than the more advanced customs union, common market, or single market. Of course, the long-run objective is to have fully uniform economic conditions (a single market) throughout the entire supernational federation. But this objective is similar to other long-run objectives such as universal fluency in a common language and a high degree of equality in average living standards. These kinds of objectives will necessarily have to be approached slowly and gradually. We must first take account of the fact, owing to the absolutely essential “open door” policy, that quite possibly there will be a substantial number of nonmember nations during the early history of the Federal Union. It is not necessary that all Union members adopt the same trade policies toward nonmember nations. The important thing is that within the Union there be the minimum possible constraints on free trade. One of the stronger immediate and tangible incentives to Federal Union membership among nonmember nations would be to participate in the large free trade area maintained under the political auspices of the Federal Union. For example, the lure of participating in the economic prosperity of the European Common Market eventually overcame Britain’s reservations against surrendering some degree of its national sovereignty to a continental European authority. The history of the European Union is sometimes cited as a case of economic integration “evolving” into political integration. Whether this is a legitimate interpretation of EU history is problematic because meaningful political integration is still a long way off. But the establishment of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would, in and of itself, represent a high level of political integration, at least in the sense of providing a full-fledged political structure on which to base future development. Of course, there is a wide spectrum of de facto “political integration” from weakest to strongest. But the Federal Union would represent a high level of de jure political integration right from the start. The reason why a high degree of economic integration cannot be achieved instantaneously is the initially high degree of economic, social, political, and cultural heterogeneity among the member nations of the Federal Union. The development of European economic integration certainly cannot be taken as a model for emulation because the very high degree of homogeneity among the nations of Western Europe as of the formation of the ECSC at the mid-twentieth century. The fact that these nations had been engaged in desperate warfare during the first half of the twentieth century created enormous “baggage”

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in terms of psychologically adverse attitudes toward one another, but the fact remains that in many important respects—especially since the ideological conflict between democracy and dictatorship had been decided by the outcome of World War II in favor of the former—the Western European nations were very similar. Therefore free trade, regulatory harmonization, and so on were easier to implement. Still, the Federal Union should establish a free trade area immediately, and make gradual, evolutionary progress toward the single market ideal as time and circumstance allow. Migration Within most contemporary nation-states, the single market ideal has already been mostly achieved. Among the key hallmarks of the national single market is the free mobility of human labor between the various regions of the nation. Unfortunately, this is one aspect of the single market within the Federal Union of Democratic Nations that will have to be postponed for a lengthy period of time. Member nations of the Federal Union will be permitted to impose whatever restrictions on immigration that they deem necessary. Almost all the nations of the contemporary world have established strict limitations on immigration from other nations. These limitations are for the principal purpose of preventing floods of immigrants from poorer nations from severely disrupting their national economies. Of course, the richer the nation the greater the potential threat; therefore it is the richest nations that impose the severest limitations and enforce them most vigorously. There seems little doubt that if all national restrictions on immigration were abolished completely, there would occur a tidal wave of migration far beyond anything ever witnessed in the entire history of the human race. The efficiency of the modern transportation network would make it possible, and the wide disparity in living standards among the nations would make it inevitable. In wealthy nations such as the United States, a perennial political issue is what, if anything, to do about illegal immigration, most of which comes from Mexico, a much poorer nation to the south with which the United States shares a long border. There are numerous proposals, ranging from massive increases in border police to amnesty for illegal immigrants. As far as quotas for legal immigration are concerned, proposals range from slightly increasing them to slightly decreasing them. However, proposals to abandon quotas, border police and all, to “throw open the borders” as it were, are peremptorily dismissed as crackpot nonsense.

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It is a fundamental proposition of this inquiry into the practicality and advisability of federal world government that such a government must not and will not endeavor to establish a global welfare state by which people in the rich nations would be heavily taxed in order to finance generous welfare entitlements that would mostly benefit people in the poor nations. Owing to the disincentive effects inherent in redistribution, a global welfare state would probably not be very effective, and in any case it would be politically impossible because it would place an intolerable burden on the altruism of the people of the rich nations. Economic equalization would be a long-term goal of the supernational federation, but this goal would be approached gradually over a period of at least several decades. The equalization program would not involve transfers of consumption goods but rather of new investment resources. The idea is not to make welfare dependencies of the poor nations, but rather to elevate their productive capabilities to the point where, without benefit of further transfers, their average living standards would be comparable to those in the rich nations. The problem with the “open borders” idea is that its effects would be too similar to those of a global welfare state. To be sure, the mass of immigrants into the rich nations would be obliged to work for their livings, as opposed to simply collecting welfare entitlements. But there would still be a decline in average living standards in the rich nations relative to those in the poor nations. No doubt the wealthiest classes in the rich nations would benefit from greatly cheapened labor, but the great majority of the population, which is dependent primarily upon labor income and not capital income, would be adversely affected. Therefore the Federal Union cannot interfere with the immigration restrictions implemented by its member nations. Every member nation would be permitted to determine its own immigration policies, and to enforce them to whatever extent it deems appropriate. As the WEEP makes progress toward reducing the economic gap among nations, pressures toward illegal immigration will diminish naturally, and the richer nations will be able to gradually ease immigration restrictions without fear of attracting a tidal wave of immigrants. Free movement of people within national borders is an extremely important aspect of contemporary nations: it breaks down regional distinctions, facilitates cooperative enterprises, and fosters national pride within all citizens. The long-run goal is to achieve as much unfettered human mobility within the entire geographical extent of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations as currently exists within nations. But until this goal is reached, “free mobility” within the Union will have to apply to traded commodities and capital investment, not to people.

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Large Issues The highly interrelated problems of excessive population growth and environmental degradation are prime examples of large global problems to which the Federal Union of Democratic Nations must respond in some manner. But exactly when and what the Federal Union should do about these large issues, and the degree of success it will have in dealing with them, are very uncertain at this point in time. People have not yet begun to think seriously about the contribution a potential future world government might make in these areas. Therefore the present consideration of “purposes and policies” of the supernational federation (aside from the global Marshall Plan) has been confined to a small number of fairly obvious topics: common language, free trade area, and migration policy. It would simply be too speculative and premature to go into any significant amount of detail about Federal Union policies respecting population and the environment. Chapter four takes up the “practicality” of federal world government, while chapter five takes up its “advisability.” Clearly on the matter of practicality, the Federal Union should be quite cautious and conservative in the areas of population and environment, lest it erode its political support in the short run and possibly suffer the ignominious fate of dissolution. Excessive population growth and environmental degradation are not such pressing issues in the immediate future that it is worth risking the long-term viability of the Union in a misguided effort to make quick and dramatic progress on these fronts. However, with respect to advisability, an absolutely critical point is that prospects for coping effectively with these problems—which if left unchecked could threaten not only the destruction of global human civilization but the actual extinction of the human species—will be far better if there is a functioning, effective, benign world government in existence, than if we persist with the quasi-anarchic sovereign nation-state system of today. We cannot predict with certainty that federal world government will enable humanity to cope effectively with the interrelated problems of population and environment. However, we can state with near certainty that federal world government will improve the odds that humanity will be able to cope with these problems effectively before it is too late.

CH A P T ER

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Economic Convergence: Global Marshall Plan

Economic Realities: Good and Bad The economic aspect of the proposed “grand convergence” is a global Marshall Plan tentatively designated the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP), through which the wealthy countries would donate a part of their new financial investment resources into a worldwide transfer fund for distribution to capital development projects in the less developed countries (LDCs). The objective of the program is to raise the productive capabilities of the latter nations to the point where their average living standards are reasonably close to those in the wealthy nations. Owing to the very substantial gap in living standards that has opened up between the rich and the poor nations, the program would require a minimum of several decades to complete successfully. Clearly, it would be the most tremendous economic undertaking in the whole history of humanity. If successful, it would greatly strengthen the spirit of human solidarity throughout the world, lay a secure foundation for international peace and cooperation, and thereby significantly enhance the prospects that the Federal Union of Democratic Nations will be a permanent, benign component of global political organization into the far future. Two critical points require heavy emphasis from the outset. The first is that the WEEP does not represent any sort of “global welfare state.” The implication of the term “welfare state” is that by means of progressive income taxation coupled with various welfare entitlements, monetary resources are shifted directly from rich to poor people. It amounts to a transfer, from wealthy households to poor households, of current output in terms of consumption commodities. Nothing like this would occur under the WEEP. Any and all transfers under this program would consist of financial investment capital for the sole

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purpose of increasing the capital stocks of the recipient nations. The idea is to increase the productive capacity of the recipient nations, not to directly increase their current consumption. The second point is that the WEEP would be initiated on a tentative and provisional basis. That is to say, the program would be initiated and continued for a reasonable trial period of perhaps ten to twenty years. If at the end of this trial period, it was not making clear, indisputable, and significant progress toward its goal, the program would be phased out and terminated. Needless to emphasize, there exists great skepticism today that a global Marshall Plan endeavor could possibly be successful. Prejudicial misunderstandings and misrepresentations concerning “foreign aid” are rife, especially in the wealthy nations. Among the people of the wealthy nations, it is widely and firmly believed that any such endeavor would result in massive waste as corrupt politicians and dishonest businessmen in the LDCs siphon off the large majority of development resources for their own greedy benefit, with the consequence that little if any benefit would be derived by the great majority of the populations of the poor nations. It would be useless to deny that there exists a possibility that this pessimistic scenario would be borne out. But to say that there is a possibility of this is not to say that the probability of this is so high that the program should not be undertaken. I will present serious economic evidence in this chapter, evidence based on computer simulations of a reasonable and plausible model of the global economy, that suggests that within a fifty-year planning period, immense progress could be made toward equalizing average living standards across the nations of the world—and that this dramatic progress would not be at the expense of living standards in the rich nations. To be sure, there would be some cost to the rich nations in terms of a lower rate of growth in living standards, but the diminution in this growth rate would be so minor as to be practically imperceptible. This tiny reduction in the economic growth rate of the rich donor nations would be compensated by a major increase in the economic growth rate of the poor recipient nations. The net benefits to the rich populations, in terms of pride of achievement and the greater peace of mind corresponding to a world in which living standards across nations would be fairly comparable, should be compellingly evident to all but the most negative, limited, unimaginative, and selfish mentalities. Obviously, the evidence to be presented here does not amount to proof that a global Marshall Plan along the lines of the proposed WEEP would be successful. Proof of any sort on a question as large and complicated as this—proof that the Program would be a success

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or, equally, that the Program would not be a success—is beyond the capabilities of contemporary human knowledge. But what the evidence does do is that it strongly supports the advisability of at least trying to overcome the problem of global inequality through a massive, coordinated, worldwide economic development effort—a global Marshall Plan. If the attempt is unsuccessful, then so be it. Humanity would be sadder but wiser, and otherwise none the worse for wear. The basic argument for the World Economic Equalization Program is basically equivalent to the basic argument for the Federal Union of Democratic Nations: that there is absolutely no way to determine if these ideas would work—would be successful—other than by the scientific methodology of empirical experiment. We owe it to ourselves, and to our descendents unto the nth generation, to undertake these experiments in the hope that they will be successful. To that minority among contemporary humanity who have been blessed with economic affluence, it is very difficult to confront the fact of massive poverty throughout the contemporary world. Psychologists agree that when it comes to depressing and frightening realities, a mentally healthy individual will not dwell upon them. For this reason, a mentally healthy person does not reflect at length about the impending moment of his or her own death. But as I will try to show in this chapter, global poverty is not like personal death: it is not inevitable and unavoidable; it may have a solution—a “cure,” so to speak. That cure may be the global Marshall Plan. Global poverty is analogous to a cancer in the human body. Cancers may be and often are fatal to those afflicted with them. But in many cases, proper medical treatment will cure cancer and enable the patient to survive and thrive for many years to come. The global Marshall Plan is a possible cure for the economic inequality cancer that is now eating away at global human civilization. Let us consider, therefore, as calmly and analytically as possible, the economic inequality problem as it exists today.1 Applying the proverbial “good news-bad news” dichotomy, let us first look at the “good news,” the economically favorable aspects of the contemporary human condition, before proceeding on to the “bad news.” The main item of good news is that economic living standards, as measured in the authoritative database maintained by the World Bank, are rising virtually everywhere in the world, and have been doing so for many years, with the single significant exception of several nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Even relatively poor nations, by the per capita income criterion used by the World Bank, manifest striking evidence of economic prosperity. No longer are huge skyscrapers, lavish shopping malls, and immense traffic jams confined to the wealthy nations—they

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are now to be found throughout the world. Moreover, there are economic elites in virtually every nation of the world whose day-to-day living standards match those of the economic elites in the wealthy nations. Nor is economic progress confined to the highly affluent. At the other end of the economic spectrum, for any arbitrarily specified “poverty line,” in most nations the proportion of the national population below this line is steadily diminishing. Furthermore, this broad-based rise in per capita income has been achieved in the face of relatively rapid population growth around the world—higher in some nations and lower in others—but appreciable even in the slowest-growing nations. The pessimistic prognostications of Parson Malthus, in the early part of the nineteenth century, based on the proposition that there is a chronic tendency for population growth to outrun productive capacity growth, may eventually be borne out, but apparently that day is not yet at hand. Of course there are costs involved in economic growth and rising living standards. It is not only enthusiastic environmentalists who are concerned about the increasing pressure being placed on the natural resource base by the combination of increasing population with increasing average living standards. And skeptical questions could also be raised that the World Bank statistics on per capita income might be exaggerating the actual amount of economic progress. As development proceeds in traditional societies, more and more economic activity becomes monetized, and the World Bank statistics measure monetized economic activity, not total economic activity. Total economic activity and consequent production output may not be rising by as much as the statistics suggest. But it is when we turn to the bad news that we perceive a problem fraught with ominous implications for the future development of global human civilization. Although it is true that average living standards, as measured by per capita income, are rising in almost all the nations of the world, the fact remains that the absolute distance (the “gap”) between average living standards in the advanced industrialized nations and those in the developing nations has reached alarming proportions, and is continuing to grow steadily. The magnitude of the problem is illustrated by figures 3.1 and 3.2. Figure 3.1 is a plot of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, using the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method of computation, in current international dollars, from 1980 (when the World Bank commenced providing PPP estimates of national income) up through 2005, for two developing nations: India and China. Purchasing Power Parity is a newer estimation method for national output that endeavors to

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6000 5000 4000 3000

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Figure 3.1 Per capita income growth: India and China, 1980–2005.

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Figure 3.2 Per capita income growth: United States, Japan, India, and China, 1980–2005.

take better account of differences between the actual purchasing power of the various national currencies. Figure 3.1 is a graphical depiction of the good news concerning the current economic status of humanity. Between them, China and India account for nearly 40 percent of the human population of the world, and as can be seen both countries are experiencing very healthy economic growth. Since the early 1990s, China’s economy has been the more dynamic of the two, but Indian

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economic growth has also been quite impressive. The average annual growth rate for India from 1980 through 2005 was about 6.59 percent, while it was 11.37 percent for China. These growth rates compare very favorably with the 4.85 percent average annual growth rate for the United States over the same period of time. Looking at figure 3.1, the average person might easily conclude that all this fuss about global economic inequality, world poverty, and so on and so forth is greatly exaggerated. Unless the World Bank is very seriously in error regarding the economic condition of these two countries, it would appear that they are progressing very nicely in terms of average living standards. Figure 3.2 a graphical depiction of the bad news concerning the current economic status of humanity. It puts the “healthy economic growth” in China and India into proper perspective by adding to the graph two additional plots for the advanced industrial nations of the United States and Japan. The economic growth of China and India is indeed very healthy, but the economic growth of the United States and Japan is also fairly healthy, and the latter two countries started from a much higher base in 1980. Despite the considerably higher growth rates of China and India relative to those of the Unites States and Japan, therefore, the absolute gap in per capita income has widened rather dramatically throughout the 1980–2005 period. If one makes the somewhat radical simplifying assumption that two nations are growing according to constant annual geometric growth, and that the poorer nation is growing at a faster rate than the richer nation, one can then mathematically determine, on the basis of the initial gap in per capita income, how long it will take the poorer nation to catch up with the richer nation in terms of per capita income. 2 For example, given the relative per capita incomes of the United States and India in 2005, if the Indian economy continues to grow at exactly the 1980–2005 rate of 6.59 percent per year while the U.S. economy continues to grow at the 1980–2005 rate of 4.85 percent per year, it will require 178 years for India to catch up with the United States. This same exercise applied to China and the United States, indicates China catching up with the United States in a mere 38 years. Of course, it is highly unrealistic to assume constant annual geometric growth rates. If the Indian growth rate speeds up while the U.S. rate slows down, then it could require much less than 178 years for the Indian economy to catch up with the U.S. economy. But it could go the other way: U.S. growth might speed up while Indian growth slows down. That would delay the catching up. I think most economists would agree that the extraordinarily rapid growth of the Chinese economy over the last quarter century is

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unlikely to be sustained over a substantial period into the future, thus it is implausible that China will catch up with the United States in 38 years. For example, at one time the Japanese economy was expanding at a breakneck clip, but in more recent decades Japanese growth has been at a more modest rate. From 1980 through 2005, Japan experienced an average annual growth rate of 4.91 percent in per capita income, only slightly above the 4.85 percent of the U.S. economy. If Japan and the United States were to maintain the same growth rates indefinitely into the future, given Japan’s 2005 per capita income relative to that of the United States, the catch-up time is computed to be 577 years. Of course, for nations such as Mexico, which registered 4.21 percent growth from 1980 to 2005, lower than that of the United States, there is no length of time at all that would be long enough to permit catching up. The unreality of such arithmetical exercises as these, based as they are on constant-rate geometric growth, need not be belabored. Constant-rate geometric growth may be a reasonable approximation to reality only over the briefest time periods. In the real world over any appreciable length of time, economic growth rates of various nations fluctuate widely in response to a number of factors. What seems clear, however, is that over an extended period of time into the indeterminate future, there will exist very substantial differences in the average living standards of the various nations. Some might argue, on the basis of speculations such as “asymptotic upper limits” on economic productivity within the rich nations, that “sooner or later” the poor nations will catch up with the rich nations. I would respond to this argument that there is no guarantee of such a thing ever happening, and even if it does, it will probably happen later rather than sooner—much later. We will probably have to live with severe economic inequality for a very long time—perhaps forever. That is, of course, unless humanity decides to do something about it. Should humanity “do something about it”? That is, should humanity organize a global Marshall Plan (i.e., a WEEP) in the hope of being able to close the presently existing economic gap within a reasonably abbreviated period of historical time, say between fifty and one hundred years? The answer to this question depends on the potential benefits of a WEEP versus its potential costs. Obviously, any such estimation of benefits versus costs must be highly uncertain. We are faced here with a classic problem in “decision-making under uncertainty”—a great deal of uncertainty. Nevertheless, to have any opinion on the matter, we are obliged to make these estimates. When some people glance at the current global economic inequality situation and then make the snap

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judgment that anything like the proposed WEEP in the real world would inevitably be an exercise in futility, they are basing this verdict on a very rough, quasi-instinctive benefit-cost analysis. Snap judgments are frequently wrong judgments. I will argue, on the basis of a more thorough consideration of benefits and costs, that a snap judgment that the WEEP would be futile is quite likely a wrong judgment. In the section entitled “World Economic Equalization Program,” I will discuss evidence from a computer simulation experiment that suggests that a global Marshall Plan of sufficient comprehensiveness and scale could result in a dramatic increase in the economic growth rates of the poor nations at the cost of a very minor reduction of the economic growth rates of the rich nations. As will be discussed, this remarkable indication is explained by one of the most fundamental principles of neoclassical economic theory: diminishing marginal productivity of a factor of production, specifically in this case, diminishing marginal productivity of capital. The economic benefit to the populations of the developing countries would be huge relative to the economic cost to the populations of the advanced nations. Although this evidence, derived from computer simulations, deserves to be taken very seriously, I do not argue that it is by any means definitive and conclusive. Everyone knows the old computer adage: “garbage in—garbage out.” Although arithmetical computations done by a computer are virtually immune from error, if the assumptions or the data on which they are based are invalid or inaccurate, then the computational results will almost certainly be incorrect. But even if the typical citizen of a rich nation—that is, a nation that would have to contribute some of its national output into the transfer fund—were prepared to give full credence to the “best-case scenario” WEEP simulation results, that citizen might still be tempted to question whether a real-world WEEP should be initiated, on the basis of the traditional self-centered question: “What’s in it for us?” After all, even the best-case scenario simulations show that if a real-world WEEP is undertaken, there would be some slowing in the rate of per capita income increase in the rich donor nations. True, it would be a very slight slowing, but it would still be a slowing. Given the prevalence of nationalistic, us-versus-them attitudes in the world today, some citizens of the rich nations might well be tempted to ask: “Why should we make any sacrifices whatsoever for the benefit of foreigners?” I will refrain at this stage from appeal to human morality, higher ethical values, sensitivity, compassion, common decency, and so on and so forth. Not that such an appeal is irrelevant and unimportant. In a larger sense, this entire proposal—for a Federal Union of

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Democratic Nations complemented by a World Economic Equalization Program—is based upon just such an appeal. But the hard fact remains that at root, concern for our fellow man is based on concern for ourselves. According to the Biblical injunction, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In practice, we behave considerately toward others in the hope—sometimes disappointed—that they will do likewise toward us. Our tendencies toward considerate, cooperative, and caring behavior are strongest toward others close to use—family and friends. They become steadily weaker as the others become more distant: people in the same local community, the same state, or province, the same nation, and finally, in the same world. Other human beings living on the same planet as ourselves, but outside our own nation are at a disadvantage in terms of meriting consideration from us, not only because they tend to be more physically distant, but because of two additional factors: (1) there is little effective law at the international level because there is no effective supernational government authority; (2) every national population nurtures various historical grievances against other nations. Thus nations, with the approval of their respective populations, behave far more inconsiderately and less cooperatively toward other nations than do properly socialized human individuals toward other people in their close vicinity. So, against this hard-nosed background, why might the populations of the rich nations take a sufficiently helpful attitude toward the populations of the poor nations to consider participating in a global Marshall Plan? They could and should do so because of both tangible and psychic benefits to themselves and their descendents. The economic gap as it exists today constitutes a very serious impediment to international harmony and cooperation, and thereby represents a very serious threat to long-term peace and prosperity. Since the economic gap appears to be an overwhelming and impermeable problem, and since there is a natural aversion to acknowledging and appraising such problems realistically, it is difficult for many people today to grasp this “inconvenient truth.” Thus, many historians and international relations specialists will argue that while existing world economic inequality is unfortunate and regrettable, it does not represent a significant hazard to the future prospects of human civilization. Various evidence might be cited in support of this proposition. In the first place, people who are truly mired in deepest poverty possess neither the physical nor the psychological means with which to make trouble for the more affluent. Applying this insight to international relations, the poorest nations of the world actually represent the least

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threat to the wealthy nations. Second, history provides an abundance of examples of warfare among peoples and nations that were quite homogeneous in terms of economic circumstances. For example, at the outbreak of World War I, living standards in the contesting nations of France and Germany were quite comparable. Indeed, the example of World War I, among others, suggests that geographical contiguity is a far more significant factor in the outbreak of warfare than economic inequality. Other factors that have contributed to hostility and warfare in the past include racial, religious, ideological, and cultural differences. Clearly this argument possesses some merit, in that it makes us aware that economic inequality is only one of several contributory factors to international tension, hostility, conflict, and warfare. On the other hand, the fact that economic inequality is only one of several factors does not translate into the proposition that economic inequality is an unimportant factor. History is full of plundering expeditions by poorer peoples desirous of appropriating the material possessions of richer peoples. One thinks of the barbarian invasions of the Roman empire, of the Viking depredations of the coastal areas of Britain and other European nations, of the Mongol invasions of China and Russia. Nor is the economic incentive to aggressive warfare exclusively confined to the earlier periods of human history. The critical catalytic factor in the two world wars of the twentieth century was Germany’s self-perception as a “have-not” nation. The critical factor in the buildup of tension that culminated in World War I was Germany’s desire to possess an overseas colonial empire equivalent to that of Britain and France. The critical factor in the buildup of tension that culminated in World War II was Germany’s desire to carve a huge land empire out of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, an empire that would have been equivalent to the overseas colonial empires of Britain and France. Living standards in Germany just prior to both World Wars I and II were equivalent to those in Britain and France, and they were certainly higher than those in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. This did not prevent Germany from considering itself a have-not nation relative to Britain and France. Historians and social analysts inclined to deprecate the role of economic inequality in generating international instability might acknowledge the significance in past history of plundering expeditions by poorer societies against richer ones, but they will argue that such expeditions are no longer feasible in the contemporary world owing to technological developments in weaponry. These developments have endowed the military forces of the rich nations with tremendous superiority over those of the poor nations. The Persian Gulf War of January–February

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1991 might be cited—in which the technically superior and better trained forces of the U.S.-led coalition slaughtered Iraqi forces with impunity—as an example of what would assuredly happen if a poor nation were ever imprudent enough to invade a rich nation. Even assuming that this is true at the present time, and without commenting on the morality (or lack thereof) of this rather arrogant attitude, there are at least two important counterpoints to be made. First, this attitude neglects the continuing financial costs of supporting a military establishment sufficiently strong to deter aggression by poor nations for a prolonged period stretching into the indefinite future. Military expenditures by the rich nations have indeed declined significantly since the demise of the Cold War, but they have not declined as much as would have been possible in the absence of the large economic gap. If all or most nations had roughly equivalent per capita income, and thus the tendency toward economically inspired aggression were much lower, it might become possible for the rich nations to reduce military expenditure to only 1 or 2 percent of Gross National Income. The second point is that it is imprudent to assume that the military situation that holds today will persist indefinitely into the future. It is not impossible that a relatively poor nation will become a military superpower in the future. Indeed, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an obvious candidate for this status. There are some interesting parallels between the PRC and Japan. When Japan joined the Axis in the 1930s and embarked upon its career of aggressive expansion that contributed to World War II, it was an “up and coming” nation that deemed itself, despite its ever-increasing material prosperity, a have-not nation. The fateful “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” represented an effort by Japan to escape what it considered to be economic subservience to foreign interests. Should the PRC determine to pursue its economically defined national interests more aggressively in the future, history might repeat itself, with far worse consequences. In current discussions of the threat to worldwide security and equity represented by the relative poverty of such a large proportion of the world population, the possibility of armed aggression by the poorest nations against the richest nations is rarely considered, owing to the fact that the implicit time horizons of these discussions are very short, and do not allow for significant changes in current conditions. To the extent that all-out nuclear world war is envisioned, it is in the context of the poorer regions of the world generating localized wars in which the superpowers might become embroiled. An example of what might eventually happen in the future is suggested by the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Iraq, under the oppressive

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dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, lusted for the lucrative oil wells of Kuwait. Less generously endowed with oil resources than Kuwait, Iraq’s 1990 per capita income in current U.S. dollars (according to World Bank data) was $2,170, relative to Kuwait’s $12,590. On the pretext of a long-defunct historical claim, Iraq invaded Kuwait in the modern equivalent to a plundering expedition. Clearly the motivation in this case was entirely economic. The United States and its allies came to the rescue of Kuwait, and expelled the Iraqi forces in a “short, victorious war.” But let us imagine that in 1991 Iraq had had a military alliance with the Soviet Union analogous to the military alliance that Serbia had with Russia in 1914, an alliance that turned out to be one of the critical linchpins into World War I. Let us further imagine that in 1991 the Soviet Union was not on the verge of dissolution, but was still very much the same as it had been in 1970 or 1980. In that case, the Soviet Union might well have accepted the Iraqi historic claim to Kuwait, have taken the position that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was an “internal matter,” and have demanded that the United States and its allies desist from their intervention. Ultimatums may well have ensued. The outcome could have been nuclear world war. Persistent inequality among nations might generate analogous situations in the future. Another potential source of disaster is terrorism. Terrorist outrages on the scale of the 9/11 attack might precipitate confrontations between nuclear superpowers. We mentioned earlier the similarity of the 9/11 attack to the June 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, an assassination that led directly to the outbreak of World War I. Had the Soviet Union still existed in 2001, and had it been persisting in ideologically motivated opposition to the foreign policy of such “imperialist capitalist powers” as the United States, the stage might have been set for World War III. Obviously, the Islamic militants involved in the 9/11 attack did not have uppermost in their conscious thoughts that the United States enjoyed higher per capita income than the nations of the Middle East—even oil-rich Mideast nations such as Saudi Arabia (of which most of the hijackers were citizens). But the fact of economic inequality certainly augmented their hostility toward the United States. Poverty, whether actual or merely perceived, provides rich soil for the cultivation of emotions of resentment and hostility—emotions that nourish fanaticism of all sorts. Given conducive conditions, one single terrorist action might light the fuse on nuclear Armageddon. Leaving aside apocalyptic visions, humanity confronts very serious threats aside from nuclear disaster. The population explosion throughout the world over the last century is putting ever-greater pressure on

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both the natural resource base and the purity of the natural environment. The AIDS crisis has reminded us of our potential vulnerability to catastrophic epidemics of contagious diseases. Drug abuse has become a major contributor to crime and a major threat to the social fabric. These are global problems in that they have important ramifications in almost every nation on the planet. The extent to which humanity will be able to cope effectively with these problems is critically affected by the predisposition among nations toward mutual respect, trust, and cooperation. The economic gap may be seriously reducing this predisposition. The wide gulf between living standards in the rich nations and those in the poor ones naturally generates a certain amount of hostility and resentment in the latter against the former. This in turn creates a reluctance in the poor nations to do “favors” for the rich nations. The United States wants Mexico to exert more effort to stem the flow of illegal migration from Mexico to the United States, but to Mexico this migration reduces its own unemployment problems, and brings into it a considerable amount of U.S. currency from illegal aliens in the United States to their families in Mexico. It might seem to the Mexicans rather selfish of the United States to want to keep out Mexican migrants, when U.S. per capita income is almost six times that of Mexico ($43,560 in 2005 relative to $7,300). The United States also wants Columbia to exert more effort to curtail the flow of illegal drugs from Columbia to the United States, but to Columbia this traffic provides a substantial amount of both domestic employment and foreign exchange. It might seem to the Columbians rather selfish of the United States to be so insistent on Columbian assistance in fighting the U.S. drug war, when U.S. per capita income is about eighteen times that of Columbia ($43,560 in 2005 relative to $2,340). Many rich nations throughout the world want Indonesia to exert more effort to suppress slash and burn methods among its subsistence farmers, because these methods result in augmented atmospheric pollution. One major constraint on the Indonesians in acceding willingly to this desire, however, is the low per capita income of Indonesia ($1,260 in 2005). To some extent it is a problem of lack of resources. It requires police resources for Mexico to impede the flow of its migrants into the United States, for Columbia to suppress drug production and marketing, for Indonesia to deter its subsistence farmers from engaging in slash and burn agriculture. But also to some extent it is a problem of lack of will. It is perhaps not unreasonable for a poor population, with a standard of living that would be considered grinding poverty in the rich nations, to be reluctant to commit significant resources to policies the major

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benefits of which accrue to the populations of the rich nations, who are already enjoying lavish living standards. It is perhaps not unreasonable that these populations, and their political leaders, experience a strong temptation to rebuff representatives from the rich nations who come to them with transparently self-serving advice and recommendations. The rich nations are generally uninterested in various proposals put forward by the poor nations toward reducing the economic gap. It is perhaps unfair, therefore, to expect the poor countries to happily embrace policies that are more obviously beneficial to the rich nations than they are to the poor ones. Were the nations of the world to have relatively equal and comparable average living standards, it would be much easier for them to reach various compromises, accommodations, and agreements on how to deal with the larger global problems that threaten humanity. It would be easier for the Federal Union of Democratic Nations to provide guidance to the community of nations toward securing a benign future for all.

Foreign Development Assistance Much to the dismay of far-right conservatives in the United States and other economically advanced nations, foreign development assistance programs are thoroughly entrenched within the fiscal procedures and administrative structures of the respective national governments. Despite perpetual grumbling by those obsessed with minimizing the tax burden, especially as it applies to the affluent, there is little likelihood that foreign development assistance programs (i.e., foreign aid) will be eliminated within the foreseeable future. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), established in 1961, is still functioning, and there are analogous government agencies in most of the twenty-two member nations of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, established in 1945 and commonly known as the World Bank, has for many decades operated as a major conduit for multilateral aid flows from the wealthy industrialized nations to the poorer developing nations. This is a good situation because it means that a global Marshall Plan does not have to be initiated from scratch. The formal apparatus is already in place and operating smoothly; it just needs to be scaled up. On the other hand, there is no getting around the fact that the “scaling up” would have to be tremendous. From OECD in Figures

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2008, the table relating to Development Aid indicates that for 2007, Official Development Assistance as a percentage of GNI was 0.16 for the United States, 0.23 for the G7 countries, and 0.40 for the EU15 countries. Even the highest of these figures, for the EU15 countries, shows that less than one half of 1 percent of national income was being allocated to foreign development assistance. Many years ago, the United Nations recommended a foreign development assistance goal of 0.7 percent of national income (seven-tenths of 1 percent). In 2007, of the twenty-two members of DAC, only Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden met this goal. These are smaller nations that together accounted for less than 20 percent of total DAC overseas development assistance (ODA). All the larger donor nations contributed well under 0.5 percent of their respective GNIs (less than one half of 1 percent). Exactly what percentage of their GNI would have to be contributed into a global Marshall Plan by the rich nations to ensure its success cannot be predicted with any degree of exactitude at this point in time. However, the WEEP policy simulations discussed in the following section suggest that anywhere from 2 to 4 percent of GNI would be required, and this probably represents a fairly plausible benchmark. This is well in excess of the corresponding figure for the original post– World War II Marshall Plan. During the four years of its operation (1948 through 1951), the United States invested a little over 1 percent of its national income for those years in the European Recovery Program.3 It is inescapable, therefore, that a global Marshall Plan would require a quantum jump in the generosity of the rich nations toward the poor nations. Such a monumental undertaking simply cannot be done “on the cheap.” On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind the relevant fact that most of the rich countries have in the past spent far larger percentages of their national incomes on their respective military establishments, than would ever be required by the global Marshall Plan. The notion that the rich countries could and should devote some of their investment resources to the economic development of the poorer countries was conceived in the aftermath of World War II. Unfortunately, it cannot be claimed that this notion was primarily the result of awakening altruistic concern in the rich nations for the welfare of “those less fortunate.” The major impetus to the birth of “foreign aid” as a recognized and accepted component of governmental policy was the Cold War, the quickly developing military and geopolitical confrontation between the communist USSR and the anticommunist United States. The communist camp was soon augmented

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by the USSR’s Eastern European satellites and Red China, while the United States counted among its allies the Western European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and some others. The “Western” or “noncommunist” camp consisted essentially of the industrially advanced capitalist nations, what Prime Minister Nehru of India dubbed the “First World.” The “Second World” in Nehru’s classification consisted of the leading communist nations, while the “Third World” accounted for all the rest: the relatively poor, populous, developing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In very basic terms, foreign development assistance programs were part of the “containment” policy of the First World to forestall the spread of Second World ideology and policy into the nations of the Third World. The central and preeminent component of containment policy, of course, were the armed forces of the First World countries, especially the United States. For example, in the high Cold War year of 1960, the United States spent 9.50 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense outlays, and 0.55 percent on ODA (foreign aid). Thus in 1960 defense outlays were 17.27 times more than foreign aid outlays. By 1980 the Cold War had eased to the extent that U.S. defense outlays were only 5.10 percent of GDP, while foreign aid outlays were 0.27 percent of GDP: thus defense outlays were 18.88 times more than foreign aid outlays. By 2000, almost ten years after the Soviet Union voluntarily removed itself from the list of principal U.S. national enemies, U.S. defense outlays reached an historic low (since the end of World War II) of 3.0 percent of GDP. In 2000, U.S. spending on foreign aid stood at 0.10 percent: thus defense outlays were 30 times larger than foreign aid outlays. Historically there has been a close correlation between U.S. defense outlays and foreign aid outlays, which is understandable as they are both motivated by international security concerns. The more threatened the United States feels, the more it spends on defense and foreign aid and vice versa. The United States has been preeminent among First World nations since the end of World War II and no doubt its international security concerns have been proportionately higher than the norm, since it is such a visible symbol of the First World that it has naturally attracted more than its share of resentment among Second and Third World nations. The military power of the United States, especially the “nuclear umbrella” it has provided, has permitted other First World nations to allocate less of their national output to defense. Thus many of them can afford to spend more on foreign aid. In some cases and to some extent, their foreign aid is motivated by a desire to maintain friendly relations with their ex-colonial possessions. Be that as it may, U.S. foreign aid

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policy has been reflected to some extent in the foreign aid policies of the other First World countries. As of the early 1960s, ODA as a percentage of GNI for the DAC member nations as a whole was around 0.50 (one half of 1 percent), while as of the early 2000s, it was down to around 0.25 percent (one quarter of 1 percent). Military and economic containment of the Second World by the First World throughout the Cold War was quite successful. As a whole, the First World countries were able to out-spend the Second World countries in both the military and the foreign aid areas. Not that foreign aid from the USSR and the PRC to Third World countries was unimportant in an absolute sense to those countries that received it. However, hopes that foreign aid disbursements would persuade recipient nations to join the communist camp were disappointed. These disbursements were rewarded with lip service only. After 1950, the only nations that joined the communist camp were Cuba and South Vietnam, and in neither case were these acquisitions owing to Russian or Chinese foreign aid contributions. By the latter 1980s, any residual hope among the Soviet leadership that communism would eventually outperform capitalism in the basic economic welfare sense had declined to the point where the leadership suffered the fatal crisis of confidence that in due course brought the Cold War to a welcome end. Exactly why, after so many decades of true belief, the USSR and its Eastern European satellites gave up on communism is a complicated question. But surely one major factor was the strong and protracted resistance against communist ideology throughout the First and Third Worlds. And to some extent at least, resistance to communism in the Third World was a function of foreign aid. Whether the First World countries were getting more “bang for the buck” from their defense spending or their foreign aid spending is impossible to ascertain with any degree of certitude. Both played a part. Now that the Cold War is over, complaints about the “burden” of foreign development assistance among more conservative elements in the rich nations are becoming stronger, and expenditures on this component of the national government budget have come down. But just as military spending has not been reduced to vestigial levels by the ending of the Cold War, the same is true of foreign aid spending. In a military sense, there is apparently still a need for substantial armed forces despite the demise of the Cold War between communism and capitalism. After all, ideological conflict between communism and capitalism was added to the list of factors responsible for geopolitical conflict among nations only as of 1917, with the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Before 1917 there was no shortage of reasons (inane

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though many of them appear in retrospect) for hostility, confrontation, and warfare among nations, and after the early 1990s, there will again be no shortage of such reasons. Moreover, ideological issues are not quite extinct in today’s world, and may experience a renaissance. At the present time, the People’s Republic of China does not bother with anything approaching Western ideals of democratic process, and despite regular contested elections within the Russian Federation, some Western pundits delight in making accusations of “undemocratic conditions” in that nation. Economic disparities among the nations increase pressures toward conflict, and create more opportunities for conflicts to escalate into warfare. And—unless World Bank statistical measurements of per capita income among nations are drastically misleading—economic disparities are increasing rather than decreasing. Expenditures on foreign development assistance are an effort to reduce economic disparities—or more realistically, to mitigate the adverse propensities, inherent within economic disparities, toward conflict and confrontation. They represent an effort to demonstrate tangibly to the poor nations that the rich nations “care”—that they desire improved living standards and economic welfare in the poor nations. It is no doubt quite true that the people of the rich nations would prefer that living standards among the people of the poor nations were higher than they are. On the other hand, there are definite limits on how much economic sacrifice the rich nations are willing to undertake to benefit the poor nations. This is just human nature at work, and were the poor populations to somehow magically change places with the rich populations, they would no doubt think and behave in the same way. Although the economic gap is widening in absolute terms, most of the LDCs have experienced quite respectable growth in terms of per capita income (i.e., average living standards) throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. That is also a period of time during which a considerable amount of foreign aid flowed from the rich nations to the LDCs. Is the second fact responsible, at least partially, for the first? In other words, has foreign aid made a difference? Foreign aid skeptics are confident that foreign aid has been ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.4 They rely largely on a mass of anecdotal horror stories about individual aid projects that, through incompetence and/or corruption, have allegedly “failed miserably.” As far as the big picture is concerned, they maintain that the ineffectiveness of foreign aid is demonstrated simply by the fact that despite “billions and billions of dollars” being “poured into” it, the recipient countries

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remain for the most part economically poor and politically and socially backward. More positive appraisals of foreign aid also cite anecdotal evidence, this time concerning apparently beneficial projects, as well as certain “macro” success stories, such as the fact that the “Asian tiger” nations of the 1960s and 1970s (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) received substantial foreign aid during critical stages of their economic development in the 1950s. Similarly, it seems virtually certain that the original Marshall Plan (1948–1951) had a great deal to do with the relatively rapid economic recovery of the Western European nations from the ravages of World War II. But apart from anecdotal evidence concerning individual projects and a few of the more successful aid recipients, what does the systematic statistical evidence say about foreign aid? Clearly, it would be helpful to my argument if compelling statistical evidence existed that foreign aid has been a major factor in whatever economic progress has been achieved among the Third World nations. Unfortunately, while many economists have tackled the question using the most accurate data and sophisticated econometric methodology available, it cannot be said that there is truly “compelling” evidence that foreign aid has made a meaningful difference. It seems that for every study indicating a positive and statistically significant effect of foreign aid receipts on the economic growth of the recipient nations, there is another that fails to indicate this result. There is also the consideration that a finding of a statistically significant positive effect of foreign aid on growth does not necessarily mean that that effect is numerically significant. For example, if foreign aid has resulted in a per capita income growth rate in the recipient nations one-tenth of 1 percent higher than it would have been otherwise, this is not a numerically significant difference.5 The unfortunate fact that there is no statistically compelling evidence supportive of the efficacy of foreign aid should not cause us to despair and to embrace the conventional pessimism of the present day. The available statistical evidence is by no means uniformly and strongly inconsistent with a positive effect of foreign aid on economic growth: some well-known studies have indeed ascertained such an effect. More importantly, common sense and basic economic theory both suggest strongly that if rich nations provide economic resources to poor nations, this will assist the economic growth of the poor nations—presumably not all of the transferred resources will find their way into the luxury cars, country villas, and Swiss bank accounts of crooked businessmen and bureaucrats. One obvious explanation for a relatively weak effect of aid disbursements in the past on the economic growth of the recipient nations is

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that much of the aid has not been applied directly to the augmentation of capital stock. In this category belongs humanitarian aid, military support, and debt relief, among other things. However worthwhile these kinds of programs may be, they do not directly increase the productive capacity of the recipient countries. In some cases, large amounts of aid have been clearly “wasted” as far as long-term economic development itself is concerned. During the Vietnam War, for example, a very large proportion of U.S. foreign aid went to South Vietnam, where it was swallowed up and obliterated by the conflict. Much the same seems to be the case currently in Iraq. Quite possibly the single most important factor that explains why the LDCs are not clearly and dramatically “catching up” with the wealthy First World nations, despite very considerable foreign aid flows, is simply that the contributions—as large as they may have been in absolute terms—have nevertheless been insufficient to get the job done. The economic gap is a huge problem, and it probably needs a proportionately huge solution if there is to be any hope of eliminating this problem within any reasonable period of historical time. In metaphorical terms, we might say that the economic gap is menacing humanity in the same way that a charging rhinoceros would be menacing a hunter. Thus far the hunter has been trying to stop the rhino with a BB gun. But clearly, a charging rhino cannot be stopped by a BB gun. A high-powered rifle, on the other hand, might be effective. The foreign development assistance programs of the past have been equivalent to a BB gun. The potential future worldwide foreign development assistance program—the global Marshall Plan or WEEP—would be equivalent to a high-powered rifle. The notion of a massive global Marshall Plan has been periodically bruited about ever since the original Marshall Plan. Obviously the global Marshall Plan would have to be on a much larger geographical scale and conducted over a much longer period of time than the original Marshall Plan, which applied only to the Western European nations and was continued for only four years (1948 through 1951). Global economic inequality as it exists today is a much larger problem than the economic problem confronted by the war-ravaged Western European nations in the immediate postwar years. Nevertheless, the original Marshall Plan provides a rough blueprint, and more importantly an inspirational beacon, for a global Marshall Plan. Among visionaries, the notion of a massive, coordinated, worldwide effort to ameliorate the global economic gap has a long history. One of these visionaries was George J. Church. Representative excerpts

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from Church’s editorial “The Case for a Global Marshall Plan” in the June 12, 1978, issue of Time magazine are as follows: The advanced countries have an urgent self-interest in improving a situation [world economic inequality] that in a few years may well overshadow any other international issue. The self-interest is partly political: poverty in the LDCs provides fertile soil for demagogues . . . These strains have bred North-South tensions that easily match in bitterness the East-West ideological clashes. At conference after conference, LDCs have demanded a “new international economic order” involving vaguely defined transfers of wealth from North to South. Northern statesmen, with much justice, have regarded this rhetoric as a kind of impractical Robin Hoodism. But with no discernible justice, the industrial countries have kept a tight lid on their assistance to LDCs. The Northern attitude is myopically stingy . . . Says West German Economics Minister Count Otto Lambsdorff: “I do not believe that a kind of Marshall Plan for the Third World—which today would have to be shouldered jointly by the U.S., Europe and Japan—is a feasible solution.” Yet a new version of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II may well be the most workable solution. Only such a plan could overcome the widespread feeling among voters that much aid to LDCs is wasted because it consists of piecemeal efforts by the givers to finance uncoordinated projects . . . Any Marshall Plan for the developing nations would admittedly be imperfect. But consider the alternatives: for the LDCs, continued poverty; for the industrial nations, endless political threats and damage to their own economies. Rich and poor countries do not have to like each other to realize they have a common interest they cannot escape.

