Episode 11 - A WORLD PARLIAMENT AND THE CHALLENGE OF CEDING SOVEREIGNTY

This episode is a sequel to preceding Episodes 9 and 10. Here we consider the ways in which nations can be persuaded to cede a modicum of sovereignty to a democratically-elected World Parliament.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Sovaida 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, which is a sequel to the two prior episodes 9 and 10, we consider the ways in which we can persuade nations to cede a modicum of sovereignty to a democratically elected world parliament. Over the last two sessions, we started talking about a really important topic, which was the need for a collective decision making institution in the form of a world parliament that would have some certain key powers. We spoke of four powers. I'm not going to repeat them here, but one of the key ones was the ability to pass international legislation that would be binding on all the nations of the world in certain narrow areas, including climate change, global pandemics, and so on, where you have to have all the nations on board. Then last time we talked about how we ensure that such a body has democratic legitimacy. And we shared some views about how one can go establishing such a body and ended up with a firm proposal of how I believe that this is most likely to work and what we need given the urgency of the global challenges we face. Today we're going to explore the 64 million dollar question of how we can get nations to cede a modicum of sovereignty, a certain limited amount of sovereignty to such a democratically elected world parliament. This is a question that I've gotten over the years as I have shared this topic with others and it's an important one and it's a really good question. I'm just going to cut to the chase here and start by saying that ultimately it's going to take nations and our leaders recognizing, fully recognizing, and embracing the following two principles that in fact embody truths that reflect our social reality. The first principle is that the advantage of any one country in today's interconnected and interdependent world can only be guaranteed by ensuring the advantage of the whole. In other words, if one nation wants to guarantee its own self interest and the well being of its citizens, given how interconnected the world is, the only way to do it is by ensuring that the entire global community has its interests guaranteed. This harks back to, harkens back to a one of the sessions in which we talked about the fact that we've become so interconnected that we have become like a single organism, that we all either sink or swim together, that our destinies are intertwined. If this rings any bells, it's because COVID has afforded us an amazing opportunity to really learn these lessons, if we hadn't fully imbibed them. A couple of analogies that I love to use, drawn from other sources, is the analogy of the body that is interconnected, the limbs and the organs. The well being of any one part is really dependent on the health of the whole body. It doesn't make sense for the liver to say to the kidneys, "I don't care that you have cancer or a disease or you're on dialysis. I'm out for number one." And in similar fashion, it doesn't make sense for one nation to say, "My nation first, even if it's at the expense of other nations," because if the global community is not healthy, then we all suffer. And again, we'll come in a few minutes to how COVID is really teaching us this lesson, really beating us over the head with this lesson. The other analogy, an alternative one that we have also used, is the analogy of the ship with 193 cabins. Once the ship starts taking water and sinking, it doesn't make sense for people in any one cabin. Again, a cabin being a nation. To say, "Hey, there's no water in our cabin, so we're cool with this. We don't need to tend to the well being of the ship," because if the rest of the ship takes water, then the whole ship sinks, including the cabin that thought it was safe and secure. So that's the first principle that leaders and nations have to embrace. The second is to really come to an understanding that, again, given where we are in our world today. Given the evolutionary process that humanity has taken towards its maturity. The days of unfettered national sovereignty are over in this world. It is nonsensical and it is a denial of truth to say that one nation has absolute sovereignty and can do whatever it wants within its borders or otherwise. We're so interconnected that every decision we make affects everybody else. For me, the first glimmerings of that recognition came during the global financial crisis, starting 2008 with the Euro crisis and onwards. For the first time, I started to see leaders of nations saying, "Hey, it's too dangerous for anyone nation to make decisions alone without conferring with other nations, because financial decisions you may take to protect your own banks or your own nations could have a really deleterious effect on the rest of us." So all these crises that have been coming over time, have all been opportunities for us to wake up and recognize that the heyday of national sovereignty is over. Now, if history is to be a guide, the recognition of these two principles that we've just articulated will only happen once. Humanity has gone through intense, mental and physical suffering. This is a very old, dysfunctional, unfortunate habit that we have, that we tend not to think proactively. This harkens back to a session that we had about the habit of acting reactively and based on expediency. In other words, short term interests and short term analysis in terms of time, as opposed to proactively thinking long term and in the interests of the collective whole. We tend to wait until there's absolute disaster and then react. The