Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Globalizing Bellamy (Finaly Essay) (H3) Part 2






Currently no international or regional body had the power to do this but I do not think this will be permanent.  I believe that the world is moving to a point where states will eventually surrender some of their sovereignty to a much large region or international entity that will have the power to enforce its rulings and bring member states into line.  We will call this body the Regional Authority (RA) for the purposes of discussion.  The RA will be able to level economic sanctions like the UN, and be able to shift political power against dissident members, but also be able to bring military and legal power to bare to force members to comply with rulings.  Have surrendered their right to refuse, in the RA, China will not be able to refuse the South China Sea ruling, because they will not have the right or the power too.  The RA will have to be set up in such a way that reduces the ability of large members to use it for their own benefit against the interests of smaller, less powerful nations.  States will have much less power individually.  By giving up some of their sovereignty they will give up some of their ability to self-administer unchecked.  One thing they will likely give up, for example, is police powers.  Although each state will have its own police the RA will have its own police force with the authority to operate in any nation in the RA they are dispatched to and to cross borders freely in the same way that federal police in the US are not bound by county or state lines.  Local authorities will not have the power to hinder them legally as long as they do not step outside their bounds since states will have given up this right.  This seems bad, but this force will not be the tool of a police state, since the police force will work for an organization run by and made up of the member states, it will be a very important and powerful tool of enforcing international law and reducing crime.  Another thing it will likely have is a more liberal authority to dispatch peace keeping forces.  Currently, the UN Security Council need a unanimous vote, not counting abstentions or absences, to launch a military intervention into a conflict.  This has happened once, during the Korean war.  It only happened because, by a fluke of chance, the Soviets had just withdrawn their UN delegation in protest and were absent of the vote (Ahh those wily Russians), allowing the US to rally the Council to a unanimous vote for intervention in the Korean peninsula.  This is never going to happen again under the current UN, there is just too much faction, political posturing, and jockeying for anyone but the post-WW II United States, in a council made up of post-WW II countries, minus the soviet, to ever do that again.  No nation will ever get that perfect storm of circumstance, influence, and chance again.  Yes, I used the word again a lot there. I all seriousness though this is why the current United Nations is so ineffective.  The safe guard put in place to prevent it from being arbitrary or abusive mean, because of the multitude of different voices and very different opinion and goals, that it is almost impossible to get anything truly significant done.  When attempts are made it is often a debacle.  The RA will have to have strict, but looser parameters.  Let’s say the RA has ten members on its Security Council, Instead or requiring unanimous vote by everyone who does vote.  They should require a majority but not unanimity.   Let’s say they have a four/fifth rule.  So if all ten members vote, only eight vote are needed to approve an action.  I would say that no more 30-40% percent of the seats should be permanent if there are any permanent seats.  Under this kind of organization decisive action is far more likely to happen, and although military enforcement should never be the first option.  Sometimes it is needed and the ability of the RA to do so will be important. 
A regional or International body like the RA, I think is inevitable.  The search for great control and security in a world where a countries sovereignty means less and less for control in the face of International corporations, international crime and terror, and other non-governmental organizations, legal or otherwise.  The world is not such a big place anymore.  Individual nations used to be able to operate as separate, independent entities.  They could be self-sufficient and self-contained and did not need others to operate.  But as the world gets more and more interconnected that is more and more impossible.  Boarder control is a great example, international criminals are finding new and better ways, day by day to get around even board control for countries like the United States.  Then there are matters like food supplies, fuel supplies, products, raw materials, the list goes on.  Whatever your country needs to survive, it probably needs to get it from somebody else.  Personal interconnectedness is another thing.  More and more people are traveling, their exploring the world, and they are living out in it.  Expatriates from every country live in nations all over the world and particularly in America and the West.  These people may or may not assimilate into their adopted society, but no matter what they will bring in their own culture and they will stay connected with theirs.  This is causing a mixing, as cultures and civilizations meet and bleed into each other the lines become more and more blurred.  The only way countries, in the years ahead, will be salvage the loss of control these factors create is to unite into a stronger body or to break down into smaller more manageable ones.  Personally, I do not think breaking down will prove effect, or is likely.  So we will have to go bigger.  We will have to make something like the RA.  It might not be anything a big and grand as United Earth or the Imperium of Man, but we will have to develop something moving forward.  I do not think it is a matter of survival, it is a matter of the tides of the world and where they are taking us.