The passing of more than a quarter century has not diminished the potential importance of this idea. The WEEP proposed here—the economic complement to the main political proposal for the Federal Union of Democratic Nations—would constitute a practical implementation of the global Marshall Plan envisioned by George J. Church. Among the objections that could be lodged against the possibility of a WEEP, probably the most important is that “there is not a shred of worthwhile evidence” that this program would achieve significant success. One possible response to this objection is that “there is not a shred of worthwhile evidence” that it would not achieve significant success. The WEEP envisioned here would involve transfers of investment resources from the rich nations to the poor nations many times larger than the current transfers. Thus far in modern human history, a WEEP on this scale has not been attempted. Thus, in a very strict

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sense, no “worthwhile evidence” of any sort at all exists—evidence supporting either the program’s success or its failure. Of course, if we relax our definition of worthwhile evidence, then it may certainly be said that worthwhile evidence does in fact exist that a real-world WEEP could be remarkably successful. The following section describes and discusses some relevant economic research conducted by the present author (an economist by profession) on the potential success or failure of a hypothetical WEEP.

World Economic Equalization Program My book Common Progress: The Case for a World Economic Equalization Program was published in the millennial year of 2000.6 The book describes extensive research based on a computer simulation model (the “WEEP model”) of the world economy. The benchmark simulation shows the possibility of a dramatic reduction in global economic inequality, within a fairly brief interval of fifty years, brought about by a global Marshall Plan in which the rich nations would contribute between 1 and 4 percent of their respective national incomes into a transfer fund for investment in the LDC economies. The benchmark simulation of the same model indicates that without the global Marshall Plan in operation, the current trend toward a wider economic gap between the rich and the poor nations will continue throughout the next fifty years. The main title “Common Progress” is intended to convey the proposition that a tremendous increase in the economic growth rates of per capita income in the recipient nations can be achieved at the cost of only a very slight reduction in the rate of growth of per capita income in the donor nations. In other words, there would be no cost in the sense of reducing per capita income in the rich donor nations: these nations would continue to grow at a good rate despite the transfers. Progress would be common to all nations, not just the poor nations: thus Common Progress. This idea is so fundamentally important that in my previous writings on the subject, I have used capitalization; I will continue to do so herein. Another term fully worthy of capitalization is “Crude Redistribution,” which I coined to represent the basic notion of the “global welfare state.” Crude Redistribution is the diametric opposite of Common Progress: it envisions a program of direct transfers of current consumption output from the rich nations to the poor nations. The populations of the rich nations would be subjected to high rates of taxation in order to finance welfare entitlements that would benefit mostly the

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populations of the poor nations. In effect, the average living standards of the rich nations would be lowered in order that the average living standards of the poor nations be increased. There would be “convergence” of average living standards throughout the world at a level somewhere between the current average living standards in the rich nations and those in the poor nations. Under Common Progress, on the contrary, the convergence within all nations would be to living standards higher than current living standards in the rich nations. In the book Common Progress, I presented numerical computations indicating the impracticality of Crude Redistribution.7 If the guaranteed minimum income levels specified by the global welfare state are even marginally reasonable, the required tax rates on the populations of the rich countries would be so high as to be obviously well beyond the bounds of political feasibility. The rich nations would resort to all-out armed resistance before allowing themselves to be subjected to such extravagant tax rates. Of course, the prevalence throughout the populous Third World of what would be considered desperate poverty by the typical resident of a rich nation renders such computations unnecessary. It must be concluded, therefore, that Crude Redistribution is not a viable option for dealing with the global economic inequality problem. The research described in Common Progress clearly indicates a very significant possibility that a real-world WEEP could be a spectacular success: a high degree of convergence being achieved in the living standards of all nations—without this causing a serious decline in the rate of increase (as opposed to the level) of living standards in the rich nations. The poor nations of today might be brought to a high level of prosperity without this causing any diminishment in the high level of prosperity currently being enjoyed by the rich nations. Be it well understood that I am certainly not claiming that this research constitutes “proof,” in either the scientific or the legal sense, that a real-world WEEP would be a success. Proof of any proposition, whether positive or negative, about the outcome of an untried public policy measure is beyond the capabilities of contemporary social science. Aside from questions concerning the conceptual and numerical foundations (the “assumptions”) of the research, there is the fact that the research indicates not only that a real-world WEEP could be a spectacular success—but also that it could be a spectacular failure. The outcome of success or failure depends on the numerical values of certain model parameters. Even if we were prepared to assume that the model was a reasonable approximation of reality, we have no way of knowing the exact numerical values of its parameters. Indications of success

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are achieved with what I consider to be a reasonable set of numerical parameter values. But I also show that with numerical parameter values that I consider to be much less plausible—but that others might deem more plausible—the outcome is complete failure. I cannot assume that the average reader of this book is thoroughly acquainted with economic methodology, and for that reason I will omit technical details concerning model specification and numerical implementation. These details are available to interested readers in the book Common Progress, as well as in some professional article contributions. I will confine myself here to an informal description of the research. The WEEP model is a model of the world economy with nations as economic units and years as time periods. Intended for computer simulation, the model’s purpose is to develop scientific evidence on the potential performance of a very large-scale global Marshall Plan. Key elements of the model are the production function, the consumption function, the transfer allocation function determining each nation’s foreign aid contribution, and the share function determining each nation’s foreign aid receipts. Owing to the model’s tight focus on foreign aid, the single model link between the national economies consists of transfers of generalized capital investment resources through the WEEP. The model does not encompass various other links between national economies such as foreign trade, private foreign investment, and private voluntary transfers. The WEEP model production function is a Cobb-Douglas form in generalized capital and labor. The descriptor “Cobb-Douglas” is a reference to the function’s originators in the 1920s—Paul H. Douglas (a professor of economics) and Charles W. Cobb (a professor of mathematics). It was designed to embody various fundamental principles normally associated with production functions. This function has been extensively utilized within the field of economics ever since its introduction in an article entitled “A Theory of Production,” published in the March 1928 issue of the American Economic Review. In the WEEP model, for any nation at any point in time, output Y is taken to be a Cobb-Douglas function of population P (a proxy for productive labor), generalized capital K, and the total factor productivity coefficient A. Statistical data are utilized for Y and P in the numerical implementation of the model, but K, generalized capital, represents a hypothetical construct for which existing statistical proxies such as “plant and equipment,” even if they were reliably available for all nations, would not be appropriate. “Generalized capital” is the value of all reproducible inputs other than physical labor power. In addition to the usual “plant and equipment,” it would definitely include the value of educational

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and training inputs into the labor force (human capital components) as well as the value of various publicly provided productive resources such as roads, bridges, dams, and schools (social capital components). Generalized capital plays a pivotal role in the WEEP model. It is presumed: (1) that the extreme differentials in per capita output between nations in the contemporary world may be all or mostly attributed to extreme differentials in current endowments of generalized capital between nations; and (2) that generalized capital is transferable between nations, in the sense that a given investment in generalized capital may be installed in any nation and it will have the same impact on production. The proposed WEEP is based on the hypothesis that most of the observed differences in output per capita (y = Y/P) across nations are the result of K differentials rather than A differentials. The program aims at influencing the future development of national K stocks: the K stocks of rich nations would grow at a slower rate in order that the K stocks of poor nations grow at a faster rate. Both of these assumptions are controversial. As to the first, it has long been argued by many economists that the main reason for observed differences in per capita output are total factor productivity differentials: these tend to be low for poor nations because of imbedded political, cultural, and institutional conditions that are economically dysfunctional. To the extent that this proposition is valid, and per capita income differentials are in fact principally a result of A differentials rather than K differentials, then a program such as the WEEP—that would alter the future allocation of world investment in K as between nations—would have a very small impact on the distribution of production over nations. This possibility is encompassed in the WEEP model specification through a parameter designated, somewhat inelegantly, the “productivity differential source coefficient.” The productivity differential source coefficient represents the proportion of the initial per capita income differentials that may be attributed to differentials in total factor productivity coefficients, as opposed to differentials in generalized capital stocks. The numerical range of this parameter is between zero and one. If the value is zero, then all A are equal between nations, and all differentials in per capita income are owing to differentials in generalized capital K. If the value is one, then every nation has the same amount of K in proportion to output Y as every other nation, and all differentials in per capita income are owing to differentials in the total factor productivity coefficient A. If the productivity differential source coefficient is between zero and one, then differentials in per capita income are partially owing to differentials in generalized capital stocks and partially owing to differentials in total

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factor productivity coefficients. Simulation experiments verify that if the productivity differential source coefficient is too high, then a WEEP would not be effective. As to the second assumption (that generalized capital is transferable between nations), according to foreign aid skeptics, only a small proportion of foreign aid is actually put to productive use, owing to high administrative costs and/or to the diversion of significant resources to private uses through the machinations of dishonest businessmen and corrupt bureaucrats. This possibility is encompassed in the WEEP model specification through a parameter designated the “conversion effectiveness coefficient.” This represents the proportion of each nation’s net share of the total transfer fund that is actually transformed effectively into generalized capital. The numerical range of the conversion effectiveness coefficient is also between zero and one. If it equals one, then all transfer shares are converted successfully into generalized capital. If it equals zero, then no transfer shares are converted into generalized capital. If it is between zero and one, then that proportion of a recipient’s transfer share is converted into generalized capital, while the remainder goes to waste. Once again, simulation experiments verify that if the conversion effectiveness parameter becomes sufficiently adverse (this time taking on too low a value rather than too high a value), a WEEP would be ineffective. The empirical basis for the WEEP model is the “World Bank dataset”: the 140 nations in this dataset include all nations that (according to the World Bank) had populations over one million people as of 1970. Even with this restriction to “larger” nations, the set of nations accounts for somewhat over 98 percent of the world population. The dataset includes population and real per capita income of the 140 nations annually from 1970 through 2000. Data from the thirty-oneyear period 1970 through 2000 are used to calibrate the model: that is, to set the numerical parameters of the model to values that create a reasonably close fit between the observed data and results from the WEEP model validation simulation. The WEEP model policy simulations, as opposed to the validation simulation, cover the fifty-one-year period from 2000 through 2050. Since the initial year of this interval has already passed into history, the policy simulation results should be thought of as “what if” results. That is to say, these are potential results if a WEEP had been initiated in 2000. Although the structural form of the WEEP model used to obtain the results described herein is exactly the same as that used to obtain the results reported in Common Progress, there are some minor numerical differences. The empirical data underlying the Common Progress

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results were obtained from the 1997 edition of World Development Indicators while the empirical data underlying the present results were obtained from the 2002 edition. The results given here were described (in considerably greater numerical detail) in my article “Could a Global Marshall Plan Be Successful? An Investigation Using the WEEP Simulation Model,” published in World Development (July 2004). Owing to various data and estimation problems, it is unrealistic to aspire to a high level of numerical precision in specifying model parameters. However, the benchmark parameter values utilized for the numerical simulations do in fact satisfy the following criteria: (1) they are consistent with basic a priori economic theory; (2) they lie within the wide boundaries of plausibility established by an impressionistic appreciation of related empirical literature; (3) they produce a reasonably satisfactory fit between the empirical data and the model results over the validation interval extending from 1970 through 2000. Of course, it goes without saying that much uncertainty inevitably exists with respect to model parameter values. Thus an important part of any computer simulation research is “sensitivity analysis”: the determination of how various model simulations are affected by changes in numerical parameter values. Qualitative model results are more weighty to the extent that they are “robust”: that is, to the extent that they continue to hold true under alternative parameter values. Two particularly important parameters in the WEEP model are the productivity differential source coefficient and the conversion effectiveness coefficient. In the benchmark case, both of these are set to the most “optimistic” values: respectively zero (indicating that all initial per capita income differentials are owing to differences in generalized capital endowments and none to differences in total factor productivity), and one (indicating that all net transfer fund shares of recipient nations are successfully translated into increases in generalized capital stocks). In due course, we will examine the consequences of setting these parameters to less optimistic values. The WEEP model policy simulations described here, covering a fifty-one-year period commencing in 2000 and concluding in 2050, are from my World Development article. The two benchmark WEEP model simulations comprise the without-WEEP simulation and the with-WEEP simulation. In the without-WEEP simulation, the parameters of the transfer allocation function are set so that no nation pays anything into the transfer fund. Figures 3.3 and 3.4 show per capita income growth results for the four representative nations utilized for figures 3.1 and 3.2: the United States and Japan (two high-income nations), and China and India (two low-income nations). Figure 3.3

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Figure 3.4 Potential per capita income growth with a World Economic Equalization Program: United States, Japan, India, and China, 2000–2050.

pertains to the without-WEEP case: it shows a projection of the likely evolution of per capita income for these four nations in the absence of a WEEP. Figure 3.4 pertains to the with-WEEP case: a projection of potential per capita income if the WEEP is undertaken. Figure 3.3 depicts a widening gap, from 2000 through 2050, between the respective per capita incomes of the rich nations (represented by the

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United States and Japan) and the poor nations (represented by China and India). From figure 3.3, it would appear that without a WEEP, we may expect “more of the same.” The economic gap will continue to grow in absolute terms, and there is no evidence of meaningful economic convergence of the relatively poor nations on the relatively rich nations. A word of qualification is merited regarding China. It is well known that China’s economic growth over the past quarter century has been extraordinary. If China were to maintain this very high growth rate for another fifty years, quite possibly it will indeed catch up with the rich nations, thus empirically falsifying figure 3.3. But to expect such extraordinary growth to be maintained over a long period of time is probably unrealistic. Moreover, few if any LDCs in the contemporary world are growing at China’s rate. It seems unlikely that China’s economic performance will be emulated widely throughout the Third World. According to the with-WEEP simulation illustrated by figure 3.4, if a WEEP were initiated, there could occur over the next half-century— without benefit of extraordinary economic performance on the part of China or any other LDC—a truly remarkable amount of progress toward overcoming the economic gap. The contrast between the without-WEEP simulation illustrated by figure 3.3 and the with-WEEP simulation illustrated by figure 3.4 can only be described as remarkable. True, we do not see absolute convergence in the sense that the poorest nations, at the end of the fifty-one-year period, would have living standards as high as those in the richest nations at that time. However, these results suggest that the living standards of what are the poorest nations of today would have improved sufficiently, by the end of the period, to be roughly comparable to those of the richest nations today. Of course, the WEEP model does not encompass all the numerous short- and long-term factors affecting economic growth. If we were to undertake a real-world global Marshall Plan akin to the WEEP, the actual growth patterns of various nations would be highly variable: they would certainly not be described by the smooth curves shown in figure 3.4. As for the poor nations of today, under a WEEP some would no doubt be benefited more than others. As a result, there could well be some substantial alterations in the relative economic positions of nations. The possibility exists that some of the poor nations of today may end up overtaking the richest nations. For example, as mentioned, China could conceivably overtake the United States within a fifty-year period. If that were to happen,

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China would at some point change from a recipient nation to a donor nation within the WEEP. A given nation’s receipts from the foreign aid transfer fund would depend on its relative economic prosperity. The more prosperous a nation becomes, the less it would receive in foreign aid. As a nation becomes steadily richer, at some point it would shift from being a recipient nation to being a donor nation. Although it is implausible that China will continue to exhibit extraordinary economic growth over the next fifty years, this is certainly a possibility, in which case China would join the ranks of the donor nations. It would be impractical to present here any significant part of the voluminous numerical data contained in my book Common Progress and my article “Could a Global Marshall Plan Be Successful?” in World Development. The basic conclusion is readily apparent from figure 3.4: a properly designed global Marshall Plan is capable of dramatically accelerating economic growth in the recipient nations at the cost of a very minor retardation of the growth rate of per capita income in the donor nations. For example, according to table 2 in the 2004 World Development article, without a WEEP in operation, anticipated growth in U.S. per capita income would be from $31,264 in 2000 to $54,697 in 2050, whereas with a WEEP in operation the estimated growth would be from $31,264 in 2000 to $53,499 in 2050. In other words, U.S. per capita income in 2050 with a WEEP would only be 2.19 percent less than it would be without a WEEP. The reduction in 2050 per capita income relative to the without-WEEP level would be on a similar order for the other nine donor nations covered by that table. The results illustrated in figure 3.4 are representative of the entire range of nations in the 140-nation dataset. Over all nations the losses in terms of a slightly lower growth rate for the small number of rich nations would be minuscule relative to the tremendous gains of the large number of poor nations. This, of course, raises the question of believability. Are not these results simply too good to be true? Perhaps—and perhaps not. The indications in figure 3.4 may simply be the consequence of one of the oldest and most universally accepted economic principles of all: the law of diminishing marginal returns to a factor of production. The factor of production in this case is generalized capital, comprising not only physical plant and machinery, but also human capital (knowledge and skills achieved via education and training) and social overhead capital (roads, bridges, dams, schools, and so on). According to the law of diminishing marginal returns, as the absolute amount of a particular input into the productive process increases, the

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marginal product of that input decreases. The rich nations are utilizing large amounts of generalized capital, therefore the marginal product of generalized capital in these nations is low. The poor nations are utilizing small amounts of generalized capital, therefore the marginal product of generalized capital in these nations is high. Consequently, if a certain increment of generalized capital that would have been installed in a rich nation is instead installed in a poor nation, the reduction in potential output of the rich nation will be small, while the increase in actual output of the poor nation will be large. This proposition, in and of itself, is hardly a matter for debate. But according to the benchmark WEEP model simulations with and without a WEEP in operation, the numerical implications of this proposition are far more dramatic than have ever been imagined. From an economic point of view, the true cost of the global Marshall Plan for the rich nations would be foregone growth in per capita income, and according to the WEEP model simulation results using benchmark parameter values, this foregone growth would be negligible. But an alternative way to evaluate the cost of the program is in terms of the proportion of a donor nation’s total current output (termed the “net transfer ratio”) that would be contributed into the global transfer fund. Table 3 in the aforementioned World Development article presents data on the net transfer ratio, derived from the benchmark with-WEEP simulation, for the twenty richest nations in per capita income as of 2000, at ten-year intervals from 2000 through 2050. Using purchasing power parity (PPP) accounting, the highest proportion of GNP contributed into the global transfer fund for 2000 would have been from the United States: 3.675 percent. The second highest would have been from Norway: 2.893 percent. These high contributions reflect the high 2000 per capita income of the United States and Norway: respectively $31,264 and $27,396. Exactly what the transfer contributions from the various donor nations would be in an operational real-world global Marshall Plan cannot be predicted in advance. For one thing, the transfer allocation function specified in the formal WEEP model is merely a suggestion. For another, the transfer contributions computed by the model are substantially affected by whether traditional national income accounting is used, or the newer PPP accounting. For still another, the relative economic positions of nations in whatever future year a real-world WEEP is undertaken may be quite different from what they were in 2000, which was the starting point for the WEEP model policy simulations. But the important thing is that the indicated net transfer ratios are not excessively high.

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For the richest nations the ratios are high, to be sure, but they are not excessively high. During the Cold War era, many of the rich nations allocated more than these percentages to military expenditure. If the benchmark with-WEEP model simulation were to tell us that the richest nations would have to allocate 10, 15, or 20 percent of their GNPs in order for a WEEP to be a success, then we could more legitimately conclude that the entire concept was impractical. But the actual percentages are mostly in the order of 2, 3, or 4 percent. Obviously these percentages are far beyond current contributions, which for most of the rich nations are well below the long-standing United Nations goal of 0.7 percent (seven-tenths of 1 percent). Certainly a major transformation in attitudes would be required to make a WEEP politically feasible. But such a transformation is not inconceivable, in view of the fact that the “grand convergence” being suggested herein complements the economic proposal for a global Marshall Plan with a political proposal for a supernational federation, the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. Thus, the overall proposal transcends “mere” economics. The conventional belief in the contemporary world, particularly within the richer nations, is that a very large-scale economic development assistance program along the lines of the envisioned WEEP would almost certainly be a very expensive failure. Such a program would substantially reduce economic growth in the rich nations. At the same time, improvement in the poor nations would be at best modest and at worst negligible. The natural reaction to the benchmark WEEP model results described earlier stemming from this conventional viewpoint is therefore that these results are simply too good to be true. Either the WEEP model itself is in error (does not represent an adequate approximation to real-world variables and relationships), or the benchmark parameter values are in error (do not represent adequate approximations to the real-world numerical parameter values). At this point the model itself will not be defended other than to say that it is based on conventional and widely accepted economic principles (a Cobb-Douglas production function, a linear consumption function, and so on). But the numerical values of the model’s parameters are another story—it cannot be reasonably maintained that these values are “very conventional and widely accepted.” The actual parameter values utilized for purposes of policy simulations of economic models are normally subject to a considerable amount of uncertainty and error. Therefore, in assessing the policy implications of any particular economic model, considerable weight is normally placed on sensitivity analysis: on the investigation of how changes in the numerical input into the model simulation affect the numerical output. The question

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to be addressed is how robust are particular qualitative policy indications against changes in parameter values. Do these qualitative policy indications change dramatically if the parameter values are changed slightly? If so, we deem the initial policy indications to be non-robust. On the other hand, do these qualitative policy indications remain basically intact despite substantial variation in the numerical values of the parameters? If so, we deem the initial policy indications to be robust. In the case of the present research, the initial policy indication is that a WEEP would be highly beneficial. To what extent is this indication robust? In the section entitled “Selected Sensitivity Analyses” of chapter four of Common Progress, I presented results from a large number of WEEP model simulations with parameters set to different values from the benchmark values. Something over ten pages of tabular data were provided. Replicating this information here is obviously impractical. Suffice it to say that the initial policy indication that a WEEP would be highly beneficial is indeed highly robust over a considerable range of numerical variation in most of the parameters of the WEEP model. These include the parameters of the production function and the consumption function, and various other parameters governing technological progress, population growth, and military spending. However, it must conceded that there are indeed two very important exceptions to this rule: the productivity differential source coefficient and the conversion effectiveness coefficient. It must be frankly acknowledged that with sufficiently adverse numerical values for either of these two parameters, the WEEP model simulation results are fully consistent with pessimistic preconceptions regarding the futility of very large-scale economic development assistance efforts. The fact that WEEP simulations run using adverse values for these parameters show little or no progress at overcoming the economic gap was not unanticipated, because these parameters were incorporated into the model precisely in order to encompass the pessimistic beliefs of foreign aid skeptics. Let us consider first the productivity differential source coefficient. This is the parameter that determines the extent to which observed differentials in initial-period per capita income y among the 140 nations of the World Bank dataset may be attributed to differentials in generalized capital stock endowments K, as opposed to differentials in total factor productivity coefficients A. The benchmark value of this parameter is zero, which indicates that all differentials in per capita income are the result of differentials in generalized capital stocks (i.e., the total factor productivity coefficients A are the same over all nations). Table 4 in

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the aforementioned World Development article shows the consequences for the benchmark with-WEEP simulation of varying the productivity source differential coefficient from its minimum possible value of zero (the most optimistic value) to its maximum possible value of one (the most pessimistic value). The equalizing effect of a WEEP is steadily degraded as the value of this coefficient increases. However, there are two additional indications in this information of critical importance. First, unless the productivity differential source coefficient becomes quite large, a substantial amount of economic equalization still takes place. Far more important, however, is the second indication. It appears that while high values of this coefficient greatly depress the growth rates of the poor recipient nations, they have very minor effects on the growth rates of the rich donor nations. This suggests that if a real-world WEEP were unsuccessful because current per capita income differentials are more the result of total factor productivity differentials than they are of generalized capital differentials, it would be unsuccessful in terms of not achieving much acceleration in the economic growth of the recipient nations. But it would not be unsuccessful in terms of having a substantial adverse effect on the economic growth of the rich nations. According to the simulation results, the rich nations would continue to grow at a brisk rate even if the WEEP is a near-total failure as far as the poor nations are concerned. Of course, if the Program were doing this badly, then soon enough the rich nations would give up on it. The other highly sensitive WEEP model parameter is the conversion effectiveness coefficient. A familiar and quite fundamental objection to the notion of a WEEP is that the “resources would not get through.” Owing partly to legitimate administrative expenses, and partly to illegitimate graft, a large part of the transferred resources would be diverted away from productive uses. Those of a particularly pessimistic and cynical nature would no doubt be tempted to assert that the “vast majority” of large-scale economic development assistance resources would end up in the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats and dishonest businessmen. But even if considerably less than the vast majority of these resources were wasted, it could seriously debilitate the effectiveness of a potential future WEEP. This possibility is encompassed in the WEEP model by means of the conversion effectiveness coefficient, representing the proportion of the poor nations’ shares in the global transfer fund that are successfully converted into productive generalized capital resources. Results for the conversion effectiveness coefficient exactly parallel those for the productivity differential source coefficient, so I will very briefly

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summarize them. The benchmark value for this parameter is one, indicating that the entire amount of the shares of the poorer nations in the global transfer fund are successfully converted into generalized capital. From simulation results for the conversion effectiveness coefficient less than the benchmark value, it would appear that the losses from administrative costs and theft would have to be extremely large for the effectiveness of a WEEP to be seriously impaired. Only if the value of the conversion effectiveness coefficient is close to zero, indicating that practically nothing gets through, does the WEEP become totally ineffective. And even then, the cost of the WEEP to the rich nations continues to be minor. The growth of the poor nations is reduced drastically, but the rich nations continue to grow at a brisk rate. The results for the conversion effectiveness coefficient are thus fully analogous to those already described for the productivity source differential coefficient. In both cases, these results are basically supportive of the desirability of a real-world WEEP, since they indicate that even if the Program is a failure this will not do appreciable harm to the economies of the rich nations.

Evaluation of the Program Profound pessimism regarding the long-term economic prospects of most of the Third World countries, with a few notable exceptions such as the People’s Republic of China, is so deeply and thoroughly entrenched in the First World countries that the optimistic evidence described earlier, derived from benchmark simulations of the WEEP model developed by the author, could very easily be shrugged off and peremptorily dismissed. Such a conclusion, however, does little credit to the best qualities of human intelligence and vision that have been responsible for the progress of mankind from the caves and rude huts of our remote ancestors to our present preeminence upon planet Earth. Whether our preeminence upon this planet will persist for a long time into the remote future depends on the decisions we are making right now. The hard fact is that there is no guarantee of our long-term success as a species. Nature once experimented with gigantic size: the fate of the dinosaurs demonstrated that gigantic size is no assurance against extinction. Nature is currently experimenting with high intelligence: our own future fate may demonstrate that high intelligence is also no assurance against extinction. Humanity’s high intelligence has resulted in nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles—instruments that may eventually cripple human civilization in a matter of days if not hours. Humanity’s high intelligence

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has also resulted in such remarkable advances in agriculture, medicine, and other fields as to generate a mushrooming population that is weighing heavily upon the natural environment. Ironic as it may seem, therefore, the human species may ultimately fall victim to its own high intelligence. According to paleontologists, dinosaurs were present on Earth for around two hundred million years, disappearing from the fossil record around sixty-five million years ago. The earliest recognizable humanoids date back a maximum of a mere three–five million years. Will humanity do as well as, or better than, the dinosaurs? Time will tell. One plausible explanation for the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs is that a large asteroid came hurtling in from outer space to strike Earth, resulting in rapid worldwide cooling from the cloud of material ejected from the impact crater. Humanity has demonstrated its ability to withstand cold temperatures, so an asteroid the size of the one that eliminated the dinosaurs would probably not eliminate us. But it is also apparent that a planetary collision with a sufficiently large asteroid could so damage the environment as to eliminate humanity. Of course, there is nothing we can do to reduce the probability that Earth will collide with a large asteroid. However, there are things we can do to reduce the probability that humanity will be overwhelmed by nuclear or environmental disaster. Among these things are the initiation of a global Marshall Plan, and the foundation of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. I will conclude this chapter with some observations and comments on the practicality and advisability of a global Marshall Plan, what I have tentatively designated herein as the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP). The remaining chapters of the book will argue in favor of the practicality and advisability of the larger, encompassing proposal for a supernational federation, tentatively designated the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. In my prior contributions on the subject, I advanced the case for the WEEP mostly from the point of view of technical economics. These writings are addressed primarily to economists, and in them I argue that both the theoretical structure and the numerical implementation of the WEEP model used for the computer simulations represent reasonable approximations to reality. The present book is addressed primarily to the general public, not to professional economists. The considerations I offer here, therefore, are of a more general nature that might be difficult to incorporate into a formal economic model akin to the WEEP model. Nevertheless, they are quite important to our evaluation of a potential future global Marshall Plan.

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The first point is that, paradoxical as it may seem, the benchmark WEEP model results may actually underestimate—rather than overestimate—the rapidity with which the global Marshall Plan will bring about a high level of global economic equality. To begin with, the WEEP model does not incorporate international trade, but economic thought from the time of such classical economists as David Ricardo onward, has insisted upon the beneficial effects of international trade on economic productivity within all nations. As nations participating in international trade specialize in the production of commodities in which they possess comparative advantage, they not only enjoy lower-cost imports, they are also able to better exploit various technical economies of large-scale production. International trade facilitates specialization and division of labor at the global level. As WEEP funds are invested in them and the LDCs of the Third World are launched into sustained growth, they will become more vigorous participants in international trade, which will benefit both themselves and their trading partners. Similarly, the WEEP model results may actually overestimate— rather than underestimate—the fiscal burden on the populations of the rich donor nations. The model simulations suggest that the rich nations will have to contribute between 2 and 4 percent of their national incomes into the transfer fund. But not all of this needs to be in the form of national government expenditures out of general tax revenue. The WEEP model does not take account of private investment flows. But flows of investment resources from the rich nations to the developing nations, often under the auspices of multinational corporations, are an increasingly important aspect of international economics. Much of the economic success of the PRC, for example, can be attributed to its openness to foreign investment, which has attracted a large amount of investment capital from First World nations. Part of the 2–4 percent of the donor nations’ GNPs that would be required to make the global Marshall Plan a success might be covered by profit-seeking private foreign investment, thus reducing the tax burden on private households. This point should perhaps not be overstressed, because profitseeking private foreign investment is mostly directed into plant and equipment. Generalized capital, recall, consists not only of plant and equipment (the usual understanding of “capital”), but also human capital in the form of education and training, and social overhead capital in the form of roads, schools, hospitals, and so on. These latter forms of generalized capital are not so attractive to profit-seeking private investment, and there would definitely be a larger need for government funding in these areas. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that the

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estimated percentages of donor nations’ GNPs from the benchmark WEEP model simulations, while obviously very high, are not excessively high in view of the Program’s long-term economic and psychological benefits for both the donor and the recipient nations. The estimated required percentages, after all, are considerably less than what many wealthy nations have spent on their military establishments, not only during the Cold War but afterward as well. A functioning global Marshall Plan on a huge scale would clearly manifest the determination on the part of all humanity toward the elimination of the economic gap that vexes contemporary international relations. The resulting augmented trust, harmony, and fellowship among nations will reduce, to some extent at least, the various nations’ perceived need for armaments. Some of the expenditures on the global Marshall Plan, therefore, can be financed by shifts from military expenditures. Among foreign aid critics, a major bugaboo is alleged graft and corruption in the aid recipient nations. This endemic dishonesty among both businessmen and bureaucrats is alleged to be among those entrenched social, political, and cultural conditions in the LDCs that are severely inimical to economic development. According to the critics, the great majority of financial resources intended for economic development, once they enter the recipient nations, are diverted into the pockets of various undeserving people who are already installed among the socioeconomic elites of their respective nations. This is not merely waste through incompetence; it constitutes blatant theft, not only from the taxpayers in the donor nations who provide these resources, but from the poor and middle-class people in the recipient nations who should be benefiting from them. While this accusation is no doubt grossly exaggerated in the more rhetorically overblown denunciations of foreign aid, there is obviously a kernel of truth in it. After all, graft and corruption are quite common in the wealthy nations as well, despite the fact that high ethical standards and personal integrity are more “affordable” to the affluent than to the poor. Nor is dishonesty of this sort confined to the public sector; in private enterprise as well, embezzlement is a chronic problem. The law enforcement system endeavors to deter not only violent crime committed by the social underclass, but “white collar” crime as well. A foreign aid skeptic, in contemplating a potential global Marshall Plan, might be inclined to argue that such a vast flow of financial resources will constitute an irresistible temptation to dishonest businessmen and bureaucrats in the recipient nations, who will descend upon it like a pack of ravenous hyenas and devour the large majority of it. This pessimistic scenario would almost certainly be falsified by

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actual events were a global Marshall Plan undertaken. The very size of this investment flow would protect it from excessive diversion. There are economies of scale in accounting fraud detection and prevention, and these economies could be fully exploited owing to the vast financial scale of the Program. The legal penalties for illicit diversion of generalized capital investment resources for private benefit could be made extremely severe, and considering the intense fraud detection effort, these penalties would very likely be encountered by anyone tempted into criminal transgressions. Intense fraud detection and severe penalties are fully justified in this case because of the transcendent importance of the Program. The WEEP would represent a massive—and quite likely the one and only— planned and coordinated effort made by humanity toward closing the economic gap between rich and poor nations. The whole future of global human civilization is at stake. It is critically important that this inequality be eliminated once and for all. A realistic hope of success will strengthen tendencies toward honest and conscientious behavior on the part of all those involved in the Program, in both the donor and the recipient nations. An important reason for the illicit diversion of some of the past and present-day aid flows is that they were and are too small to have any important improving effect on the economic welfare of the intended beneficiaries, namely the general populations of the recipient nations. This makes it easier for businessmen and bureaucrats in the recipient nations to rationalize dishonest behavior. Their rationalizations on the matter are analogous to those engaging in insurance fraud—that is, “this doesn’t really hurt anybody.” But the aid flows of the global Marshall Plan, by their very magnitude, would manifest a serious intent and a significant probability of success. Diverting these flows would hurt people. The economic progress over the last three hundred years that has brought the average living standards within the First World countries to such extraordinarily high levels is unprecedented in the whole history of human civilization. Even the most basic familiarity with the economic history of human civilization establishes the uncomfortable fact that economic stagnation, as opposed to economic progress, has been the rule. For thousands of years, methods of production and modes of life remained quite static and unchanged. What caused the sudden and drastic transition into sustained economic growth within the rich countries of today? Several aspects of the process are immediately apparent. First, there were fundamental advances in scientific and technical knowledge that improved the efficiency of production, especially large-scale production. Second, improvements in communications and

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transportation fostered international trade and investment. Third, the discovery and exploitation of large reserves of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) dramatically lowered the cost of energy. Fourth, the incorporation of the huge and virtually uninhabited North American landmass into the Western European economy at a critical stage in its development yielded several benefits: a safety valve for excess population, a source of cheap natural resources, and profitable opportunities for investment capital. Assuming that no global Marshall Plan is undertaken, and we continue with the same basic international economic system that has prevailed over the last several decades, what are the chances that the Third World nations will eventually emulate the First World nations in the sense of achieving equivalent average living standards? I would suggest that it is very unlikely that this will take place within the foreseeable future—assuming that no global Marshall Plan is undertaken. While it is true that the poor countries today have intellectual access to advanced science and technology, they do not have the capital investment resources necessary to build the plant and equipment required to embody this advanced science and technology in actual production processes. The limits on global reserves of fossil fuels are now clearly in view, which means that we will soon be obliged to transition to more expensive renewable energy sources. There is not now, nor will there ever be, another expanse of richly endowed and lightly populated territory in the world equivalent to what the North American landmass represented to Western Europe circa 1600. When we take these considerations into account, along with the simple fact that in long-term historical perspective economic stagnation rather than economic progress has been the rule, we are strongly inclined toward the realization—as disturbing as it may be—that to expect the poor countries of today to catch up with the rich countries within the foreseeable future, without a great deal more assistance than they have been getting, manifests a seriously naïve and unjustified optimism. The original Marshall Plan, whereby the United States expended something over 1 percent of its national income from 1948 through 1951 on reconstruction aid to the Western European countries devastated by World War II, was made politically possible by appeals to both the national interest and to altruistic sentiment. There was a very real concern that the Soviet Union might unleash its massive military machine on Western Europe and forcibly incorporate its nations into the Soviet empire. Such incorporation would be more likely to the extent that the indigenous communist parties in these nations gained

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power. It was assumed, plausibly enough, that the appeal of communism was far stronger among people suffering from poverty and privation than among comfortable, prosperous people. The restoration of Western Europe to economic prosperity was therefore desirable for two reasons: a prosperous Western Europe would be able to maintain stronger military forces to directly deter Soviet invasion, and a prosperous Western Europe would be more resistant to their indigenous communist parties. Therefore the original Marshall Plan could be justified on grounds of national self-interest. But the Plan was also sold to the public on grounds of altruistic concern for the welfare of others. In Acts 20 of the King James version of the Bible, Jesus is reported to have said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Charity is one of the cardinal virtues of Christian tradition, and it is highly recommended, in one way or another, by all the world’s great religions. Every properly socialized human being derives a certain amount of satisfaction from performing charitable works—some more than others, of course, but everyone to some degree. What underlies that “warm feeling in the cockles of one’s heart” associated with giving? For some people, religious motivations are quite important. If one believes in an afterlife, and also believes that one’s status in the afterlife depends on one’s behavior in the temporal life, doing good works may be justified purely on the basis of crass selfinterest. For those with tenuous or nonexistent belief in the afterlife, doing good works may be learned behavior. Being good not only forestalls various penalties and punishments, it also wins the approbation of family, friends, and the society at large. Some of this approbation might convey tangible rewards. There is also a basic “instinctive” (i.e., genetic) predisposition toward charitable behavior that operates independently of the self-interest of the individual. According to Charles Darwin, natural selection tends to weed out the “unfit.” Among the unfit are those who are excessively selfish, and thereby excessively niggardly in the performance of charitable works. Leaving aside the genetic factor, it is plausibly arguable that altruism, as generally understood, is simply an expression of what might be called “enlightened self-interest.” Whereas narrow self-interest concentrates on the certain and immediate benefits from a given behavior (e.g., working in order to earn an income), enlightened self-interest concentrates on more problematical and long-term benefits. The work performed by a person to earn an income would not be described as altruistic. At this point in time, with “foreign aid” in generally low repute, and the prevalent attitude among the populations of the wealthy nations being that very limited foreign aid should be provided by the

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wealthy nations, support for a global Marshall Plan could reasonably be described as altruistic. It could also be described as self-interested in the enlightened sense. Although the most direct and obvious benefit of a global Marshall Plan would be to the huge populations of the poorer nations lifted once and for all out of poverty, the populations of the richer nations would garner significant tangible benefits as well. Economic prosperity among those nations today termed “LDCs” would impact favorably on the future economic prosperity of today’s “advanced nations.” International trade and investment would be strengthened, there would be further exploitation of economies of scale in the production of many commodities, the interrelated problems of excessive population growth and environmental degradation would be made subject to better control. Finally, there is the key political dimension. Worldwide prosperity would provide a more secure foundation for civil harmony and democratic institutions within nations, would reduce the economic motivations toward conflict that have historically been a major factor in the generation of international warfare. If, as proposed in this book, a WEEP is commenced in conjunction with the foundation of a world federation, the economic program would greatly augment the probability that the world federation would persist and flourish.

