Martin LeFevre: A Workable Global Polity, Part Two

The hard truth is that UN commitments, beginning with the Millennium Goals, aren't being met. The vast majority of efforts within the international framework amount to spinning wheels, going nowhere. Soon the machinery is going to grind to a halt, and then where will we be? There is urgent work to be done.

Little or nothing is actually happening outside the international paradigm. There is no effective Global Polity, though the UN framework is dead and gone. No Global Polity competes with the UN framework for attention. Not that it should, but perhaps there must be a competition of ideas before there can be a cooperation of bodies.

A Global Polity will never be an institution. A GP is a process of effective global citizenship on one hand, and a body of effective (though non-power-holding) global citizens on the other.

Let’s make a clear distinction between the international order (UN framework), and the international institutions themselves (UN, World Bank, etc.). Seeing them as synonymous leads people to think that the only way the international institutions can work is if the international order is maintained. On the contrary, for international institutions to serve the interests of humanity, we have to let go of the obsolete international order, and create a new order in the de facto global space.

In other words, the only way to save the UN is to dump the old order before it inevitably collapses. We need to pour the foundation and erect the framework for a new order before the international order completely crumbles. It will be too late once it does. Humankind needs international institutions, but doesn’t need (and indeed, is being suffocated by) the international order.

Will the status quo of the 'UN framework' (the ruling paradigm in Europe and Canada, which is somewhat different than the more ruthlessly ruling one in the USA) ‘turn the tanker’ of human activity on this planet in time? It won't. And we can’t wish or wait for a “calamitous maelstrom…to forge tribal-like relations to survive.”

The concern with what is 'practical' is a widely used excuse to avoid dealing with issues in any other way. Unless one has to worry about where one's next meal is coming from, the first priority is radically changing oneself in the context of the
world. Politically, that means a Global Polity in some form.

The truism, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is almost universally accepted as correct. Nonetheless, very few people can envision political organization not based on power. Why? Is it inertia, fear, failure of imagination?

America’s founders sought to limit the power of the presidency through a system of checks and balances. These worked well enough within the United States until there were no checks and balances on the power of the United States itself. Bush’s Cold War triumphalism has been tempered somewhat, given the debacle in Iraq, but the presumption of power, and hope for leadership from America as “the sole remaining superpower” remains.

The bipolar balance of power grew out of the ashes in Europe (and Russia), and from the ascendancy of the USA after World War II. But the “balance of terror” between the US and USSR is gone, and the power of America, while not unchallenged, continues to go unchecked.

Perceived threats (like North Korea, Iran, and even China), offer no counterweight, only the prospect of more conflict and instability. There is not, and will not be, another international system of checks and balances, as woefully imperfect as the Cold War system was. We will have to create a global one.

The new reality requires a new understanding of and relationship to power. A decentralizing, networked world offers that opportunity, even as it presents grave dangers. If the distinction is made between power and influence (rather than “hard power” and “soft power”), then it is possible to quicken the transition from competition and coercion to cooperation and collaboration.

Thinking in terms of the larger dimension of the Global Polity does not preclude working in the smaller dimension of the international institutions. But thinking in terms of the smaller, increasingly chaotic dimension of the crumbling international order precludes living in a Global Polity.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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