I am sure, looking backward from 100 years in the future or so the people of the planet earth of 2116 will think how unusual and unstable this time was.  They will also probably think we were all idiots, but that is another blog post for another time.  I also think they will be able to look back on the results of Globalization after they have more or less reached their conclusion and be able to judge it for the best or for the worst.  We unfortunately, can only look forward try to guess what will happen and make the best out of our current situation.  So now that we have looked back ward and we have also looked forward a bit at where things are likely headed.  Let’s tell a bit of a story, and see how things fit if we place them into Bellamy’s proto-Globalization model.  Over the next ten year NGO’s of all kind grow increasingly powerful.  Corporations become even more exploitative of smaller poorer nations, and lack of international regulations means that little can be done.  At the same time the UN is helpless to do anything do to political divisions within it.  Nations, especially rising states like China, will take this opportunity to assert their own authority at the expense of others. Seeing that the UN will not help them, and not having enough power to act on their own Regional bodies will form.  They will regulate ad bring into line NGO’s and international corporations first.  Slowly, more and more power will be given to them until these regional bodies become “Great Trusts”, massive political, military, and economic unions with member state and likely member corporations as well.  It is likely that several of these will form and might eventually merge into great state of their own over time.  What these states will likely do is generate economic stability and growth, positive cultural feed back and flow, as well as peace, once these larger bodies will prevent military disputes between members, and will not likely go to war with each other.
Now for what everyone is thinking this sounds great but it’s a lot of politics, where’s the philosophy?  Well let’s talk about Bellamy for a moment.   He is known mostly for what has been called Happy Socialism. Because the socialist paradise of the great Trust comes about peacefully and not through armed revolution.  Being a socialist he was influenced by Marx’s and. Of course, Hegel.  Hegel, a I am sure you all remember.  Was famous for his conception of the inevitability of history.  It was all leading up to one point, the end of history when it all makes sense.  If you want to trace this even farther back this actually goes as far back as Saint Augustine.  Before Augustine, Democritus basically set the mold for the circular conception of time in the west until Augustine, who mainstreamed the linear conception of time, which culminated in the completion of history with the second coming.  For Hegel it ends with perfect knowledge, for Marx with the Communist utopia and Bellamy with the Great Trust.  Many other philosophers have put forth ideas about the end of history.  Bellamy I think stands out among his more modern counterparts because he actually might have hit the nail on the head with his socialism with a smile, the new world order won’t come in fire or revolution, but with the stroke of a pen, and the creation of Regional Authority.  
When you say world government many people get nervous.  It makes people think of big centralized government controlling everything leaving the people of the world at it's mercy, usually the beast and the antichrist, the red terror, or numerous other political or religious symbols get thrown in.  We have every reason to think that. When you think world government you think of the Soviet Union wanting to dominate the world, of Hitler wanting to cleanse it of his "undesirables"  We think of imperialism, and tyranny.  As American,s the most powerful nation in the world.  We only see the potential for us to become less powerful and become subject to the whims of others.  Something all powerful nations fear.  It doesn't have to be though,  I do not see world government as Orwellian, but rather Bellaminian, it a brave new and much smaller world with a smile. There is the potential for abuse but no more than our current forms of government,  for that matter no less potential for overthrow if true abuse is present.  their is the potential for a whole world of good people often ignore.  It could be a force for good, a force for peace and for acceptance, and for liberty.  This is where Bellamy's true lesson comes in.  The future is not in the hands of the politicians, and businessmen, and lawmakers of the present. Even if the Regional authority, or world government is inevitable it's form is not.  It's in the hands of those of tomorrow, whether we get the Great Trust, or Big Brother, it is up to us whether to take the path we know, or try something different.  I hope Robert Frost will not mind, if I periphrases his words.



Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Past their:
To watching eyes at every pass
high iron gates,
From there I could not have turned back.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
It was unseen and unheard
without a marker of its path
Without a sign of where it led
Free of any ill of good
Of Iron gates, 
Or something worse yet.
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
I kept iron gates for another day
I trod that uncertain path
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this without a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, 
one was certain, 
and one less
 and I— I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.























1 comment:

  1. "It might not be anything a big and grand as United Earth or the Imperium of Man," - or the United Federation of Planets?

    "I do not think it is a matter of survival, it is a matter of the tides of the world and where they are taking us." - But won't it have to be perceived as a matter of survival, before enough of the world's (and our) many nationalists concede the urgency of accepting the loss of national sovereignty? If they don't concede, can consolidation possibly succeed?

    You're a dreamer, Bryce, but you're not the only one. I for one would welcome a more responsible seat of authority than Washington D.C., especially going forward. Wake me when the Regional Authority comes!

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