CH A P T ER

4

On the Practicality of Federal World Government

Antecedents of World Federalism The practicality of this proposal for a limited federal world government is based upon one simple but profound insight: it is possible to create a meaningful and effective federal government without requiring its component political units to be militarily defenseless, and without forbidding them from detaching themselves from the union if that is their wish. Needless to emphasize, few national governments in the contemporary world would be comfortable about explicitly authorizing their subsidiary units (states, provinces, districts, and so on) to maintain whatever military forces they desire, and to declare their independence from the nation whenever they desire. Such liberties are commonly perceived as contradictory to the core principle of national sovereignty. The armed forces of subsidiary political units are typically regarded as potential threats to the authority of the national government. And history is littered with examples similar to the U.S. Civil War of 1861– 1865, precipitated by unauthorized declarations of independence by the Southern states. These declarations were regarded as treasonous and were met with force. Nevertheless, we need not be imprisoned by the past. We need not be constricted within an intellectual straitjacket composed of traditional thinking about government and sovereignty. The fact is that the national governments of today are not at all comparable to a potential future world government. A potential future world government would be operating within a very different environment from that confronting the national governments. Therefore its institutional structure and operating procedures would, quite appropriately, be very much distinct from those of today’s national governments. Human knowledge, understanding, and flexibility are advancing on many fronts.

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This is—or can be—as true in the area of political organization as it is in many other areas. The world is changing, and we need evolving concepts of political organization to cope with the evolving world in which we live. This chapter will endeavor to show, by reviewing the idea of universalist government from its earliest historical inklings down to the present day, that the proposal for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations advanced in this book is entirely and fundamentally innovative. Nowhere in the annals of world federalist thinking will be found a scheme of world government that allows the member nations to arm themselves as they please, and to secede from the federation whenever they please. The conventional world government scheme of today envisions what I term the “omnipotent world state”: member nations would be fully disarmed, and any move toward independence by a member nation would be instantly suppressed by armed force. Such a world state, it is true, would virtually eliminate the possibility of a sudden nuclear holocaust of the sort that has haunted the nightmares of humanity ever since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Unfortunately, such a world state might also quickly degenerate into a totalitarian nightmare equivalent to what Hitler and Stalin inflicted on their respective nations during the worst years of the twentieth century. In the years following World War II, world federalists put their case for an omnipotent world state before the court of global public opinion. The case was quickly and definitively rejected: fear of global tyranny far outweighed fear of nuclear holocaust. To this day, however, “traditional” world federalists continue to insist that the threat of nuclear holocaust is far more dangerous than the threat of global tyranny. Conceivably they are correct about this, but the only way they will be proved correct is if nuclear holocaust befalls the world. And then, of course, it will be too late. It is sometimes suggested that only a nuclear holocaust will convince humanity of the necessity for an omnipotent world state. Rather more likely, in my opinion, is that the embittered and impoverished survivors of a nuclear holocaust would be fragmented into a host of independent mini-states ruled by brutal warlords thirsting for revenge, who would thereafter make perpetual war on one another with whatever weapons were available, as the human race slides inexorably toward a new dark age—or physical extinction. Most traditional world federalists today would be inclined to dismiss such notions as the member nations of a world federation arming themselves as they please and leaving the federation whenever they please as manifestly unworkable. They cannot imagine that such a

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world government would persist for any length of time and achieve anything worthwhile. They would predict that within a few years—a decade or two at the most—the federation would have splintered into its component nations, and humanity would be right back to where it is today. In the previous chapter, I questioned the sensibility of the argument of the close-minded foreign aid critic that a global Marshall Plan could not possibly be successful, and therefore not even an experimental effort at such a Plan should be undertaken. How can they be so sure, I asked—especially when so much is potentially at stake? I would put the same question to a close-minded conventional world federalist who would argue that there is no point in even experimenting with a supernational federation along the lines of the proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations. If the foreign aid skeptics are indeed vindicated and the global Marshall Plan is getting nowhere, it would be shut down. If the Federal Union of Democratic Nations soon flies apart from centrifugal forces, there would be no need for a central decision to dissolve it, since it would be effectively dissolved via the independent decisions of its component nations. If the pessimistic skeptics are correct, and both the global Marshall Plan and the Federal Union are failures, this would be a bad omen for the future of humanity on this planet. But from a practical standpoint, we would be no worse off than we are today. We have little to lose and much to gain. To my mind, therefore, these experiments are clearly merited. It is self-evident from the long-term historical record that there has been a trend toward a smaller and smaller number of larger and larger political entities in the world. True, there have been some huge dominions, such as the Roman Empire, that eventually disintegrated. But at the same time as the Roman Empire and other large dominions, there existed thousands of small independent polities. At present there are a little over two hundred nation-states covering the entire land surface of the planet, excepting only the frozen wastes of Antarctica. The average nation today dwarfs the average independent principality and city-state of the medieval and earlier historical periods. Only those of anarchic leanings would seriously deny that, on the whole, political consolidation has been beneficial to humanity. Political consolidation facilitates peaceful conditions over extensive areas, conditions conducive to economic prosperity, cultural development, and psychological serenity. Apart from anarchists, virtually everyone believes that authoritative government is beneficial at the local level, also at the regional level (e.g., states), and also at the national level. Paradoxically, virtually everyone simultaneously believes that authoritative government at the world level would not be beneficial. Humanity having achieved two

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hundred sovereign and independent nation-states, there is supposedly no further scope for beneficial political consolidation. History is now at an end as far as political consolidation is concerned. On the face of it, this position appears absurd. As we cast our minds back through the mists of history to the predawn of human civilization, we perceive humanity politically organized into a myriad of small tribal groups not dissimilar to troops of chimpanzees. With the economy of each group, such as it was, based on hunting and gathering supported by a limited amount of handicraft production of simple tools and weapons, there would be little opportunity for trade with other groups (i.e., cooperation). On the other hand, there would be much opportunity for warfare with other groups over control of resource-rich territories (i.e., competition). At first it was simply a matter of the winning group driving other groups out of a specific territory. But as time slowly passed and technology gradually advanced, both the cooperative and the competitive approaches to human interaction developed. On the cooperative side, the idea gained ground that various groups could and should consolidate, so that production could be more efficient through greater specialization and division of labor, and also so that the expanded group could support larger military forces in its competitive dealings with other groups. On the competitive side, the idea gained ground that other groups should not merely be driven away from certain areas, but should rather be conquered and made permanently subordinate. The subordinate groups would be left unharmed and unmolested so long as they provided various forms of tribute and mounted no military threats against the dominant group. The development process from the earliest small tribal groupings to the great civilizations of earliest recorded history in Mesopotamia and elsewhere extended over a relatively immense interval of time (in nongeological terms) from at least one million years ago to approximately 3000 BC—only about five thousand years ago. In other words, the unrecorded history of mankind covered at least a thousand millennia, compared with the mere five millennia of recorded history. As recorded history begins to emerge from the mists of time, we perceive much that is familiar today: complex agriculture supported by irrigation, complicated production methods, large cities, writing, arithmetic, religion, culture. All of which were integrated within political units directed by authoritative governments, benign or repressive as the case may have been. As had been the case throughout unrecorded prehistory, force and violence continued to play an important role at the dawn of recorded history, as it has to the present day. At a minimum, force and

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violence were necessary to suppress and deter illicit criminal activity within the polity. Beyond that, armed forces were required to deter or prevent the conquest and despoliation of the polity by other, external polities. While the development of civilization did not eliminate force and violence from human affairs, it did reduce the probability that any given individual would die violently within any given period of time. Or at least there was, and remains, a long-term trend toward reduction of this probability. There is a rather subtle line between a “great civilization” and a “great empire.” While we would be inclined to define an empire as an atypically aggressive civilization, the fact is that no great civilization of history could have arisen and persisted without some recourse to imperial methods. In fact, some historians have no problem with designating any of the great civilizations of the premodern world as “empires.” Be that as it may, the term “empire” has strongly negative connotations in the contemporary world. The pejorative usage of empire and “imperial” is ubiquitous. In the “Star Wars” films, the “Empire” is the embodiment of brutal repression. Adolf Hitler aspired to a “world empire” under German hegemony. During the Cold War, Ronald Reagan memorably described the Soviet bloc as the “evil empire.” Soviet ideologues from the time of Lenin onward habitually referred to the “imperialist capitalist” nations of the West. The intelligentsia of the Third World has not forgotten nor forgiven the “colonial imperialism” of the First World, manifested most impressively by the British Empire “on which the sun never set.” Now that the United States has attained the precarious status of the “single most powerful nation in the world,” concern is everywhere expressed, both inside and outside the United States, that this nation will be tempted by a vision of an American-dominated world empire. While the vast majority of U.S. citizens today would dismiss this particular concern as paranoid nonsense, the disconcerting fact remains that most if not all the great empires of history were initiated by what might be termed “preemptive defense.” That is, they started out in efforts to diminish threats from hostile foreigners. Current U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq could certainly be described as efforts to diminish threats from hostile foreigners. On the other hand, the common conception of imperial motivation embraces indefinite occupation of conquered territories, plus the extraction from them of economic tribute in one form or another. In contrast, the United States seems impatient to withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, and thus far the economic resource flows have been entirely from the United States to these two nations, and not vice versa.

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Whether preemptive defense in the case of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq will evolve into anything more remains to be seen, but certainly in the case of the best-known empires of history, from the Egyptian, the Persian, the Roman, and so on down to the present, security motives were soon complemented, and eventually eclipsed, by economic motives. The imperial territories became a permanent source of wealth. Although virtually unimaginable in the contemporary world, empires and their reigning emperors figure prominently in the history of human civilization. However, almost nothing of the many notorious empires of human history remains discernible today. Their component regions and territories have entirely devolved into independent nation-states. Poets, moralists, and historians agree that great imperial dominions, no less than the men who build them, are fated ultimately to crumble into dust. No doubt there is a valuable lesson in humility to be derived from the fate of empires. But does the fate of empires suggest that a world government, established at the present moment in the history of human civilization, would also inevitably be doomed to decline and fall? The short answer to this question is “No,” since the conditions that led to the decline and fall of historical empires need not, and probably would not, apply to a world government established at the present moment in human history. Let us consider the reasons why historical empires declined, and the related question of whether these reasons would necessarily apply to a potential future world government. In examining possible reasons for the decline of empires, what immediately comes to our attention is military aggression against the empire from outside its boundaries, and military rebellion against the empire from inside its boundaries. Historical empires were created by the sword, and they were destroyed by the sword. Some of the less appealing characteristics of historical empires—very weak democratic accountability, glorification of military virtues, brutalization of the population—are plausibly attributed to the fact that these empires were in effect huge armed camps, in which both the citizens and their leaders lived in perpetual fear of death, dishonor, and despoliation at the hands of foreign invaders. In this we perceive an important difference between the empires of the past and a potential world federation of the future. Even if the membership of the world federation envisioned herein is not universal, in all likelihood a sufficiently large number of the major world powers would join the federation at its inception such that the possibility of invasion of a Federal Union member nation by a nonmember nation would be minimal. It has been emphasized in the foregoing that the

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formation of a world government under the presently prevailing international situation would not lead instantly, nor even very quickly, to sweeping nuclear and non-nuclear disarmament. However, the formation of a world government would very quickly and significantly reduce the probability that heavy armaments, including nuclear weapons, will be utilized by nations within the foreseeable future in warfare among one another. A world federation, in short, would not have to put up with the same everlasting, acute threat of foreign invasion that was such a major factor in the institutions, policies, and behavior of the historical empires. Therefore, it would almost certainly be a far more benign and benevolent political organization than were any of the historical empires. Historical empires were not only continuously subject to the threat of foreign invasion but also continuously subject to the threat of domestic rebellion. An important connotation of the term empire in the common understanding is that of continuous oppression and exploitation of vassal states and subject peoples. The great empires of the past were founded upon military conquest—of that there is no question. But once the conquest had been completed, the role of force and violence in the ongoing daily maintenance of peace and order was probably very much the same as it had been prior to the conquest. Very likely the independent local government dislodged by the conquest had been just as oppressive and tyrannical as the new imperial government. Certainly in the case of the long-lasting empires, such as the ancient Roman empire or the British colonial empire, a very serious effort was made by the empire’s political leadership to retain the voluntary loyalty of imperial subjects by means of wise and benevolent governance. On the other hand, judging from the regularity of armed insurrections against imperial authority within empires, efforts at wise and benevolent governance were frequently insufficient to maintain compliance. Imperial governments, of their nature, inevitably suffered from some major disadvantages relative to the local governments they displaced. First and foremost, there was a constant tension between the desirability of providing wise and benevolent governance over subject peoples in distant territories, and at the same time the necessity of maintaining a privileged status for those closer to the imperial seat of power. Of course, the most successful empires were those that were generous in awarding the privileges of citizenship to conquered peoples, that endeavored to assimilate and co-opt these peoples, that were relatively modest in the imposition of taxes and tributes, and that were extremely tolerant in matters of religion and culture. But at the same time, there was a permanent and unavoidable conflict between these

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commendably tolerant tendencies and the arrogant pride and egotistical self-esteem naturally inspired by the military conquest of other human beings. In addition to the attitude problem, there was the possibly even more important communications problem. Assuming roughly equivalent attitudes among the political leadership, a local government would obviously have a more accurate and complete understanding of local conditions than a remote imperial government, and it would therefore be in a better position to implement specific policies most favorable to public welfare under local conditions. Opponents of world government today argue that such a government would almost certainly subject the national populations to a remote and oppressive authority in no way more wise and benevolent than the remote and oppressive imperial governments of the past. This argument fails to appreciate the salient and significant differences between the circumstances that surrounded the empires of history, and the circumstances that would surround the establishment of a world government today. Perhaps the most key and critical differences pertain to: (1) the greatly improved communications capabilities of the present time, relative to all past eras in human history, and (2) the tremendous advance of the democratic principle in the modern world, relative to all previous historical periods. The imperial governments of past history had very sketchy and imprecise information on both material and psychological conditions in their remote territories. Thanks to modern data collection methods and communications technology, a world government in the modern era would have an immense informational advantage over any past imperial government. Policy determination would incorporate extensive and accurate information concerning local conditions and opinions, and this would substantially reduce the possibility that local discontent and disaffection would become so prevalent as to cause the secession of nations from the world federation. Possibly even more important than improved knowledge would be that the world government would be far more democratically accountable to its constituents than any imperial government of the past. Democracy, of course, is not a modern invention. The ancient Greeks of Athens are credited with devising and implementing a recognizably modern form of democracy. On the other hand, there is obviously a huge gap between the contemporary concept of democracy, and democracy as it was intermittently practiced in the premodern and early modern eras. There are three central criteria of genuine democracy as currently perceived: (1) government officials are subject to election; (2) elections are competitive; (3) the electorate comprises a substantial

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proportion of the entire population. It is in terms of the third criterion of democracy—the extent of the franchise—that disqualifies political organizations in premodern and early modern times from being considered genuine democracies. For example, even though the Athenian democracy and early Roman republic supposedly empowered “all adult citizens” with the right to vote, all women and slaves were excluded, as well as many others resident in the area who would be deemed “citizens” by modern standards. In his book World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought (1996), Derek Heater traces the roots of the world government concept back to the ancient Greeks.1 However, Professor Heater emphasizes that the contemporary notion of a world government did not begin to develop until the modern era. In ancient and medieval times, the philosophical concept of the “oneness of man,” the political implications of which are in any case quite nebulous, coexisted with the concept of a universal empire, initially established by conquest, but thereafter governed with such wisdom and benevolence as to command the voluntary allegiance of its citizens. Historical tribulations such as the Peloponnesian wars, which began in 432 BC, may have prompted Aristotle’s isolated remark in the Politics that the Greek people possess the intelligence that would enable them “to attain the highest political development, and to show a capacity for governing every other people—if only they could once achieve political unity.” This statement hardly prefigures a universal state based on contract. Rather it suggests the Greeks conquering and then ruling the world for their own security and benefit—albeit in a wise and benign manner that would command the peaceful consent of the various nonGreek populations. In their massive compilation Searchlight on Peace Plans: Choose Your Road to World Government (1944), Edith Wynner and Georgia Lloyd enumerated and briefly described a large number of plans for supranational political organizations.2 Part II catalogues seventy-four pre–World War I plans, from a 1306 proposal of Pierre Dubois to a 1905 proposal of Richard Bartholdt. As one reads through these brief descriptions, however, it is evident that the earlier proposals encompass only the Christian nations of Europe, and were motivated by a warlike, crusading spirit: the main point was that a strong political union of the Christian nations would enable more effective military action against the Islamic Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, several of the plans provided considerable detail on the mechanisms of political unification among the European nations, and these mechanisms, at least in principle, could be extended to encompass other regions of the world.

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The first plan listed by Wynner and Lloyd that explicitly incorporates the entire world is attributed to the French monk Emeric Crucé, author of The New Cyneas (1623). This is a recognizably modern proposal in the sense that all known territories of the world are included. Another modern feature is that despite his clerical vocation, Crucé was insistent upon the necessity for religious toleration. Crucé’s book was little noticed in its time, only being “rediscovered” in the twentieth century. No doubt one reason why the notion of political unity extending beyond European borders may have seemed preposterous in the seventeenth century was simply the slowness of transportation and communications. Although The New Cyneas is a remarkable work considering when it was published, it prefigures the modern concept of a world state chiefly in scope rather than institutional features. As befits a work published during the age of absolute monarchy, it envisions that the subsidiary political units would all be hereditary monarchies. There would be no hint of democracy either at the national or at the supranational level. The sole purpose of the “Council of Ambassadors” would be to suppress armed conflicts among and within nations by the adjudication of controversies. The Council would not have a permanent executive arm nor armed forces at its immediate disposal. Rather it would marshal the forces of loyal monarchs against those of upstart monarchs (i.e., monarchs refusing to abide by the decisions of the Council). The concept is really that of a universal mutual assistance alliance, later realized in the form of the League of Nations and the United Nations—neither of which was particularly successful in discouraging aggressive war, and neither of which constitutes a genuine world state in the current sense. In the three centuries of modern Western European history between 1700 and the present time, there were two veritably catastrophic periods of warfare: the “French wars” between 1792 and 1815, and the “German wars” between 1914 and 1945. It is sometimes observed that plans for supranational political organizations, up to and including literal world states, flourish most abundantly in periods beset by large-scale warfare. A numerical indication of this phenomenon is contained in the Wynner and Lloyd catalogue (Part II) of plans to unite nations from 1306 to 1905. Of the seventy-four plans from this six-hundred-year interval enumerated and briefly described in the catalogue, some twenty-eight date from 1792 through 1821, the tumultuous period of thirty years that witnessed the “French wars” associated with the French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic era. Thus approximately 38 percent of the plans date from an interval covering only 5 percent of the total time span. Some notable historical

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figures are to be found among the proposers of the seventy-four plans put forward between 1306 and 1905: in addition to those already mentioned, Dante Alighieri, Desiderius Erasmus, Pope Leo X, Hugo Grotius, William Penn, Jeremy Bentham, Johann Fichte, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Paine, Czar Alexander I, Count Henri de Saint-Simon, Napoleon Bonaparte, Simon Bolivar, Charles Sumner, Baroness Bertha von Suttner, and William T. Stead. No implication is intended that these individuals envisioned a world state as proposed in this book. Most of the plans are extremely vague as to organization and procedure. In many if not most cases, the plans merely call for political unification of the European nations, that is, for something roughly prefiguring the European Union of today. Moreover, many of these regional plans, especially those earlier in the period, are inspired by a dubious vision of a politically united Europe dominating the rest of the world. Finally, in many if not most cases, the plans conceive “political unification” in terms merely of a formally recognized super-alliance, that is, for something along the lines of the League of Nations of the interwar years and the United Nations of the postwar years. Few plans extended qualitatively beyond the alliance concept to the state concept. Despite their wide diversity and serious limitations, there is one key and critical element that unites practically all of these plans: the idea that the supranational political entity is to be founded upon contract rather than upon conquest. This is a fundamental advance over the imperial concept, according to which nations (or other subsidiary regions) are initially brought into the imperial domain by means of military conquest. These plans manifest definite progress in the evolution of human thinking on the potential role of formal organization in the realm of international relations. Another important point is that while it was customary for contemporary critics of supranational political organization from 1306 to 1905 (and by extension, of the specific type of supranational political organization known today as a “world state”) to lambaste and ridicule each and every one of the seventy-four proposals enumerated by Wynner and Lloyd in its own day as patently preposterous, in actual fact the substance of many of these proposals was in fact eventually realized in the real world in the form of the League of Nations, established in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles.

Twentieth-Century Proposals The twentieth century was especially productive of world government blueprints, particularly during the two world wars. In their section

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on “universal, federal plans to unite nations since 1914,” Wynner and Lloyd tabulated no less than twenty-five proposals for what is currently understood as a world government, including twenty-one for which the authors specified details concerning representation and voting. Several of these proposals were formulated by Americans, and these tended to be highly derivative of the U.S. Constitution. A fundamental principle embodied in the U.S. Constitution is bicameralism, with the Congress being divided into two houses: a “lower” house (the House of Representatives) in which each state’s representation is proportional to its population, and an “upper” house (the Senate), in which each state is represented equally. The rationale is to endow the smaller states (in terms of population) with more influence in legislative decisionmaking than would be the case if there were a unicameral legislature with the voting weights of the various states proportional to their populations. A natural extension of this rationale to the international level would envision a bicameral world government legislature in which national representation in the lower house would be proportional to population, and national representation in the upper house would be equal. Although the historical origin of the institution of bicameralism was roughly that of a lower house representing the nonaristocratic general population, and an upper house representing the aristocratic subset of the population (e.g., the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the British Parliament), the bicameral principle is still very prevalent today throughout the nations of the world on the basis of the second rationale: that of equalizing the political power of various jurisdictions or regions within the nation that differ substantially in terms of population. Despite the prevalence of regionally based bicameralism throughout the world, questions might certainly be asked about sensibility of the institution. The first skeptical question is whether this type of bicameralism truly does protect the interests of the populations of the more lightly populated jurisdictions. Consider the example of the United States, in which the 2006 population of approximately 299 million was spread over fifty states, for an average population of about 6 million per state. Among the fifty states, there are twelve that might be described as small in the sense that they had populations less than 1.5 million. These twelve small states had a combined population of about 11 million relative to a combined population of the other thirty-eight states of about 287 million. They are obviously greatly outvoted in the House of Representatives, where their combined voting weight is only about 3.7 percent of total voting weight. But they are also greatly outvoted in

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the Senate, where their combined voting weight is only 24 percent of total voting weight. Despite this, these twelve states do not seem to be laboring under any special disadvantages owing to their relatively small populations: the larger states are not “ganging up” on them in order to exploit them in various ways. A plausible argument may be made that the major justification for bicameralism in the contemporary world has nothing to do directly with the protection of regional interests. It is rather that it tends to weaken governmental power and authority generally. Bicameralism is beloved by political conservatives because it complicates and delays legislative decision-making and makes any sort of positive government action more difficult and unlikely. For example, if the probability is 50 percent that one house will approve a legislative initiative, and the probability that the other house will also approve that initiative is also 50 percent, then the probability that both houses will approve it is only 25 percent. Political conservatives regard this as a virtue of bicameralism. Obviously constraints have to be placed on governmental power and authority lest oppressive totalitarianism arise. But there are more efficient and effective ways to impose these constraints than bicameralism. For example, the majority of a unicameral legislature necessary to approve a legislative initiative might be raised from 51 percent to 55, 60, or even higher. With respect to the Federal Union of Democratic Nations under present consideration, the most fundamental constraints on governmental power and authority would be the reserved rights of member nation-states to secede from the Union, and to maintain whatever independent military forces they deem necessary under their autonomous authority. These and other aspects of the proposed Federal Union would be sufficient to curb the power and authority of the supernational government without adding bicameralism. Of the twenty-one plans for world government from 1914 to 1944 covered by the Wynner-Lloyd compendium mentioned earlier, fourteen propose a unicameral legislature rather than a bicameral one. Of the other seven, six are for bicameral legislatures and one is for a “tricameral” legislature. The proposal of M. Habicht (1943) envisions a House in which voting weight is directly proportional to population, a Senate in which voting weight is a truncated step function of population, and a “Chamber” that would represent nongovernmental organizations such as large corporations and labor unions. Another atypical proposal is that of Oskar Newfang (1942), which envisions a unicameral legislature with a dual voting mechanism: in the national vote, the representatives from a given nation would have the same voting weight

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as representatives from any other nation, while in the population vote, the representatives from a given nation would have voting weight equal to their nation’s population as a proportion of total population. The dual voting mechanism is also utilized in the Federal Union proposal, albeit the bases would be different: population and material rather than population and national. Still another atypical proposal is that of H. J. Paintin (1926), which prefigures the Federal Union proposal in specifying that voting weight in the House would be proportional to population while voting weight in the Senate would be proportional to revenue. Essentially the same objective is achieved in the Federal Union proposal through the use of dual voting in the unicameral legislature, rather than through bicameralism. Aside from Newfang’s proposal, all these proposals assume that each representative in each house of the legislative body would have one vote, thus collapsing the separate issues of representation and voting weight into one. Typically voting weight is a positive function of population in at least one house. Of twenty proposals (twenty-one less Newfang’s), ten involve truncated functions of population and three involve step functions. Truncated functions specify a minimum number of representatives per nation, a maximum number, or both. Step functions specify several fairly wide population ranges in which each nation would have the same number of representatives. Step functions are always concave, meaning that the number of representatives rises less than proportionally to population. For example, the step function of A. Crozier (1915) specifies one representative for nations with population of 20 million or less, three for nations with population between 20 and 50 million, and five for nations with population of 50 million or more. The disadvantage of step functions is illustrated by the following example (using Crozier’s specification): a nation with a population of 19.9 million would have one representative, while a nation with the slightly larger population of 20.1 million would have three representatives. Both the truncated function concept and the step function concept are efforts to cope with the fact that there is a very wide dispersion in the populations of nations. But as was pointed out earlier in the context of states of the United States, oppression of lightly populated jurisdictions by heavily populated ones is not likely to be a problem—unless there are other factors at work than population size. The “factor at work” in the case of a potential future world government is the very wide dispersion in material living standards among the nations, along with the heavily skewed international income distribution. The large majority of nations are relatively poor, and also

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the large majority of the world population is relatively poor. Whether we make voting weight proportional to population, or proportional to nations, or proportional to both (in the case of bicameral schemes), the voting weight of representatives from poor nations would greatly exceed the voting weight of representatives from rich nations. Of the twenty-one proposals, the only one to address this problem is that of H. J. Paintin. Prior to World War I, some people viewed the advances being made in military technology apprehensively, fearing that the destructiveness of future warfare would be overwhelming. On the other hand, through nearly a century from the 1815 Congress of Vienna that concluded the Napoleonic wars until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Europe had been spared any experience of total war. There were several wars during that interval, but they were relatively brief and involved limited objectives. As for the increasing destructiveness of weaponry, most viewed this rather complacently. Given the rationality and common sense of humanity, increasing destructiveness of weaponry would more effectively deter the outbreak of war. And in the unlikely event that war did break out, the effectiveness of modern weaponry would hasten a victorious conclusion to the conflict. Nations were on the whole quite proud of their weapons, and it is not too much to suggest that they were itching for an opportunity to employ them. When in August of 1914 the European armies marched off into warfare with one another, both soldiers and civilians expected the matter to be successfully concluded by Christmas. As history duly recorded, the complacent expectations of 1914 were sadly disappointed. The war ground on through four long years, decimating a generation and gutting the economies of most of the participants. The peaceful conditions following the Armistice of November 1918 turned out to be merely a short-lived truce separating World War I (1914–1918) from the even more comprehensive and destructive World War II (1939–1945). Taking advantage of the wounded pride of the German people over what they considered unduly harsh treatment under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the demagogue Adolf Hitler waged an ultimately successful struggle to achieve dictatorial control of the German nation. Not quite seven years elapsed between Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933 and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Estimates of those killed in World War II run to about seventy million persons, compared to about fifteen million killed in World War I. The relative economic losses of the two conflicts were proportional to the human losses. Whereas Germany and Austria had not been occupied following the November 1918 Armistice, the

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defeat of the two principal Axis powers in World War II, Germany and Japan, was more definitive, resulting in lengthy military occupations of both nations. The downside of war, especially unsuccessful war, was emphatically demonstrated to the German and Japanese people, who since 1945 have been among the more peace-minded of the populations of the great powers. Germany having unconditionally surrendered in early May of 1945, the mid-August 1945 unconditional surrender of Japan was hastened by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9). The terrific amount of death, injury, and destruction inflicted on these two unfortunate cities by only two atomic bombs, one for each city, had a profoundly sobering effect upon human thinking about warfare. Prior to the unleashing of nuclear weapons, those openly concerned about the destructiveness of modern weapons tended to be dismissed as fainthearted alarmists. Some of the more martial mentalities even argued that warfare was not merely inevitable but actually desirable—in that its effects on human society were not unlike the effects of diet and exercise on the human body. Moreover (according to these same mentalities), just as stronger species eliminated weaker species according to the iron laws of Darwinian natural selection, so too would stronger nations and peoples defeat and subjugate weaker nations and peoples by means of warfare. Under the shadow of the mushroom clouds that rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the articulation of such thoughts went into steep decline. On the other hand, no fundamentally innovative steps were taken toward eliminating—or even substantially reducing—the new peril of nuclear war. With remarkable rapidity, the human population of the world became desensitized to the nuclear threat. The United Nations established in 1945 was a virtual carbon copy of its predecessor, the League of Nations, except for the fact that among its charter members were two of the great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, that had not joined the League of Nations when it had been established back in 1919. Unfortunately, the wartime alliance of these two nations did not survive the defeat of Nazi Germany. Both the United States and the USSR were determined that the new United Nations possess no more authority than the League of Nations, even though the inherent weakness of the League of Nations had been thoroughly demonstrated by its impotence in the face of Axis aggression during the 1930s. In the minds of U.S. and Soviet policy makers, the overriding consideration was preventing its ideological and geopolitical opponent from exercising substantive control over a significant international authority. To attain that end, the United Nations was

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deprived of any means by which it might exercise significant international authority. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, as the enormity of the catastrophe sunk in, along with dawning realization that as bad as it had been, World War II would be dwarfed by a potential nuclear World War III of the future, world federalist sentiment and activity skyrocketed, and soon reached an unprecedented peak never before—or since—seen.3 The inadequacy of the United Nations, as constituted in 1945, to the task of preserving peace in the nuclear age was immediately and clearly perceived by world federalists. To their minds, the unreliability of collective security, achieved through a quasi-universal alliance system, had been adequately proved by the sorry history of the League of Nations. In the absence of an authoritative central government incorporating all the nations of the Earth and enlisting the loyalty of all peoples around the world, there would be too much shirking and evasion of responsibility among the membership of the alliance for it to be a credible deterrent against a determined aggressor. What was needed, as the only secure guarantee against nuclear world war, was what I have described here as the “omnipotent world state.” Best-selling books, most notably the immensely successful The Anatomy of Peace (1945) by Emery Reves, unambiguously, energetically, and enthusiastically advocated world government.4 Renowned scientists such as Albert Einstein, famous philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, influential financiers such as Bernard Baruch, wellknown educators such as Robert Hutchins—all declared themselves firmly committed to world government. World federalist organizations proliferated, and world federalist activity blossomed. However, as soon as it became apparent that the political leadership of the major powers, especially the United States and the Soviet Union, was completely uninterested in any type of international organization that would go beyond the existing United Nations, the post–World War II “world government boom” deflated almost as rapidly as it had inflated. By the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, all but a handful of diehard optimists had given up on the possibility of establishing a genuine world government anytime within the foreseeable future. As a political movement, world federalism was soon marginalized, and so it remains to the present day. Notwithstanding the feebleness of world federalism as a real-world political movement, since World War II a substantial number of additional world government proposals have been put forward, beyond those enumerated in the 1944 Wynner-Lloyd compendium Searchlight on Peace Plans. Most of them repose in profound obscurity, buried

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deeply in the pamphlet collections of the largest academic libraries, or lost amid the tens of millions of unheralded World Wide Web sites known only to those who post them. There are three postwar proposals, however, that attained a modest level of familiarity in the wider world, and that will serve to exemplify the “typical” postwar world government blueprint. The limited amount of awareness of the first two is owing to the fact that they were presented in books published by major university presses. Giuseppe Borgese’s Foundations of the World Republic (1953), which proposed a “Federal Republic of the World,” was published by the University of Chicago Press,5 while the three editions of Grenville Clark and Louis Sohn’s magisterial World Peace through World Law (1958, 1960, and 1966), which proposed a “strengthened” United Nations that would have effectively constituted a world government, were all published by Harvard University Press.6 The third proposal, for a Federation of Earth, is slightly better known than average owing to the tireless efforts of its principal formulator, Philip Isely, to publicize and implement it in the real world.7 Isely was for several decades secretary-general of the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA), founded in 1958 and headquartered for most of its existence in Lakewood, Colorado. Under Isely’s guidance, the WCPA organized a considerable number of international conferences from the 1960s onward. One of these, termed the second session of the World Constituent Assembly, held at Innsbruck, Austria, in June 1977, ratified the initial version of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. The document carries the signatures of approximately 150 individuals. An amended version was later ratified at the fourth session of the World Constituent Assembly, held at Troia, Portugal, in May 1991, and carries the signatures of well over 200 individuals. Some of the signatories to these versions, such as Linus Pauling of the United States, Tony Benn of the United Kingdom, and Desmond Tutu of South Africa, were well-known public figures. However, none of them were authorized representatives of a national government at the time they signed. Under the terms of the Constitution, a “Provisional World Parliament” has met on several occasions from the 1980s through the 2000s, and has passed a number of legislative bills. For example, the First Session of the Provisional World Parliament, held in Brighton, England, in September 1982, passed a bill (one of five at that session) to outlaw nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. More recently, the Tenth Session of the Provisional World Parliament, held in Kara, Togo, in June 2007, passed a Guaranteed Annual Income bill assuring every citizen of the Federation of Earth a guaranteed income floor starting

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at age eighteen and lasting throughout life. Of course, since the Federation of Earth does not yet exist, all this legislation is moot. Indeed, despite prodigious effort by Philip Isely over several decades, followed by his successor at the post of WCPA secretary-general, Glen T. Martin (a professor of philosophy at Radford University), it is probably safe to say that only a tiny handful of people throughout the contemporary world are even aware of the existence of the World Constitution and Parliament Association and the Provisional World Parliament, and of that handful, most would categorize the participants in these activities as harmless eccentrics—while a few, such as Gary H. Kah, author of En Route to Global Occupation (1992), perceive the WCPA as one facet of a vast left-wing, atheistic conspiracy to bring about global tyranny under the dominion of the Antichrist. The Borgese proposal for a World Republic, the Clark-Sohn proposal for a strengthened United Nations, and the Isely proposal for an Earth Federation are exemplary of the typical postwar world government proposal in three critical respects. First, the world legislature follows commendably democratic principles, with the inevitable result that representatives from the relatively poor nations of the world would dominate the voting. The possibility would exist that a substantial majority of the legislature would have a predisposition toward the establishment of a global welfare state whereby the citizens of the rich nations would be heavily taxed in order to finance generous welfare entitlements benefiting the citizens of the poor nations. Second, the typical twentieth-century world government proposal stipulates that membership in the world federation would be universal, permanent, and irreversible. Any movement by a member nation toward withdrawing from the world federation would be viewed as treasonous and met by force. Therefore, rich nations unwilling to participate in a radical global income redistribution project undertaken by the world federation would not be able to legally and peacefully leave the federation. The third critical characteristic is that the member nations would be fully disarmed, and all large-scale military forces and heavy armament would be concentrated under the authority of the world federation. What this means is that if the world federation were to undertake a radical global income redistribution project, rich nations unwilling to participate in this project and desirous of leaving the federation would possess no military power with which to enforce this desire. The typical post–World War II world government proposal, motivated as it is by the overriding purpose of reducing the threat of nuclear war, is basically oblivious of this problem. The traditional world government advocate would respond to objections based on this problem

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with the assertion that the threat of nuclear holocaust without world government is far greater than the threat of global tyranny with world government, whether this tyranny comes about owing to radical global income redistribution or anything else. The impotence of the world federalist movement throughout the Cold War, at a time when instantaneous nuclear disaster was a far greater danger than it is today, is sufficient testimony to the unpersuasiveness of this assertion. Nevertheless, it does not require genius but only a modicum of mental flexibility to perceive that there exists a practical alternative to the typical omnipotent world state proposal. The proposal for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations put forward in this book envisions a limited world government very much distinct from the typical world government proposal—yet one that would represent an authentic government entity, a quantum leap beyond the United Nations of today. To reiterate, the three critical characteristics enumerated earlier of the typical world government proposal are as follows: (1) the voting principle in the world government legislature would place dominant voting power in the hands of representatives from poor nations; (2) member nations could not legally and peacefully withdraw from the world federation; (3) member nations could not maintain largescale military forces and heavy armament under their own control. The three critical characteristics of the alternative world government proposal for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations are respectively as follows: (1) the “dual voting” principle in the world government legislature would preclude the passage of any legislation on which the rich and the poor nations could not achieve consensus; (2) member nations would have a permanent and inalienable right to withdraw from the Federal Union at any time; (3) member nations would have a permanent and inalienable right to maintain whatever military forces and heavy armament (including nuclear weapons) they desire. Obviously these limitations on the world government, which are necessary to evade the possibility of global tyranny and to permit its foundation in a world still very much under the influence of nationalistic pride and prejudice, would constrain its effectiveness in the short run. But limited effectiveness does not mean no effectiveness. The existence and operation of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would slowly but steadily enhance that positive spirit of cosmopolitan toleration that facilitates international cooperation and coordination. In this innovative view of federal world government, such worthwhile goals as economic equalization and general disarmament are not viewed as short-term objectives to be accomplished immediately upon the formation of the world government. They are viewed rather as long-term

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goals that probably would not be fully accomplished for many decades. The purpose of the Federal Union (and its economic complement, the World Economic Equalization Program or WEEP) would not be to achieve these goals quickly, but rather to establish a political framework and environment under which their achievement in the long run would be more likely. While there have been no post–World War II world government blueprints involving all three of the earlier mentioned characteristics of the present proposal for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations, there have been at least two proposals that address the issue of voting weights in the world legislature in a manner analogous to the dual voting mechanism. One of these was the now-forgotten proposal of Fremont Rider, and the other is the more recent, but almost equally obscure, “binding triad” proposal of Richard Hudson. In 1946, Fremont Rider, a writer and librarian at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, published a short book entitled The Great Dilemma of World Organization, in which he proposed a solution to the problem that today would be described as the global economic gap.8 Rider himself expressed the problem in terms of the gap between the “civilized” and the “uncivilized” nations. The civilized nations of North America, Western Europe, and so on (i.e., the rich nations) would never consider participating in a world government with genuine power and authority that was subject to majority rule— and that would hence be controlled by the vast, impoverished populations of the uncivilized nations. And yet if world government were to be acceptable to all nations, the principle of apportioning voting weight among the nations would have to possess compelling rationality, plausibility, and apparent legitimacy. Rider’s proposed solution was to make the respective voting weights of the nations in the world government legislature proportional to their “educational attainments,” in terms of total number of years of education completed by their populations. Since the average educational attainment in the civilized nations was high, they would enjoy dominant voting weight in the world legislature. But this would be acceptable to the poor nations as well, since it makes good sense to give more voting weight to individuals with more education. Such individuals would presumably utilize their greater voting weight more wisely and intelligently. Rider envisioned arms races being replaced by “education races” as nations enthusiastically threw their resources into educating their respective populations. Their immediate motivation would be to increase their influence in the world government, but this strategy would also increase their economic prosperity, which is largely

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determined by the productivity of the citizens, which in turn is largely determined by educational attainment. No doubt this is a flaky if not altogether goofy idea—but at least it constituted a sincere effort to deal with a serious problem mostly ignored by other, better known formulators of world government schemes such as Borgese, Clark-Sohn, and Isely. The dual voting principle in the Union Chamber of Representatives deals with the economic gap problem by requiring approval of proposed legislation on both the population basis, in which the populous poorer nations would have dominant weight, and the material basis, in which the less populous richer nations would have dominant weight. Once we have understood and accepted the basic idea of counting the vote of a given Union Representative in two conceptually separate votes, in which the weight of that vote would be different depending on the basis of the vote, it becomes apparent that the idea could be extended to other bases beyond the population and the material. For example, one might contemplate a third voting basis: the “national.” In the national vote, the weight of a given Union Representative’s vote would depend on the number of nations that representative was representing, as a proportion of the total number of member nations in the Federal Union. It could then be specified that in order for measures to be approved by the world legislature, they would have to be passed by the specified majority on the population, the material, and the national bases. As a matter of fact, this particular “triple voting” scheme is incorporated in the so-called binding triad proposal put forward by Richard Hudson, founder and former director of the Center for War-Peace Studies in New York City. Hudson, who died in 2006, worked as a journalist covering the United Nations. Despite his credentials as a writer, he never produced a book on the binding triad idea. However, it is sketchily referenced in a few printed sources, such as David Christiansen’s Healing the World (2005).9 Hudson’s plan envisions world government being implemented by means of upgrading the power and authority of the existing United Nations. The General Assembly would become the legislative arm of the world government, composed of one representative from each nation as is the case at the present time. In order for legislation to become binding on all member nations, two-thirds of the representatives would have to approve it, and these representatives would have to represent at least 51 percent of the combined population of all nations, and also at least 51 percent of the combined contributions of all nations. This would be equivalent to requiring approval on three bases: the national, population and material, with a two-thirds

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majority on the national basis, and a simple majority on the population and material bases. The advantage of this triple voting system is that it would give the smaller nations in terms of population and contributions a third voting basis in which their interests would receive what they might tend to regard as more adequate and appropriate representation. Therefore, the adoption of such a voting system might induce some small nations to join the Federal Union that otherwise would not have joined. But this advantage is offset by some serious disadvantages. To begin with, owing largely to the demise of colonialism since World War II, there are some extremely small nations in the modern world. Allowing a national vote into the voting system might be regarded by most people in the modern world—who are citizens of much larger nations—as giving these very small nations an undue amount of influence in the decision-making of the world government. Second, very small nations, say those with a population less than one million, are still a relatively small minority among all the nations of the world, so that the addition of this voting basis would not necessarily guarantee that the interests of these very small nations were adequately protected. Better guarantees of the interests of small nations would be the adherence by the Federal Union to very high standards regarding human rights, together with the fact that it would be both administratively complicated and minimally profitable to the larger nations to try to set up circumstances that amount to “exploitation” of the very small nations. Finally, there is the problem that admission of a third voting basis might encourage the extension of the concept to additional bases. For example, there might be a “racial voting basis” specified in such a way that each racial group in humanity, regardless of its relative abundance in the overall world population, would exercise an equivalent amount of influence to that of any other racial group. For another example, there might be a “religious voting basis” specified in such a way that each religious group in humanity, regardless of its relative abundance in the overall world population, would exercise an equivalent amount of influence to that of any other religious group. And so on and so forth. With each additional voting basis, there is a greater likelihood that a given proposed legislative measure would fail to gain approval on at least one basis. It seems likely that owing to the large degree of heterogeneity within the global human population, decision-making in the global government would be sufficiently sluggish even with just two voting bases: the population and the material. We would probably not want to make it still more sluggish by adding more voting bases.

