A global government

While a major step has been achieved by those countries at the G20 summit in overcoming the financial and economic crisis, it nonetheless excludes the remaining 15 per cent of countries which contribute to global trade. The world therefore needs a more practicable mechanism in ensuring all countries are engaged in the decision-making processes on policy and co-ordinated responses to global issues that infiltrate national boundaries.

This practicable mechanism could be achieved by means such as the establishment of a “global government” structure or alternatively by a greater solidification of the global governance structure presently in existence. Such a more globalised structure approach would need to embrace all nations, regardless of their social, political, and economic systems; embrace all citizens of the world regardless of religion and race; and have the mechanisms, power and authority to formulate and enforce legislation globally.

This framework would need to consist of agreed common goals and principles of engagement, including universality, rule of law, subsidiarity, democracy, solidarity, equity, and human rights. Many of these guiding principles of engagement, as also detailed in Christopher Hamer’s “A Global Parliament: Principles of a World Federation” are already recognised in varied degrees by nation-states forming the European Union, and the United Nations as part of its Charter and Conventions.

Arguably, the nearest the modern world has in terms of a world government and a governance structure is the United Nations and the various international institutions, including the International Criminal Court, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Health Organisation.

The United Nations is, however, currently viewed as purely a token forum for discussion and co-ordination between sovereign governments, and does not have the enforceable authority to be deemed a truly global government. Nevertheless, the opportunity exists to transform and strengthen the United Nations into a truly legitimate global government.

One of the many challenges in reconstructing a model of global government is in determining a balance between nation-states retaining a level of sovereignty over domestic affairs, ensuring some level of national sovereignty and cultural identity, however required in tandem to conform within a global governance framework when it comes to matters that go beyond national borders.

The reality is that the formation of a truly “global government” is currently an unlikely one. Before a genuine “global government” can come to fruition, in part, the attachment of citizens to their own sovereignty needs to be diminished, a greater community connectedness through common values is needed in creating a more unified global village, as well as an element of loosening of political power at the national level and transferred to the international level.

In the meantime, there must be a continued, united, global determination in strengthening international governance and mitigating threats to global stability. The G20 London Summit may have sown the first seeds of a paradigm shift in our still newly born second millennia, in forming the evolutionary building blocks of a new world order for a more global oriented unitary system of governance in dealing with modern international challenges.

The opportunity now avails itself in enabling international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and International Criminal Court to be further strengthened and given greater legitimacy in ensuring more effective monitoring, greater legislative authority, enforceability and accountability in imposing international law and regulations at a national level.

Greater synchronisation of nation-state based action via a multilateral framework will be required to ensure the greater likelihood of successful outcomes in combating other deepening global challenges such as climate change; entrenched global poverty; crimes against humanity; nuclear weapons proliferation; conflicts between and within nation-states including the war on terrorism; and stemming the ever-increasing international crime such as the war on drugs.

The global financial and economic crisis and the ever noticeable perils of climate change, have clearly demonstrated that a more co-ordinated and pressing international response is imperative in confronting these and prospective global oriented issues that are not, as yet, on our radar.

Until such time as this ideal world state paradigm shift is realised, the world will continue to deal with issues of a borderless and non-discriminatory nature in a fragmented and nationalistic fashion, and likely fulfil Albert Einstein’s prophecy - “There is no salvation for civilisation, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government”.