Home
Previous letters
Subscribe
Useful links
About me
Contact me
|
WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 47
View full list of previous letters
Receive future letters by email
WCL 47 May 1999
The wrong world government
Those opponents of world government who dismiss the idea as something impractical and unwanted even if it were possible, need to examine more carefully what NATO is doing at the present time, because what we have in the bombing of Serbia is an example of the wrong sort of world government, partial, unjust, erratic, not judicially but politically motivated, incompetent and flawed in many ways. Nevertheless, whether or not we like it, this is a form of world government; a limited world government that is engaged in altering the course of world history, in despite of the wishes of the majority of the people in the world who take a political interest in current affairs.
The NATO world government is one which will pick on areas of particular concern to the wealthy and will treat them as favoured, will expend treasure and time to reform them nearer to the design of some NATO leaders; and will ignore much of the rest of the globe. Led at present by the American government, supplemented by the British prime minister, it is hell-bent on enforcing its own limited view of the need to reform the world. Thus Iraq is singled out for treatment, while Ruanda will be left to squalid disaster. Kosovo will be "protected" by bombing, while the Congo will wallow in a mire of war and corruption. And this will be accompanied by a positive barrage of propaganda, explaining why everything is being done with the best will in the world. The message will come forth on the waves of American technology that lap the world and bathe it in a bath of Anglophone culture.
So if what we have is not to our liking, what should be done? First, we must return to the sole institution representing the world as a whole, but we cannot do this while the United Nations is so impotent that it cannot even require explanation of the NATO leadership but must await its bidding and then bring a begging-bowl to enable the organization to continue working. The need for UN reform is now so clear and urgent that without it not even the pretence of UN sufficiency will be left. Perhaps we should thank Slobodan Milosevic for finally exposing the United Nations as the ineffective sham that it has become as far as preserving peace - its primary function - is concerned.
The UN must, above all, be democratised. The nonsenses in the Charter will have to be remedied or the organization will be totally unable to function usefully. First, the notion of sovereign equality of members that are equal in nothing except a theoretical legality will have to go. It gives them neither power nor self-respect but allows often unrepresentative leaders to strut meaninglessly but proudly across a world stage. Nor will it gain either the respect or the finance needed without serious reform. In the UN, corruption is endemic when the alliance of powerlessness and show can be displayed as if it were a means for keeping the world peaceful.
But we must go beyond that, and introduce at a world level that fundamental unit of democracy - the individual. We must count heads so that it is people who are represented at the United Nations, not governments. We have to ensure that a world democracy emerges and within the UN system people are enabled, so that the interests that all of us have in peace, stability, equality, justice and the preservation of a stable environment are safeguarded. Nothing less will suffice and only such a reform will start the process of replacing the NATO-world government that we have, by one the one that we need. That, devoted to the interests of the whole world, instead of to a partial and self-interested group, will only be a practical proposition if it turns out to be some form of world federal government.
John Roberts
Comment on this letter
View full list of previous letters
Receive future letters by email
Comments on this letter
|
|