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There is also the point that some of these bases might further aggravate the dysfunctional effects of existing diversity within the human population. The progressive elements within the human race are looking forward to a world in which, for example, the race and religion of a given citizen will be completely irrelevant to that citizen’s status and circumstances. We would not want to incorporate within the voting system of the world legislature mechanisms that continue to call attention to distinctions, such as race and religion, that ought to be irrelevant. To repeat a point made earlier, the principal justification for the recommended dual voting system encompassing population and material voting bases is that it is a short-term expedient intended to assist in the extinction of the economic distinctions on which it is based. Dual voting would help to make a Federal Union of Democratic Nations possible and successful, and an operating Federal Union of Democratic Nations would help to make a WEEP possible and successful. Once the WEEP has eradicated the world poverty problem, the distinction between the population vote and the material vote would be irrelevant, and the latter voting basis could then be discarded formally by means of a constitutional amendment. It would clearly be futile to search for a “perfect voting system” for the world legislature that would absolutely guarantee, in advance, by means of syllogistic logic, that each and every legitimate national interest in the world would be adequately and appropriately respected by the world government. Such a system either does not exist, or else it is completely beyond the comprehension of limited human intellect. What we can do, however, is to devise a voting system that is sufficiently plausible to provide a basis for experimentation with a world government. Once such an experiment is undertaken, experience will soon provide what a priori reasoning cannot: proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the world government will in fact respect every legitimate national interest to a sufficient degree to establish the practicality and desirability of world government.

The Heterogeneity Bugaboo During most of the second half of the twentieth century, human civilization teetered precariously over the abyss of nuclear Armageddon thanks to an ideologically fueled geopolitical confrontation, known as the Cold War, between the communist and noncommunist blocs of nations. Even during that perilous period, a limited world government along the lines of the proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations would have been possible (above all, because member nations would

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have been able to retain their own independent armed forces), and had such a federation been formed, the better communication and closer cooperation it would have facilitated might well have hastened the end of the Cold War and thereby reduced the terrible threat of instantaneous nuclear holocaust to which humanity had been exposed. But neither the intelligentsia nor the political leadership possessed sufficient vision to perceive the possibility. Instead, assuming that a world state must necessarily be omnipotent and claim a monopoly on large-scale armed force and weapons of mass destruction, the intelligentsia and the political leadership dismissed the possibility of world government on grounds that if the “other side” got control of such a government, they would immediately impose their odious economic and political system on “our side.” This assessment was common to both sides: noncommunist and communist. During the Cold War, therefore, the ideological gap was perceived as the primary impediment to world government. Now that the ideological gap of the Cold War is dead, and will, it is hoped, never arise again from its grave to haunt humanity, the primary impediment to world government is the economic gap: the tremendous gulf that has opened up between economic living standards in the richest nations and those in the poorest nations. Not that this fact is explicitly recognized and openly acknowledged by either the general public or international relations experts. The latter speak of “heterogeneities” within the human population and the “lack of shared values,” while the former are instinctively appalled by the notion that “foreigners” will gain any sort of meaningful control over their lives. Perhaps it is simply too crassly materialistic for the peoples of the rich nations to confess their fear of a global welfare state that will economically despoil them, and for the peoples of the poor nations to confess their fear that the reimposition of colonial-style exploitation will economically despoil them. Both peoples prefer to think that their apprehensions regarding world government are based on something more—something higher—than “mere” economic self-interest. Be that as it may, if we dig down past various superficial rationalizations, it is fairly apparent that the North-South economic gap has now replaced the East-West ideological gap as the primary impediment to world government. Certain fundamental characteristics of the proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations are designed to cope with the situation, most importantly, the dual voting system in the Union legislature, and the retained national rights to withdraw from the Union and to maintain independent military forces. These are shortterm expedients, to enable the world government to be established and to commence to function. In the long term, the only way to remove

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the economic gap as an impediment to successful world government is to remove the economic gap itself. This would be the goal of the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP) under the direction of a World Development Authority (WDA), an agency of the Federal Union. During its early decades, the absolute top priority of the Federal Union should be pursuit of the global economic development effort to a successful conclusion. Although the existence of large economic differentials among the nations of the world is the primary impediment to successful world government at the present time, there are certain other impediments that need to be considered in assessing the practicality of world government. In a very general sense, any distinction at all within the human species can be perceived as an impediment to political unification. Among the most important of these distinctions are race, language, culture, religion, and nationality. Clearly, however, some of these impediments are more serious than others. But I would argue that even the most serious of them do not constitute a significant obstacle to federal world government, as long as the envisioned federal world government is properly limited and constrained. The Federal Union of Democratic Nations blueprint proposed in this book is in fact “properly limited and constrained.” The issue of nationalism will be taken up in the final section of this chapter. The fact that race and language, in and of themselves, are not particularly serious obstacles to political unity is clearly suggested by the many examples of successful nations that are quite diverse in terms of race and language. China and India are probably the most dramatic examples of very large nations within which there are numerous different languages and dialects spoken by substantial proportions of the populations. With respect to race, the U.S. “melting pot” is probably the single most important piece of evidence that considerable racial diversity is not necessarily an insuperable obstacle to political unity. The principal minorities in the United States are blacks, Asians, and Latinos. Of these, Latinos are not sufficiently different in a physical sense from white Caucasians to constitute a “racial” minority. The presence of a substantial black racial minority in the United States today is the result of four hundred years of slavery, an institution that represents the greatest historical stain by far upon the honor of the nation. It would be a gross misrepresentation of reality to claim that full racial equality of whites and blacks has been achieved in the contemporary United States. However, it would be equally blind to reality not to acknowledge the very considerable progress that has been made in this direction, as exemplified by the recent election to the U.S. presidency

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of Barack Obama. The examples of China and India, among many others, show that linguistic diversity is not a serious obstacle to world government. The example of the United States, among others, shows that racial diversity is also not a serious obstacle to world government. Turning now to culture, we should recognize and acknowledge that most “cultural differences” are quite harmless. What difference does it make that one person prefers classical music by great composers such as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, while another prefers heavy metal rock and roll as provided by AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead? What difference does it make that one person prefers representational painting by great masters such as Rembrandt and Monet, while another prefers abstract paintings by modern artists such as Hoffmann and Pollack? There is an overwhelming variety of diverse musical and artistic expressions available to people in the modern world, not to mention literary and cinematic expressions. Most people relish the abundance of choice and revel in the amazing diversity. While devotees of some of these expressions may experience a certain amount of distaste and distain for devotees of other expressions, it seems absurd to suggest that cultural differences of this sort could provide a significant basis for intense hostility and physical conflict within and between organized groups. When we come to religion, however—often deemed to be an important component of culture—clearly the situation is not as favorable. The horrific events of September 11, 2001, were instigated by Islamic extremists who were obviously motivated, to some extent, by religious enthusiasm. The 9/11 horror suggests that religiously aggravated hostility and conflict is hardly extinct in the modern world, despite the general advance of secularism. That event was a particularly dramatic example of a phenomenon that has often appeared elsewhere in the world. For example, India continues to be disturbed on a regular basis by Hindu-Muslim riots. For another example, despite decades of “progress toward peace” in Northern Ireland, violence still occasionally erupts between Catholics and Protestants. Indeed, the matter of religion is sufficiently serious to be worth more extended discussion than that accorded to the more innocuous cultural differences mentioned earlier. Prior to the rise in modern history of “secular ideologies” promoting such ideas as democracy and socialism, “religious ideologies” promoting various belief systems such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on were very prevalent in human society and human history. The fundamental characteristic of any ideology, whether it be secular or religious, is that the validity of its various propositions

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(democracy is preferable to oligarchy, Christianity is ordained by God, etc.) cannot be confirmed or refuted by any sort of logical argument or empirical evidence. At the same time, these propositions have a strong bearing on individual welfare, social welfare, or both. Subscribing to the “wrong” religion can cause a person to suffer eternal damnation to the fires of hell. Living under the wrong political or economic system can severely limit the achieved level of social welfare. The combination of critical importance with irreducible uncertainty endows ideological issues with strong emotional overtones. The existence of people who believe otherwise than oneself on these issues inspires in any normal person emotions of dread, anger, and hostility. But sensible people recognize that in the normal course of events, no good can come of such emotions, and that the thoughts that inspire these emotions—namely thoughts about ideological issues—should be suppressed to the maximum extent possible. The reason why such thoughts should ordinarily be suppressed is that hostility leads to violence and warfare, and history has repeatedly shown that ideologically fueled warfare rarely results in the complete annihilation of those with opposed ideological beliefs. And of course warfare cannot, of its nature, lead to any sort of clarification or resolution concerning the truth or falsity of ideological beliefs themselves. In this sense warfare is futile, despite enormous human and material costs. This lesson has been fairly well absorbed by humanity—although obviously not fully absorbed. Most nations of today exercise some degree of toleration for religious diversity, to a greater or lesser extent as the case may be. Even a “theocracy” such as contemporary Iran does not forbid adherents of non-Islamic religions from setting foot in Iran. A few contrary cases such as Iran aside, the vast majority of national governments today recognize the importance of religious toleration and endeavor to uphold it to the extent possible, given the intolerant attitudes of many of their citizens. Almost everywhere in the world, religious toleration and freedom is perceived as an ideal and a desirable goal to be pursued. Against this background, it need hardly be emphasized that it is absolutely vital that religious freedom be recognized in the Union Constitution as a “fundamental human right,” and that the Federal Union be constitutionally prohibited from passing laws or pursuing policies that favor any one religion over another. It is not simply a matter of forbidding an established church; rather there must be erected a very high, very strong “wall of separation” between the state and any one religion or group of religions. In some ways this will be easier for the world government to accomplish than it has been for the national

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governments. This is because the amount of religious diversity over the entire world is much greater than that within any one nation. In many if not most nations, one religion has become dominant: for example, Christianity in the United States. Thus there might be a tendency in the United States toward extending various favors and benefits toward this religion and not toward others. On the other hand, very general religious categories such as “Christianity” frequently subsume numerous divisions and subdivisions that are very much opposed to each other. In such cases, there is less likelihood of special favors and benefits being extended by the state to any one religious group. At the world level, there is no single religion, even defined very generally, that has achieved such dominance that the world government would be inclined toward favoring it. Probably the most obvious, dramatic, and historically prolonged case of religiously inflamed conflict and warfare has been between Islam and Christianity.10 The founder of Islam, Mohammed (ca. 570–632), was himself no stranger to the role of armed force in religious conversion, and immediately upon his death his successors initiated one of the greatest eras of military conquest in the history of the world, extending far to the east into Persia and India, and far to the west along the north African coast into present-day Spain. This era extended from the death of Mohammed in 632 a full one hundred years until the defeat of the Moorish Arabs at Poitiers in 732. The Christian reaction, in the form of the Crusades, covered an even longer period from the launching of the first Crusade in 1096 to the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291. Another era of Muslim expansionism occurred during the rise of the Ottoman empire centered in Turkey. The high point of the Ottoman empire in western Europe was the siege of Vienna (1529), which was broken more by harsh winter weather and the length of the Ottoman supply lines than Hapsburg military action. More recently, the foundation of Israel within Muslim Palestine (1948) has once again inflamed Islamic sensitivities in the Mideast, and has generated no less than four full-fledged Arab-Israeli wars, in addition to numerous Muslim terrorist attacks inflicted on the rest of the world, most notably the 9/11 attack that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed thousands of people. Looking at this unfortunate history, there are some who assert a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the other major religions, especially the Judeo-Christian, that can only culminate in the destruction of one side or the other. Such a bleakly pessimistic view is completely unjustified. Although there are indeed some hair-raising passages in the Koran justifying and indeed glorifying warfare between Muslims and various “infidels,”

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these passages need not be taken any more seriously than various passages in the Old Testament of the Bible proclaiming the Israelites as “God’s chosen people,” and urging them on to the conquest and subjugation of their various enemies. Close reading of the Koran passages about killing infidels indicates that such killing is justified on selfdefense grounds in the course of warfare with nonbelievers. Moreover, there are various admonitions in the Koran toward humane treatment of infidels living peacefully within Muslim societies. There are no urgings in the Koran toward what we would today identify as “genocidal” behavior toward infidels. Although history tends to concentrate on violent episodes because they are inherently more interesting than peaceful periods, we should not lose sight of the fact that there were many hundreds of years, between the various wars between Christian and Muslim societies, during which Christians and Muslims practiced peaceful coexistence. For example, Islamic societies welcomed Christian pilgrims to the holy places of Christianity within their borders for the same reason that nations today welcome tourists from abroad—they bring in foreign exchange and help local businesses to flourish. Furthermore, history records numerous vicious wars among different Christian societies, as well as among different Muslim societies. For more than one hundred years following Martin Luther’s initiation of the Protestant alternative to Roman Catholicism, Europe was beset by a series of religiously fueled wars and civil wars, culminating in the devastating Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648. Most of the wars associated with the Islamic empires were among various sultans all of whom nominally accepted the teachings of Mohammed—just as all the wars of modern Europe, up to and including World War II, were among various nations all of whom nominally subscribed to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In fact, it would be quite difficult to argue from the historical record that there has been any greater propensity toward Christian versus Muslim wars than toward Christian versus Christian or Muslim versus Muslim wars. With respect to the original Muslim jihad following the death of Mohammed, most historians are inclined to rate the influence of religious zeal on campaigns of imperial conquest as relatively minor. The Greeks and the Romans built their empires through conquest, and their motivation ran to the acquisition of wealth and power on the earthly plane, not to increasing their chances of pleasing God and getting into heaven. The same could be said of the barbarian invasions that overthrew the Roman empire, and the Mongol campaigns that subjugated much of the known world from eastern Europe in the west to China

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in the east. The European reaction to the Islamic conquests, after an interval of over three hundred years, came in the form of the Crusades. When Urban II preached the First Crusade in 1095, he placed much emphasis on the reward of eternal salvation for liberating Jerusalem from “the heavy yoke of the Turk”—but he also mentioned prominently the potential material spoils of war as an incentive for signing on. Spiritual rewards alone were too nebulous to justify a risky war of conquest. Campaigns of materialistically inspired imperial expansion are not confined to the distant past: the most recent large-scale example being the Nazi effort to establish a Eurasian empire under German control, an effort thwarted by the outcome of World War II. No religious motivations were involved in that event, although Hitler endeavored to enlist secular ideological support for the 1941 invasion of the USSR by alleging that the principal purpose of the invasion was the preservation of European culture against unholy Bolshevism. New religions are coming along all the time, and only rarely do they quickly get mixed up in wars of expansion. It may well have been an accident of history that the Islamic religion played such a large part in the Arab conquests of 632–732. A campaign of conquest was already brewing, and the new religion merely intensified the campaign. Mohammed was recently deceased, his religion was new and his disciples few in number and highly enthusiastic. No one outside what is now Saudi Arabia had ever heard of Mohammed and his religion. Thus what might have been perceived simply as the “wars of Arab imperial conquest” became the “wars of Islamic expansion.” As the Arab armies marched across North Africa and up into Spain, they probably perceived their Islamic religion as a handy tool for establishing control over various peoples and regions. In their view, they were offering the keys to the kingdom to prospective co-religionists and subjects. To the extent that prospective subjects could be persuaded that the teachings of Mohammed offered a sure path to personal salvation, they would be less inspired to resistance. The role of the Islamic religion in the Arab wars of imperial conquest was arguably quite analogous to the role of the Christian religion in the Iberian wars of imperial conquest in Central and South America. To the extent that the indigenous American Indians could be made into docile Christians, there was less risk of disruptive rebellions against the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Fortunately for the cause of contemporary global human civilization, Islamic jihadists in the mode of Osama bin Laden constitute a tiny fraction of the Muslim population of the world. If this particular pathological infection becomes too widespread in the future, of

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course, it will cause disastrous warfare throughout the world. But it would be the same if Christian fundamentalism, or nationalistic separatism, or communist fanaticism were to become too widespread. In 1095, Christian fundamentalism (of a sort) generated the Crusades. In 1914, Serbian nationalistic separatism motivated the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that plunged human civilization into World War I. The Cold War that nearly precipitated a nuclear World War III was fueled by communist fanaticism. There is nothing particularly unique about the Islamic fanaticism that inspired 9/11 and thereby led to the ensuing events. We can only hope that just as Christian fundamentalists, nationalistic separatists, and communist fanatics have not thus far precipitated the downfall of humanity, the same will be true of Islamic jihadists. Sensible Muslims throughout the world can see for themselves, in the aftermath of 9/11, the folly of jihadist actions against the United States and the other major Western nations. That terrorist attack led directly to the invasion of two Muslim nations (Afghanistan and Iraq), the overthrow of their national governments, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims, many if not most of them innocent bystanders. Unless jihadist terrorist actions somehow embroil the Western nations in conflicts among themselves, they will probably do more harm to Muslims than to Christians. Most people think of the various differences of opinion among humanity (e.g., whether the supreme being should be referred to as Yahweh, God, Allah, etc.) as an obstacle to world government. But in the past these same differences were an obstacle to the formation of large nation-states, and yet history records that large nation-states nevertheless came about. An important reason for large-scale political unions is that of discouraging and suppressing the violent conflicts that these differences of opinion often engender among people under conditions where there is no higher authority. That argument is as valid today with respect to supernational government as it was in the past with respect to national governments. A world government would certainly not abrogate these differences of religious opinion—nor would we want everyone in the world to think alike anyway. The important thing is simply that differences of religious opinion not generate armed conflict. It is essential that the Federal Union refrain from any laws or actions that might be perceived as favoring or disfavoring any specific religion. But this does not imply that the Federal Union should necessarily oppose all such laws and actions within specific member nations. Among the complaints heard about world government is that it would be intolerant of cultural diversity, and would attempt to suppress it by

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various direct and indirect means. But most cultural differences, in and of themselves, present no problem for world government. The world government would have no incentive, for example, to try to suppress certain types of music (e.g., heavy metal rock and roll) in order to foster other types (e.g., classical music by Bach and Beethoven). Students of culture usually include religion as a very important component of any cultural system. Some cultural customs have a religious basis: for example, the reason why Saudi Arabian women have to cover their faces in public is that the Koran prescribes this—at least in the view of fundamentalists. Some such customs may seem perverse and dysfunctional to people of other cultures. They may seem like a violation of the separation of church and state principle, to the extent that religious documents and doctrines are the basis for these customs. But if the world government were to oppose such customs, even just verbally, this might be interpreted as a form of oppression to people of cultures that value these customs. The fundamental guarantee that the world government would not oppress any given nation in cultural and/or religious terms, whether that nation be primarily Christian, Islamic, or whatever, is the retained right of member nations to withdraw from the union at their unilateral discretion (along with the right to independent military forces). In the interest of the stability of the world federation, it would be advisable to maintain a high degree of flexibility on culturally oriented churchstate issues within member nations. For example, if an Islamic nation wants to prescribe that only mullahs can hold political office in the national government, or to require that women keep their faces covered in public, then so be it. The Federal Union Constitution should specify clearly that the supernational government shall take no action against national customs, so long as these customs do not infringe on basic human rights. Possibly a line might have to be drawn on some very important issues. For example, it may not be permissible for member nations to impose special taxes on citizens who do not subscribe to the majority religion. Such provisions might cause that nation to be expelled from the union, or prevent it from joining in the first place. But complete church-state separation at the national level is probably unrealistic. For example, in most Christian nations, Christmas is recognized as a national holiday—yet it is clearly a religious observance. NonChristians might complain that declaring a religious observance a national holiday constitutes an impermissible church-state connection. Most Christians would argue that such complaints should be ignored, on grounds that Christmas has become a secularized holiday, and in

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any event no fundamental human rights are being violated. Analogous arguments could be made in defense of many other religiously inspired customs of certain nations that seem strange to the people of other nations. Clearly, with respect to such matters, a reasonable degree of toleration and flexibility is essential.

The Issue of Nationalism To some people, nationalism is deemed such a fundamental, immovable, irreducible, ineluctable obstacle to world government that even if we envisioned a world in which the human population was almost completely homogeneous in terms of race, language, ideological convictions, economic living standards, religious beliefs, and cultural traditions, there would still be no hope of political unification at the global level. This is simply because people everywhere are much too loyal to their own respective nations. This loyalty is rooted in whatever accident of birth was responsible for the nationality of any given individual, and is nourished by parental and educational immersion in the hopelessly complex and tangled web of historical grievances nursed by the populations of any one nation against numerous others throughout the world. It results in such deep-seated nationalistic prejudices and preconceptions as to constitute an impervious, impenetrable, and completely adamantine barrier to the foundation of any sort of federal world government, no matter how limited and how carefully designed. I will argue that upon close examination, this proposition, however popular it may be at the present time, is seen to be untenable—as well as being a veritable insult to human rationality and intelligence. Nationalism is not some primitive, instinctive, quasi-mystical force totally beyond the dictates of reason and rationality, which will forever preclude the development of political loyalty to a state entity higher than the contemporary nation-state. Presuming that the world government in question is a properly restrained and limited state organization, nationalism as it is known in the world today most certainly does not represent an insuperable obstacle to the establishment of such a government. As a matter of fact, in historical context, nationalism has been a stabilizing and unifying force to a greater extent than it has been a destabilizing and disunifying force. Those who would argue today that nationalism will forever prevent the formation of a viable federal world government because mankind is incapable of developing anything beyond national loyalties are comparable to those who, several hundred years ago, would have argued that local and regional loyalties

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would forever prevent the formation of a viable nation-state. Indeed, a healthy degree of national pride might in some ways actually facilitate the establishment of a world government. Once the possibility of a limited world government along the lines of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations becomes widely known, and a critical mass of interest and enthusiasm is achieved, at some point a bandwagon effect might take hold, so that people will demand that their particular nation take up its rightful place in this great human endeavor—and not be left behind with the handful of unprogressive, reactionary, and backward-looking nations that continue to decline membership in the Federal Union. In considering the nationalistic impediment to world government, we should first take note of the fact that this impediment, while logically distinct from the ideological and economic impediments, is in practice closely associated with them. Depending on the circumstances, the nation-state may be perceived as either the principal line of defense against the external imposition of ideologically hateful social systems, or as a principal instrument for the sharing of ideologically superior social systems with the rest of humanity. Throughout the modern era and especially in the twentieth century, ideological fervor and nationalistic patriotism have been intimately related. To the traditional role of the nation-state as the champion of ideologically correct social systems, an increasingly important role has been added as consciousness of the economic gap has intensified throughout the twentieth century: the nation-state as the preserver of economic prosperity and welfare against potential inroads by envious or greedy foreigners. During the modern era, nationalistic spirit has been associated with three major conditions and motivations: (1) religious and ideological ideas and aspirations toward the general reform and progress of human civilization; (2) desires for political unification and territorial expansion; (3) desires for liberation from governments perceived to be remote and oppressive. Some historical episodes show a relatively simple pattern: for example, the British revolutionary period from 1640 to 1688 witnessed an intensification of British nationalism almost exclusively on the basis of the first motivation. The genesis and development of American nationalism in the United States from its inception through the early twentieth century, on the other hand, shows a more complicated pattern involving all three motivations. The immediate impetus to the American Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War was the desire for liberation from the British imperial government in London—a government perceived by the colonists to be remote and oppressive. But the American founding fathers

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quickly supplemented this immediate motivation with a vision of a new and improved democratic political commonwealth, based upon the natural rights of man and eschewing the aristocratic distinctions and the religious activism of the state that had characterized Europe through its long and difficult history. Finally, American nationalism was further intensified throughout the nineteenth century by the “manifest destiny” of westward territorial expansion toward the Pacific Ocean. The interaction of these three basic correlates of nationalism—in various permutations and combinations—may be observed in numerous other historical episodes: the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the consolidation of Italy and Germany, the decline and ultimate collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, the ideological and military conflicts of the twentieth century involving fascism and communism, and the dissolution of the British, French, and other European colonial empires after World War II. The attitudes and emotions that have been associated with nationalism in the past are by no means uniformly and consistently unfavorable to the foundation and operation of a supernational state in the future. In fact, of the three major historical correlates of nationalism, two might easily work in favor of a world government: in other words, these particular motivations to national pride and patriotism might also serve as motivations to supernational pride and patriotism. The Federal Union of Democratic Nations could be seen as an instrument toward the general reform and progress of worldwide human civilization—as an effective means for the extension to all mankind of such values as personal freedom, political democracy, social equality, and economic prosperity. At the same time, the Federal Union could be perceived as a means for the political unification of an extensive and populous territory, and for the possible expansion of mankind out into the solar system and beyond. The third correlate of nationalism is where the potential problem for world government lies: the desire for liberation from remote and oppressive governance. A realistic appreciation of nationalism clearly shows that in order to be viable in a world still very nationalistically oriented, the world government must not be regarded as remote and oppressive by any substantial proportion of its citizens. As to the specific issue of remoteness, this potential problem has largely been abrogated—relative to one hundred or two hundred years ago—by the amazing technological progress in the area of transport and communications. There would be no difficulty in maintaining close contact between the individuals and agencies of the supernational government and their constituent citizens. Moreover, in recent decades the methodology of opinion polling

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has also made great progress, and no doubt this methodology would be relied upon extensively in making judgments as to what the Federal Union should and should not do. The maintenance of close and continual communication between the Federal Union and its citizens would help to forestall feelings of oppression. In addition, the proposed Federal Union would incorporate numerous features explicitly intended to inhibit tendencies toward oppressiveness—ranging from the national right of secession to the dual voting principle in the Chamber of Representatives. Among the strongest guarantees of non-oppressiveness is the fact that the government of the supernational federation would be democratically elected by the population of the Federal Union. When we think of oppressive regimes throughout history, from the ancient Roman empire through to Stalinist communism, a unifying feature is the absence of democracy, of democratic accountability of the government to the population that it governs. By virtue of close contact and communication, democratic elections, formal constitutional guarantees, and the good sense and wisdom of the leaders of the supernational federation who will hopefully remain aware of the strong possibility of disaster should they overstep their political and moral authority, it may be anticipated with a reasonable degree of confidence that the Federal Union of Democratic Nations will avoid becoming an instrument of oppression. The proposition that the nationalistic impediment to world government is impermeable may be restated as the proposition that any world government would inevitably involve unacceptable inroads into national sovereignty. The term “sovereignty” has an appropriately sonorous ring: it tends to evoke deep and abiding emotions, to elicit intimations of fundamental issues of survival and well-being, to generate what might be termed a “mystical” frame of mind in the individual. Once in this frame of mind, it is relatively easy to imagine that the concept of national sovereignty constitutes an insuperable obstacle to supernational federation. Such a federation (according to this reasoning) would constitute an abridgement of and an infringement upon the national sovereignty of its member nations. But nations cannot permit such a “competitor” for their traditional authority to exist and yet remain sovereign states. By the same token, a world government—in order to constitute a proper state entity—could not tolerate the limitations upon its own sovereignty represented by the sovereignty of its component nations. It simply could not allow such significant restrictions on its authority, and it simply could not permit so much competition for the loyalties of its citizens. Therefore, one or the other would have to go: either the concept of national sovereignty or the concept

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of supernational sovereignty. Since we cannot imagine the nations of today surrendering their national sovereignty, we are forced to conclude that a world government is impossible. Such thinking is muddled and fallacious. It manifests an excessively rigid mentality that perceives only black and white rather than shades of gray, that focuses only on the extreme endpoints of the spectrum of possibilities rather than looking for the happy medium. The formation of a world government would not necessarily manifest the abrogation of national sovereignty, nor would the continuation of national sovereignty necessarily imply an absence of sovereignty on the part of the world government. The world government and the component nationstates would each have their respective areas of sovereignty—areas in which they would indeed exercise absolute and undisputed authority. In some areas the world government would possess sovereign authority, and in others the individual nation-states would possess sovereign authority. In the United States today, individual states such as Texas and New York are frequently described as “the sovereign state of Texas” and “the sovereign state of New York.” Such phrases are not contradictory to Texas and New York being components of the “sovereign United States of America.” At first it may seem paradoxical to think about “areas” of sovereignty and “limitations” on sovereignty—such restrictive notions may seem basically contradictory to the essential concept of sovereignty. But we must take a more sophisticated view of reality. It would be a serious error to think of the notion of sovereignty as an absolute rather than a relative concept. In actual fact, the notion of sovereignty with respect to a state is closely analogous to the notion of “freedom” with respect to an individual. Freedom is of course a marvelous abstraction: it expresses the deepest and most sublime human aspirations toward individual autonomy, discretion, and self-determination. Every rational human being desires to have as much freedom for himself or herself as is conceivably possible. But at the same time, every rational human being also recognizes the many practical and unavoidable constraints that must restrain autonomy, discretion, and self-determination. Some of these constraints are imposed by nature: human beings cannot fly like birds, they cannot breathe water like fish, they require food, drink, and shelter to survive, and despite their best personal efforts to implement the instinct of self-preservation indefinitely, they are all eventually subject to the physical dissolution of death. Some of these constraints are imposed by economic realities: the person of average means, even in the most prosperous nations, is not able to live in a large mansion on an extensive estate, is not able to eat steak and lobster every day, is not

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able to take six-month tours around the world. Some constraints are imposed by the social enforcement system: theft, rape, murder, and many other actions that may appeal to certain persons at certain times will normally eventuate in confinement and the Spartan living conditions of prisons. Some constraints are imposed by the political system: even in the most democratic polities, no individual citizen can autonomously specify who shall be the head of state—such as himself/herself or some close friend or relative. Such constraints, however, do not constitute flat contradictions to a sensible understanding of freedom. It is fully sensible to interpret freedom as involving simply a substantial amount of personal autonomy, discretion, and self-determination—even if that amount is indeed far short of what could be imagined. We may certainly think of ourselves as free, even though we may be subject to physical limitations and mortality, even though we may be able to afford only a relatively modest standard of living, even though we must avoid criminal behavior or suffer the consequences, even though our own personal influence in determining the social leadership may be minimal. It is the same thing with national sovereignty—or in more general terms, with any type of state sovereignty. Just as it is possible to legitimately describe a person as free even though there may be many practical constraints operative upon his or her individual autonomy, discretion, and self-determination, so too it is possible to legitimately describe a state as sovereign even though there may be various practical constraints on the power and authority of that state, and even though that state must share the loyalty of its citizens with other state entities. A realistic appreciation of history and contemporary civilization clearly manifests that “state sovereignty,” whether that state is a nationstate or some other form such as an empire or a city-state, is in fact significantly limited both internally and externally. Internally, the government cannot ignore the interests and desires of its citizens, or it runs the risk of being ousted by election or overturned by revolution. The externally imposed limitations on sovereign power are just as important. Throughout human history, the exercise of sovereign power has frequently brought various states into armed conflict with one another, and the possibility of armed conflict constitutes a major constraint on their autonomy, discretion, and self-determination. No national government can afford to entirely disregard the strong national interests of other national governments—sovereignty or no sovereignty. All this is not to deny the existence and significance of the concept of sovereignty. It is rather merely to point out that in practice, sovereignty does not imply absolute and unlimited power.

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The political unification of all or most of today’s nations within a properly designed federal world government would not entail abrogation of national sovereignty. It would, of course, involve some additional limitations on national sovereignty beyond those that exist today. But these would be reasonable and appropriate additional limitations, and they would apply to all member nations alike. In return, the national populations would reap significant material and psychological advantages from living in a more secure and prosperous world than we have today.

CH A P T ER

5

On the Advisability of Federal World Government

The Global Governance Myth Whether or not a certain course of action (such as establishing a federal world government) is or is not desirable is determined by comparing its expected benefits to its expected costs. This formulation uses the word “expected” in its statistical sense of “expected value.” We can never know for sure what the actual outcome will be in the future if we undertake now (or do not undertake now) a certain course of action. As is often observed, prediction is very difficult—especially about the future. In “decision-making under uncertainty,” something that all of us do on an almost daily basis (e.g., should we, or should we not, take an umbrella when we go out this morning), we attach various subjective probabilities to various “states of nature” (e.g., it will not rain, it will sprinkle, it will pour), and make our decision accordingly (e.g., if it is cloudy and the weather forecast calls for heavy rain, we are likely to take an umbrella). Every course of action (or inaction as the case may be) carries with it expected benefits and expected costs. If (continuing with the umbrella example) we take the umbrella, we will have protection against rain (a benefit), but we will be burdened with the umbrella (a cost). The benefit will have a high value if it rains, a low value if it does not. The cost, once we have decided to take the umbrella, is a fixed amount. We weigh this fixed amount against the expected benefit, computed (subconsciously) by multiplying the probability of each amount of rain against the benefit of avoiding the wetness that would have been incurred for that amount of rain had we not had the umbrella, and adding up. Or, we could do a calculation of the expected benefits and costs of not taking the umbrella. Whatever decision we make, it might turn out to be the wrong one. If we take the umbrella and it doesn’t

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rain, we’ve wasted the energy it took to carry the umbrella. If we don’t take the umbrella and it does rain, then we get wet. No matter how careful and accurate the expected value calculation, it might yield the wrong result. Of course, the decision that humanity makes regarding whether or not to move forward toward the foundation of a federal world government is far more consequential than the personal decision each one of us makes each morning about whether or not to take an umbrella when we go out. But the decision-making principles are the same. Let us consider, for the sake of argument, the active (or positive) decision to establish a federal world government. A potential cost of such a decision is that the world state might degenerate into a totalitarian nightmare extending over the entire surface of the world. The previous chapter, on the practicality of world government, in effect argued that the probability of such an adverse outcome was quite small—given that the world government in question is characterized by the various limiting features proposed for the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, especially dual voting in the legislature, and the reserved national rights to independent military forces and free withdrawal. In other words, the expected costs are low. At the same time, there are potential benefits from establishing a federal world government: reducing the likelihood of nuclear war, facilitating human effort toward ameliorating global problems such as environmental degradation, and so on. The present chapter, on the advisability of world government, in effect argues that the expected benefits from establishing a world government are high. In this chapter we are examining the potential positive side of world government, whereas in the previous chapter we examined the potential negative side. The overall argument is that when we weigh the high expected benefits from world government against its low expected costs, we perceive and understand the desirability of world government. The overall argument is commenced with a critique of what I term the “global governance myth”: namely that effective global governance is possible without effective global government. This myth basically asserts that humanity does not need a global government simply because we are already achieving virtually all of the benefits of peace and prosperity that might be obtained were a global government in existence—without running any of the risks inevitably entailed by an actual, functioning global government. This proposition in effect maintains that expected future benefits are just as high (or at least virtually as high) without world government as they are with world government. It disputes that the expected benefits would be higher if a

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world government existed, than if one did not. The fact that I am referring to the proposition that “effective global governance is possible in the absence of effective global government” as the global governance myth reflects my belief that this proposition is false. But it is more than false: it is pernicious, harmful, and potentially fatal. The rise of the term “global governance” to prominence dates roughly from the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.1 The Communist Party was ousted from the position of political leadership and social domination it had held since 1917, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics transformed itself into the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose confederation comparable, at most, to the British Commonwealth. The component states of the ex-USSR and its Eastern European satellite fringe started transforming themselves into democratic capitalist nations in the image of the United States and the Western European nations. All this had a rapid, significant, and highly beneficial effect on international relations. The two dominant military superpowers, the United States and the Russian Federation, soon commenced deep cuts in their military expenditures. The fears and anxieties that had plagued a generation—that human civilization would suddenly and without warning be devastated by a nuclear world war—evaporated almost overnight. There is no reasonable doubt that the epochal developments of the early 1990s considerably reduced the short-term threat of all-out nuclear war among the superpowers. This is certainly just cause for a considerable amount of relief and rejoicing. But among those with a deeper understanding of the contemporary world situation and its historical origins, it should be clear that joy should not be unrestrained. Human civilization continues to confront very serious long-term problems, problems of such gravity as to pose a threat of reduction to barbarity, if not of physical annihilation. Global problems such as war and poverty did not suddenly emerge at the time of the emergence of the “communist menace” in 1917; it follows that these problems will not disappear along with the disappearance of this menace. Throughout modern history, the sovereign nation-state system has been seriously implicated in the aggravation of these problems. The sovereign nationstate system has not been significantly affected by the collapse and dissolution of the USSR and the ensuing demise of the Cold War. It follows that this system is likely to continue generating debilitating and potentially deadly problems into the unforeseeable future. A “myth” is defined as a traditional story of ancient lineage, frequently involving supernatural beings and activities, that explains otherwise unexplainable conditions or justifies otherwise unjustifiable

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customs. For example, almost every human culture has developed myths to explain the origin of the world and its inhabitants. In those human cultures that have practiced human sacrifice, myths typically account for the origin of such practices. The development of human knowledge has cast serious doubt, among educated people, concerning the literal truth of most if not all myths of creation and the origins of human sacrifice. Belief in the literal truth of most myths has declined to such an extent that today the word “fiction” is ordinarily a workable synonym for myth. Nevertheless, throughout most of human history, myths were generally accepted as being not merely figuratively but literally true. Myths were not originally intended as entertainment—they were rather intended to assist human individuals to cope with uncongenial and unavoidable realities. Their usefulness for this purpose would have been significantly diminished if they had been presented as anything less than completely factual and truthful. With respect to creation myths, for example, these myths ease the strain of ignorance with respect to the origins of the earth, the universe, and humanity. With respect to myths accounting for human sacrifice, these myths eased the strain of providing such sacrifices. The strain consisted not only in the loss of life, but in uncertainty that the deities being thus appeased would reciprocate by providing abundant game, fertile soil, and good growing weather. Myths provided some assurance (not complete) that once the gods had been appeased by human sacrifices, there would be abundant game, fertile soil, and good growing weather. In civilized societies of the present day, of course, human sacrifices to appease the gods have been virtually eliminated. They have been replaced by more civilized and humane sacrifices of time (i.e., time devoted to church attendance and prayer) and money (i.e., financial donations to churches and charities). Although all mythical beliefs, by definition, are incapable of compelling support by means of empirical observation and/or logical reasoning (otherwise, they would be universally accepted “facts”), this is not to say that all of these beliefs are necessarily invalid. An unsupportable belief may in fact be correct, especially if it is interpreted in a general and symbolic sense, as opposed to a specific and literal sense. On the other hand, mythical beliefs may certainly be invalid and even dysfunctional. A dysfunctional myth is defined as a belief that is not only invalid, but that also discourages and deters positive thought and action toward the amelioration of uncongenial realities that are not, in fact, unavoidable. Belief in the efficacy of global governance is not harmless. This belief is dysfunctional because it deters thought and action toward the

