The majority of New York’s citizens are frazzled by the traffic jams caused by the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly, wishing it would all go away to another country. People in other cities and other countries are probably glad the UN is not in their town. We all need to remember, however, we may be many countries but one world, many ethnicities but one species. Our finite resources are being consumed by wars and competition between peoples rather than cooperation to address the global crises of our time.
American President Barack Obama, on September 23, 2009, in his first address to the UN General Assembly noted the serious challenges confronting us these days. He listed some of them, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, poverty, protracted wars, pandemic disease, the pursuit of peace, and the global economic recession.
Echoing similar themes of global cooperation from his Berlin Speech in May of 2008 and his Inauguration Speech in January 2009, he declared “Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought – in world and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
President Obama went on to say to thunderous applause “The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation – one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations.” He concluded with a challenge for all there to be “honest” with each other, declaring “If we are honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we are not living up to that responsibility.”
After receiving widespread applause, the American president puzzled many by leaving the room rather than taking his place among the other leaders of nations. It was commented on by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi who followed Obama to the podium. In a long, wacky speech noted for pent-up buffoonery, Gadhafi did make certain noteworthy points. He pointed out the inequalities inherent in the U.N. Security Council, the lack of representation by the majority of nations, and the failure of the Security Council to stop war. Gadhafi mentioned “65 wars,” although they’re more than that. Nor did he mention among the few wars he listed those that had involved Libya.
On the following day, September 24, President Obama presided over a historic session of the U.N. Security Council. This was the fifth time the Security Council met since the founding of the United Nations Organization back in 1945. Despite his criticisms of the day before, dictator Gadhafi was supposed to attend as a sitting member of the 15-chair Council. He no-showed, however, being the only head-of-state that was absent. Libya’s ambassador to the U.N. took Gadhafi instead. It was, however the first time an American president actually presided over the Security Council, as the U.S. holds its rotating presidency.
In an equally historic vote, the Council members unanimously approved an American-sponsored resolution that committed all nations to work for a nuclear weapons-free planet and affirmed a world-wide effort to “lock down all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years.” The resolution combined many similar and earlier international agreements into one consolidated resolution that was in turn backed by China and Russia. Many developing nations also supported this resolution, which gave it the very global clout and strong political backing necessary to tackle this serious problem. Nuclear weapons are devices for mass murder.
President Obama, gaveling the meeting around the horseshoe-shaped table, announced after the unanimous vote that this “historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. And it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal.”
Obama went on to announce plans for a summit in April 2010 addressing issues of compliance and assistance for all nations.
The fifth U.N. Security Council gathering was unique in at least two ways. It advances the cause of world government. The U.N., however, is not itself a democratic regime. It represents nation-states, of which there are less than two hundred, while there remain many thousands of stateless-nations. A large number of those nation-states are not democratic, and of those that are, many were empires or retain remnants of empire. Not to mention the imperial and quasi-imperial nature of some of the non-democratic states. While the U.N. is part of the greater, informal Euro-American Global Empire, the leader of this quasi-imperium is the democratically elected President of the United States. As the good emperor, he is light years ahead of his peers in the movement toward global nuclear disarmament and realizing the need for unified global action.
The Soviet-American Cold War is over. Yet nuclear weapons remain and even grow in number as a threat as they seem to proliferate. Local conflicts such as between India and Pakistan, on the Korean Peninsula, and involving Israel and Iran threaten not just mass regional slaughter but the sucking in of more countries in a nuclear bloodbath. Other countries are considering joining in the nuclear arms race, and terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda seek to get their hands on such WMD. Militarization drains resources away from resolving other serious challenges.
The quicker we move our planet to representative, democratic world government the better. We all assume creating democratic world government is going to be a long, slow, tedious slog. Politicians and diplomats can make historic agreements and momentous speeches, but the real work lies in action.
An arc of chronic war stretches from Central and East Africa across the Middle East, the Balkans, Caucasia, and South Asia, skipping over to the Koreas. Potentially explosive “volcanoes” such as Kosovo, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, and Pakistan rumble and sputter with threats, alarms, and fears. Any eruption of all-out war in the Middle East and South Asia would most likely expand into a true world war. With such final unleashing of long pent-up hostilities the possibility of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction remain high. Such violence will delay the establishment of a democratic world government. In fact, it may well speed up the development of a one world dictatorship to suppress such mass destruction by force.
Democratic world government will negate this threat of war and tyranny. And as I’ve pointed out in earlier articles our choice is not between reclaiming national sovereignty versus world government but what kind of world government will we choose? World government is coming, like it or not, but will it be democratic? Not only do we have the challenges of nuclear weapons, regional and world wars, but the additional challenges of global climate disruption and a global economic recession. Both are serious challenges not well understood and, in the case of global warming, even believed by many people. It will take a united planetary response to resolve these challenges successfully. But will it be a democratic one? My stand is that we help make it so.
One pragmatic way to advance the grass roots stand for democratic world government is to vote in and vote “Yes!” in the Global Referendum for Democratic World Government. It simply asks “Do you support the creation of a directly-elected, representative, and democratic world government?”
American President Barack Obama, as current head of the U.N. Security Council, concluded that “This is not about singling out an individual nation. International law is not an empty promise, and treaties must be enforced.”
Let’s take this evolution of world law to the next step and help transform the United Nations into a truly democratic world body that represents all humanity among all the nations, including the stateless-nations, of Planet Earth.
William Dudley Bass
September 29, 2009
© by William Dudley Bass