famous historian Arnold Toynbee understood this human habit and tendency when he wrote in the 1970s that we are allergic as a humanity to the idea of global governance or world government. But he predicted that when faced with an existential crisis, which he thought would be the atom bomb and annihilation through nuclear war, that humanity would turn on a dime and right itself. And even though it would do so kicking and screaming, would opt for some form of global governance, which is what we're talking about. A world parliament is one aspect of this concept of collective governance for the good of the whole of humanity. My point about the suffering was, although this has been the old habit, we don't need to continue clinging to that habit. We can make a choice. Again, we talked about the importance of choice in one of the sessions. We can make a choice to change the way we do things. Our past does not need to equal our future. At any point when we realize that certain habits are disserving us, and do not conduce to peace and happiness, we can change them. Enter the twin crises of COVID 19 and the global economic recession. They are what I think of as midwives that are providing us with the perfect opportunity to do both things, to learn both lessons, the lessons of the two principles we talked about, and to experience deep mental and physical suffering. Let's look quickly at the first lesson about the principles of the advantage of the part only being guaranteed by guaranteeing the advantage of the whole all nations. We have come up with this very new phenomenon. We have a new phrase called vaccine nationalism, right? It's an old habit couched in new clothes, so to speak, which is nationalism. I'm looking out for the interests of my own nation first." We've seen this phenomenon in the following ways. Wealthy nations that have means and have access to the vaccine have been hoarding up the inventory of vaccine around the world. As a result, according to reports, as of last week, people in 130 countries had not received a single dose of the vaccine. If we have 193 nations in the world, that's roughly two thirds of the world's population. That is shameful. It's unacceptable. Now here's the lesson. We are now learning that if we continue to pursue vaccine nationalism, we will actually endanger our own nations, whoever, wherever we are, in at least two ways. And these are the two ways that so far have become apparent. One, as long as people in other parts of the world remain unvaccinated, new variants and mutations of the coronavirus will arise and will develop in those communities. Because as long as you allow community spread, the virus, you give it a chance to mutate. And those mutations will in turn undermine the progress that we, whoever we are in the nations that have had access to vaccines, the progress we've made amongst our populations. Because, as we're finding out, the vaccines that we've been able to administer may not be as effective and going forward, who knows with new mutations and variants, whether they'll be effective at all in countering the virus. So we're literally undermining ourselves. The second way in which we're undermining ourselves is that studies have now shown that the economic impact on nations that are wealthier and have means that have been able to hoard the vaccine will be at least as great as on nations that do not have access to the vaccine. If we're thinking, "Oh, we'll get our nations vaccinated and then we'll be able to continue life and get our economies back on track," that is a pipe dream. That's not going to happen, because the world is so interconnected and interdependent. The COVID 19 is really whacking us over the head with this lesson that we absolutely have to learn. The second way COVID is teaching us is through suffering. We know already about all the deaths and the infections around the world. As of yesterday, there were 113 million cases diagnosed around the world and two and a half million dead. But that's not the only kind of suffering. We have loss of jobs. We have people being evicted from their homes, people going hungry, including in the United States, the wealthiest country on the face of the earth. People denied access to education and housing. Violence, especially domestic violence, is on the rise. Addiction is on the rise. Deaths from overdose on drugs is on the rise and on opioids. Mental health problems are proliferating. So humanity is suffering in many different ways and everybody everywhere is suffering. The question is how long do we insist on suffering and how much more until we will heed these lessons, learn these two principles. Here's the proposal. We've had another old habit that we also talked about, saying that "Oh, we haven't been able to deal with these problems in the past, so there's no point, we're not going to be able to deal with them going forward. Our past equals, our future equals our past. We failed before, we'll fail again." What if we tried a different approach, and instead said, Let's look to a time in the past where we've actually had similarly big problems and challenges and we've actually managed to overcome them. Is there a model we can look at? What have we done before? What was it about what we did that worked? And can we apply it today to help us?" And I want to propose an amazing model. It is the model of the European Coal and Steel Community, which is a historical model really worthy of emulation that was established not too far back in our history, in the middle of the last century, the 20th century. Very quickly, story time: the story of the ECSC, the European Coal and Steel Community. At the end of the Second World War, as Europe was completely devastated in every which way because of the war, the countries of Western Europe needed massive amounts of coal and