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achievement of a higher level of international harmony and cooperation through the mechanism of federal world government. The contemporary global governance myth assists human individuals to cope with the uncongenial reality (assumed reality) that, although the sovereign nation-state system has proven itself throughout modern history to be strongly predisposed toward the production of conflict and war among nations, and although a war fought with presently existing conventional and nuclear weapons would be unimaginably destructive, and although an effective global government would significantly reduce the probability of unrestricted warfare—an effective global government is nevertheless impossible. The notion of global governance is therefore a coping mechanism: it tells us that the absence of a global government is not a matter for great concern—because we do have “global governance” and this is almost, nearly, practically, virtually, well-nigh as good as actual global government. The proposition that there is no feasible escape from the current quasi-anarchic condition of international relations is directly contradicted by the proposal put forward in this book for a limited federal world government, the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. This plan of world government represents a happy medium between the ineffectual United Nations of today, and the omnipotent world state concept advocated by traditional world federalists. The Federal Union would be a genuine state entity, a fully functional and functioning government authority, yet it would operate under a sufficient set of limitations to reduce the threat of a totalitarian outcome to a negligible level. Whether or not the global governance concept constitutes a myth is not affected by whether or not a benign and effective global government is a possibility. But the latter issue does affect whether or not the global governance concept is a dysfunctional myth. If benign and effective global government were actually impossible, then the global governance concept may be a myth, but it would not be a dysfunctional myth because the uncongenial reality with which it copes (international quasi-anarchy) is indeed unavoidable. But if benign and effective global government is in fact, despite the contemporary consensus to the contrary, a possibility, then the global governance concept is a dysfunctional myth because it deters thought and action toward the elimination of the uncongenial—but not unavoidable—reality of international quasi-anarchy. The global governance myth of the post-Soviet era was preceded by two earlier myths of analogous purpose: the collective security myth of the pre-nuclear period, and the mutual assured destruction (MAD)

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myth of the Cold War period. These earlier myths have not been displaced by the global governance myth; rather the global governance myth supplements and reinforces them. Collective Security The notion of collective security is an extrapolation and generalization from the notion of an alliance. As such, it is descriptively referred to as the “super-alliance” concept. It might be useful to review, in downto-earth terms, the basic alliance concept. Imagine that there are three nations: A, B, and C. Nation A is big enough and powerful enough to conquer nation B individually or nation C individually. But it is not big enough and powerful enough to conquer nations B and C simultaneously. Therefore, nations B and C form an alliance according to which each one will come to the assistance of the other if the other is attacked by nation A. This strategy is simple, and so also is the counterstrategy followed by nation A if it desires to conquer both B and C: the strategy of divide-and-conquer. Nation A assures nation B that its intentions toward nation B are of the most amicable nature imaginable, but that nation C is engaging in various intolerable provocations that simply cannot go unpunished. If nation B is persuaded by these assurances, it stands aside (i.e., maintains its neutrality, avoids “foreign entanglements,” eschews the spilling of the blood of its own people to benefit “foreigners,” etc.) as nation A conquers nation C. Once nation C has been conquered and fully subjugated, nation A is then ready to deal with nation B. The collective security concept envisions a general mutual assistance alliance among a large number of “peace-loving” nations (i.e., nations satisfied with the prevailing international status quo). The combined power of all these allied nations would be so overwhelming as to deter any aggression against members of the alliance by other nations. Peace would then be, in Kant’s well-known terminology, “perpetual.” An important example of collective security in modern history was the “Concert of Europe” established in the aftermath of the “French wars” from 1792 through 1815. This embodied the plan of Metternich, enunciated at the Congress of Vienna, for an informal super-alliance of the great powers of Europe to maintain the peace against future upstarts who might be tempted to emulate the example of Napoleon Bonaparte. Many historians have been complimentary toward Metternich and the Concert concept, on the basis that ninety-nine years elapsed (1815 through 1914) without a major war among the Western European nations (the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 and a few others were

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not “major”). On the other hand, ninety-nine years, while quite a long time from the viewpoint of an individual human being, is far from perpetuity. As far as “perpetual peace” is concerned, the utility of the Concert concept was thoroughly discredited by the commencement of the “German wars” in 1914, a series of two wars (World War I from 1914 through 1918 and World War II from 1939 through 1945), separated by a truce (the “interwar period” from 1919 through 1938). The problem with the Concert concept, in the post-1914 thinking of mainstream theoreticians and practitioners of traditional balance of power diplomacy, was that it had been an informal super-alliance rather than a formal one. The proposed solution to the problem was the League of Nations established in 1919 by the post–World War I Treaty of Versailles. The League set up a formal institutional structure in support of the super-alliance. The dubiousness of a formalized super-alliance as a means of preserving perpetual peace was strongly indicated by the League’s failure to deter Nazi Germany and its allied fascist nations from the aggressive policies that soon sparked World War II. The problem with the League of Nations, in the post-1939 thinking of mainstream theoreticians and practitioners of traditional balance of power diplomacy, was that its membership had not been broad enough: in particular, the United States, a superpower that had tipped the balance of World War I against Germany, had not joined the League, owing to a resurgence of isolationism generated by heavy American casualties incurred during the just-completed “European” war. The United Nations established in 1945 was in reality little more than a renamed League of Nations with the added membership of the United States. During the half century that followed its foundation, the existence and operations of the United Nations had little perceptible effect on the Cold War confrontation between the communist and noncommunist blocs of nations that had human civilization perched precariously on the edge of nuclear holocaust. The basic problem with the collective security concept, whether manifested informally in the Concert of Europe of the nineteenth century or formally in the League of Nations and the United Nations of the twentieth century, is what economists call the “free rider” problem. Each individual nation, whether a member or a nonmember of the alliance, tends to reason that the alliance will be strong enough to deter aggression without its own participation. This kind of reasoning is greatly aided and abetted by nationalistic attitudes stemming from the fact that there exists no political entity in the world higher than the nation—a super-alliance composed of sovereign nations does

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not represent a genuine political commonwealth capable of inspiring emotions of common interest and purpose among the populations of its component nations. But if several nations put this reasoning into effect, the potential military power of the alliance is obviously diminished. Thus the League of Nations was not, in the end, an effective deterrent against the revisionist intentions of the fascist bloc of nations. Nor was the United Nations an effective deterrent against the revisionist intentions of the communist bloc of nations. The persistence of so much faith in collective security among mainstream theoreticians and practitioners of traditional balance of power diplomacy, in the face of so much historical evidence against its long-term effectiveness, is what qualifies collective security as a myth. Mutual Assured Destruction In the immediate post-Hiroshima period, there was a strong tendency for people to seek solace in the thought that a nuclear world war would be so horribly destructive that the common sense of humanity would prevent its happening. For the first fifteen years after the development of nuclear bombs, conventional aircraft were the primary means of delivery of these weapons. During this period, nations maintained alert and powerful air defense systems against long-range bombers, and it was thought likely that in the event of an attack, interceptor aircraft would destroy a large proportion, if not the totality, of the attacking force. From the early 1960s, ballistic missiles gained ground as a means of delivery. Interceptor aircraft would have been powerless against ballistic missiles. As the arms race proceeded into the 1970s and more and more ballistic missiles were equipped with multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs), the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) gained ground. MAD was simply a further evolution of the basic idea, conceived immediately after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, that a nuclear world war is very unlikely because it would be very destructive. With (as of the 1970s) thousands of nuclear-tipped MIRVs at the ready, and no plausible air defense system against these weapons in existence, it was now true that nuclear war was very, very unlikely because it would be very, very destructive. It was not merely destruction but mutual destruction—and it was not merely mutual destruction but assured mutual destruction. Although clearly a very reassuring idea, there are two major difficulties with MAD. The first is that the effective civilian and military decision-makers, as opposed to the general population, have never seriously believed in MAD. There is always the possibility of a limited

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nuclear war that would be halted after just a few nuclear detonations. There is always the possibility that a planned first strike by the other side might be discovered in time for a devastating preemptive counterstrike. There is always the possibility that the other side’s strategic weaponry might malfunction in a crisis. There is always the possibility that an effective antimissile defense system might be devised, either in the form of antimissile missiles or in the form of satellite-mounted electronic devices to render inoperative the guidance systems of attacking missiles. It is very unlikely that the hopes and dreams underlying such acronyms as ABM and SDI will ever become extinct. Research on defensive systems against ballistic missiles is very likely to go on and on, until eventually something plausible is obtained. In light of these kinds of possibilities, the destruction involved in a nuclear war might not be “mutual”—and it most certainly would not be “assured.” The second major difficulty with MAD is that even if (for the sake of argument) it were absolutely, positively, and unequivocally believed by everyone in the world that a nuclear war would kill every human being in the world, this is still not an absolute guarantee against such a war taking place. Any historian will verify that both World Wars I and II were sparked by what has been termed “miscalculated brinkmanship.” When the Austro-Hungarian government delivered its ultimatum to Serbia in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914, it was reasonably confident that the other side would accede to the ultimatum’s demands rather than risk continent-wide war. History records that the Austro-Hungarian government was in error. When Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland in 1939, he was reasonably confident that this would not lead to protracted total war with Poland’s allies. History records that Hitler was in error. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, had Khrushchev not backed down in the face of the U.S. ultimatum, then history would have recorded a third instance in the twentieth century of miscalculated brinkmanship sparking a world war. The persistence of so much faith in MAD as a deterrent to nuclear war, especially among the general public, in the face of so much common sense evidence against its effectiveness, is what qualifies MAD as a myth. In its own way, the notion of global governance is just as comforting as the notions of collective security and mutual assured destruction. Alternatively known as “global civil society,” global governance may be defined as the totality of institutions, policies, and initiatives by which humanity is currently endeavoring to cope with such universal (global) problems as violence and warfare, poverty and exploitation, explosive population growth, natural resource depletion, and

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environmental degradation. The term came into wide usage with the formation of the Commission on Global Governance in 1992. The Commission, consisting of twenty-eight eminent individuals from many countries and walks of life, received a high level of support from the United Nations, several national governments, and a number of private organizations. The extent to which discussion of global government had been veritably purged from the professional literature on international relations may be gauged from the treatment (or more accurately, lack thereof) of the concept in the Commission’s Report (Our Global Neighborhood, Oxford University Press, 1995). Within the 410 pages of this document, there are exactly two references to world government. The first appears in the co-chairmen’s foreword: As this report makes clear, global governance is not global government. No misunderstanding should arise from the similarity of the terms. We are not proposing movement toward world government, for were we to travel in that direction we might find ourselves in an even less democratic world than we have—one more accommodating to power, more hospitable to hegemonic ambition, and more reinforcing of the roles of states and governments rather than of the rights of people. (P. xvi)

This definitive pronouncement, supported by no argumentation whatsoever either here or anywhere else in the Report, is reminiscent of nothing so much as the calmly complacent dogmatism of a medieval theologian. The second and final reference to world government is perhaps even more arbitrary: States remain primary actors but have to work with others. The United Nations must play a vital role, but it cannot do all the work. Global governance does not imply world government or world federalism. Effective global governance calls for a new vision, challenging people as well as governments to realize that there is no alternative to working together to create the kind of world they want for themselves and their children. It requires a strong commitment to democracy grounded in civil society. (P. 336)

The Report does not discuss or even take notice of the abundant literature produced over the course of the twentieth century by numerous proponents of world federalism. The seven-hundred pages of Clark and Sohn’s World Peace through World Law, for example, are apparently not even worth a dismissive footnote. In a volume that purportedly deals comprehensively with global governance, this arbitrary dismissal

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is veritably insulting to the many talented and dedicated men and women, past and present, who have argued the case for global government. One can only wonder at the distorted attitudes responsible for a lengthy and pretentious document on global governance that casually but definitively rejects, without discussion, the concept of global government.2 The irony is that without exception the practical proposals of the Commission would in fact involve strengthening the United Nations and moving it (slightly) closer to a world government (despite explicit assurances to the contrary). Examples of Commission proposals include establishment of a permanent UN Volunteer Force of ten thousand soldiers under direct UN command, increasing the peacekeeping reserve fund to facilitate rapid deployment, establishment of a UN Economic Security Council to enable more vigorous pursuit of global economic development, establishment of a Global Competition Office as a UN specialized agency, gradual phase-out of the veto power in the UN Security Council as well as expansion of its membership, effective budgetary control by the General Assembly, all member nations of the UN to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, little if any of this has been implemented. In the end, the Commission’s disavowal of any world government aspirations availed it nothing. Conservative guardians of national sovereignty immediately dismissed the Report on grounds that it may as well have been presented by the World Federalist Association. Meanwhile, the small minority of world federalists also dismissed the Report as insufficiently bold and original. It failed to capture the attention and imagination of either the proponents or the opponents of world government, and it had little perceptible impact. However, what the Commission Report did demonstrate beyond any doubt is the intellectual straitjacket that has been imposed on the rationality, intelligence, and vision of the human race by the reigning dogma that world government is probably undesirable and definitely infeasible. Within the tens of thousands of printed pages churned out each year by mainstream international relations academics and pundits, mentions of world government are almost nonexistent, and most of the few that do occur are arbitrarily dismissive. If the belief that global government is impossible may be likened to a straitjacket immobilizing human rationality, the global governance myth may be likened to a large syringe loaded with a potent tranquillizer that has been injected into the mental bloodstream of humanity. If we cannot shake off the effects of this dangerous sedative and break out of this confining straitjacket, the future of the human race may be at severe risk.

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The New World Order That the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union has generated a new world order is obvious. The salient question is whether this new world order will be stable and benign—or otherwise. There are many hopeful signs—but also many not-so-hopeful signs. Certainly the most hopeful sign of all is that since the de-communization and dissolution of the USSR in 1991, there is no longer a superpower nation in the world that is vociferously disdainful of the capitalist economic system, and openly declares, as its moral duty, its intention to facilitate the impending collapse of that system. Given that fundamental ideological attitude, official Soviet assurances throughout most of the Cold War concerning its commitment to “peaceful coexistence” were never entirely reassuring. The second communist superpower of the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), has abandoned Soviet-style central planning entirely in favor of a variety of market socialism that, for the moment, is performing quite impressively. However, the communist leadership of the PRC is also, for the moment, completely uninterested in political reform. They are acutely aware of the unintended consequences of Gorbachev’s liberalizing initiatives of the latter 1980s, initiatives that led to overthrow of communist party control of the USSR, and sent the ex-Soviet economy spiraling into a decade-long depression. The political and socioeconomic system of the PRC is obviously very much different from that of the leading Western nations, but so long as neither side proclaims any revisionist intentions against the system of the other side, peaceful coexistence seems attainable. On the less hopeful side of the ledger, the accommodation between the communist bloc and the leading Western nations did not entail any fundamental, qualitative change in the world system. The land surface of the planet continues to be divided up among something more than two hundred jealously independent and self-righteously sovereign nations. In fact, the breakup of the Soviet Union resulted in several more independent sovereign nations, as did the breakup of Yugoslavia. A substantial number of these sovereign nations are armed with nuclear weapons. While there was considerable nuclear weapons reduction during the 1990s by the United States and the Russian Federation, the remaining stockpiles of these weapons are sufficient—if they are ever utilized in total warfare—to devastate the world. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970 recognized five “nuclear weapons states”: the United States, the USSR (since succeeded by the Russian Federation), the United Kingdom, France, and

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China. According to recent estimates published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the United States has approximately four thousand active warheads, Russia somewhat over five thousand, the United Kingdom around one hundred and fifty, France around three hundred, and China around four hundred. Since 1970, three nations that were not parties to the NPT have conducted nuclear tests: India (approximately one hundred and fifty active warheads), Pakistan (approximately fifty active warheads), and North Korea (possibly as many as ten active warheads). Israel declines to confirm or deny that it possesses nuclear weapons, but it is widely assumed that its nuclear arsenal contains between one hundred and two hundred active warheads. Three former republics of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, inherited nuclear weapons from the USSR, but voluntarily returned them to the Russian Federation in the mid-1990s and subscribed to the NPT. It may be unduly optimistic to expect significant further reductions in nuclear stockpiles if there are no substantive changes in the world order. For several decades, both the United States and Russia have placed heavy reliance on possessing large nuclear arsenals. Why do these two nations need nuclear weapons? Russia has to consider, for example, the possibility of a resurgent Germany tempted by the huge Russian land area and natural resource base in the same way that Hitler was tempted. A Russian nuclear capability will help ensure that Germany continues to resist such temptations. The United States has to consider, for example, that there are masses of poor people in the world, many of them living in Mexico and the Latin American nations to the south of Mexico. Mexico, of course, suffered what it might still tend to regard as an outrageous territorial injustice at the time of the MexicanAmerican War of 1848. A U.S. nuclear capability will help to ensure that Mexico does not contemplate redressing that injustice, nor that the impoverished masses of Latin America do not contemplate a forcible redistribution of wealth by means of a land invasion of the continental United States. A U.S. nuclear capability also helps to ensure that various other nations, especially erstwhile ideological opponents such as Russia and China, do not take upon themselves any sort of military resistance when it becomes necessary for the United States to protect its essential national interests by military means on the soil of other nations. In the recent past, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, military invasions have been undertaken into Afghanistan and Iraq. Others may be undertaken in the future to deal with various “rogue states,” especially those such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea, tempted by the prospect of joining the nuclear club.

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Quite frankly, the nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, have a tiger by the tail—they dare not let go. Within both nations, therefore, any suggestions of complete nuclear disarmament are arbitrarily dismissed as crackpot nonsense. But among the second tier of nuclear powers, most of them also seem locked into maintaining their nuclear capabilities. Britain and France, nations that developed their nuclear weapons capabilities just in case the NATO umbrella should fail to provide shelter against the USSR, are apparently highly reluctant to dismantle their nuclear arsenals even though the USSR disappeared from the scene almost twenty years ago. After all, Western Europe was nervous about the huge “Russian bear” to its east long before the 1917 revolutionary transformation of Russia into the Soviet Union. Although shorn of eleven SSRs, the Russian Federation, by itself, is still a huge “Russian bear” to the east, and it is well-armed with nuclear weapons. China, India, and Pakistan seem frozen into a three-way Mexican standoff. China needed nuclear weapons to defend itself against both the United States and the USSR. Then India needed them to defend itself against China. Then Pakistan needed them to defend itself against India. Israel, surrounded as it is by a vast and thoroughly hostile Muslim population in the Mideast, considers its nuclear weapons essential insurance for its very survival. But as long as Israel possesses nuclear weapons, the several Muslim nations in the region will be subject to a permanent temptation to correct this imbalance by developing their own nuclear capabilities. A major theme in current international security thinking is that of the “rogue state”—a small but nuclear-armed nation whose leadership gets into a bellicose frame of mind and is not afraid to die. The consensus view is that we (the superpowers) need plenty of nuclear weapons to ensure that if these rogue state leaders ever do anything desperate, they will indeed die. But on the other hand, perhaps all these concerns about rogue states are greatly exaggerated. It has been seriously argued by Kenneth N. Waltz, by reputation one of the great intellects of twentieth-century international relations theory, that nuclear proliferation should be welcomed and encouraged—not opposed—by the current nuclear powers. In a volume coauthored with Scott Sagan (The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, Norton, 1997), Waltz argued that in a world in which any one nation could destroy any other nation, nations would be compelled to treat each other with proper dignity and respect. During the high Cold War period, Waltz argued (Man, the State and War, Columbia University Press, 1959) that fears about nuclear war would not compel the nations of the world to establish a world government. One wonders on what basis he later concluded that fears about

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nuclear war would compel the nations of the world to treat each other with proper dignity and respect. Scott Sagan argued the conventional consensus that the more nations are armed with nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that a nuclear exchange will eventually take place, and thus nuclear proliferation should be opposed by all means possible. Quite possibly Kenneth Waltz was just having fun playing the devil’s advocate. Or possibly he was apprehensive that deadly confrontations among the nuclear superpowers might arise based on disagreements about just how far it is permissible to go in order to forestall nuclear proliferation. To the extent that a limited amount of nuclear proliferation is not perceived as unduly threatening, there would be less probability of such confrontations actually happening. Another obvious source of potential deadly confrontations among the nuclear superpowers would be disagreements about just how far it is permissible to go in pursuit of individuals responsible for terrorist outrages. References to the 9/11 attack have been ubiquitous in the international relations literature ever since that fateful day, and this book is no exception. Special emphasis has been placed herein on the ominous parallel between the 9/11 attack and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914: in both cases there was a brutal assault on the national honor of one nation by citizens of another nation. Gavrilo Princip and his accomplices had in common with the nineteen 9/11 hijackers an overpowering, blind hatred against their perceived national enemy, combined with complete indifference to and irresponsibility concerning the larger consequences of their actions. Princip was determined to strike a blow against the Austro-Hungarian empire, the national enemy of his beloved Serbia. Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers were determined to strike a blow against the United States of America, in their view the preeminent national enemy of the entire Islamic Mideast. Of course, Gavrilo Princip, an undistinguished, tubercular teenager, could not know that his deed would lead to World War I, and thereby (indirectly) to the communist revolution in Russia, the rise of Hitler during the interwar period in Germany, World War II, and the ensuing Cold War that had the world perched precariously on the edge of a nuclear volcano for the better part of half a century. But had he the capacity to imagine that such a chain of disasters might follow upon his assassination of the Austrian archduke, it is doubtful that he would have been deterred. Similarly, Mohamed Atta and his accomplices were not deterred by the possibility that such an enormous outrage might somehow spark a nuclear world war. Since they subscribed to the twisted perversion of the Islamic religion purveyed by a handful of unhinged extremists, they believed that the more death and

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destruction they managed to inflict on infidels, the greater Allah would be pleased and the more generous would be their heavenly reward. In certain key respects, the world situation is evolving at a glacial pace. Economic progress is widespread, but it is proceeding slowly in terms of the average person’s expected lifespan. Political evolution at the international level is at a standstill. The United Nations represented little more than good intentions when it was established in 1945, and so it remains today. More than half a century has passed since the foundation of Israel in 1948 inflamed the Mideast, and the region is still seething. Earth’s human population continues to grow precipitously, and the environment correspondingly continues its long-term decline. Among other things, these problems ensure that there will be a steady supply of completely alienated and thoroughly nihilistic individuals long into the future, individuals who are ready, willing, able, and indeed eager to carry out terrorist actions—and the more deadly and potentially destabilizing these actions may be, the better. Of course, the most ominous possibility is that some well-financed terrorist gang will get possession of an operational thermonuclear weapon, upon which they will happily detonate it in the middle of a city—New York City being the most likely target.3 In the movies, square-jawed action heroes thwart the terrorist plots of evil masterminds on a regular basis. James Bond alone has saved the world at least a dozen times—or at least in each case a large part of the world. Perhaps because terrorist plots are invariably squelched in the fictional media, or because the plots themselves seem to be part of the same mythical fantasy world populated by hordes of vampires or plagues of zombies, it is extremely difficult for most of us to take seriously such possibilities as a nuclear terrorist attack on New York City. The thing is that vampires and zombies never have existed and never will exist in the real world. In contrast, nuclear weapons exist in the real world, and so do fanatical terrorists who want to get hold of these weapons. The case of Osama bin Laden is sufficient to prove that there are also wealthy people in the real world with the capability and the desire to assist terrorists in carrying out their designs. The Council on Foreign Relations recently sponsored an “online debate” on the topic “How likely is a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States?” led by experts Michael Levi, author of On Nuclear Terrorism (Harvard University Press, 2007) and Graham Allison, author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (Holt, 2004). The experts agree that such an attack is definitely possible, therefore significant effort and expense to prevent it is worthwhile. They offer various disconcerting observations (e.g., there exists much

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bitter hatred against the United States throughout the world, especially in the Middle East), and various reassuring observations (e.g., getting hold of an operational nuclear weapon is not as easy as buying a handgun in Houston). But in the final analysis, nothing that they have to say on the matter is quantifiable in any meaningful way. Should the United States be spending fifty billion dollars per year on nuclear terrorism prevention, five hundred billion dollars, or what? Assuming the United States continues its antinuclear terrorism expenditures at the same level they are now, is the probability of a successful nuclear attack on an American city, within the next twenty-five years, 20 percent, 5 percent, 1 percent, or what? Experts are reluctant to answer specific questions such as these with specific answers, and when they do, they are likely to add the caveat that whatever number they give is “just a guess.” Probabilities cumulate, of course. Something that is very unlikely over a short period of time becomes more likely the longer the period of time. For example, if the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack on an American city within the next year is only 1 percent, the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack within the next one hundred years is approximately 64 percent. Quite likely a thermonuclear bomb detonated under the Empire State Building in New York City would kill millions of people. The magnitude of such a horrific catastrophe coming about through deliberate human intention would be absolutely unprecedented in the recorded history of humanity. The world wars of the twentieth century killed millions of people, but not so suddenly and unexpectedly. The United States is the virtually inevitable target of such an attack. With great success and power comes great resentment and hostility. Despite the fact that as individuals, the people of the United States are no better or worse than the people of any other nation in the world, the United States is the recipient of far more than its fair share of criticism and denunciation. This continual negative hum can and does inflame some of the more susceptible minds in other nations to unrestrained rage and hatred, the type of rage and hatred that generates terrorist attacks. Determined terrorists are not likely to be mindful of the fact that the United States of America is a nation armed with thousands of operational nuclear warheads, and the ballistic and guided missile means to deliver them virtually anywhere in the world. They are not likely to take account of the possibility that if you sting an elephant hard enough, the elephant is liable to go berserk. Among the extreme religious right in the United States, there are millions of Christian fundamentalists who believe (or say they believe) that mankind is in the end days, that there will soon appear

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the Antichrist, that a great world Armageddon is imminent, that there will be the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Second Coming of Christ, the Millennium, and so on and so forth. There are several versions of this story and the details can get somewhat complicated, but the nub of it seems to be that “all hell will break loose,” the human casualties from which will number in the hundreds of millions. What makes the story so appealing to some is that these horrific events will thoroughly humble and destroy all those unbelieving skeptics and atheists whose sneering doubts are currently making the faithful so uncomfortable. For most normal people, contemplating a near-term “end of the world” scenario is rather unpleasant, but for these people the thought elicits positively gleeful anticipation. Other right-wing extremist groups in the United States are fully secular in outlook, but they share with the religiously oriented groups the interpretation of the “new world order” as a giant conspiracy to enslave the people of the United States. These groups think it would be a sensible policy for the United States to “nuke” anyone or anything that represents a serious threat to U.S. national interests—and they see serious threats everywhere. Thus far these groups have been kept under control. But if an international terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda manages to detonate a nuclear device in New York City, the belligerent attitudes that are today confined to a minority of extremists would spread out among the general population like wildfire. Quite possibly they would spread into the highest corridors of power, to people who exercise significant, immediate authority over the nation’s nuclear arsenal. How the United States, as a nation, would react to such an outrage is unknown. It is impossible to predict. Most of us hope that we will not live long enough to find out. But there are those who can hardly wait to find out. Meanwhile, outside the United States there is much unease over what many perceive as unrestrained U.S. power. The “balance of power,” on which all hopes for peace have hitherto depended, is now out of balance. Not everyone perceived in the 1991 Gulf War, for example, a heartening example of international solidarity against aggression by a nation under the control of a mini-Hitler. Some saw it as an ominous portent of global hegemony by the United States alone, or by an alliance among the small minority of wealthy nations. According to this view, the United States and its allies would never have bothered if the victim of the aggression, Kuwait, had not happened to be a major oil exporter. The main point of the exercise was not (in this view) to teach a lesson to would-be aggressors in the future, but to keep the price of oil low. Those who think this way tend also toward the opinion that

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it is important that “counterweights” be built up against the power of the United States.4 The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a “coalition” consisting almost entirely of the United States and (to a much lesser extent) Britain generated a wave of protest not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. While few of the protesters would have denied that Saddam Hussein had degenerated into a vicious tyrant, and that he represented a “threat to stability” in the Middle East, they doubted that his regime presented such a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and its allies as to justify military invasion. The quick military victory of U.S. and U.K. forces in Iraq intensified apprehensions throughout the rest of the world that the United States, aided and abetted by a handful of its closest allies, was evolving into an international bully that would in future take upon itself the task of preemptively eliminating, via military conquest, all real and perceived threats to its national interests. No doubt those concerned that the United States might evolve into an international bully are deriving considerable comfort from the fact that postwar Iraq has become a quagmire that is swallowing up substantial U.S. human and material resources. By general consensus, the United States is the single strongest military power in the world today, possessed of the most formidable nuclear arsenal. Be that as it may, there are several other nuclear powers that may eventually confront the United States should it become unduly aggressive in protecting its national interests. It would take only one instance of miscalculated brinkmanship to plunge humanity into a nuclear abyss from which we may never emerge. In her bestselling book The Proud Tower, historian Barbara Tuchman painted a richly detailed portrait of the world in the decades leading up to the outbreak of World War I in August 1914.5 Knowing what we know now—what the people of that era did not know—such phrases as “marching toward catastrophe” or “sleepwalking toward disaster” come readily to mind. There were a few who were concerned that the combination of testy relations between the major European powers and the increasing destructiveness of military hardware was creating a hazardous situation. But there were many others who did not consider the possibility of warfare to be a serious threat. Indeed, for some of the more pugnacious personalities, warfare was eagerly anticipated since it would provide a welcome opportunity to defeat and humble various enemy nations. After all, warfare (in the view of these personalities) was an integral part of nature’s ultimately benevolent scheme for strengthening and improving the human species. For others, the economic interdependencies among nations made warfare

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such an unviable proposition that assuming the political leaders of the various nations were in the least bit rational, they would never authorize and initiate a war. But most people gave the matter little thought. The world was as it was, and could not be changed. This attitude was shared not just by rank-and-file citizens, but by the highest leaders of the nations. Since there was nothing feasible that might be done to significantly diminish the threat of warfare, one may as well forget about the whole matter and just get on with the business of life. When the Damocles sword finally broke loose and descended upon that hapless generation, people were stunned—how could such a monstrous thing have happened? The unification of Germany in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 is normally taken as the starting point of the run-up to World War I. Before that time, the territory that became Germany consisted of several independent principalities (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and so on), a circumstance that well suited France since it reduced the potential military power of its German-speaking neighbors to the east. Prussia’s rise to dominance in the region was manifested by its quick victory over the Austrian empire in 1866, which gave rise to French apprehensions over a potential German federation under Prussian direction (Prussia had been a major participant in the alliance that brought down Napoleon in 1815). Reacting to the inane (in retrospect) issue of whether or not a Hohenzollern prince should sit on the Spanish throne following the deposition of Isabella II, and reports of mutual insults exchanged between the Prussian king and the French ambassador to Prussia at the resort town of Bad Ems, France declared war on Prussia on July 19, 1870. The imprudence of this declaration was soon demonstrated. Not only was Prussia by itself militarily stronger than France, it was joined by most of the other German principalities. Well prior to the French capitulation, the German Empire was proclaimed in the Palace of Versailles on January 18, 1871, thus bringing about the very result that the French had intended to forestall by military means. Meanwhile, the German people, puffed up with their triumphant victory, developed a virulent case of nationalism verging on chauvinism. Enthusiasts of “pan-Germanism” envisioned the incorporation into the Reich of several specific territories in other nations in which there were substantial German-speaking populations. Aside from Austria itself, there were substantial German-speaking populations within both the Austro-Hungarian empire (in what later became Czechoslovakia) and the Russian empire (in what later became independent Poland). Moreover, many Germans regarded most enviously the enormous world empires under British, French, and Dutch control. Coming late to the

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scramble for African colonial territories, Germany had to content itself with a few leftover scraps such as German East Africa (most of which was to later become the independent nations of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi). In the past, wars on the European continent had often eventuated in transfers of ownership over huge colonial areas from the defeated to the victorious nations, and some Germans eagerly anticipated future victorious wars with other European powers that would bring about a great worldwide German empire capable of writing finis to the erstwhile imperial domains of Britain, France, and Holland. Although Germany’s various territorial ambitions were the most dangerously destabilizing factor in the pre–World War I era, Germany was by no means the sole source of tension. Competing claims to African territory by Britain and France resulted in the “Fashoda incident” (1898) that nearly precipitated warfare between these two nations, despite their having been allies for decades prior to this. Even more serious was the fact that the “sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman empire centered in Turkey, was rapidly disintegrating. Among others interested in ownership or control of the newly independent territories were the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian empire. The two Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 solidified the reputation of this area of southeastern Europe as the “powder-keg of Europe.” Sure enough, the assassination of the Austrian archduke that lit the fuse to World War I occurred on Balkan soil, specifically in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, later part of Yugoslavia. One important argument against excessive complacency in our own time is simply that the Balkan area of the pre– World War I era has much in common with the Middle East of today. Among those increasingly uncomfortable with the general trend of international relations throughout this era, much optimistic joy and relief was elicited by the appeal for a multilateral “peace conference” issued by Czar Nicholas II of Russia. The purpose of the conference would be to arrive at arms limitations agreements to relieve the great powers of the heavy burden of military expenditures, and also to set up institutions and procedures for the peaceful arbitration of international disputes. The consensus among historians, reflected in Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, is that the principal motives of the Russian government were not particularly humanitarian. It was more a matter that the economically under-industrialized Russian empire was having great difficulty in keeping up its end of the European armaments race, along with concern that the potential vicissitudes imposed on the Russian population by a war would generate a revolution that would bring down the autocratic Russian regime. Accordingly, the leaders of the other great powers were highly suspicious of Russia’s motives and highly skeptical

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that anything worthwhile would come out of the conference. But since the appeal had come from the head of state of a great power, it could not very well be tossed carelessly into the nearest wastepaper basket. After all, public opinion could not be entirely disregarded, even in that long-ago era. In the event, not one but two Hague Conferences (so named for the Dutch city that hosted them) were held, in 1899 and again in 1907. A planned third conference, scheduled for 1915, had to be cancelled because most of the participants had become embroiled in World War I. The initial hope of the Russian government of Nicholas II that the Hague Conferences might slow down the arms race was entirely disappointed: no significant arms control agreements of any sort were reached. However, despite the unenthusiastic attitude of most of the conferees, the two conferences did result in some limited agreements on other matters, agreements that were regarded in their time somewhat comparably to the SALT and START treaties of more recent times. For example, Article 2 of the Hague Convention of 1899 states: “In case of serious disagreement or conflict, before an appeal to arms, the Signatory Powers agree to have recourse, as far as circumstances allow, to the good offices or mediation of one or more friendly powers.” Of course, the circumstances following upon the assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, did not allow recourse to the good offices or mediation of one or more friendly powers. Moreover, once World War I had started, the agreements did nothing to diminish its ferocity. For example, one of the three Declarations produced by the 1899 Hague conference states: “The Contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” This was simply ignored in World War I: following Germany’s first use of lethal gas in early 1915, the British followed suit. The only reason why poison gas was not more widely utilized during the war is simply that artillery and machine guns proved more reliable and effective. The Hague Conferences are good examples of the limited effectiveness of formal negotiations among sovereign nations that do not like or trust each other. Among the many influential contributors to the intellectual environment of pre–World War I Europe were Norman Angell of the United Kingdom and Ivan Bloch of Russia. Both men produced books, wellknown at the time, that argued the proposition that the overwhelming destructiveness of war fought with the then-modern weaponry of the period made war thoroughly infeasible—something to be avoided at almost any cost. Norman Angell (1872–1967) placed the major

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emphasis in The Great Illusion (1910) on the economic interdependencies among nations that are inevitably ripped asunder by warfare to the detriment of all sides, victors as well as defeated. Ivan Bloch (1836–1902) produced a monumental six-volume work (La Guerre Future, 1898) on military technology, strategy, and tactics that anticipated some aspects of World War I quite accurately: the necessary commitment of armies numbering in the millions, a tendency toward static trench warfare, the degeneration of warfare into a brutal contest of human and material attrition. Bloch’s conclusion was that the costs of warfare had become unendurable to civilized society, thus no effort should be spared to make war virtually impossible. Bloch was an invited participant at the 1899 Hague peace conference, where he distributed copies of his magnum opus to the delegations of twenty-six participating nations. No doubt they were politely received by various undersecretaries, then ignored by the delegation authorities as misguided alarmism produced by a harmless crackpot. After all, it was the dogma of the period, accepted by almost all, whether high or low in society, that a nation requires armed force to preserve its vital national interests against various provocations and impositions of malevolent foreigners, and that any nation unwilling or unable to wage war in defense of its interests will soon be humiliated and despoiled. Just as this was unquestioned dogma in the early years of the twentieth century, so too it is in the early years of the twenty-first century. Of course, today we have the harsh lessons of the twentieth century to temper our natural proclivities toward warfare. Presumably we are not nearly so prone to escalate disagreements to conflict, and conflict to warfare. There is much wider and clearer realization now, relative to the situation one hundred years ago, that because of the development of nuclear weapons, total warfare would almost certainly be immensely and intolerably destructive, and therefore it should be avoided at almost any cost. Almost. But if, God forbid, it should come to pass that irresponsible, malevolent, virtually suicidal foreigners should somehow push us into a corner from which there is no escape other than through the use of nuclear weapons, then so be it.

What Is the “Utopian Delusion”? In what may turn out to be a fatal misjudgment, the world government concept is routinely dismissed today as a “utopian delusion,” on the grounds that it proposes an ideal condition of perfect stability, serenity, and bliss—a condition that is, to every reasonable person, manifestly impossible. But no reasonable proponents of world government,

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including traditional world federalists espousing the “omnipotent world state” concept, have ever maintained that such a government would produce “an ideal condition of perfect stability, serenity and bliss.” All they say is that the world with a world government would be better than one without such a government: it would be more secure and more prosperous. As I have repeatedly emphasized, I do not agree with traditional world federalists that a world government with the attributes of the omnipotent world state (i.e., that would necessarily encompass all the nations of the world, that would monopolize all large-scale armed forces and weapons of mass destruction, and that would implement a pure form of democracy according to which dominant voting weight would be exercised by the populous poorer nations) would be preferable to the world we have now, even with all its risks and uncertainties. Furthermore, I think it is thoroughly unrealistic (“utopian” if you will) to imagine that the peoples of the world today, especially the peoples of the relatively small number of wealthy nations, would ever agree to participate in such a world state. But as I have also repeatedly emphasized, the omnipotent world state is not the only institutional form that world government might take on. The Federal Union of Democratic Nations proposed in this book would be a legitimate, genuine state entity qualitatively beyond the impotent United Nations of today, yet it would operate under sufficient limitations (the dual voting system, plus the reserved national rights to independent armed forces and free withdrawal from the federation) to guarantee the legitimate national interests of all its member nations, whatever their size or level of economic development. Clearly with such a world government there is no utopian intention, nor is it utopian to imagine the formation of such a government in the real world. This is a plan of world government that would be acceptable to most of the nations of the world—if and when they become adequately aware of it. Given the availability of the Federal Union option, the aspiration toward this specific form of world government is in no way utopian. What is more plausibly described as utopian—in the fully pejorative sense of the term—is rather the bland expectation that without some higher form of political organization in the international arena than we have now, global human civilization will remain relatively peaceful and progressive into the indefinite future. The quasi-anarchic system of national sovereignty under which we labor today is too unstable, too rigid, and too resistant to necessary change, for human progress to be maintained steadily for a long period of historical time. In all probability, the system will eventually careen into disaster—possibly the

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instantaneous catastrophe of nuclear holocaust, or possibly the slow, strangling catastrophe of environmental collapse. We can and should do better than this. To argue against any and all world government possibilities, on the basis that the concept itself is inherently and necessarily utopian, constitutes an example of tendentious terminology. “Tendentious terminology” may be defined as application of a loaded word or phrase to a certain concept or proposal in an effort to derail and terminate serious, focused consideration of it. In this case, the loaded word is “utopian.” The rank injustice and unfairness of peremptorily dismissing world government on grounds that it is a utopian idea becomes more apparent when we look more closely at the origins and intellectual history of the term—in conjunction with the distinct possibility of a limited world government such as the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, as opposed to the omnipotent world state. In coining the word “Utopia” as the title of his speculative work on the ideal society, published in 1516, Thomas More called upon his classical education in the Greek language.6 The word is derived from the Greek words ou, meaning “no,” and topos, meaning “place”: thus “utopia” is “no place.” More’s Utopia was published at the height of the era of European expansion, just following the discovery of the Americas, during which travelers’ accounts of distant lands and peoples were very popular. Even those accounts based on fact tended to be rather fanciful and more than a little inaccurate. But many were purely fictional, intended only as entertainment or instruction. In this latter category belongs More’s work. It is not clear whether More personally approved of the various laws and customs of the fictional people living on the remote island Utopia, or whether he was ridiculing them as preposterous and impracticable. The ambiguous tone of the work, and its presentation as a work of fiction rather than a serious treatise, may have been intentional. One must recall that in More’s time, the “wrong” kind of thinking might easily result in execution for heresy. Certain characteristics distinguish utopian literature from the broader category of social improvement literature. Utopian literature is set within an explicitly fictional framework, and it envisions a society very different from real-world society. Typically it describes a very wide range of proposed improvements across the board of social organization, encompassing economic production and distribution, political institutions and practices, and social customs and traditions. Amidst this welter of ideas, set in the context of a fictional fantasy, there are at least some that will no doubt seem silly and preposterous to any given reader. This may be what is responsible for the primary denotation of

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the term utopian today: as any idealistic and completely impractical reform scheme. But it should be recognized and appreciated that a great many of the proposed reforms in the works of utopian authors, reforms that seemed absurd when first proposed, have indeed become firmly established in the modern world. Amid a great deal of chaff in utopian writings, there has been quite a lot of what turned out to be wheat. Illustrations of these points may be found in Thomas More’s seminal utopian story. That the lives of the inhabitants of the imaginary island of Utopia are far short of the conceivable ideal may be deduced from the following, among other things: (1) serious offenses against the law are dealt with by capital punishment or enslavement; (2) slaves are essential to the operation of the economy because they do all the menial, unpleasant work that citizens in good standing abhor, and a steady supply of slaves is assured by means of convictions for crimes, purchases from abroad, and prisoners of war; (3) although themselves inclined toward peace, the citizens of Utopia are often forced to wage war with foreign nations—but if possible they hire armies of mercenaries to fight these wars for them. As an example of a somewhat zany social custom supported by law, on More’s island of Utopia a prospective bride and bridegroom are required to inspect each other in the nude prior to marriage. (Considering the prevalence of premarital sex in contemporary society, perhaps this proposal was not so zany after all.) That there is a good deal of sensible thought (“wheat”) in utopian writing amidst the dubious thought (“chaff”) is illustrated in More’s Utopia by the following three especially important characteristics of the proposed utopian society: (1) a very high level of diversity in religious beliefs, and a very high level of religious toleration; (2) democratic election of public officials instead of their appointment by hereditary monarchs; (3) the absence of an economic market and a high level of economic egalitarianism (workshops would deliver their products to central warehouses from which citizens would take reasonable and appropriate amounts for their own use). Of these three ideas, only the last would be confidently dismissed by most people today as clearly impractical. But in the modern world, religious toleration is preached widely and loudly, although its actual practice often leaves something to be desired. Many nations in the world today have implemented highly democratic election of key public officials, and the ideology of democracy has become so dominant throughout the world that the less-democratic nations tend to eschew direct and explicit criticism of the democratic principle.

