Notes on "one world"

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force. So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might. First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”. Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

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One of my favorite commentators, Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times's chief foreign affairs columnist, just wrote a column advocating a world government, Matthew Drudge of Matthew Drudge fame caught wind of it and prominently featured a link to it. As they say, (hollow, baritone voice) "the rest is history".

Soon it seemed as if every hoogedy boogedy wingnut in the USA had started to write in comments and after about 150 the FT shut the comments section down.

Here are a few samples:

If you don’t find the possibility of a one-world government alarming and frightening, you are a kool-aid drinker of the highest order.

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Uh, pal… have you heard of The Constitution? I’ll distill my feelings for you: fck World Gov’t, and the international bankers disguised as the Fed plans to drive an nail in the coffin of the USD.

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The planet is not in peril. Our freedoms are. Gullible warming is a ruse designed to bring about global collectivism and the world government you speak of.

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I just can’t wait to start paying “entitlements” to the impoverished in Africa.
Hit the road lefty.

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It will simply not happen. You’re dreaming. We Americans would never allow it. “Live free or die” and all that!

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And so on and so on. I dropped Gideon a line telling him he was lucky that there is no Chinese or Muslim Drudge because I'm sure many of their readers would say much the same things as the American neanderthals do, but in Chinese and Arabic.

Ironically, the only country that wants to "rule the world" is the USA. "World Government" would be seen by most Chinese and Muslims as a last attempt by the USA to prolong its hegemony, which it probably would be, and I'm sure they would express themselves colorfully too.

What might finally happen, if we are lucky, is sort of a universal "Yalta" with recognized areas of influence: Asia with the Chinese, Japanese and the Indians calling the tunes.

There would be a dividing line that would leave Pakistan, Afghanistan and all the other stans in some Muslim grouping connected to Iran and the Arab countries of the Middle East, with Turkey as a bridge to the European Union.

By then the EU will have discovered, with the Russians, how to get the best use out of their marvelous, made in heaven, synergies.

The NAFTA group will have done the same thing.

Central and South America will chafe under the direction of Brazil and Africa will probably continue to be an endless source of pain, trouble and wealth as it always has been.

The major problem that I see here, are the relics of western imperialism like Australia and Israel, that will tend to fall between the stools.

Aside from that, I imagine that it might not be too difficult to keep any conflicts that might arise in these spheres of influence contained within them and not have them spread any farther.

Instead of "one world", a world of peacefully coexisting compartments. Will this happen? Probably not for a long, long time, unless the USA really does fold up. DS