steel in order to reconstruct. They needed it for their railroads and ships and buildings and basically everything. Coal and steel in those days were the equivalent in importance to economic development to our oil, gas, and nuclear energy of today. Now, Germany was blessed with an abundance of coal and always had been. And her nemesis, France, had historically desperately needed coal in order to heat the ovens, necessary to make the steel. Germany, because it had been rich in coal and had a very strong steel industry also, had also started two world wars with the military machinery that it was able to build because of its access to coal. France, in particular, and other European countries feared that Germany, if allowed to hang on to these industries, would start a third world war. The first idea was, "Let's dismember Germany's coal and steel industries." But they soon realized if they really wanted to have a strong Western Europe, they would need to have a strong Germany. And there was a new threat on the horizon, the rise of communism in the Soviet republics. What to do? There was this conundrum, right? We need coal and steel. We're devastated. But we don't want Germany to start a new war, and yet we need Germany to be a strong buffer between the West and communism in the East. Enter an amazing human being by the name of Jean Monnet with an idea and his idea essentially reflects a wonderful quotation from Goethe who said, "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." So Mr. Monet said, "Why don't we pool all the resources, coal and steel resources of Germany, France, and any other European country that wants to, and put it in the hands of a supra national organization." This is akin to the idea of a world parliament, a supra national organization that operates above the national level and has a lot of powers and authority. The coal and steel of all these countries was to be managed by this high authority of the ECSC, and it would act for the collective benefit of all countries. Sound familiar? This is what we propose that the world parliament be able to do, to be given authority in a certain narrow sphere, or a couple of narrow spheres like in climate change, global pandemic, and so on, and be able to take decisions that were binding on the nations that were members of it. This high authority would be the joint buyer and seller of coal and steel for the whole community and would ensure that every country had equal access and equitable access to coal and steel on reasonable terms, so not exorbitant prices. And in times of crisis or shortage, it was empowered to intervene. This was an amazing new concept, and what's fascinating, and I hope to turn to it later, was that it was embraced by the leaders of France and Germany, and then another four nations, and six member states founded the ECSC. What was it about this situation and the decisions made that made it possible? Here are the lessons learned. The first was the mindset articulated by Robert Schuman, who was the foreign minister of France. He said, "World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts." So thinking outside the box, being creative, proportionate to the dangers which threaten it. I submit that today, given the dangers of the pandemic and climate change and the global economic recession and terrorism and nuclear proliferation, we have so many of them that threaten the well being of humanity that we have to make proportionate creative efforts in order to ensure world peace. Now, the second thing was that Monet was a Frenchman, but he was not nationalistic. Which was really interesting and key to the success of the ECSC. In fact, he believed in crafting a proposal that would be a win for France and Germany. Even though France and Germany had been at loggerheads and had fought wars for centuries, particularly over coal, he wanted them to be on an equal footing. He believed in the common management of common problems, which is exactly what we're proposing a world parliament would do. Common management of common problems. And he believed that we should be working for the fusion of the collective interests of Europe as opposed to trying to achieve an equilibrium between competing national interests. This is a fascinating concept that he had. This is really based on a deep understanding on his part that Europe's interests were completely fused, that it was a single organism, that the advantage of one nation could only be guaranteed by guaranteeing the advantage of the whole, as opposed to this business of, "Oh, let's just balance interests." We've tried this for centuries, balancing interests of various nations, and look at the mess our world is in. It hasn't worked so well. Time to try something different. He was able to change the culture in Europe of confrontation and control. Who has access to coal? I do. You do. Let's go. There were bits of territory on the borders of France and Germany over which wars have been fought for centuries, because each of the two countries wanted access to the coal. Imagine oil, gas, border fights and wars over access to these important resources. Now, these are all things that we need to deal with COVID, with the economic recession and with climate change, right? Exactly the same kinds of conundrums and challenges. And what's interesting is that the end of each meeting of the ECSC, Jean Manet would hammer home this point that "We're here to cooperate, not just to cooperate, but to ensure the collective interests of all our nations are met." The benefits that resulted from this simple proposal were, one, a new culture of collaboration and cooperation amongst nations in Europe and a new culture to replace the culture of war. For the first time, Europe had peace that was permanent. And to this day, we haven't had war in Western Europe because of