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One way to look at utopian writing is that it is equivalent to “brainstorming”: it sets out a wide array of possible reforms and improvements without subjecting each and every one of them to careful, critical consideration. The purpose of brainstorming is to get a lot of ideas quickly “on the table,” so to speak, with the intention of examining each one of them more carefully later on. It is not unusual for many of the ideas produced during brainstorming sessions to be unsound, but this does not preclude others from being sound and valuable. It is also a misconception that utopian speculations are produced solely by ivory-tower academics with little or no experience of the practical business of life. Thomas More, for example, pursued a successful career as an English court official during the reign of Henry VIII, and rose to the exalted position of Lord Chancellor of England, somewhat akin to King Henry’s second-in-command. On the other hand, More did demonstrate what some would consider an impractical side by refusing to comply, on grounds of conscience, with the Act of Supremacy by which English subjects were enjoined to recognize Henry VIII’s authority over the Pope. In consequence of this act of defiance, More was beheaded in the Tower of London in 1535. Of all the twentieth-century writers who contributed to utopian fiction, no doubt the most prominent is Herbert George Wells (1866– 1946). Immensely popular as a storyteller, technological analyst, and social critic, Wells was deeply interested in all aspects of the future of humanity: scientific, social, and political. By the turn of the twentieth century, Wells’ reputation as a prophet was such that The Fortnightly Review asked him to write a series of nonfiction articles speculating on the future of human civilization. The resulting articles, published in 1901, were collected into a book entitled Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. Much of the work was concerned with technological forecasts: laborsaving devices in the household such as vacuum cleaners and dishwashers, communications breakthroughs such as radio and television, transportation advances such as automobiles, trucks, and airplanes. But the later articles dealt with economic, social, and political issues. Wells came out firmly in favor of planned socialism and world government. Market capitalism would have to go because of its intolerable inefficiency and instability. Or at least capitalism in the nineteenthcentury form excoriated by Karl Marx would have to go. Moreover, the international system of national sovereignty, also as known in the nineteenth century, would have to go owing to its inexorable and intolerable propensity toward perpetual warfare—warfare that could and

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would become steadily more destructive owing to continuing scientific and technological progress. Wells did not anticipate that the necessary transformations would come about smoothly and peacefully. He predicted ominously that terrible wars would be fought at some point during the twentieth century. Of course, following World War I, Wells’ reputation as a seer was assured. When the idea of a League of Nations was broached during the war by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, Wells was almost ecstatically enthusiastic. But once the details of the organization had become clear, specifically the fact that it would be a mere super-alliance as opposed to a genuine world government, his earlier enthusiasm was replaced by bitter disappointment. He experienced that same bitter disappointment in 1945, near the end of his life, when it became clear that the much-vaunted United Nations born of World War II was simply a replication of the League of Nations. In a bleakly pessimistic book published in 1945, Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells concluded that humanity was apparently not capable of learning from our mistakes after all, and despite all our amazing scientific achievements, our species is most likely doomed to extinction within the near future. A persistent theme throughout the body of Wells’ writing is that of the ultimate redemption of human civilization through the purifying crucible of devastating warfare. First enunciated in the nonfiction Anticipations, this theme was elaborated in several works of fiction, most notably in The Shape of Things to Come, a novel published in 1933. Once again Wells’ reputation as a prophet was well served by Things to Come: in it he forecast that World War II would commence in 1940 and that it would be precipitated by a conflict between Germany and Poland. The actual World War II was started in September 1939, by means of the German invasion of Poland. But while he foresaw the near future of humanity as filled with death and destruction, Wells was optimistic about our long-term future. Wells foresaw that humanity would be chastened and enlightened by its vicissitudes, that it would repudiate leadership by lawyers, politicians, generals, and others of that ilk, and instead entrust the future of the race to the progressive, broad-minded, tolerant, and intelligent elements within humanity, as represented most ideally by scientists, engineers, and technologists. Greedy, shortsighted, and paranoiac competition would be replaced by generous, long-sighted, and benign cooperation. Unshackled from the needless, egregious suffering and loss imposed by warfare, human civilization would rise to new peaks of happiness, serenity, and accomplishment. Wells did produce at least three books that could be described as “conventional” utopian works in that the major emphasis was on the

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characteristics of the much-improved future world society, rather than on the bumpy path by which this much-improved future was to be achieved: A Modern Utopia (1905), Men Like Gods (1923), and World Brain (1938). Of the three, only the first is explicit about the need for world government to ensure a better human condition. In A Modern Utopia, Wells depicts a world that is far from perfect, but that copes with problems somewhat more successfully than did his own world of 1905. To be sure, some of his notions for improvement seem daffy (e.g., the elimination of the legal profession for “lack of need”), but others seem quite reasonable by today’s standards. For example, he is insistent that every vestige of racial prejudice be removed, that racial toleration be no less sincere and universal than religious toleration. He sees as the ultimate “salvation of women” from overbearing and abusive husbands not police protection so much as their economic independence through full-time participation in the labor force. During the working day, society would provide day care centers and schools to take care of children. All this is to say that H. G. Wells cannot be classified as a totally unrealistic and impractical dreamer. All of Wells’ ideas about possible means toward a better and brighter future for humanity are worthy of consideration, and this is certainly true of his advice that a world government be made part of the future political history of human civilization. The typical world government skeptic will be inclined to argue, of course, that H. G. Wells’ favorable assessment of world government is no more to be taken seriously than that of any other world government enthusiast. Certainly Wells’ fame as a literary storyteller does not entitle his opinions regarding international organization to any special consideration. A gift for storytelling does not necessarily imply any special gift with respect to economic, political, and sociological prognostication and prescription. After all, as a storyteller Wells achieved fame through the creation of fantasies involving such things as time travel and invisibility (respectively in The Time Machine of 1895 and The Invisible Man of 1897). Any competent scientist will attest that neither time travel nor invisibility, at least as literally described in Wells’ stories, is within the realm of possibility. Quite possibly, therefore, world government is also not within the realm of possibility. I would have to agree with the world government skeptic that it will most probably be forever impossible to send a person forward or backward in time, notwithstanding the numerous depictions of this phenomenon in literary and cinematic fiction. The same holds true of invisibility. But the same does not hold true of world government. In the case of world government, we are not concerned with violations of

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the basic principles of the natural universe. We are concerned, rather, with the principles of political organization. That it is possible to establish effective governmental authority over huge masses of people, most of whom are completely unknown to each other, has been clearly established by the existing, functioning national governments in the world today. If it is possible for the People’s Republic of China to effectively encompass a population of more than one billion persons, then it might also be possible for a properly designed supernational federation to encompass the approximately seven billion persons presently resident on this planet. Understandably enough considering the trials and tribulations that the twentieth century inflicted on mankind, throughout the century dystopian writing was at least as prevalent, and probably more prevalent, than utopian writing. As the word suggests, “dystopia” is the antonym of utopia. A utopia defines a condition of life dramatically superior to life as we know it today, while a dystopia defines a condition of life dramatically inferior to life as we know it today. Often, the road to dystopia is perceived to pass through utopia: a misguided effort among humanity to achieve utopian conditions actually results in the exact opposite, through the workings of the “law of unintended consequences.” The single most famous dystopian novel to come out of the twentieth century was George Orwell’s 1984. Written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, before the economic and psychological recovery process from the war had fairly begun, 1984 lays out a terrifyingly bleak image of the human condition in 1984, some thirty-five years following the book’s publication in 1949. According to the image, all of the nations of the world will have been incorporated into three great empires: Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia. All three empires are governed by brutal dictatorships, supported by blizzards of propaganda, in the direct line and image of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Russia. All three empires are engaged in perpetual warfare among one another. The alliances continually shift: first Oceania and Eastasia battle against Eurasia, then when Eurasia weakens it joins with Oceania to battle Eastasia, and so on and so forth. However, all three sides refrain from the use of nuclear weapons for fear of the consequences, a restraint that preserves the basic existence of human civilization but has the disadvantage of perpetuating warfare indefinitely. The living standards of the populations of these empires have been reduced to bare subsistence: there is no health, joy, or culture. Order is maintained by a brutal secret police in conjunction with a massive propaganda apparatus that cranks out “Newspeak”

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slogans such as “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength.” Everywhere in Oceania there are posters of the supreme dictator, known euphemistically as “Big Brother,” in the eyes of whom are concealed surveillance cameras. There is an underground resistance, of course, but it is easily kept under control by the state apparatus. The story concerns one Winston Smith, a minor Party operative in the “Ministry of Truth,” whose job it is to “correct” news items so that they conform to the Party line. Winston is unhappy in his work, and is drawn toward resistance, but soon after making contact with the rebels, he is arrested and subjected to brainwashing prior to execution, according to the pattern established by the infamous Great Terror in the USSR of the latter 1930s. Orwell was not a well man when he wrote 1984, either physically or psychologically. Although a brilliant and well-published writer since his youth, he had not had a successful career in a financial sense. During World War II, Orwell worked as a journalist and editor for various newspapers and the BBC. Motivated by concern for others, both Orwell and his wife sacrificed some of their ration coupons during the war to help local children. It was to the physical weakening entailed by this generosity that Orwell attributed the death of his wife in 1945 following a minor surgery. No doubt it also aggravated the health problems that led to his own death from tuberculosis five years later. Although always left-wing in his basic political attitude, once the enormity of the Stalinist tyranny became evident Orwell turned against communism and authored a savage assault on it in the satirical fantasy Animal Farm (1945). Orwell only attained a measure of personal prosperity with Animal Farm and 1984, the latter published just one year prior to his death in 1950. To anyone who has read this harrowing novel, it will come as no surprise that the author of 1984 was an unhappy, unhealthy, and embittered individual at the time he wrote it. Be that as it may, 1984 is not only a literary masterpiece, but the importance of its message is such that it should be required reading in the educational system, along with detailed historical accounts of the fascist and communist regimes that inspired it. The novel presents a vivid picture of a potential future that we should all make it our solemn duty to avoid. But as a proponent of limited world government in the form of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, I must strenuously contest any and all arguments to the effect that the condition of human life and civilization depicted in 1984 would be the likely consequence of world government. The basic mechanism underlying the abject poverty and corrupt political system of 1984 is continuous international warfare. So

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vast are the economic resources being committed to the war effort that the material condition of the general population has necessarily been reduced to bare survival. So strong are the tendencies toward political instability generated by these low living standards that they must necessarily be kept under control by a combination of brutal repression and cynical propaganda. But if there were no international warfare, then the living standards of the general population would not have to be so low, and the political system would not have to be so repressive and manipulative. A central purpose of a world government, obviously, is to reduce the threat of international warfare. Therefore a world government, if successful, would reduce the propensities within human civilization toward the miserable conditions depicted in 1984. I am not saying that George Orwell himself would have recognized in world government a feasible means of escaping the bleak destiny conjured up by 1984. Toward the end of his life, Orwell was disgusted with any and all ideologies, and no doubt he would have classified proponents of world government as ideological enthusiasts. As an intelligent and well-educated Englishman, albeit somewhat unsuccessful and disreputable, most likely Orwell would have held out some hope that humanity might be able to “muddle through” to a better future—but even if so, any and all ideologies certainly would be of no help. I would hope that if Orwell were alive today to read this book, he would recognize in it a “non-ideological” advocacy of world government. But it is impossible to say what his actual attitude would have been. I am also not saying that if humanity established just any kind of a world government, this would improve humanity’s prospects for evading the fate so vividly portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984. If the world government were to be excessively powerful in a military sense, and the member nations completely disarmed, then even if the government were democratically controlled by majority will, there would be a considerable danger, to the populations of the richer member nations, of the policy described as Crude Redistribution. Although it is hard to imagine Crude Redistribution leading to living standards among the populations of the rich nations quite so low as those depicted in 1984, there would certainly be a considerable reduction in these standards. While a man such as George Orwell, who was capable of sacrificing his own household’s ration coupons during World War II for the sake of others, might not see a problem with this, I do not expect that the average person (in the rich nations) would not see a problem with it. (After all, I myself happen to be a citizen of a rich nation, and not surprisingly I see a definite problem with Crude Redistribution.) Thus it has been strongly emphasized that Crude Redistribution is politically

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impossible, and that the only feasible avenue by which global living standards can be equalized is through the mechanism of Common Progress. To ensure that Common Progress is implemented, and not Crude Redistribution, the world government has to be restrained and limited both financially and militarily. Thus the provisions for dual voting in the world government legislature, for limitations on the world government’s taxing authority, for the retention by member nations of the right to withdraw peacefully from the world federation, and finally and probably most importantly, the retention by member nations of the right to maintain whatever military forces and armaments they desire under their direct control. If we interpret the word utopian as an “impossible dream,” then there is nothing at all utopian about the plan presented herein for a limited world government to be known as the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. On the other hand, if we interpret utopian simply as a “better world” than the world we know today, then one would have to describe the present plan of world government as utopian in that specific sense. Clearly, at the present time, the dominant implication of utopian is that of an impossible dream and not simply a better world. Thus it is incumbent upon me to deny most strenuously that this plan of world government is utopian in this dominant and generally accepted sense. Far from being utopian, this proposal is absolutely and positively practical, possible, pragmatic, viable, and workable. What is indeed utopian in the usual sense of naïve unrealism is the commonplace expectation today that the contemporary quasianarchic world system will keep us all safe and sound, prosperous and secure, into the far future.

Drift versus Direction Few people doubt that the world today is a much safer place than it was twenty-five years ago. The renunciation of communist ideology by the components and satellites of the ex-Soviet Union has greatly eased tensions. Around the world, military spending and arms stockpiles have been significantly reduced. The possibility of instantaneous nuclear holocaust has been reduced to a level that many consider negligible. Although an impressive degree of desensitization to the nuclear threat had been achieved early in the Cold War, it was never complete and total. Always at the back of people’s minds, hidden away in some dark corner, lurked the awareness that “it” might someday happen—and if it did happen, there would be very little warning. Understandably, people are now breathing more easily, especially those living in or

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near to obvious urban targets of ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads. The downside of this development, as far as the future destiny of the human race is concerned, is the loss of a sense of urgency, the growth of complacency, and the dominance of a policy best described as “let’s drift and see what happens.” Not even the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, and those of its aftermath, have apparently dislodged humanity’s strong consensus that the current international status quo situation is—if not the best of all imaginable worlds—at least the best of all possible worlds. In some ways, the contemporary world is very dynamic. Notwithstanding occasional recessionary “meltdowns,” the long-term economic trend, throughout most of the world, has been strongly upward ever since the end of World War II. The pace of technological progress, especially in the area of consumer electronics, has been veritably dizzying. Throughout the world, the human population is growing briskly. Unfortunately, the political evolution of the human race at the global level is currently frozen in time, stationary, immobile. The fact that progress in other areas has outpaced progress in global political organization is unhealthy—at best it is slowing down the overall progress attained by humanity, and at worst it may be setting up conditions that will eventuate in ultimate, self-inflicted, planetary catastrophe well within the lifetimes of many people alive today. In the absence of a global government equipped with a reasonable and appropriate degree of political authority, the circumstance of humanity in today’s world may be compared to that of a group of people gathered together in a large boat—a boat lacking in both rudder and engine—that is drifting down an unknown river. At the moment the river is broad and quiet, drifting is pleasant, and the people in the boat feel quite safe and secure. But of course an unknown river may contain deadly hazards in the form of churning rapids and huge waterfalls capable of smashing the boat to smithereens and drowning its occupants. Should one of these hazards come into view around a bend in the river, the people in a boat unequipped with engine and rudder would be staring doom in the face. A good metaphor for the intention of world government is that of attaching a rudder and installing an engine in a boat that is drifting down a broad, quiet river. The idea is to improve the degree of control over the boat, so that there is less likelihood that it will be destroyed if rapids or a waterfall are encountered. Of course, maybe there are no rapids or waterfalls ahead on the river, so that if our boat continues drifting down it indefinitely, it will eventually emerge into a deep, blue, quiet, peaceful sea. In this case, the people in the boat would never

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have needed the engine and the rudder, and installing them would have been a waste of time and energy. Or, perhaps, the engine and rudder that were installed would have been too weak to do any good should the people be unlucky enough to encounter churning rapids or a high waterfall. Once again, the installation of the engine and the rudder would have been a waste of time and energy. But even if either of these two cases happened to be true, these possibilities are not good arguments against installing the engine and the rudder—unless it is assumed that the “wastage of time and energy” would be extreme. The only good argument against installing an engine and a rudder is that such action would worsen the overall prospects of the boat and its occupants. It is hard to imagine how an engine and a rudder on a boat filled with people that is drifting down a river could possibly be actually undesirable, in terms of the interests of the people in that boat. Of course, no analogy is perfect, and a world government skeptic would immediately object that this particular analogy is egregiously misleading. Establishing a world government in the contemporary world (according to the skeptic’s argument) is in no way comparable to installing an engine and attaching a rudder to a boat. Engines and rudders are standard equipment on boats, and any group of people intending to descend an unknown river would be quite sure that their boat possessed both an engine and a rudder. On the other hand, global human civilization has so far been unencumbered with world government—and so far, so good. We have not yet encountered the equivalent of churning rapids and high waterfalls. More to the point, unlike equipping boats with engines and rudders, which is customary and risk-free, there are definite hazards that would be involved in establishing a world government. Such a government might quickly degenerate into a horrific global tyranny. Or it might imprison humanity in a vast, stifling, suffocating, bureaucratic straitjacket. Or possibly it might manage to do both simultaneously. The unwillingness of some nations to participate in the world government might lead to warfare, possibly nuclear warfare. The plausibility of these adverse outcomes means that establishing a world government would be nothing like putting an engine and a rudder on a boat—it would rather be recklessly risky and highly imprudent. The skeptic’s argument is basically that because a world government might turn out to be undesirable in the future, establishing such a government in the present is undesirable. One wonders what the condition of humanity would be today if this argument had been decisive ever since the Stone Age. Presumably the condition of the human race would still be very much the same now as it was then. Of course, in

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itself this is not a particularly weighty observation. In fact, mankind has made progress since the Stone Age because mankind has aspired toward progress and has been willing to take risks toward the achievement of progress. The question at this point is whether mankind should now take another risk, in the interest of progress, of establishing a federal world government? How much more clear can it be that the answer to this question depends critically on the specific institutions and procedures of the proposed federal world government? Not all world government schemes are equal: some are more attractive than others, in that some plans are more likely than others to lead to the future we want. What we need is the proverbial “happy medium,” located somewhere between the weak-as-water United Nations of today, and the “omnipotent world state” preached by traditional world federalists. On the wide spectrum of political organization between these two extreme points, the Federal Union of Democratic Nations lies at, or very near to, the optimal happy medium point. The Federal Union described in these pages would look like a government, talk like a government, and act like a government—it would be a government. It would have legislative, executive, and judicial branches, a permanent administrative apparatus headquartered in a capital city, local offices in numerous cities around the world, an armed force, a flag, an anthem. The democratic election of its officials by an electorate composed of a substantial part of the entire population of the planet, possibly the totality of it, would endow its deliberations and decisions with a great deal of legitimacy and authority. At the same time, the Union would operate under the key limitations embodied in the reserved national rights to free withdrawal from the federation, and to the maintenance of independent armed forces of whatever size and nature deemed necessary by the national governments. These reserved rights add up to an “exit strategy” should the Federal Union, once established, be drifting toward policies unacceptably inimical to the national interests of various member nations. Of course, the hope of most people of goodwill is that after an initial period of suspicion and resistance, lasting perhaps several decades, the increasingly obvious benign evolution of the world government will make these reserved rights mere historical curiosities. It might be argued that the ingrained prejudices and preconceptions against world government are so overwhelming that it is useless to seek a happy medium plan toward workable world government. Even if a specific form of benign, effective, and progressive world government was indeed fully practical, a form that would greatly increase the

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security and prosperity of humanity as we advance into an uncertain future, it will never be recognized as such. The negative presumptions and assumptions concerning world government are too strong ever to be challenged. The vast majority of people will simply ignore the case for world government, no matter how rational and plausible it may be in objective terms. Even just thinking about world government is therefore a complete and utter waste of time. I refuse to accept such a pessimistic argument, which merits rejection simply on the grounds, if none other, that it is gratuitously insulting to human rationality and intelligence. While I will concede that today’s prejudices and preconceptions against world government are very, very strong, I do not think they are “overwhelming” in the sense that they can never and will never be successfully challenged. At the present time, the large majority of people believe that benign and effective world government is impossible. But if we go far enough back in the history of humanity, we can find several important examples of things that the great majority believed to be impossible—that were later proved to be possible. Space travel is an example from the technological realm; representative democracy is an example from the political realm. In the light of these kinds of examples, we need to be skeptical of the belief, no matter how widespread, that any sort of benign and effective world government is an impossibility at the current juncture in human history. Perhaps it is impossible; perhaps it is not impossible. To properly illuminate the question, we need to look carefully at proposed world government blueprints. Prior to the achievements of the Wright brothers in the early 1900s, many if not most people believed that it would be impossible for human beings to construct powered, heavier-than-air, manned aircraft capable of flying substantial distances at high speeds. The Wright brothers disproved this belief, but to do so they had to carefully consider the many technical design issues involved. It would not have been feasible to prove or disprove the possibility of powered, manned aircraft by means of general speculative discussions that did not address technical design issues. Prior to the Wright brothers, there were numerous unsuccessful aircraft designs, which demonstrates that not just any old aircraft design will be capable of flight. But as became evident in due course, all these unsuccessful aircraft designs did not imply the invalidity of the basic concept of air travel. Similarly, it is not feasible to prove or disprove the possibility of stable and effective world government without carefully considering the various institutional design issues involved. But once these design issues are seriously addressed by informed and competent people, I am confident that a consensus will eventually emerge that

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stable and effective federal world government in our time is, after all, very much within the realm of possibility. Until such time as there is virtually universal consensus that nuclear weapons must never be utilized in human conflict, and nuclear stockpiles have been reduced to virtually negligible levels, and consequently nuclear war has truly and literally become “unimaginable,” the possibility of nuclear world war will continue to be the single biggest danger confronting humanity within the relatively proximate future (over, say, the next fifty years). Correspondingly, the single most important argument for establishing a federal world government is that it would significantly reduce this danger. I have had much to say about this in the foregoing, and while it is hard to overstate this crucial point, it is necessary to append an important caveat lest the argument seem naïve and unrealistic. This caveat is that owing to the necessary restrictions on the power and authority of the proposed world government in order to make it feasible in today’s nationally oriented world (specifically the reserved rights of member nations to free withdrawal and independent military forces), the reduction in the nuclear holocaust threat will obviously be much less than the reduction that could be achieved by the omnipotent world state of conventional world federalist thinking. Recall that under the omnipotent world state concept, all nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, along with all other heavy armaments, would be concentrated under the direct control of the world government. The implication of conventional world federalist thinking on the matter has also been that the world government would not hesitate to use these weapons upon recalcitrant nations. According to the deterrent principle, however, if the world government exercised monopolistic control over these weapons and also was sufficiently determined to use them should the occasion arise, then the occasion never would arise. No nation would ever dare become sufficiently recalcitrant to bring down upon itself these terrible weapons. In the opinion of world government skeptics, with this amount of power in its hands, the world government would soon engage in policies (such as a worldwide welfare state) that would make the lives of many of its citizens, especially those living in the rich nations, a living hell. While I personally am very dubious that an omnipotent world state, if it ever came about in the real world, would do anything at all to make the lives of any appreciable number of its citizens into a “living hell,” I concede that there is a sufficient probability of this very adverse outcome to make the omnipotent world state an impractical objective. Within the first several decades of the Federal Union’s existence, it seems inescapable that several nations that currently possess nuclear

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weapons will elect to keep them as part of their independent armed forces. This is virtually certain for the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Russian Federation. It is not part of this proposal that the world government concern itself, especially in the short run, with disarmament of any kind, nuclear or conventional. The leadership of the Federal Union should at most permit itself a modest amount of verbal approval toward nations that are voluntarily reducing their military expenditures and weapons stockpiles. The reasonable hope is, however, that the greater opportunities for amicable interaction and cooperation afforded by the existence of the Union will gradually reduce mutual suspicion and mistrust among the member nations, so that they may gradually, and without apprehension, reduce their military commitments. After nuclear disaster, the second biggest threat is environmental disaster. It is a distant second, however, simply because unlike nuclear disaster, which can and probably will (if it occurs) be virtually instantaneous, environmental disaster will necessarily come about (if it does) very slowly and gradually. Owing to humanity’s marvelous adaptability, oncoming environmental disaster might not even be noticed—until it is far too late to do anything about it. Among the more enthusiastic environmentalists, the basis of the problem is the extravagant living standards of the rich nations. Whether through voluntary choice or governmental fiat, the heavy footprint being impressed upon the natural environment by these absurdly high living standards needs to be lightened. While I myself believe that a clean, pure, and uncrowded natural environment, populated by an abundance of wildlife, is very important to individual human happiness, at the same time I think it is unrealistic to try to pursue this objective by means of persuading the people of the rich nations to substantially reduce the living standards to which they have become accustomed. The World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP), the economic aspect of the “grand convergence” proposed in the title of this book, envisions living standards in all parts of the world being at least as high as they are presently in the rich nations. To some environmentalists this prospect might seem totally “unsustainable.” We can only hope that they are wrong about this, and that with efficient production, the Earth will be able to support a human population of at least ten billion–fifteen billion at a high standard of life at least comparable to those in the rich nations today. Declining living standards are a sure recipe for political instability, and so we cannot propose declining living standards in the rich nations. At the same time, extreme economic inequality, such as characterizes the contemporary world, is also

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a sure recipe for political instability at the international level. We would be well advised to try to greatly reduce, and hopefully close entirely, the economic gap. If it turns out to be impossible, because of natural resource constraints, to close the economic gap and at the same time keep living standards in the rich nations high and rising, then quite frankly the prospects for humanity on this planet are bleak. But it is much too early to arrive at any such conclusion. Given a certain human population of the Earth at a certain point in time, and given the available production technology at that time, the natural resource base (including both nonrenewable and renewable resources) determines the average worldwide standard of living that can be attained. Anyone who is aware of the basic demographic realities of the contemporary world, and who is not suffering from the religious delusion that “God will provide,” cannot help concluding that the Earth is not underpopulated at the present time. It follows that the more we can slow down population growth, the better the chances will be that the World Economic Equalization Program will be a success. High and relatively uniform living standards throughout the world would contribute to the long-term political stability under which the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would flourish, and along with it human civilization and culture. During its early decades, the absolute top priority of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations should most definitely be the WEEP. If the global economic development program is a failure, quite likely the global political initiative will also be a failure. The world today is beset by many problems other than economic poverty: the AIDS epidemic, the illegal drug industry, localized conflict situations such as Darfur, mistreatment of women, environmental degradation, the threatened extinction of valued plant and animal species, and numerous others. Throughout this book, I have refrained from arguments and allegations that the establishment of a world government along the recommended lines would quickly lead to rapid and dramatic progress toward the amelioration of these kinds of problems. It cannot be predicted in advance just how much—or how little—progress could be made against these varied problems were there an active, functioning Federal Union of Democratic Nations in existence. The fact that no promises can be made that these problems would be successfully tackled in the short run might be taken by some as an argument against world government. But this would be an exceptionally shallow and unperceptive argument. Many if not most of the “problems of the world” we know today are bound up integrally with economic poverty and inequality. The AIDS epidemic would not be so severe if more people could afford to

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purchase condoms. One reason illegal drugs are relatively inexpensive is that for many impoverished farmers around the world, they are a preferred cash crop. Localized conflict situations are often over economic resources—in Darfur, for example, an important aspect of the problem is contention over who is to get the major benefit from the petroleum resources of the area. It has been statistically verified, through findings from the World Values Survey, that the status of women is highest in the richest nations.7 Much environmental degradation comes about owing to pressure from impoverished subsistence farmers in desperate quest for sustenance for their families. And more often than not, plant and animal species are endangered because their “natural habitats” are being invaded by humans. Economic inequality aggravates the frustration and resentments generated by the condition of economic poverty. If everyone in the world had the same living standards as subsistence farmers in Botswana, the human population of the world would probably be relatively content, and international tensions would be far less than they are. The tribulations imposed by poverty on any given individual are far worse if that person is aware of other people, elsewhere in the world, who are enjoying a much higher standard of living. The emotion of envy easily transitions into resentment and hostility. It is an ineffable characteristic of humanity to want to blame other humans for any unsatisfactory event or condition. It is so much more satisfying to blame other people for various problems than it is to blame the uncaring natural universe, or “forces beyond anyone’s control.” The uncaring natural universe and forces beyond anyone’s control can never be brought to account and punished. Individual human beings, on the other hand, can most definitely be brought to account and punished. What is the significance of this psychological phenomenon, in terms of prospects for international stability and harmony? Consider this question: Would the United States of America be subjected to so much suspicion, distrust, resentment, hostility, and downright hatred throughout much of the world, if it were not one of the richest nations in the world? The answer is self-evidently negative. It would not be nearly as easy for the poorer people of the world to regard the United States so negatively if the average living standards of its people were equivalent to those of subsistence farmers in Botswana. The irony is, of course, that if average living standards in the United States were the same as in Botswana, and if at the same time the United States possessed the same armed forces, equipped with the same conventional and nuclear weaponry, that it does now, it would be a far more dangerous force in the world than it is now.

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According to the “demographic revolution,” which has been going on in the economically advanced nations of the real world for the last two centuries, as living standards rise, the population growth rate ultimately declines. Economic progress initially leads to a decline in the death rate, and later on to a decline in the birth rate. During that time interval during which the death rate is declining but the birth rate remains high, the population growth rate becomes quite high, but this rate eventually declines as the birth rate declines. In much of the Third World, the birth rate remains quite high despite substantial decreases in the death rate. Thus the population growth rate is quite high, and the high population growth rate retards progress in per capita income. Slow growth in per capita income is responsible for the slow decline in the birth rate, which in turn keeps the population growth rate high. Back in the 1950s, the economist Harvey Leibenstein coined the term “low-level equilibrium trap” to describe the phenomenon.8 This socalled trap is a classic “vicious circle.” The Third World is making some progress toward breaking out of this particular vicious circle, but it is slow progress—and uncertain. The absolute gap in per capita income between the richest and the poorest nations has been getting bigger over the last several decades, and any expectation that this trend will change, in the absence of massive, coordinated intervention at the global level, is unduly optimistic. To make any such assumption would be highly imprudent. In order to reverse the widening economic gap, and to propel the Third World forcefully out of the low-level equilibrium trap, we need a global Marshall Plan along the lines of the proposed WEEP. The sheer magnitude of the economic problem we confront today is unprecedented in the history of humanity. It is unlikely that this problem can or will be overcome without a worldwide economic effort of equally unprecedented magnitude. Without question, there would be serious disadvantages involved in rapid economic development throughout the world: disruption of traditional ways of life, heavy pressure on the natural environment, aggravation of psychosocial problems associated with dislocation and rapid change. But these disadvantages are comparable to the inevitable adverse side effects of potent medicines necessary to cure life-threatening diseases. Global human civilization may be likened to a person with a serious case of cancer. To this person, radical treatments such as surgery and chemotherapy are hazardous as well as painful. But they may be the only alternative to death. One popular bromide with which people in the wealthy nations endeavor to justify their relative indifference to Third World poverty is that the people of these nations don’t really want economic

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progress—they are quite content with their simple, uncomplicated, stress-free lifestyles. If this proposition possessed any significant degree of validity, the First World nations would not be constantly besieged by hordes of determined Third World people desirous of escaping their “simple, uncomplicated, stress-free lifestyles.” If a serious likelihood were to emerge of a real-world global Marshall Plan, almost certainly the vast majority of people in the Third World would welcome it with open arms. The benefits from raising the standard of life in the poorer nations and closing the economic gap between these nations and the rich nations are not confined to the higher personal welfare experienced by people who are eating better, housed more comfortably, better educated and informed, more secure against the adversities of age and disease, and so and so forth. People in the rich nations, apprehensive about the higher taxes that will be required by a global Marshall Plan, might ask why, on the “I am not my brother’s keeper” principle, should they be concerned with poverty in the Third World? I would hope that only the most hard-hearted individuals would be totally immune to the feelings of warm satisfaction associated with acts of concern and generosity. But aside from appeal to the higher qualities of humanity, there are very down-to-earth, practical reasons for assisting the poorer nations of the world in their efforts toward economic progress. The more poverty and economic inequality there is in the world, the more unstable the world will be for everybody, rich and poor. Poverty and inequality are breeding grounds for terrorists and terrorist supporters, for demagogues and dictators who are compelled by the resentments of their people to adopt uncooperative, confrontational attitudes toward the rich nations. A functioning global Marshall Plan, supported by an active Federal Union of Democratic Nations, that was making clear progress toward its goal of a high level of economic prosperity in all nations throughout the world would deliver a powerful message in support of global peace and harmony. Just as it is clear that the problem of global poverty cannot be cured quickly, it cannot be promised that the instability inherent in this poverty will be quickly eliminated. There will still be disruptive terrorists, demagogues, and dictators. But we will have established direction—we will be engaged in an active program toward the diminishment and eventual elimination of the problem. We won’t simply be drifting—hoping that the problem will somehow cure itself. Recall those people in their boat, drifting down the river. If their boat had an engine and a rudder, they would not be at the mercy of the current, they could go where they wanted on the river. They could

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avoid being trapped in churning rapids or going over high waterfalls. Just as those people have a natural interest in equipping their boat with an engine and a rudder, so too humanity today has an interest in establishing a world government. We can’t know in advance exactly where we will want our world government to take us. No doubt there will be considerable disagreement and debate over our direction. But at least if we are able to arrive at a reasonable consensus on direction, we will have the means to go in that direction.

CH A P T ER

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The Next Step: Summary and Conclusion

Outline of the Argument In many ways, global human civilization is developing in the right direction. Most of the nations of the world are experiencing significant economic growth in terms of the bottom line indicator: average living standards (or “per capita income,” as economists describe it). The human population of the Earth is growing briskly—probably too briskly—but at least this is unmistakable evidence of a basically healthy global economic system. Science and technology continue to provide to each new generation equipment and commodities the capabilities of which would have seemed veritably miraculous to earlier generations. Contemporary communications technology permits a person anywhere in the world to communicate instantaneously with another person thousands of miles away. Contemporary transportation technology permits a person anywhere in the world to go anywhere else in the world within a matter of hours. Uncounted thousands of works— literary, musical, artistic, cinematic—are being added to humanity’s cultural treasure trove each and every year. Space travel to other planets within the solar system is technologically feasible, and it seems only a matter of a relatively short time before it actually takes place. Although the land surface of the planet is subdivided into something over two hundred sovereign nations, for the moment at least the overwhelming majority of national leaders loudly proclaim the paramount need for international harmony, amity, and cooperation. Western Europe, which generated two world wars during the twentieth century, is now the home of the remarkably peaceful and cohesive European Union. International conferences of one sort or another, concerned with one issue or another, are virtually continuous. The UN General Assembly provides a continuous forum for discussion

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and debate concerning international relations and global issues. There is wide acceptance, throughout most of the world and over all social strata, of the sensibility and desirability of the democratic principle as the basis of political organization. Through international trade and investment, the economies of the nations are becoming steadily more interdependent. Thanks to the global notoriety of a handful of top celebrities, tastes in popular culture are becoming more homogeneous throughout the world. With amazing rapidity, the World Wide Web has become a central component of the global communications network. Much of what is going on today—economic, political, technological, cultural—can be described as “convergence.” And much of it can also be described as “benign convergence.” But there are shortcomings and limitations in the convergent processes occurring today. While it is true that most of the nations of the world are becoming more economically prosperous, the rates of economic advance are quite diverse among the nations, and more importantly, the current levels of economic prosperity among the nations differ quite radically. In view of the steadily widening gap between average living standards in the richest and the poorest nations, it will apparently be a very long time, if ever, before there is significant convergence in average living standards over all nations. Even more seriously, there has been no important progress in the area of political convergence for a very long time. Despite the United Nations, and despite earlier efforts at international peacekeeping such as the League of Nations and the Concert of Europe, the same sovereign nation-state system that some historians date back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 continues in full force today. Most nations of the world—and all the larger nations—consider it vital to maintain substantial armed forces to guarantee their national interests against potential impositions and depredations from other nations, near and far. Despite the continuous international conferences, and the continuous forum provided by the UN General Assembly, each and every nation in the world is quite ready, willing, and able, if the need arises, to favor its own perceived national interests over those of any other nation, or every other nation. National leaders, however wise, tolerant, and cosmopolitan they may be in their personal attitudes, operate under the severe constraints imposed by the nationalistic attitudes of their respective populations. They are at constant risk of being ousted from their positions of power on grounds that they have disregarded and “sacrificed” the interests of their own nation in order to appease unworthy, grasping, malevolent foreigners. The worst-case scenario is

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that these mutually suspicious, nationalistically based attitudes will, in some convoluted way or another, through some series of unfortunate events impossible to predict, eventually generate a deadly confrontation culminating in nuclear holocaust. But aside from the possibility of ultimate catastrophe, these attitudes are continuously impeding the kind of coordinated global action required to cope effectively with various global problems. The “grand convergence” proposed in the title of this book refers to a plan to weave the various convergent strands already in existence in the contemporary world into a coordinated, unified direction toward a benign future for global human civilization. The plan comprises an economic component and a political component. The economic component envisions the initiation of a global Marshall Plan, tentatively designated the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP); and the political component envisions the simultaneous establishment of a limited federal world government, tentatively designated the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. If the plan is successful, there will be comprehensive, genuine convergence both economically and politically. The nations of the world will all—eventually, though this will probably require several decades—enjoy relatively high and equal average living standards. And the existence of a federal world government will significantly reduce the probability that conflicts fueled by nationalism will eventually engulf the world in nuclear warfare. The immediate reduction in this threat, owing to the limitations required in order to make the foundation of the Federal Union feasible, would be relatively modest. But in the long run, the existence and operation of the Federal Union will enable the spirit and practice of international harmony to develop and flourish, until eventually the threat of nuclear warfare is reduced to a vestigial level. In the meantime, the Federal Union will encourage and facilitate the kind of global action required to cope effectively with various global problems. The sensibility and desirability of this road map toward grand convergence is based on certain fundamental realities concerning human nature and society. That there are deep and ineradicable inclinations in every human being toward hostility and violence toward others is compellingly demonstrated by both social realities (violent crime) and historical realities (continuous warfare). But it is also clear that there are deep and ineradicable inclinations in human beings toward friendship and cooperation with others. Governments are established for the control of the former inclinations and the facilitation of the latter. They have been remarkably successful, as manifested by the fact that the larger nation-states of today maintain basically peaceful and

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harmonious conditions within populations numbering in the tens of millions, even hundreds of millions. But the impulses toward hostility and violence, pent-up within polities, tend to surface in relations between polities. Instead of the warfare between individuals and small groups that would be inevitable in the absence of governments, we have warfare between large groups of individuals organized under governments. Modern history has witnessed a profusion of deadly and destructive violent conflicts among nations and blocs of nations. Although the technological advance of weaponry has made these conflicts steadily more terrible, they have continued to occur. Still another future conflict involving nuclear weapons— although it would be terrifically destructive—appears to be highly probable, over a sufficiently long period of future time. We should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the short-term decline in the nuclear threat owing to the end of the Cold War. In a world of burgeoning population, ever-increasing pressure on the natural environment, and slow and uncertain economic progress in the Third World, adverse developments are quite possible, and these adverse developments could greatly intensify the disruptive pressures that foster confrontation and warfare. Common sense suggests a solution: form a supernational federal government composed of an overwhelming preponderance of nations. This government would suppress conflict among the nations in the same way that national governments suppress internal conflict among their citizens. But as is well known, there are severe obstacles to this common sense solution. The nations of the world are extremely heterogeneous in terms of economic status, ideological preferences, and cultural characteristics—not to mention race, religion, and language. If one nation or a small group of nations gains control over the world government, and that government possesses a monopoly on heavy armament, then it would be likely to try to impose its own preferences on all nations—preferences that might be odious and intolerable to millions or billions of its citizens. Either the world polity would degenerate into a horrific, totalitarian police state, or it would dissolve amid disastrous civil war. So while the risks of proceeding into the future without a world government are clear, so too are the risks of proceeding into the future with a world government. To date, the vast majority of humanity has assessed the latter risks to be larger than the former risks. The assessment of relative risk is fundamentally altered if instead of imagining an extremely powerful world government that would essentially be equivalent to a typical national government of the present day

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(the “omnipotent world state” of conventional world federalist thinking), we envision a limited federal world government that, although exhibiting all the essential characteristics of a state organization and being in fact a genuine state organization, would nevertheless share a considerable amount of effective power and authority with its member nations. Specifically, the member nations would retain the right to maintain independent military forces under their direct control (armed, if desired, with nuclear weapons), would retain the right to withdraw peacefully from the federation at their own unilateral discretion, and would exercise a reasonable and appropriate amount of relative weight in the supernational legislature by means of the dual voting system. According to this system, legislation would have to be approved on both the material and the population bases. The less populous richer nations would dominate the material vote while the more populous poorer nations would dominate the population vote. Thus neither type of nation would be able to enforce its preferences on the other type of nation against the will of the other type of nation. This type of limited world government, as proposed herein in the form of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, is a plan for world government that would be acceptable to most of the nations of the world and the peoples of the world—if and when they become aware of it. An essential component of the overall convergence scenario proposed in this book is the World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP). Now that ideological conflict within humanity (the East-West ideological gap) is in sharp decline, the economic gap between the rich nations and the poor nations (the North-South economic gap) has taken over as the single most important impediment to the long-term viability and stability of world government. So long as there is a dramatic differential between average living standards in the richest nations and those in the poorest nations, then a democratically organized world government would be subjected to constant pressures toward what has been termed herein Crude Redistribution. The short-term solution to this politico-economic problem is to incorporate such provisions into the structure of world government as to reduce pressures toward Crude Redistribution to a manageable level: thus the aforementioned provisions for dual voting, the national right to withdrawal from the federation, and the national right to maintain whatever military forces and armaments (up to and including nuclear weapons) desired under the independent control of the nation. The fundamental purpose behind these provisions is to make world government feasible in the short run, so that it might assist in the initiation, operation, and completion of the WEEP.

