World Federalist Papers Article One: Introduction

No borders up here

The World Federalist Papers is a series of articles advocating for a World Federalist government. Like the Federalist Papers that inspired this series, we will delve into the justifications for our revolutionary system and how it will operate.

Article One

The history of Humankind has been one of growing unity between people, our first steps as a species were done in family units, then tribes, that became kingdoms, which grew into nation states. For the last 300 years humanity has largely organised itself under the nation, this in turn increased our species’ prosperity, unlocking the potential of billions.

Yet it also brought wars of unimaginable scale, inflicted the plague of Imperialism on the world and spawned the atomic bomb, a weapon whose world ending hand hangs over us all to this day. There are now live billions of people whose lives are anchored in suffering due to nationalism. It limits cooperation between peoples, it creates self-serving states that ignore the most pressing problems facing us collectively as a species. Problems such as Climate Change, Poverty, Racism, War and Terrorism remain unaddressed due to the inherit problems that are born from a world of hundreds of squabbling nation states. The solution to these problems, lies in realising the final act of human unity. Where we slip the bounds of nations to become a single, global democratic union.

This is the aim of World Federalism.

By uniting democratic states together under a single, shared federal government we can as a species effectively address the issues that face us all, and create a world free of poverty and war. Nations would act as states do currently under a national federal system, with a level of independence but ultimately following the laws passed by the central governing authority. This central government will be democratic, where all member nations would send representatives chosen from their citizenry. This would open unlimited opportunities for exchange between cultures and economies, granting the people of the world real measures to combat the issues that face us all.

Currently there are 195 countries on earth, nine of which have nuclear weapons. Each of these nations are being led in an anarchic Westphalian global order, where national sovereignty reigns supreme and the only rule of the game is to survive no matter the cost. This has led to more than 40 active conflicts at this very minute, with more powerful countries using their weaker counterparts as pawns in vicious games to achieve ideological, economic and strategic supremacy.

Attempts to stop this cycle of imperialistic conquest and war occurred after the Second World War, with the formation of the United Nations. Yet it fell short of meeting its noble aims by only creating an association of Nations, a mere gathering of ambassadors whose ability to effect change in their home countries is limited to say the least. The peace would shatter almost immediately as the United Nations was not empowered to enact laws or enforce them; nations returned to their natural state of conquest at the cost of all else. Wars flared up across the world and the greatest ideological divide in Human history, between the Democratic Bloc and the Communist Bloc would nearly drive our species to a fate worse than the most horrid imaginings of hell.

This does not need to be our fate. We could utilize the natural brotherhood that flows between democracies to unite differing nations under one flag. We could create a world where nuclear weapons do not need to exist, and instead of the trillions we waste on expensive defence forces we could use our immense wealth to end hunger, uplift the downtrodden and explore the heights of heavens. We could finally become a species who live among the stars, a species whose most laudable position to attain will not be the bloodied general, or the billionaire but instead the academic, the worker, the artist and the cosmonaut. In this cause we will at last realise the words of Isaiah and turn our swords into ploughshares, and shall not learn of war anymore.