How to truly unite nations across the globe

After the First World War ended in 1918, there was a popular vision of One World, without borders or barriers, created through reason. Our many individual national attempts at social improvements, however, have proceeded without adequate reason, without order, without sufficient perspective, without adequate confidence, without a comprehensive plan, and without a great dream.

Historically, the creation of states has not been through reason. The boundaries of almost all countries, from China, the U.S. and Mexico, to Germany, France, Italy, Greece and Turkey, are fairly arbitrary, being based on the results of military struggles in the past. These and many other countries were united by force. Our efforts to provide the infrastructure for our global civilization have been guided by anonymous builders, mediocre designers, minimalist engineers, rapacious financiers, and corrupt politicians.

Yet, the notion of a world government seems to satisfy a basic craving for unity and order. And, an implicit world system is evolving slowly through economics and science. A global order is necessary to govern the system, but, at the current stage of international relations, there seems to be no agreeable path towards such a world order.

The partial adoption of international institutions is insufficient for a world order, especially if those bodies are only advisory. The United Nations (UN) is the only existing body with the machinery for constructing such a world order. However, as long as ecological and political problems are addressed in a framework of nationalism and military power, the UN is treated as peripheral and relatively impotent. Furthermore, as it is structured, the UN is not capable of handling the responsibility for world order.

For example, restricting membership in the Security Council to powers with nuclear arsenals, or using the veto principle, indicates problems. Furthermore, even when the UN does make good recommendations, it does not have the power to coerce any nation to follow them. Rather than replace the UN, countries must revise it.

The UN has been a half-hearted investment, but it has historical appeal and wide support. It is a nascent global order, but it must have new structures and new functions, new powers and new responsibilities. Two are especially important now.

1. Protecting diversity. The UN must have real explicit responsibilities, such as the protection of biological diversity for the planet, as well as of human cultural diversity. At one time, around 1900, there were over 1,000 different human cultures and over 3,000 different languages (roughly equivalent to the number of natural biogeographical provinces, subprovinces and habitats on earth).

Cultural diversity is necessary to protect biological diversity (the ecological wealth of each country). One critical message of ecology is that if we diminish variety in the natural world, we debase its stability and wholeness. If we wish to advance human civilization, we must preserve and promote variety.

After a long trend of consolidation by colonial powers, new countries are declaring their independence. New countries, such as Kiribati, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, and Vanuatu, have recently joined the UN. Many more countries want independence based on their cultural and linguistic uniqueness.

Perhaps many of the borders drawn up by violence, in Bulgaria, Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia, among others, could be redrawn peacefully.

2. Protecting security. The UN must also be given real powers for protecting countries and for policing international terrorism. Most military powers, except for local police or National Guard, could be turned over to the United Nations (nuclear disarmament itself could be accomplished relatively quickly with complete international support).

Wars are being fought over resources and territory, as well as for religious and personal reasons, without an international referee with power or respect. Violence will continue (regardless of how well justified - and justification these days has a very dissolute and tangled history), but an international body composed of representatives of all peoples can break the cycle of attack, hatred, and revenge.

International terrorism, or criminal actions, such as those recently occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, Macedonia, and the U.S., require an international response, with an international police force, an international justice system, and an international form of punishment, so that all the countries of the world not only have a say, but have a stake in the peace process. Having the UN address international issues, as a confederacy of concerned neighbours, would do much to diffuse the polarity of one country trying to be world leader and peacemaker (especially when the U.S., for instance, is viewed as the power behind many thrones that exist only to protect U.S. economic interests).

The UN could provide support - food, health aid, engineering to a country such as Afghanistan and it would not be resented as a gift of rich people wanting a market or an ally. It would just be the act of good neighbours.