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The long-term solution to the global economic inequality problem is the WEEP, a program intended to bring about substantial equalization of living standards across the world, within a reasonably abbreviated period of historical time of the order of fifty years, on the basis of the Common Progress principle. That is to say, while the program would transfer huge amounts of generalized capital from the rich to the poor nations, these transfers would nevertheless be sufficiently limited as not to decrease living standards in the rich nations. The basic Common Progress concept is to very slightly reduce the rate of increase in the living standards of the rich nations, in order to greatly accelerate the rate of increase of the living standards of the poor nations. Therefore both types of nation would continue to experience increasing living standards—progress would be “common” to all types of nation. In the long term, after the WEEP has equalized living standards throughout the world, the earlier mentioned political provisions—while they would probably be formally retained—would have become dead letters, relics of an earlier age. Nations will be satisfied with very limited military forces under their direct control, and secession from the world federation will no longer be a serious option for any sane and sensible national official. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That is true in this case: the Federal Union would make the WEEP possible, and the WEEP would make the Federal Union possible. Neither component would likely survive in the absence of the other; but together they would assure each other of survival and success. The combination of political convergence through the Federal Union of Democratic Nations and economic convergence through the World Economic Equalization Program would add up to the grand convergence through which a prosperous and secure future for global human civilization may and will be achieved. It would be useless to deny that the hopes and dreams underlying the interrelated Federal Union and WEEP proposals might be disappointed. But the possibility of failure is not a good reason for never even trying. Until we actually establish a Federal Union and initiate a WEEP, predictions of failure are sheer speculation. Therefore, it is proposed that the entire enterprise be conducted on the same experimental lines that have been the basis of all progress in science and technology since time immemorial. It would be understood by all those enrolling in the Federal Union and in its economic associate, the WEEP, that both of these initiatives were being undertaken not necessarily in the complete confidence that they would be successful, but rather in the spirit of experimentation. That is to say, both the political and the economic initiative are considered tentative and provisional, to

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be pursued for a reasonable trial period of perhaps ten to fifteen years. If the initial indications are sufficiently unpromising, then the World Economic Equalization Program would be drastically downsized or perhaps terminated altogether, and the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would be peacefully dissolved. Humanity would be back to where we are today, sadder but wiser, and otherwise none the worse for wear. Some lessons will have been learned that might be valuable in the future. In the past, much of human progress has been through trial and error, and this situation will no doubt continue in the future. If we envision world government in these terms, clearly the risks of proceeding into the future with a world government are very significantly less than they would be if the world government was to be necessarily a permanent and omnipotent polity. The purpose of world government in this alternative vision is not to achieve in one fell swoop a millennial condition of perfect peace, prosperity, and happiness throughout the world. It is evident to sensible people that millennial conditions are impossible now, and will probably forever remain so. An ineffable characteristic of humanity, which is simultaneously a great strength and a great weakness, is that whatever our current condition, we can always imagine a better condition. Be that as it may, it is not a sound argument against progress that no matter how much progress is achieved, humanity will always be able to imagine further progress. The condition of the world today is unsatisfactory in many ways—even very unimaginative people can perceive the possibility of improvement. The proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations, even if we imagine it established with great panoply and high expectations, could not instantly abrogate all the problems of the world. The foundation of the Federal Union would not mark the “end of history” after which humanity would settle into a comfortable but boring rut of perpetual peace and plenty.1 The Federal Union would rather be an “organic part of history”—as opposed to the end of history. It has taken a thousand steps to get human civilization to its present condition, and if we now take the logical next step of establishing a world government, this would merely be the first step of what might well be thousands of future steps into the unknown future. The sensibility and desirability of a federal world government, together with its associated global Marshall Plan, is supported by a very basic cost-benefit analysis. The major cost of federal world government resides in the possibility that it might degenerate into some horrific combination of totalitarian tyranny and suffocating bureaucracy. But with a “properly designed” federal world government, the risk of

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this adverse outcome is reduced to a vestigial level. “Proper design” is incorporated into the present world government proposal through such fundamental characteristics as its federal nature, its democratic orientation, dual voting in its legislature, and the reserved national rights to free withdrawal and independent armed forces. These characteristics make world government practical. The major benefits of federal world government are that it would reduce the probability of large-scale warfare in the future, and it would simultaneously increase the probability of effective global action against serious global problems such as the deterioration of the natural environment. These benefits make world government advisable. Just how significant these benefits will be cannot be predicted in advance with any degree of confidence, since we cannot know how successful or unsuccessful the project will be. But when uncertain but quite possibly very substantial benefits are compared with vestigial costs, the desirability of the project becomes clear and manifest. Conventional opinion today holds that meaningful world government is impossible because there is too much heterogeneity within the human population of the world. There are too many nations, too many ideologies, too many religions, too many languages, too many races, too many cultural variances, and too much disparity in average living standards. Given such diversity within the human population, how is it possible to imagine the attainment of sufficient consensus to enable the foundation of a world government? In citing these various heterogeneities as the reason why world government is impossible, the implicit assumption is that the essential precondition for successful world government is the attainment of a very high degree of socioeconomic homogeneity and psychological consensus among the whole human race. This argument is defective because it fails to take into account two critical characteristics of the relationship between social uniformity and political unity: the continuous nature of the relationship, and the interactive nature of the relationship. First, the relationship between social uniformity and political unity at any one point in time is a smooth and continuous relationship: the higher the degree of social uniformity achieved, the higher the level of political unity that may be established. To have a very high level of political unity in a world government—that is to say, an extremely strong, centralized, and authoritative world government (the “omnipotent world state”)—we would need a very high level of social uniformity. This book does not advocate any such world government. If we are content, as we should be, with a reasonable level of political unity at the global level—that is to say, with a limited world

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government such as the Federal Union of Democratic Nations under consideration herein—then we would not need a very high level of social uniformity. Second, the relationship between social uniformity and political unity over a period of time is an interactive and mutually reinforcing relationship: the mere existence of political unity, albeit weak in the beginning, tends gradually to generate a higher level of social uniformity, and as social uniformity increases, it in turn permits a higher level of political unity. Thus the relationship over time between social uniformity and political unity is not static but dynamic; a mutually reinforcing, snowballing process is created that over time will tend toward a high (albeit far from “complete”) level of both social uniformity and political unity. Consider the traditional question: Which came first—the chicken or the egg? What makes the question absurd, and therefore humorous, is that neither the modern chicken nor the modern egg came first. The modern chicken-egg-chicken progression is the result of millions of years of slow, evolutionary development with roots in the primeval slime. To argue that it is necessary to have a high level of social homogeneity prior to having an effective state is equivalent to arguing, in response to the chicken-egg question, that since chickens come out of eggs, then the egg came first. The problem with this, obviously, is that it is also true that eggs come out of chickens. If we take social and attitudinal homogeneity to be the egg, and the effectiveness of state organization (i.e., political unity) to be the chicken, the direct relevance of the chicken-egg question to world government becomes clear. A population that is politically united within the same state organization tends to become, over time, more socially and attitudinally homogeneous. Similarly, as a given population becomes more socially and attitudinally homogeneous, its state organization tends to become more effective. There is an ongoing, progressive, interactive, mutually reinforcing, snowballing process between the social and attitudinal homogeneity of a given population, and the effectiveness of the state organization in which it is politically united. In terms of the chicken-egg analogy, the “egg,” which we have at the present time (the level of social homogeneity throughout the contemporary world), and the “chicken,” which is capable of coming forth from this egg (the level of political unity that could be achieved by a world government established at the present point in history), are both fairly primitive versions of what we eventually hope to realize. The ancient egg and the ancient chicken were virtually unrecognizable relative to their modern counterparts. But we should not allow

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the best to be the enemy of the good. It is certainly true that the world government that we could establish today would be far short of the utopian ideal that might be imagined. Such a world government would not directly and immediately banish the threat of nuclear holocaust, would not directly and immediately banish such equally serious threats as excessive population growth and accelerating environmental degradation. But these facts should not obscure the high probability that a world government would establish a more secure foundation for long-term efforts toward the reduction of such threats as nuclear war, excessive population growth, and accelerating environmental degradation. During the “bad old days” of the Cold War, the possibility of world government was customarily dismissed on grounds that neither the communist nor the noncommunist nations would ever agree to one. A typical example is provided by Stephen Goodspeed’s textbook The Nature and Function of International Organization (Oxford University Press, 1967). The argument is basically that you can’t have a world government before a very high degree of uniformity, equivalent to that which existed among the original thirteen states at the time they formed the United States of America, has been reached among all the nations and all the peoples of the world (the egg must come before the chicken). Goodspeed sums up as follows: If, in some desperate effort to solve the problems dividing the Soviets and the Western world, the United Nations were to be transformed into some form of world government with the General Assembly made a legislature based on the democratic principles of popular representation and majority rule, could it succeed in the absence of a majority possessed of common values, interests and goals? The answer is a categorical “no” since the struggle between East and West would not dissolve merely because the setting was changed. The possibility of establishing a limited world government at the present time is as remote as it has been for centuries. (P. 663)

This negative evaluation of world government was shared on both sides of the ideological rift. While conservatives in the noncommunist West warned that the establishment of a world government could and probably would lead to the final triumph of international communism, so too communist ideologues in the Soviet Union warned that the establishment of a world government could and probably would lead to the final triumph of international capitalism. For example, E. A. Korovin, in a postwar Soviet essay in international law, wrote:

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The dreams of Eden and Bevin [regarding the establishment of world government to reduce the peril of nuclear war] are quite removed from reality; they bring to mind the talk at the end of the First World War about the gradual development of the League of Nations into a world parliament . . . It is scarcely possible that the contemporary gravediggers of sovereignty are so naive as to believe in earnest that peace and harmony on earth can be obtained by the creation of a world parliament . . . Is it not true that at the bottom of these political fantasies lies an extremely shrewd calculation—in the realm of political arithmetic and voting games? The eager troubadours of a world parliament are inspired by the thought of the voting majority in this new organ through which they can dictate their will to the rest of mankind.2

What Korovin has in mind here is that even with the postwar accessions to the communist camp (the Eastern European nations and China), both the number and the population of the noncommunist nations still considerably outnumbered those of the communist nations. Thus if a vote were taken on the question of capitalism versus socialism in a world parliament, the vote (it was assumed) would go against socialism. It never occurred to E. A. Korovin, just as it never occurred to the multitude of other world government critics both in the noncommunist West and the communist East, that a world government might be established that would remain neutral toward the issue of capitalism versus socialism, just as most national governments remain neutral on religion. The root of the problem, according to writers such as Goodspeed and Korovin, is the ideologically fueled opposition between the communist nations of the East and the noncommunist nations of the West. In light of this opposition, both of them imagined that there could only be two possible outcomes were a world state to be established: (1) either one side or the other would get control of the world state and impose its will on the other; or (2) the world state would almost immediately dissolve amidst acrimonious charges on both sides that the other side was not acting in good faith. Of course, the “problems dividing the Soviets and the Western world” (quoting Goodspeed) were fairly well abrogated by the dramatic transformations of the early 1990s in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite nations. Marx was repudiated and communist parties were removed from power. The new leaders of the ex-USSR republics and the Eastern European nations proclaimed as their paramount goal the duplication of the socioeconomic characteristics of the leading democratic capitalist nations of the West. Almost twenty years

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have passed since these developments, and as yet their significance is still inadequately appreciated by world government skeptics. Just as was the case throughout the Cold War, “too much heterogeneity” remains the primary justification for dismissing the possibility of world government. For example, in his international relations textbook International Conflict and Cooperation: An Introduction to World Politics (McGrawHill, 1999), Mark Amstutz provided a typical post–Cold War statement of the argument: A stable world government needs a centralized governmental structure and widespread shared values and aspirations. A world federal regime will require the creation of both a central authority and strong social, economic, cultural, and political affinities. The dilemma of world government is this: the international system needs world government to reduce the threat of war, but the precondition for world government is world community, which can only be solidified through the political transformation of the anarchic world system. (P. 329)

Although the general thrust of the passage is clearly that world government is unlikely, the statement is not clear. What, precisely, is meant by “the political transformation of the anarchic world system”? If by this is meant “the establishment of a world government,” then we would have a logical refutation of the possibility of world government along “Catch 22” lines: you can’t have world government without world community, but you can’t have world community without world government. This would constitute a sensible interpretation of the word “dilemma,” but then the argument could be satirized as follows: “You can’t have a chicken without an egg, and you can’t have an egg without a chicken, therefore chickens and eggs are impossible.” If, on the other hand, by the phrase “the political transformation of the anarchic world system,” Amstutz means “the achievement of a high degree of mutual toleration and cooperation among sovereign nations,” this is not a dilemma but a “problem.” More importantly, Amstutz offers no reason why the present level of mutual toleration and cooperation among sovereign nations is not sufficient to the establishment of a world government—of a limited nature. He cannot cite, as did Goodspeed in the 1960s, the “problems dividing the Soviets and the Western world.” He could cite, however, the “problems dividing the First World and the Third World,” that is, the absence of “economic affinities” between the rich and the poor nations. As a matter of fact, although it was overshadowed during the Cold War era by ideological discord,

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the economic gap was always just as serious an impediment to world government as was the ideological gap. But even as the ideological gap need not necessarily have abrogated the possibility of world government during the Cold War period, so too the economic gap need not abrogate the possibility of world government during the post–Cold War period. What could have worked then, and what could work now, is a limited world government along the lines of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations under consideration here. All that is needed to perceive this possibility is a modicum of mental flexibility and vision. There are two additional points I would like to make on the matter of heterogeneity as it affects the prospects for world government. The first is that our existing experience with nations demonstrates that they are capable of coping successfully with a great deal of heterogeneity within their citizen bodies while still maintaining a high level of internal harmony and political stability. Consider, for example, the following litany: racial differences, religious differences, linguistic differences, cultural differences, historical grievances. That these factors do not necessarily preclude political union is demonstrated by the simple fact that there are many large and successful nations in the world today that are dealing successfully with these types of heterogeneity. With respect to race, for example, the minority of African Americans in the United States, despite centuries of enslavement in the past, are becoming gradually more assimilated. U.S. society is still a long way from being completely color-blind, but clearly much progress has been made and continues to be made. With respect to religion, while these differences have stirred up much trouble in the past, and will no doubt continue to do so, the fact remains that most nations are forced to deal with a certain amount of religious diversity: there are Jewish minorities in the United States, Muslim minorities in India, Catholic minorities in England, Protestant minorities in France, and so on and so forth. With respect to language, Canada manages two official languages, Switzerland three, and China and India deal with dozens of local dialects. With respect to cultural differences, the cultural gap between Manhattan sophisticates and Wyoming ranchers in the United States is quite large, yet both are peacefully subsumed within the overall United States. With respect to historical grievances, the United States must deal with lingering resentment in the Southern states over the course and outcome of the Civil War of 1861–1865. Similarly, the leading members of the European Union today were enmeshed in warfare only a little over a half-century ago. Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely. What they show is that political unification is not necessarily precluded by heterogeneity.

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When we come to the very serious matter of economic heterogeneity, that is, economic inequality: that a high degree of economic inequality within the polity is not necessarily a serious impediment to political stability, even under fully democratic conditions, is demonstrated by some existing nations in the world. Consider India, for example. Although India’s per capita income is quite low compared to that of Japan or the United States, there are still a considerable number of very wealthy individuals in India, people whose personal wealth rivals that of the wealthiest people in Japan or the United States. At the same time, India is a highly democratic nation, a nation in which the one-person-one-vote principle is scrupulously observed and implemented. To certain rather simplistic mentalities, it is therefore a mystery that India has not undertaken drastic redistribution by which rich individuals are taxed exorbitantly in order to provide generous welfare benefits to the poor. Of course, to those with a more sophisticated understanding of political realities, this situation is not particularly mysterious. Even if they do not wield disproportionate formal voting weight, wealthy people exert disproportionate influence on political processes by providing financial support to candidates for elected offices (or withholding it) according to the candidates’ policy preferences. Perhaps even more important is the disproportionate influence of the wealthy on the intellectual processes and communications media of the nation. The example of India, among others that could be cited, suggests that the economic concern expressed throughout this book may be exaggerated. This concern is that the world government might be tempted to implement a “global welfare state” according to which the populations of the rich nations would be exorbitantly taxed in order to provide generous welfare entitlements that would benefit mostly the populations of the poor nations. This policy of drastic redistribution of current income I have described by the term “Crude Redistribution,” the diametric opposite to the preferred policy of “Common Progress” on which the WEEP would be based. It might be argued that the example of India, among others, shows that even if the legislative apparatus of the world government was based on a strict one-person-onevote principle, the world government would still abstain from anything so potentially destabilizing and hazardous as Crude Redistribution. Be that as it may, the “dual voting” system that has been proposed for the Federal Union legislature would be a far more reliable guarantee against the possibility of Crude Redistribution than the exercise of disproportionate influence by the populations of the rich nations through various informal mechanisms. In the author’s opinion, therefore, the

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dual voting system is an essential component of this pragmatically oriented proposal for world government. The second point is that although world government skeptics insist adamantly that the high degree of heterogeneity within the human population of the world constitutes an impenetrable barrier to world government, this same heterogeneity can be seen as a prime incentive toward the establishment of a world government. I would have to agree with world government skeptics that the high degree of heterogeneity within the human population is a virtually impenetrable barrier to the “omnipotent world state” envisioned in conventional world federalist thought. But no such world government is under consideration in this book. Through the retained rights of the member nations of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations to free withdrawal from the federation, and to the maintenance of independent armed forces of whatever size and nature deemed necessary, the essential national interests of each and every member nation would be adequately protected. While a high degree of heterogeneity precludes the establishment of an unlimited world government, it does not preclude the establishment of a limited world government. In fact, the existing heterogeneity is a critical argument in favor of a limited federal world government. The heterogeneities cited by world government skeptics are indeed a problem. They constitute impediments to world government (not an “impenetrable barrier” to world government), and were a limited federal world government along the lines of the proposed Federal Union to be established despite these heterogeneities, they would obviously constrain its authority and effectiveness in the short run. But what world government skeptics do not seem to appreciate is that these heterogeneities also constitute, right here and now in the contemporary real world, a serious threat to peace. Under the contemporary nationstate system, aspirants to national leadership positions are constantly tempted to exploit their own people’s antipathy toward other nations, antipathy based on one or more of these heterogeneities, in order to gain power, whether through democratic means or otherwise. There is always the possibility of some irresponsible demagogue, in the manner and likeness of Adolf Hitler, arising out of nowhere, taking firm control of his own nation, and then using his nation’s power to gain unwilling concessions from other nations. Nuclear weapons or no nuclear weapons, this is a recipe for warfare. If we continue with the present system of national sovereignty, there is every likelihood that a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler will eventually, sooner or later, stride forth onto the world stage. It would just take one Adolf Hitler in the nuclear age to plunge the world into disaster.

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Were there to be a limited world government, along the lines of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, existing and functioning in the world, the opportunities for Adolf Hitler reincarnations to come along and make trouble for the world would be much less than they are today. They would be less from the date of the initial foundation of the Federal Union, and with each additional year and decade of successful operation of the Union they would become lesser and lesser. This is owing to the benign cycle of interactive development described earlier: the ongoing, progressive, interactive, mutually reinforcing, snowballing process between the social and attitudinal homogeneity of a given population, and the effectiveness of the state organization in which it is politically united. Partly it is a matter of reducing the heterogeneities themselves: this is especially relevant in the area of economic living standards. During the early history of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, its top priority would be the WEEP toward dramatically reducing, via the “Common Progress” avenue, the economic gap that so much vexes and troubles international relations today. And partly—where the heterogeneities are permanent and ineradicable, as in the case of race, religion, and certain aspects of culture—to reduce their natural propensity to generate hostility and conflict among peoples and nations.

How Is It Possible? In the final analysis, a world government is possible because there exists a practical and fully feasible alternative to the omnipotent world state of conventional world federalist thought. The specific blueprint for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations described in these pages would be a genuine and fully functional government entity that would very likely make a major contribution to the ongoing and evolving processes of global governance through which we hope to achieve a benign future for global human civilization. Yet it would operate under certain restrictions and limitations that would reduce the probability of a totalitarian outcome to a bare minimum. Would these restrictions and limitations reduce the effectiveness of the world government? Of course they would—in the short run. But even in the short run, this type of world government would appreciably improve global governance relative to what it is under the quasi-anarchic international regime of today. And at the same time, this type of world government would constitute a firm foundation for future progress toward ever greater prosperity and security at the global level. The problem, of course, is that this reality is not currently recognized by very many people. The vast majority of the human population of the

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world, including the rank-and-file citizenry, the professional intelligentsia, and the political leadership, is firmly convinced that no imaginable form of world government would be beneficial to the entire human population of the world. First and foremost, people imagine that their own nations would suffer disadvantages if any form of world government existed. But looking beyond their own national interests, they find it convenient to believe that most other nations would be similarly disadvantaged. This basic attitude toward world government is thoroughly erroneous and mistaken. But it is also thoroughly entrenched. Can it ever be successfully challenged and dislodged? A pessimist could make an impressive case that it doesn’t matter that in logical, objective terms, a very good case can be made for the specific type of world government advocated herein. Whatever the actual merits of the case to be made for this specific form of world government, the case will never be heard. It is not a matter of it being argued against or contested in any meaningful way—it will simply be ignored. This is certainly a possibility. There is no getting around the fact that there exists a terrific amount of inertial conservatism in the contemporary world. One contributory factor is the unimaginativeness and timidity of the academic intelligentsia. As a professor of economics myself, I am well and personally acquainted with this. In economics, there is a dividing line between “positive economics” and “normative economics.”3 Positive economics deals with the economic world as it is. Normative economics deals with the economic world as it should be. Positive economics is reputable and encouraged because it deals with objective facts; normative economics is disreputable and discouraged because it is based on subjective opinion. Contemporary economics prides itself on its scientific bent, and opinions, of their nature, are not scientific. The success of an academic economist’s career is gauged by the number and quality of his or her publications in the professional literature. One has to look long and hard through the professional literature to find contributions that advance and defend specific, tangible recommendations for the improvement of the economic world. The bigger, more imaginative, and more potentially important the idea, the less likely it will be found in the professional literature. Although the specific terminology varies, basically the same tendency exists in other areas of social and political inquiry. The discipline of international relations (IR) is not immune from this tendency, and given the importance of international relations to the future destiny of humanity on this planet, this is especially unfortunate. Big ideas are not welcome, either in the academic IR literature, exemplified by such periodicals as International Organization and

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World Politics or in the practitioner IR literature, exemplified by periodicals such as Foreign Affairs and Orbis. The academic literature concerns itself with the “world as it is,” and the emphasis on “scientific” analysis results in a plethora of nebulous propositions having little or no apparent bearing on such critical practical issues as the prevention of nuclear holocaust. Meanwhile, the practitioner literature concerns itself with the various issues of the day: what to do about Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Somalia, or whatever other nation happens to be making waves at the moment. Each tree in the forest is examined in excruciatingly minute detail, but little or no effort is made to look at the forest as a whole. Even those contributions ostensibly concerned with “larger issues” consist mostly of lengthy recitations of unrelated factual information of obscure practical significance, from which are half-heartedly extracted ambiguous “implications” and banal “conclusions.” Serious consideration of world government is virtually absent from both the academic and the practitioner IR literature. The typical contributor to the IR literature is blissfully unaware of any international organization possibilities other than the existent United Nations, the omnipotent world state of traditional world federalist thinking, and the peacekeeping confederation advocated in Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.” Kant’s essay has nothing to do with world government as presently conceived. It advocates a loose confederation of nations (a “super-alliance”), devoted exclusively to peacekeeping, very much akin to the League of Nations eventually established in the real world in 1919. Owing to the inherent weaknesses of the collective security concept, the League of Nations was unsuccessful in its primary mission, as evidenced by the onset of World War II in 1939. The fact that Kant’s proposal is still being discussed in the IR literature as if it had been published yesterday, as opposed to well over two hundred years ago, illustrates the paucity of meaningful discussion of the world government possibility in this literature. Another illustration of this is an article by Alexander Wendt, entitled “Why a World State is Inevitable,” that appeared in the December 2003 issue of the European Journal of International Relations.4 Although the title suggests that the author intends to present a case for world government, the reality is quite different. The thesis of the article is not “world government should come about” (a normative proposition), but rather “world government will come about” (a positive proposition). Furthermore, the only empirical evidence adduced that world government is inevitable consists of the observation that there has been a gradual trend throughout history toward greater and greater political consolidation, a trend leading from the hundreds of thousands of small

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tribal groups of prehistory down to the two hundred or so nationstates of today. Professor Wendt presents some sketchy arguments as to why continued consolidation to the point of a world state would be desirable: the large nations will be absolved of the necessity of fighting destructive wars among themselves, while the small nations will be better off under a world state than they would be under the hegemony of one or more large nations. These are certainly valid arguments why a world state might (depending on its nature) be desirable, but they are not sensible arguments that a world state is inevitable. To begin with, most if not all of the political consolidation that has come about throughout history has come about via warfare, and in the present-day nuclear-armed world, the possibilities for further political consolidation via warfare are limited to say the least. But even if we envision future political consolidation coming about through peaceful contracting among nations, long before the long-run trend toward greater and greater political consolidation reaches its end point in a world state, the trend might be rudely interrupted by a nuclear holocaust that will plunge humanity into a new Dark Age presided over by a host of competing local warlords. From there, humanity might start sliding down the slippery slope toward extinction of the species. In any case, there is very little reference in “Why a World State is Inevitable” to empirically based argumentation of any kind. The article is basically an exercise in pure philosophical logic, couched in discipline-based jargon, and based on nebulous and unpersuasive propositions involving “teleological theory,” “constructivism,” and the like. Of course, if the article had been presented to the European Journal of International Relations as an explicit argument for the desirability of world government, it would have been deemed a mere “opinion piece” not suitable for publication. Another contributory factor to the unimaginativeness and timidity of the intelligentsia as a whole, including journalistic and other components in addition to academia, is excessively keen awareness of the various disasters of modern history caused by “big ideas” of one sort or another. The prime example of this, of course, is the nineteenthcentury work of Karl Marx, which condemned the capitalist socioeconomic system, and advocated (and predicted) its replacement by the socialist socioeconomic system. The “unintended consequences” of this particular “big idea” included the Stalinist Great Terror and the gulag archipelago in the Soviet Union, as well as the ideological and geopolitical Cold War conflict between the communist and noncommunist blocs that had the world dangling perilously over a nuclear abyss for the better part of half a century. Blaming all this on Karl Marx’s

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big idea may be a bit unfair. It is difficult to imagine the Stalinist Great Terror and gulag archipelago coming about if the Soviet leadership had not been in deathly fear of invasion by hostile capitalist nations desirous of nipping the socialist threat in the bud. The same holds for the Cold War. One could blame the Great Terror, the gulag archipelago and the Cold War on the sovereign nation-state system just as plausibly as one could blame them on Marx’s big idea. Moreover, not all the consequences of Marx’s socialist critique of capitalism were adverse. Most economic and social historians today would credit Marx with helping to reform the capitalist system, from what it was during his formative years in the early nineteenth century, to what it is today. Some of the progress and reforms that transformed capitalism into a more humane socioeconomic system were motivated by apprehensions among the social elite and political leadership concerning the possibility of violent socialist revolution. World government is certainly a big idea that if not pursued prudently and judiciously might eventuate in truly disastrous unintended consequences. That is why the present proposal for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations is carefully crafted, specifically with respect to the stipulated limitations on its power and authority, to avoid such unintended consequences. It is clear that the rejection of every big idea for the advancement of human civilization on grounds that there might be disastrous unintended consequences would severely retard our progress and result in stagnation and decline. Turning to the general public, that is to say, people not part of either the professional intelligentsia or the political leadership, probably the principal reason for their inertness is that, by and large, they are materially and financially comfortable. Only in relatively few parts of the world are lack of food and shelter a serious problem for a large proportion of the population. Despite occasional recessionary downturns, most people are experiencing gradually increasing living standards— this is true of the poor nations as well as the rich nations—although, of course, absolute living standards are much higher in the latter than in the former. People are not merely physically comfortable; they are well entertained. Karl Marx perceived religion to be the “opiate of the masses”—one of the main factors explaining their resistance to the necessity for violent transformation of society. In our own time, people don’t just have religion, they have popular culture, high culture, spectator sports—and of course literal opiates in the form of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and so on. People have an abundance of ways to occupy their time that are generally more attractive than pondering the problems of the world, and how possibly to cope with these problems.

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Add to this the raw realities of specialization and division of labor. Many if not most people work in occupations requiring considerable specialized knowledge and skills, including job-related terminology that is impenetrable jargon to people in other lines of work. This cuts down on the amount of language and thought that is shared by all members of society, which in turn tends to cut down on the amount of political participation in which the typical citizen engages. Consistent with the dominant principles of specialization and division of labor, most people are content to leave the larger issues of social decisionmaking in the hands of the appropriate government officials, whether they be elected or appointed. The indirect personal influence of any one rank-and-file citizen in a large democracy on social decisionmaking is so slight as to discourage any serious interest in and study of the issues involved. The political leaders, for their part, also have good reasons for inertial conservatism. In flourishing democracies especially, any significant departure from the status quo is likely to elicit howls of protest from those who believe, correctly or incorrectly as the case may be, that they have a strong personal vested interest in the status quo. Such howls jeopardize the leaders’ chances of being reelected. Even in less democratic polities, somewhat the same phenomenon is operative. Under the circumstances, political leaders tend to do as much following as they do leading. Only if a strong consensus for departing from the status quo emerges among both the general public and the professional intelligentsia are the political leaders likely to seriously consider such departures. Looking at the big idea of world government in the light of all these powerful inertial forces working against it, one might well contemplate the despairing proposition: “Owing to nationalism, heterogeneity, or whatever, humanity never has and never will establish a world government—a world government is literally impossible and it is therefore a complete waste of time to think about it, talk about it, or work toward it.” Such a despairing conclusion is unmerited. Consider the possible analogue between this conclusion and the condition known to psychiatry as “hysterical paralysis.” This condition is brought about by some kind of psychological trauma to which the patient involuntarily responds by losing control over movement of the limbs. It is a protective reaction in that its unconscious purpose is to assist the patient to escape from or reduce some kind of stressful environment or circumstance. But it is a dysfunctional reaction in that it creates new problems for the patient that may be as bad as, or worse than, the problems that induced the hysterical paralysis. For example, a

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prolonged condition of hysterical paralysis might so atrophy the muscles as to cause permanent physical damage. Hysterical paralysis is a specific type of the general psychiatric disorder termed “hysteria,” in which a wide variety of sensory, motor, or psychic disturbances may occur. In the nonmedical context, an hysterical condition is understood as a temporary reaction to a severe shock, involving agitation, crying, babbling, screaming, fear and trembling, and rushing about randomly like a frightened animal in a cage trying to escape some mortal peril. In such a state, the person may do physical harm to himself or to others, but assuming there is no injury the condition will eventually subside and the person will return to normalcy. Even in the nonmedical context, hysteria is generally viewed as an unproductive, even a counterproductive, way of coping with a problem or threat. If the threat really is mortal, the hysterical person is less likely to survive it than the person who remains calm, alert, and rational. In the medical context, hysteria is understood as a prolonged condition the symptoms of which may not be as dramatic as crying and screaming, but that are generally an unproductive or counterproductive means of coping with whatever stressful circumstances are responsible for the condition. Consider the distinction between the conditions of ordinary and hysterical paralysis. Ordinary paralysis is caused by a variety of verifiable physical problems: spinal cord damage, brain damage, or nerve damage. Hysterical paralysis, on the other hand, has no physical basis, and is caused by psychological problems brought on by traumatic stress and emotion. It is treated not by physical therapy but by psychotherapy. Hysterical paralysis tends to be a difficult and controversial diagnosis in any particular case. There are always two alternative possibilities: that the condition is being feigned by the patient, or that the condition has a physical basis not yet known to medical science. But from the well-established fact that some cases of paralysis have been successfully treated by psychotherapeutic means alone, it is obvious that at least some cases of paralysis are indeed hysterical in nature. Hysterical paralysis can often be cured simply by talking with the patient, gradually deepening the patient’s understanding of his or her circumstances and emotions, and in so doing strengthening the patient’s coping mechanisms. At some point in the process, the patient regains control over his or her limbs and is able to carry on with life more successfully. Now let us consider the proposition that it is impossible for humanity to establish a world government as analogous to a condition of paralysis in a person such that it is impossible for the person to move

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his or her limbs. There are two possibilities as far as the person is concerned: either the person is afflicted with a physical problem that does indeed make movement of the limbs physically impossible, or the person is afflicted with a psychological problem and in actual fact movement of the limbs is physically possible. Analogously, there are two possibilities as far as humanity is concerned. First, it might be impossible to establish a world government because world government manifestly would be highly undesirable. This would be “legitimate” paralysis—equivalent to ordinary paralysis in a person caused by physical problems. Second, it might be impossible to establish a world government because humanity merely believes that world government would be highly undesirable. This would be “illegitimate” paralysis— equivalent to hysterical paralysis in a person caused by psychological problems. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the latter is actually the case. What has been responsible for this condition in humanity? It may be attributed to exactly the same thing that is responsible for hysterical paralysis in specific human individuals: psychological stress. Humanity as a whole is stressed by a social environment perpetually disrupted by either the reality of warfare or the threat of warfare. But there appears to be no escape from this environment. In particular, world government is ruled out by the perceived likelihood that it would immediately degenerate into a repressive global dictatorship. The general threat posed by warfare to society as a whole and each individual within it has been greatly augmented in the post–World War II era owing to the advent of nuclear weapons. But still world government is ruled out—there can be no escape by this means from the fearful possibility of nuclear holocaust. Under this level of stress, the minds of a great many people have cracked, and they have descended into an uncritical, unresponsive, dogmatic attitude that “world government is impossible because of nationalism (or heterogeneity or whatever),” and thus it is no use talking or even thinking about world government. This attitude may not be an exact analogue to hysterical paralysis, but it is a close analogue. In clinical cases of hysterical paralysis, the condition can often be cured or alleviated simply by the therapist engaging in a calm, collected, supportive dialogue with the patient that gradually raises the patient’s self-awareness and self-confidence. The patient is urged to fully acknowledge and recognize the adverse conditions under which he or she must live. But at the same time the therapist tries to help the patient perceive whatever positive and hopeful aspects may exist, and whatever sensible courses of action the patient might take to improve

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the situation. The patient eventually realizes that there are more effective ways of dealing with personal problems than paralysis. With this realization, the condition of hysterical paralysis diminishes and finally disappears. In an analogous sense, therefore, the purpose of this book is to initiate a kind of psychotherapeutic dialogue within humanity on the nature of the current unsatisfactory international situation, and on the potential positive contribution that a limited world government could make toward the improvement of the situation. The hope is that such a calm, collected dialogue will ultimately dissolve and dispel the perverse belief that “world government is impossible.” One highly influential misconception is that establishing a world government would be a radical departure from the present course of development. But radical changes, as we all know, are very hazardous and ought to be avoided at all costs. “Evolution and not revolution” is the dominant catch phrase. But what is being proposed in this book is indeed evolution and not revolution. No doubt, to most people today, establishing a world government will seem to be a very dramatic and important transition. But one hundred or two hundred or three hundred years from today, people might well interpret the event as a natural and relatively minor step in the long-term political evolution of human civilization. It looks more important to us who are alive today simply because it is so close to us. We don’t have “perspective” on this transition. Contributing to this misconception is the mistaken belief that major historical transitions require highly stressful circumstances—that the tendencies toward “inertial conservatism” are so strong within people that they will only contemplate major changes when the status quo has generated unmitigated disaster. Certainly one can find historical episodes consistent with this theory: for example, the Russian Revolution occurred in 1917 after World War I had inflicted horrific death and devastation on the Russian nation. But there are many other cases of revolutions occurring during relatively stable and prosperous periods. This was true of the three other major revolutions in modern Western history: the English Revolution of the 1640s, the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789. Indeed, thoughtful consideration of the historical record casts considerable doubt on the commonplace assertion today that humanity will give serious consideration to world government only if and when human civilization becomes enmeshed in nuclear holocaust or environmental catastrophe. If anything, the historical record suggests that when conditions are literally disastrous, people are too preoccupied with the daily struggle for survival to take much interest in political or social reform.

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It is also a misconception that establishing a world state would be such a radical break from the status quo that it could never be accomplished peacefully. While it may be true that there are some possible reforms so drastic that their implementation would entail violence, the establishment of a limited world government, such as the Federal Union of Democratic Nations proposed here, does not fall into this category. And even granting that a world government would be a far more ambitious reform than the average reform, history records many instances of major reforms occurring without appreciable violence or bloodshed. For instance, the repeal of the Corn Laws in England in 1846 is regarded by historians as on a par with some of the social legislation passed during the French Revolution. A more recent example, and far more dramatic, was the peaceful renunciation of communism by the ex-Soviet Union and its erstwhile Eastern European satellite nations. This abrupt and highly unexpected transition was veritably astounding to the political leaders of the world, to the intelligentsia, and to the general public alike. While the economic condition of these nations was definitely deficient compared to that of the advanced capitalist nations of Western Europe, it was by no means disastrous, and in fact it was much better than that of many politically stable capitalist nations in the Third World. It was certainly not clear, as of 1985, that the Soviet Union was entering the final years of its history. Just as the Soviet Union in 1985 was closer than anyone realized at the time to throwing off communist ideology and embracing democratic capitalism, so too the world today may be closer than anyone realizes to proceeding beyond the sovereign nation-state system and embracing a limited world government. Just as the transition of the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation and the other successor republics was accomplished peacefully, so too a world state may be formed peacefully. Among world government skeptics, it is a tired cliché that there exists “no plausible scenario” by which world government could be peacefully inaugurated in the real world. The implicit challenge is that unless the proponents of world government can produce a detailed chronology of future events—a “plausible” chronology, no less—the case for world government can be disregarded. That this challenge is absurd and unfair is, I hope, fairly obvious to the reader. Had anyone had an intuition in 1985 that the Soviet Union was in its final years, that person certainly could not have specified the exact course of events leading up to the USSR’s dissolution in 1991. Quite clearly, therefore, it would be futile to try to set forth any sort of a definite timetable for the achievement of world government, or to set forth precise details for the

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campaign of enlightenment necessary to establish the preconditions for this achievement. Obviously a great many people must become aware of the blueprint for world government advanced herein, and they must also consider this information sufficiently important to be worth sharing with others. Whether this process will commence this year, next year, or ten years from now is impossible to predict. Whether the process, once commenced, will proceed to the level necessary for success is also impossible to predict. What may be argued strongly, however, is that for the greater good of humanity, this process should commence, and the sooner it commences, the better. While it is clearly impossible to specify a detailed and plausible schedule running from the here and now to the establishment of a world government according to the specifications of the proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations, I will conclude this section with some observations that provide the beginnings of a response to the challenge that there is “no plausible scenario” toward the foundation of a world government. First and foremost, this proposal did not suddenly drop down out of the clear blue sky. The vast majority of informed people in the world today are fully aware of the ongoing processes of globalization, are cosmopolitan in their outlook, and favorably disposed toward increasing international cooperation. A wide and diverse assortment of authorities, experts, intellectuals, and politicians are continually preaching the cause of global understanding, and are constantly appealing for “fresh, new ideas” toward the furtherance of this cause.5 The basic idea of world government, of a universal political entity embracing—or at least open to—all of the peoples and nations of the world, has been under consideration and development literally for centuries. It is a concept that is fully accepted “in principle” and “in theory” by a very large proportion of those people who have ever thought seriously about it. The perceived obstacles are “practical” in nature: that is, world government would be good in theory but not, alas, in practice. But the proposed Federal Union of Democratic Nations is in fact a thoroughly pragmatic and sensible means of dealing with and overcoming the practical impediments to world government. In the light of this possibility, allegations that world government is impractical simply do not make sense. This plan is exactly the sort of “fresh, new idea” that people everywhere are calling for. There is nothing at all preposterous and unrealizable about the Federal Union blueprint for a genuine, functional world government. It is not to be compared with lunatic fringe proposals toward world peace. The typical Christian televangelist, for example, has a very

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simple prescription for world peace: that everyone in the world “accept Christ into their heart.” Should this vision be realized, it would no doubt vastly increase the financial revenues of these televangelists, but whether it would insure world peace is another question—there was a profusion of bloodshed and warfare in medieval Europe, at a time when virtually everyone, ostensibly at least, had accepted Christ into their hearts. Another example of arrant nonsense is provided by assorted lunatic fringe anarchists and pacifists whose merry prescription for world peace is that “the people” take matters into their own hand, dissolve the governments, disband the armies, and live happily ever after in a myriad of self-sufficient little communes scattered over the face of the globe. The proposal for a Federal Union of Democratic Nations put forward in this book has nothing in common with any and all schemes that envision drastic changes either in human nature or in the presently existing institutions of human civilization. No governments would be dissolved, no armies would be disbanded, and no one who had not already done so would be required to “accept Christ into his/her heart.” The world government skeptic might grant that as individuals a great many people might be favorably disposed toward world government if they were to become fully aware of such limited world government possibilities as the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, because they would see it as benefiting both their own personal interests and the interests of humanity as a whole—but the real problem lies not at the individual level but at the organizational level. According to the skeptic, organizations would naturally tend toward opposition to world government because they would see it as an organizational competitor to themselves. But why attribute to organizations a higher degree of paranoia than exists at the individual level? Any organization is built on the principle of cooperation toward a common goal, and thus the leaders of organizations would be generally predisposed in favor of cooperation with other organizations. This is not to deny that there are some organizations in the world today that would almost certainly be opposed to world government. At the same time, there are numerous organizations that are definitely predisposed in favor of world government—assuming that a practical and effective scheme toward it can be devised. Citizens for Global Solutions is perhaps the foremost among several similar groups. In addition, there are a great many interest organizations and think tanks that—although they have not yet gone on record in support of world government because they are not yet aware of a practical scheme toward it—are nevertheless in favor of progressive and outward-looking international policy: the

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Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There are also many international organizations that might see in the Federal Union of Democratic Nations an effective instrument for the pursuit of their own goals: the many multinational corporations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. But what about the national governments and the United Nations? Surely (according to the world government skeptic) both the national governments and the United Nations will perceive in a possible Federal Union of Democratic Nations a direct competitor against their own interests, power and authority—as an organization that would most likely encroach on their own “turf.” Once again, I would respond to this position that it places far too much reliance on paranoiac tendencies. The human personnel of both the United Nations and the national governments, whether primarily politicians or administrators or rank-and-file employees, are not only (by and large) sane, rational, and intelligent people, but by virtue of the role of the organizations of which they are part, they are predisposed in favor of cooperation, authority, and governance. As a group, they are not predisposed toward paranoia. Therefore, many if not most of these people will recognize in the Federal Union of Democratic Nations a potentially very positive force in the world. The personnel of the national governments might look toward a potential world government much as do the personnel of the various state governments in the United States toward the federal government—as a helpful partner toward the pursuit of their internal goals.6 And the personnel of the United Nations might look forward to a potential world government as a more effective means of pursuing their personal and professional goals. Nor is it the case that the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would present a direct and immediate threat to the employment of the personnel of the national governments and the United Nations. What the long-term effect of the Federal Union on overall employment in governance organizations might be is difficult to predict. While world government skeptics invariably argue that world government would automatically increase the bureaucratic overload on human civilization, this is pure speculation. Certainly the overall objective would be to maintain aggregate administrative costs over all levels of government, including the supernational, the national, the regional, and the local, at a reasonable level consistent with the central importance of good governance to human society. The existence of a world government would enable certain administrative functions of national governments

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to be handled more efficiently and effectively at the supernational level. Thus the world government could well lead to reductions in the total number of employees involved with those specific functions. On the other hand, there might be an increase in the total number of personnel involved in other types of administrative functions. What will happen in the long run is therefore quite uncertain. In the short run, however, over the first ten to twenty years of the world government’s operations, it is most likely that there will be a significant increase in the total number of personnel employed by governance organizations. To start with, the personnel of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations will likely be five to ten times more numerous than the personnel of the United Nations At the same time, there will likely be very little decrease in the personnel of the national governments. Thus the establishment of the world government would open up new employment opportunities for all types of governance personnel: politicians, administrators, and rank-and-file employees. And some of these new opportunities might seem very attractive indeed to those who would be qualified for them. Just as the governors of the states of the United States today may aspire to becoming the president of the United States, so too the national leaders of the future could aspire to becoming the union chief executive of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations. It hardly seems unlikely that many of the various national presidents and prime ministers would indeed, with considerable relish, imagine themselves rising to that honored and exalted position in human affairs.

A Final Word The time has come for people of good will around the world to cast off the paralyzing timidity engendered by the inertial conservatism that is so rife today, and begin working together to bring about the long-overdue next step in the economic and political development of global human civilization, the initiation of a global Marshall Plan, to overcome, once and for all, the vexing problem of severe economic inequality among nations, combined with the formation of a federal world government, open to all the nations of the world, to facilitate international coordination and cooperation toward a better world. To better assure the future of humanity, we need a grand convergence, involving both economic and political aspects, toward progress on a global scale. The global Marshall Plan, termed herein the World Economic Equalization Program, envisions massive transfers of new development

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resources from the richer to the poorer nations. Although these transfers would far exceed the foreign development assistance programs of the past, they would not be so large as to reduce living standards in the donor nations. The basis of the program would be Common Progress: economic progress would be common to both the rich donor nations and the poor recipient nations. There would be a very slight, almost unnoticeable, reduction of the rate of growth in per capita income in the rich donor nations, in order that the rate of growth in per capita income in the poor recipient nations be greatly increased. That this is possible is the consequence of one of the most thoroughly grounded and widely accepted principles of economics: the diminishing marginal product of a factor of production. The rich nations have large stocks of generalized capital, thus its marginal product is low; while the poor nations have small stocks of generalized capital, thus its marginal product is high. As a result, the application of a certain amount of new generalized capital in a poor nation will result in a much greater increase in output than the application of that same amount in a rich nation. This is the key that can unlock the door to a world in which the envies and resentments naturally evoked by extreme economic inequality are a thing of the past. Meanwhile, the opportunities that we now possess to move forward toward global political unity, in the form of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations, are unparalleled in history. Continuing technological progress in transportation and communications have rendered the coordination problems of state entities in earlier eras effectively null and void. International commerce and investment, for the first time in history, have risen to such levels as to justify the term “world economy.” Especially now that the most controversial elements of Marxist ideology are in abeyance, there exists a remarkably high consensus, throughout the world, on some key and critical components of “the good and just society.” With Hollywood and Coca Cola Inc. in the vanguard, cultural globalization is proceeding ever onward and upward. But at the same time, there are very serious problems, first and foremost the persistence of large stockpiles of operational nuclear weapons. Even though these stockpiles are significantly less than they were during the Cold War, they are still more than sufficient—should they be unleashed in total war—to cripple and perhaps destroy human civilization. And as long as these stockpiles exist, and as long as the sovereign nation-state system continues to furnish fertile soil for the cultivation of misunderstanding, irritation, conflict, and confrontation, there is a significant possibility that they will eventually be unleashed. Aside

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from the possibility of nuclear holocaust, there are several other major concerns, most significantly, the interrelated problems of runaway population growth and environmental degradation. A world government might greatly assist and facilitate humanity’s efforts to ameliorate these kinds of problems, which if not adequately checked could lead eventually to the downfall of human civilization. If we hesitate too long before taking decisive action, the opportunities we possess today may fade away, setting us irretrievably on the path to disaster. No one is more conscious than this author of the difficulties and discomforts of preaching world government in today’s environment. At the present time we are living in a very nation-oriented world. Ninetynine people out of a hundred one meets walking down the street will respond negatively to the term “world government,” because they believe that a world government would somehow disadvantage both themselves and their nation. On the other hand, espousal of world government is not a criminal offense in any nation of which I am aware. One will not suffer the same fate as heretics burnt at the stake in the Middle Ages. One is in danger of being regarded as a misguided or feeble-minded crackpot, but one will not be hauled off to jail. In fact, belief in and advocacy of world government is not nearly so disreputable as being a devil-worshipper or having personally experienced alien abduction. Many if not most world government skeptics will easily admit that world government is a great concept “in theory”—the problem is that it would not work “in practice.” This commonplace, virtually ubiquitous, judgment on world government is, as we have seen, based on the fundamental misunderstanding that the only possible world government is the “omnipotent world state” of conventional world federalist thinking. The omnipotent world state probably “would work in practice,” but it would work in ways that might well be highly undesirable to many of its citizens. The omnipotent world state probably would permanently eliminate the possibility of nuclear holocaust, and that is clearly a good thing. But it might well also be drawn toward a global welfare state implementing what I have termed herein Crude Redistribution. The global welfare state would be regarded by the people of the rich nations as a form of totalitarian repression. Or, on the other hand, it might be drawn toward policies that the less affluent nations would regard as a form of totalitarian repression through the equivalent of colonial exploitation. The Federal Union of Democratic Nations described herein would be qualitatively different from the omnipotent world state. The retained rights of the member nations to free withdrawal from the federation, and to the maintenance of independent armed forces, in conjunction

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with the dual voting principle in the federation legislature, would rule out the world government adopting policies such as a global welfare state or colonial-style exploitation. Schemes for the betterment of humanity are normally presented with complete and total assurance. The implicit message in such advocacies is that only ignorant, stupid, or malevolent people will fail to perceive the benefits of the schemes. I, on the other hand, have been at pains to emphasize that there can be no guarantees that the World Economic Equalization Program and the Federal Union of Democratic Nations would be successful. Both these initiatives might fail badly. If after a trial period of reasonable length, they were developing poorly, then they should, could, and would be discontinued. The WEEP would be shut down and the Federal Union disbanded. These schemes do have a built-in “exit strategy.” My argument is simply that there is sufficient evidence that they would be successful to merit a tentative and provisional implementation of the WEEP and the Federal Union. This would be done in the same spirit of open-minded experimentation that has been the basis for our marvelous achievements in science and technology. Under the omnipotent world state concept, there would be no exit: all nations of the world would be required to join, and any move toward withdrawal would be regarded as treasonous and met with force. In this respect, the “open door” policy of the Federal Union of Democratic Nations is entirely the opposite. The fact of the matter, therefore, is that the typical person-in-the-street’s negative viewpoint on world government is based on a simple misconception about what a world government must necessarily entail. Once this misconception has been corrected, once the typical person-in-the-street becomes aware of the fact that there are viable alternatives to the omnipotent world state, his or her overall opinion of world government must necessarily improve. It may improve to the point where he or she will be able to perceive the benefits of world government. From being a world government skeptic, he or she may well transform into a world government supporter. Of course, people are reluctant to change their minds about anything. They are especially reluctant when their own opinion on a certain issue is widely shared at all levels of society, including the authoritative intelligentsia. But one of the fundamental strengths of the human mind is its ability to recognize and receive new information, and to adjust attitudes and behavior accordingly. In my own case, during my formative years I imbibed the conventional judgment that world government was, at best, a foolish delusion, and at worst, part of a plot by malevolent people (communists, in my day) to impose a horrific totalitarian

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regime over the entire surface of the planet. Eventually, in an epiphany that was easily the equivalent of religious conversion, I realized that I had it all wrong—that a properly designed world government actually could and probably would provide a great benefit to all mankind. It was one of the most exhilarating and memorable moments in my life. In coming years, I hope that many others will experience this unforgettable, liberating awakening.

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Looking Ahead: The Long View

1. Winston Churchill, “Battle of Britain” speech, June 18, 1940. 2. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter XIII. 3. Richard Falk, “A New Paradigm for International Legal Studies: Prospects and Proposals,” Yale Law Journal 84(5): 969–1021, April 1975. 4. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do about It (New York: Rodale Books, 2006). 5. John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation XVII. 6. Paul R. Ehrlich, professor of biology at Stanford University, author of The Population Bomb (New York: Ballentine, 1968). 2

Political Convergence: Supernational Federation

1. In the introduction to his annotated bibliography on separatism (“Separatist Movements: Research Sources 1990–1995,” Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 1995), Timothy L. Sanz states: “The following list of worldwide locations is seemingly unrelated in any way: Eritrea, Abkhazia, Chiapas, Tatarstan, Corsica, Yemen, Xinjiang, Quebec, Gaucho Pampa, Lombardy, Sri Lanka, Somaliland, Cabinda, Assam, Irian Jaya, Transnistria, Crimea, Hawaii, Scotland, Kashmir, California and Illinois. But what these and other areas have in common are separatist movements currently operating or being formed within their boundaries, sometimes as full-scale armed insurrections as in Chiapas or Abkhazia, or as peaceful, legally based secessionist movements as in Quebec, Scotland and Hawaii.” 2. See, for example: Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery: 1830–1860 (New York: Harper and Bros., 1960); William J. Barney, The Road to Secession: A New Perspective on the Old South (New York: Praeger, 1972); David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848–1861 (New York: Harper and Row, 1976). 3. Illustrative references on disarmament negotiations during the interwar period include: John Wheeler-Bennett, The Disarmament Deadlock (London: G. Routledge, 1934); Robert Gordon Kaufman, Arms Control

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during the Pre-Nuclear Era: The United States and Naval Limitation between the Two World Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Thomas Richard Davies, The Possibilities of Transnational Activism: The Campaign for Disarmament between the Two World Wars (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007). 4. Illustrative references on arms control and reduction during the Cold War period include: John W. Spanier and Joseph L. Noge, The Politics of Disarmament: A Study in Soviet-American Gamesmanship (New York: Praeger, 1962); Duncan Clarke, Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (New York: Free Press, 1979); Gerald Smith, Doubletalk: The Story of the First Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1980); Louis Rene Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1983). 5. A few illustrative references on the humanitarian disasters of the recent past include: Ed Vulliamy, Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Fergal Keane, Season of Blood: A Rwanda Journey (New York: Viking, 1995); Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Scott Peterson, Me against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda (New York: Routledge, 2000). 3

Economic Convergence: Global Marshall Plan

1. Some illustrative references on world economic inequality are as follows: Keith B. Griffin, International Inequality and World Poverty (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978); William Ryrie, First World, Third World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); John Dixon and David MacArov, eds., Poverty: A Persistent Global Reality (New York: Routledge, 1998); K. S. Jomo and Jacques Baudot, eds., Flat World: Big Gaps: Economic Liberalization, Globalization, Poverty and Inequality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 2. For readers interested in the technical details underlying these computations, see James A. Yunker, Common Progress: The Case for a World Economic Equalization Program (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), pp. 59–62. 3. Herbert Carleton Mayer, German Recovery and the Marshall Plan, 1948–1952 (Bonn and New York: Edition Atlantic Forum, 1969). 4. See, for example, William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Press, 2006). 5. Illustrative references to the large statistical literature on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of foreign aid include: Gustav S. Papanek, “Aid, Foreign Private Investment, Saving and Growth in Less Developed

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Countries,” Journal of Political Economy 81(1): 120–130, January– February 1973; Paul Mosley, John Hudson, and Sara Horrell, “Aid, the Public Sector and the Market in Less Developed Countries,” Economic Journal 97(387): 616–641, September 1987; Craig Burnside and David Dollar, “Aid, Policies and Growth,” American Economic Review 90(4): 847–868, September 2000. 6. James A. Yunker, Common Progress: The Case for a World Economic Equalization Program (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000). In addition to the book, I have published four articles to date in the professional literature based on computer simulations of a potential WEEP: “A World Economic Equalization Program: Results of a Simulation,” Journal of Developing Areas 10(2): 159–179, January 1976; “A World Economic Equalization Program: Refinements and Sensitivity Analysis,” World Development 16(8): 921–933, August 1988; “Could A Global Marshall Plan Be Successful? An Investigation Using the WEEP Simulation Model,” World Development 32(7): 1109–1137, July 2004; “Swords into Plowshares: Financing a World Economic Equalization Program,” Journal of Policy Modeling 28: 563–593, 2006. Although there are slight differences in data and model, all of these indicate the possibility of dramatically increasing the rate of economic growth in the poor nations at the cost of a very minor reduction in the rate of economic growth in the rich nations. 7. Yunker, Common Progress, pp. 50–59. 4

On the Practicality of Federal World Government

1. Derek Heater, World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). 2. Edith Wynner and Georgia Lloyd, Searchlight on Peace Plans: Choose Your Road to World Government (New York: Dutton, 1944). 3. For the most comprehensive historical account of the post-World War II world government boom, see Joseph P. Baratta, The Politics of World Federation, Volume I: United Nations, UN Reform, Atomic Control, Volume II: From World Federalism to Global Governance (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004). 4. Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, second edition (New York: Harper, 1945). 5. Giuseppe Borgese, Foundations of the World Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1953). 6. The first edition of World Peace through World Law was published by Harvard University Press in 1958 under the sole authorship of Grenville Clark (1882–1967). Owing to Clark’s advanced age at the time, he took on a coauthor—Louis B. Sohn (1914–2006), at that time a professor of international law at Harvard University—for the second and

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7.

8. 9.

10.

5

third editions (respectively published in 1960 and 1966 by Harvard University Press). Many if not most of the larger public and university libraries have the world government proposals of Borgese and Clark-Sohn on their shelves. The interested reader in search of print material on the world government proposal of Philip Isely may have a more difficult time. However, much literature on the proposal is available directly from the World Constitution and Parliament Association Website. At this point, there is only a limited number of locations in the printed literature in which the WCPA’s approach to world government may be examined. Two locations of which I am aware are as follows: “A Constitution for the Federation of Earth” is included as the appendix to Errol E. Harris’s book One World or None: Prescription for Survival (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), and two papers authored by Philip Isely (“A Critique of Our Global Neighborhood” and “A Bill of Particulars: Why the United Nations Must be Replaced”) are included in Errol E. Harris and James A. Yunker, eds., Toward Genuine Global Governance: Critical Reactions to “Our Global Neighborhood” (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999). Fremont Rider, The Great Dilemma of World Organization (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1946). David Christensen, Healing the World: A Primer about the World and How We Must Fix It for Our Children (Bloomington, IN: Universe, 2005), pp. 174–175. Illustrative references on the history of Christian-Muslim conflict include: Rollin S. Armour, Islam, Christianity and the West: A Troubled History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002); Andrew Wheatcroft, Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam (New York: Random House, 2005). On the Advisability of Federal World Government

1. The term “global governance” was apparently invented in the latter 1980s, and came into wide usage in the early 1990s with the formation of the Commission on Global Governance (the Stockholm Commission) in 1992, and the publication of such seminal works as Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), edited by James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel. 2. For a collection of essays criticizing the timidity and lack of vision of the Commission Report, see Errol E. Harris and James A. Yunker, Toward Genuine Global Governance: Critical Reactions to “Our Global Neighborhood” (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999). 3. The possibility of nuclear terrorism is a major concern in such analyses of the current world situation as David E. Sanger, The Inheritance:

NOTES

4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

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The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (New York: Harmony Books, 2009), and Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism (New York: HarperCollins, 2008). In Suskind’s book, several individuals are singled out for close attention as prime exemplars of the problems of the contemporary world. One of these is Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a U.S. government official charged with devising methods of thwarting nuclear terrorists desirous of flattening New York or Washington. According to Suskind, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen is pessimistic about the matter, saying that a successful nuclear terrorist attack on the United States is not a question of if, but of when. The European Union is the most prominent of the “counterweights” against U.S. power under current consideration: T. R. Reid, The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy (New York: Penguin, 2005). Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Illustrative references from the extensive literature on the history and concept of utopia are as follows: Joyce Oramel Hertzler, The History of Utopian Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1923); Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Pippa Norris and Ronald Englehardt, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 222. The seminal contributions on this theory were Harvey Leibenstein, A Theory of Economic Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), and Richard Nelson, “The Theory of the Low-Level Equilibrium Trap in Underdeveloped Economies,” American Economic Review 46(5): 894–908, December 1956. 6

The Next Step: Summary and Conclusion

1. The “end of history” phrase, coined by Hegel and popularized by Karl Marx, enjoyed a resurgence thanks to Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 2. Quoted by Elliott R. Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 396. 3. The positive-normative dichotomy in economics is generally associated with Milton Friedman: “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in Milton Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of

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Chicago Press, 1953). However, at the beginning of his well-known “Methodology” essay, Friedman attributes the dichotomy to John Neville Keynes (1852–1949), in his book The Scope and Method of Political Economy (1891). John Neville Keynes was the father of the famous John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), whose work during the Great Depression of the 1930s advocating activist government anticyclical policy was by far the most important contribution the discipline of economics has yet made to the cause of human welfare. 4. Andrew Wendt, “Why a World State is Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 9(4): 491–542, December 2003. Wendt’s article elicited a comment by Vaughn P. Shannon: “Wendt’s Violation of the Constructivist Project: Agency and Why a World State is Not Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 11(4): 581– 587, December 2005, to which Wendt replied: “Agency, Teleology and the World State: A Reply to Shannon,” European Journal of International Relations 11(4): 589–598, December 2005. 5. Some examples of writing on the problems of the world and the need for “a new way of thinking” to cope with these problems include the following: Robert B. J. Walker, One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988); Harlan Cleveland, Birth of a New World: An Open Moment for International Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993); Richard A. Falk, On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995); Joseph Rotblat, ed., World Citizenship: Allegiance to Humanity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Amitai Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: Norton, 2006). 6. By common consensus, the United States of America is currently the “single most powerful nation in the world,” both economically and militarily. Understandably, therefore, there is a substantial literature that amounts essentially to advice given by various authorities to the U.S. national government as to what its policy toward the world ought to be. In addition to several works previously cited that fall into this category, some further recent examples include: David Held and Mathias KoenigArchibugi, eds., American Power in the 21st Century (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004); Strobe Talbott, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008); Leslie H. Gelb, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). The vague and nebulous recommendations to be found in these kinds of writings are completely consistent with the

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“grand convergence” envisioned in this book. As a loyal, patriotic citizen of the United States of America, it is the fervent hope of this author that both the citizen body and the national leadership of this great nation will eventually see the light, so that the United States will come forward to assume a leading role in guiding humanity toward a better world.

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absolute gap, 76, 194 absolute monarchy, 60, 122 Afghanistan, 14, 35, 117, 144, 165 AIDS, 83, 88, 192 alliances, 158 Allison, Graham, 168 al-Qaeda, 170 altruism, 111 Amstutz, Mark, 208 anarchists, 115, 223 Anatomy of Peace, The, 129 Angell, Norman, 174 Anticipations, 179 Arab conquests, 143 Archduke Francis Ferdinand, 13, 82, 144, 161, 167, 173 Aristotle, 121 Asian tiger nations, 89 Association to Unite the Democracies (AUD), 34 Athens, 38 atmospheric pollution, 83 atomic bombing, 114, 128, 160 Austro-Hungarian empire, 13, 148, 161, 172 Austro-Prussian War, 64 balance of power, 49, 159, 170 Balkan Wars, 173 Baruch, Bernard, 129 believability, 100 benchmark parameter values, 97, 103, 105 benchmark WEEP simulations, 92, 97, 101 benign convergence, 199 Benn, Tony, 130

better world, 185 bicameralism, 124 big ideas, 215 bin Laden, Osama, 14, 143, 168 binding triad, 134 Bloch, Ivan, 174 boat drifting down a river, 186 Bolshevik revolution, 87 Borgese, Giuseppe, 130, 134 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 13, 173 brainstorming, 179 brinkmanship, 12, 161 British Commonwealth, 155 British revolutionary period, 147 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 165 bureaucracy, 2, 203 bureaucratic strait-jacket, 187 Bush, George W., 26 Canada, 64, 86, 209 cancers, 73 capital city (FUDN), 38 capitalism and socialism, 11, 22, 60, 207, 216 Case for a Global Marshall Plan, The, 91 Catch 22, 208 Center for War-Peace Studies, 134 Chicago, University of, 130 chicken or the egg, 205 China, 11, 23, 26, 33, 38, 43, 74, 76, 80, 86, 97, 99, 105, 138, 142, 164, 182, 207, 209 Christian fundamentalists, 169 Christiansen, David, 134 Church, George J., 91 Churchill, Winston, 1

240

INDEX

Citizens for Global Solutions, 223 Civil War (U.S.), 45, 113, 209 civilizations vs. empires, 117 Clark, Grenville, 130 Cobb, Charles W., 94 Cobb-Douglas function, 94, 102 coexistence, peaceful, 142, 154 Cold War, 2, 11, 58, 66, 81, 85, 102, 108, 117, 132, 136, 144, 155, 158, 164, 185, 200, 206, 216, 226 collective security, 129, 158, 161, 214 colonial empires, 43, 80, 148 Columbia, 83 Commission on Global Governance, 162 common language, 30, 61, 64, 70 Common Progress, 91, 185, 202, 210, 212, 226 Commonwealth of Independent States, 155 communications, 44, 109, 120, 122, 148, 179, 199, 210, 226 communism, 11, 60, 87, 111, 148, 183, 206, 221 computer simulations, 5, 72, 78, 106 concave step functions, 126 Concert of Europe, 158 Congress (U.S.), 124 Congress of Vienna, 127, 158 constant geometric growth rate, 76 Constitution (European), 66 Constitution (Federal Union of Democratic Nations), 36, 42, 46, 55, 140, 145 Constitution (Federation of Earth), 130 Constitution (United States), 27, 46, 124 constraints on freedom and sovereignty, 150 containment, 86 continuous relationship, 204 conventional world federalists, see traditional world federalists convergence, 199

conversion effectiveness coefficient, 96, 103 corrupt bureaucrats, 96, 104 cotton gin, 45 creation myths, 156 critical mass, 147 Crozier, A., 126 Crucé, Emeric, 122 Crude Redistribution, 92, 184, 201, 210, 227 Crusades, 14, 141 Cuban missile crisis, 161 cultural differences, 139, 209 customs union, 64 Czar Nicholas II, 173 Czechoslovakia, 172 Darwinian natural selection, 128 decision-making under uncertainty, 153 delinquent in taxes, 57 democracy, 33, 35, 60, 120, 149, 176, 189, 217 democratic market socialism, 60 Denmark, 85 development assistance, 4, 16, 20, 29, 84, 226 Development Assistance Committee (DAC), 84 dictators, 24, 35, 60, 82, 182, 195, 219 diminishing marginal productivity (returns), 78, 100, 226 dinosaurs, 106 directed contributions, 55 disarmament, 47, 119, 132, 166, 191 dishonest businessmen, 72, 96, 104, 108 dissolution (FUDN), 6, 27, 70 dissolution (USSR), 11, 60, 82, 155, 164, 221 diversity, 59, 136, 139, 144, 178, 204, 209 Douglas, Paul H., 94 drug war, 83 dual voting, 4, 31, 40, 125, 132, 136, 149, 154, 176, 185, 201

INDEX

Dubois, Pierre, 121 dysfunctional myth, 156 dystopia, 182 East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 81 East-West conflict, 91, 137, 201 Eastern Europe, 11, 51, 60, 80, 86, 142, 155, 201, 221 econometric methodology, 89 economic convergence, 28, 71, 202 economic inequality (gap), 3, 12, 16, 23, 29, 58, 61, 73, 76, 90, 92, 191, 193, 202, 210, 225 Economic Security Council (UN), 163 economies of scale, 56, 109, 112 education, 5, 94, 100, 107, 133, 144, 177, 183 effectiveness coefficient, 96, 103 Einstein, Albert, 129 empires, 43, 80, 117, 142, 148, 172, 182 En Route to Global Occupation, 131 end days, 169 end of history, 203 English language, 30, 34, 58, 62 environment, 10, 16, 48, 70, 74, 83, 106, 112, 133, 154, 162, 168, 177, 191, 200, 206, 220, 227 European Coal and Steel Community, 65 European Commission, 65 European Parliament, 65 European Recovery Program, 85 see also Marshall Plan European Union, 65, 67, 123, 197, 209 evolution not revolution, 8, 220 executive power, 36 exit strategy, 6, 188, 228 experiment, 6, 22, 28, 115, 202 exponential population growth, 17 Falk, Richard, 3 Federal Republic of the World, 130

241

Federal Union Constitution, see Constitution (FUDN) Federal Union of Democratic Nations (FUDN), 3, 9, 26, 28, 31–70, 84, 91, 102, 106, 114, 125, 132, 136, 147, 154, 157, 176, 183, 185, 188, 192, 195, 199, 201, 209, 212, 216, 221 federal vs. unitary state, 36, 59 Federation of Earth, 130 finances (FUDN), 55 First World nations, 18, 86, 90, 105, 109, 117, 195, 207 foreign aid, 20, 72, 84, 86, 94, 96, 100, 103, 108, 111, 115 foreign aid skeptics, 88, 108, 115 foreign development assistance, 4, 16, 20, 29, 84, 226 fossil fuels, 110 Foundations of the World Republic, 130 France, 13, 25, 50, 65, 80, 164, 172, 209 Franco-Prussian War, 48, 64, 158, 172 fraud detection and prevention, 109 free trade, 61, 64 free-rider problem, 159 freedom, 10, 33, 43, 58, 140, 150 French Revolution, 25, 122, 148, 220 French wars, 122 FUDN, see Federal Union of Democratic Nations General Assembly (UN), 134, 163, 197, 206 generalized capital, 5, 94, 101, 226 Genesis, Book of, 61 geometric growth, 76 German wars, 122, 159 Germany, 7, 13, 24, 33, 50, 60, 65, 80, 127, 148, 159, 165, 172, 180 global civil society, 161 Global Competition Office (UN), 163 global governance, 153, 155

242

INDEX

global Marshall Plan, 3, 5, 16, 19, 28, 41, 54, 61, 70, 71, 77, 84, 90, 97, 100, 107, 115, 194, 199, 203, 225 global warming, 4 global welfare state, 40, 69, 71, 92, 131, 137, 210, 227 globalization, 222, 226 good news-bad news, 73 Goodspeed, Stephen, 206 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 164 Gore, Al, 4 governance, 36 graft and corruption, 108 grand convergence, 30, 199 Great Depression, 23 Great Dilemma of World Organization, The, 133 Great Illusion, The, 175 Great Terror (Stalinist), 23, 25, 183, 215 Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 81 Greeks (ancient), 120 Guantanamo Bay, 26 gulag archipelago, 215 Gulf War, 80, 170 Habicht, M., 125 Hague Disarmament Conferences, 48 happy medium, 2, 150, 157, 188 Harvard University, 130, 168 have-not nations, 80 Healing the World, 134 Heater, Derek, 121 heterogeneity, 67, 136, 204, 208 Hiroshima, 114, 128, 160 Hitler, Adolf, 24, 50, 60, 114, 117, 127, 143, 161, 165, 167, 170, 182, 211 Hobbes, Thomas, 1 homogeneity, 67, 205, 212 Hoover, Herbert, 27 House of Commons, see Parliament (U.K.) House of Lords, see Parliament (U.K.)

House of Representatives (U.S.), see Congress (U.S.) Hudson, Richard, 133 human capital, 5, 95, 100, 107 human experiment, 6 human sacrifice, 156 humanitarian intervention, 54 Hussein, Saddam, 35, 82, 171 Hutchins, Robert M., 129 hysterical paralysis, 217 ideological conf lict, 11, 23, 50, 60, 68, 80, 82, 87, 128, 136, 140, 143, 147, 164, 184, 200, 206, 215 immigration, 68 imperialism, 117 impossibility (of world government), 189 impossible dream, 185 inconvenient truth, 4, 79 independent military forces, 4, 29, 31, 125, 137, 145, 154, 190, 201 India, 39, 44, 74, 86, 97, 138, 141, 165, 210 Indonesia, 44, 83 inequality (economic), see economic inequality (gap) inertial conservatism, 213, 217 Innsbruck, Austria, 130 intellectual straitjacket, 163 interactive relationship, 29, 204, 212 International Conflict and Cooperation: An Introduction to World Politics, 208 International Court of Justice, 163 International Monetary Fund, 224 international organization, 2, 129, 181, 213, 214 Internet, 45 Iran, 140, 165, 214 Iraq, 34, 54, 81, 90, 117, 144, 165, 171, 214 Isely, Philip, 130 Israel, 141, 165, 168 Italy, 33, 65, 148

INDEX

Japan, 26, 33, 35, 49, 62, 75, 81, 89, 91, 97, 128, 210 judicial power, 36 Kah, Gary H., 131 Kant, Immanuel, 123, 158, 214 Keynes, John Maynard, 23 Khrushchev, Nikita, 161 Korean War, 129 Korovin, E. A., 206 Kuwait, 54, 82, 170 La Guerre Future, 175 Lakewood, Colorado, 130 Lambsdorff, Count Otto, 91 language, official, 58, 63, 209 languages, number of, 62 League of Democracies, 34 League of Nations, 33, 49, 122, 128, 159, 180, 198, 207, 214 legislative power, 36 Leibenstein, Harvey, 194 Lenin, Vladimir, 117 Less Developed Countries (LDCs), 1, 72, 88, 91, 99, 107, 112 Levi, Michael, 168 Lloyd, Georgia, 121 localized conflict situations, 54, 192 low-level equilibrium trap, 194 lower house, 124 lunatic fringe, 222 Luxembourg, 65, 85 Maastricht, Treaty of, 65 Malthus, Parson Thomas, 74 Man, the State and War, 166 manifest destiny, 148 Mao Zedong, 23, 26 Marshall Plan (1948–1951), 85 Marx, Karl, 22, 25, 179, 207, 215 material vote, see dual voting McCain, John, 34 McVeigh, Timothy, 26 Men Like Gods, 181 Metternich, Klemens, 158 Mexican-American War, 165

243

Mexico, 68, 77, 83, 165 migration, 68 military forces (FUDN), see Union Security Force (USF) miscalculated brinkmanship, 161, 171 model (WEEP), 92, 94, 96, 102, 106 Modern Utopia, A, 181 Monaco, 30 More, Thomas, 177 Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), 12, 157, 160 myth, 62, 153, 155 Nagasaki, 114, 128 Napoleonic wars, 127, 148 nationalism, 58, 66, 138, 146 Nature and Function of International Organization, The, 206 Nazi Germany, 24, 34, 128, 159, 182 net transfer, 97, 101 New Cyneas, The, 122 New York, sovereign state of, 150 Newfang, Oskar, 125 Newspeak, 182 no plausible scenario, 221 no taxation without representation, 44 noble experiment, 27 nonmember nations, 36, 53, 65, 67 Non-Union Affairs, Ministry of, 53 normative vs. positive, 213 North American landmass, 110 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 34, 166 North-South gap, 91, 137, 201 Norway, 85, 101 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), 164 Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, 168 nuclear war, 10, 17, 128, 154, 160, 166, 190, 206 nuclear weapons, 1, 3, 9, 18, 35, 42, 46, 54, 105, 114, 127, 137, 157, 160, 164, 175, 182, 190, 200, 211, 219, 226

244

INDEX

OECD in Figures, 84 Official Development Assistance (ODA), 85 official language, 58, 63, 209 Oklahoma City, 26 omnipotent world state, 3, 8, 114, 129, 132, 157, 176, 188, 190, 201, 204, 211, 214, 227 On Nuclear Terrorism, 168 open borders, 69 open door policy, 42, 67, 228 opinion polling, 148 organic part of history, 203 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 84 Orwell, George, 182 Ottoman empire, 121, 141, 148, 173 Our Global Neighborhood, 162 overpopulation, 19 pacifists, 223 Paintin, H. J., 126 paralysis, hysterical, 217 Parliament (U.K.), 44, 124 Patriot Act, 26 Pauling, Linus, 130 peaceful coexistence, 142, 164 peacekeeping, 54, 163, 198, 214 People’s Republic of China, see China perfect voting system, 136 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 158, 214 Persian Gulf War, 80, 170 plant and equipment, 5, 94, 107, 110 plundering expeditions, 80 Poland, 34, 161, 172, 180 police state, 200 policy simulations (WEEP model), 85, 96, 101 population growth, 1, 10, 16, 18 population vote, see dual voting positive vs. normative, 213 powder-keg of Europe, 173 preemptive defense, 117 premature specificity, 3

Princip, Gavrilo, 13, 167 production function (WEEP model), 94, 102 productivity differential source coefficient, 95, 103 Prohibition, 27 proletariat, 22 properly designed, 1, 8, 11, 26, 28, 100, 152, 182, 203, 229 Protestant Reformation, 142, 209 Proud Tower, The, 171 provisional basis, 5, 72, 202, 228 Provisional World Parliament (WCPA), 130 Prussia, 64, 172 psychological factors, 29 purchasing power parity (PPP), 74, 101 quasi-anarchy, 157 Quebec, 64 quinquennial elections, 37 racial voting basis, 135 Reagan, Ronald, 117 real factors, 29 redistribution, 69, 131, 165 religion, 12, 14, 32, 45, 58, 116, 119, 136, 143, 200, 207, 212, 216 religious ideologies, 139 religious voting basis, 135 representation and voting (FUDN), 38 Reves, Emery, 129 Revolutionary War (U.S.), 147 revolutions, 8, 220 Ricardo, David, 22, 64, 107 Rider, Fremont, 133 risky experiment, 28 robust results, 97 rogue state, 166 Roman empire, 80, 115, 119, 142, 149 Rome, Treaty of, 65 Russian Federation, 65, 88, 155, 164, 191, 221

INDEX

Russian Revolution, 11, 220 Rwanda, 54, 173 SALT treaties, 54, 174 Sarajevo, 13, 82, 161, 167, 174 scientific method, 16, 28, 62, 73, 93, 109, 213 Searchlight on Peace Plans, 121, 129 secession from FUDN, 29, 33, 57, 120, 149, 202 Second World nations, 86 selected sensitivity analyses, 103 Senate (U.S.), see Congress (U.S.) sensitivity analysis, 97, 102 separation of powers, 36 separatism, 43, 64, 144 September 11, 2001, 139, 186 Serbia, 13, 82, 161, 167 simulations (computer), 5, 72, 78, 85, 96, 101, 105 slavery (U.S.), 27, 45, 138 small nations, 135 small states (U.S.), 124 social infrastructure capital, 5 socialism and capitalism, 11, 22, 60, 207, 216 Sohn, Louis, 130 Somalia, 54, 214 South Korea, 89 sovereignty, 2, 14, 36, 67, 113, 149, 163, 176, 179, 211 Soviet Union, 11, 13, 23, 25, 30, 51, 60, 66, 80, 82, 86, 110, 128, 155, 164, 166, 185, 206, 215, 221 Spain, 141, 143 Stalin, Joseph, 23, 114 Star Wars, 117 START treaty, 174 step functions, 125 Streit, Clarence, 33 subsidiarity, 56 super-alliance, 34, 123, 158, 180, 214 supernational patriotism, 29, 41, 59 Switzerland, 209

245

Taiwan, 89 Taliban, 14 taxation (FUDN), 55 televangelists, 222 tendentious terminology, 177 terrorists, 15, 17, 26, 82, 168, 195 Texas, sovereign state of, 150 Things to Come, 180 Third World nations, 16, 86, 91, 99, 105, 110, 117, 194, 200, 208, 221 Thirty Years’ War, 142 Time magazine, 91 total factor productivity coefficient, 94, 103 totalitarian, 24, 32, 114, 154, 200, 203, 212, 227 tower of Babel, 61 trade (international), 64 traditional world federalists, 3, 32, 114, 157, 176, 188 transfer allocation function (WEEP model), 94 transfer fund, 71, 78, 92, 96, 100, 104 Transitional Codicil, 36, 55 transportation, 44, 68, 110, 133, 179, 197, 226 Treaty of Maastricht, 65 Treaty of Rome, 65 Treaty of Versailles, 25, 50, 123, 127, 159 tripartite separation, 32, 36 triple voting system, 134 Troia, Portugal, 130 truncated functions, 125 Tuchman, Barbara, 171 Tutu, Desmond, 130 umbrellas, 153 unintended consequences, 215 Union Chamber of Representatives, 37, 45, 134 Union Chief Executive, 37, 225 Union Districts, 37 Union High Court, 37

246

INDEX

Union Now, 33 Union Security Force (USF), 52 unitary vs. federal state, 36, 59 United Nations, 2, 20, 31, 42, 50, 54, 85, 102, 122, 128, 132, 154, 157, 162, 168, 176, 180, 188, 198, 214, 224 United States of America (U.S.), 14, 15, 26, 40, 46, 76, 82, 86, 90, 100, 113, 117, 124, 128, 138, 161, 165, 170, 180, 209 upper house, 124 USSR, see Soviet Union utopia, 177 validation simulation (WEEP model), 96 Versailles, Treaty of, 25, 50, 123, 137, 159 Vietnam, 44, 87, 90 Volunteer Force (UN), 163 voting weight, 4, 40, 55, 124, 133, 176, 210 Waltz, Kenneth, 166 warheads, nuclear, 47, 165, 186 wars of Islamic expansion, 143 WEEP, see World Economic Equalization Program WEEP model, 92, 94, 96, 102, 106 Wells, H. G., 179 Wendt, Alexander, 214 white collar crime, 108 Whitney, Eli, 45 Why a World State is Inevitable, 214 Wilson, Woodrow, 180 withdrawal from the FUDN, see secession World Bank, 12, 15, 40, 73, 82, 88, 96, 103, 224

World Bank dataset, 96, 103 World Brain, 181 World Citizenship and Government, 121 World Constituent Assembly, 130 World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA), 130 World Development, 97, 100, 104 World Development Authority, 138 World Development Indicators, 40, 97 World Disarmament Conference, 50 World Economic Equalization Program (WEEP), 3, 28, 41, 55, 61, 71–112, 133, 138, 191, 199, 201, 225 world federalism/federalists, 2, 32, 47, 114, 129, 157, 163, 176, 188 World Federalist Association, 163 world government proposals, 129 World Parliament (Federation of Earth), 130 World Peace through World Law, 130 World Trade Center, 141 World War I, 13, 25, 48, 51, 80, 82, 121, 127, 144, 159, 167, 171, 180, 220 World War II, 2, 13, 23, 30, 34, 44, 47, 49, 54, 60, 66, 80, 85, 89, 91, 110, 114, 127, 135, 142, 148, 159, 167, 180, 214, 219 World War III, 48, 51, 82, 129, 144 World Wide Web, 130, 198 worldwide welfare state, see global welfare state Wright brothers, 189 Wynner, Edith, 121, 129 Yugoslavia, 54, 164, 173 Zollverein, 64