what's now the European Union. All members had equitable access to coal and steel at reasonable prices so that they could rebuild. And when they did an analysis after the 50 years when the ECSC was supposed to shut down, all the analyses showed that indeed every country was better off having decided to act jointly than it would have been if it had gone it alone, which is, again, this is an amazing historical example. What obstacles did they need to overcome? One was letting go of sovereignty. When the parliamentarians of each of these six nations who signed on to the ECSC treaty had their debates about "Should we sign on or should we not," they had a lot of reservations. They were shocked and concerned that the supranational body would have legislative, judicial, and executive powers over their citizens while bypassing the national parliaments. It's like, What are we, chopped liver here?" Yet they overcame their reservations and threw their lot in with the ECSC, because they were convinced that ceding sovereignty in this narrow economic sector of coal and steel, albeit really important to them, and pooling these resources and acting jointly for the collective benefit would yield a better economic result, while also avoiding a future war. So they were convinced. Famously, Chancellor Adenauer of Germany said, "Wow. If we embrace the system, then it's not going to matter actually, which of France and Germany owns these pieces of property on the border that are actually coal rich, because if we all have equal access and benefit to the coal, then we don't need to fight wars, definitely, but it also actually doesn't matter who owns it. An amazing recognition. The second obstacle they had to overcome was letting go of hatred. France and Germany had a long history of intense hatred between them. It's fascinating to read the literature of the time, so we're talking 20th century, in which they talk about how they drink the milk of hatred against each other with their mother's milk. That they would always be at war, they would always be at loggerheads. Seems funny now, and not that much time has passed, just a few decades, to think of the French and the Germans having such intense hatred for each other. What gives me heart is when we think about other parts of the world where you have similar, loggerheads for centuries. And when I look at what the ECSC was able to achieve, I am very hopeful and optimistic. Bottom line, what's our takeaway from everything we've discussed today? If they could do it in Europe after the Second World War, overcome their hatred and overcome their resistance to ceding sovereignty in such an important sector, we can do it too. It's time to exercise our free will choice and to take bold and decisive action. This is something that FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, talked about a lot, about the need for bold, persistent experimentation. He says basically, "It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly. This ability to accept reality and say openly, "We failed," and then try another, but above all, try something. This harkens back to earlier conversations in the series where we talked about the fact that our nations and our leaders seem to be unable to take decisive decisions in a timely fashion. And not to constantly be doing too little too late. They need to let go of their egos, not worry about whether they're going to be re elected, do what's in the interest of humanity, try something, be agile and flexible, and try something else, and to be able to be honest and transparent with themselves and with others. So that's the first thing. Exercise free will choice to take bold and decisive action. And the second is we don't have to wait anymore to suffer a lot before we take steps. We can choose to be proactive as opposed to being reactive. So this is a choice we get to be. And finally, we can let go of who we've been in the past and how we've done things, driven by outmoded ways of thinking and outmoded habits, and start to develop new ways of thinking. Again back to the two principles that we articulated at the beginning. The advantage of the part can only be guaranteed by the advantage of the whole, and the heyday of nationalism is over. Let go of excessive nationalism, let go of the culture of competition, and replace it with a culture of collaboration, cooperation, and an institutional infrastructure starting with the world parliament, with the powers that we talked about, that is based on representation of all segments of humanity, again as we discussed last weekend, and upon the principle of consultation, which is actually the application of the principle of justice in practice. I am going to end there. I hope one of the things you're noticing is that we've been weaving a tapestry throughout. This is our 12th session, or 11th session today. All of these sessions are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or weavings in a tapestry. While each episode is standalone, they also all interrelate and build on each other. Just in today's presentation, you will see how we hearken back to a whole number of key points that we have unpacked in far greater detail in past episodes. So if something struck your fancy and you thought, "Oh, I want to learn more about that or learn about the ideas here, feel free to go back to the previous episodes and take a look. And as ever, you can also learn more about all of these topics and look at them in more detail in our book, The Alchemy of Peace, which just came out in January, that's available on Amazon anywhere you are, wherever you are around the world. By the way, I was very excited about the topic of ECSC today because it's a topic very close to my heart. It gives me hope that things are possible, that we can actually make the next quantum leap that we need to as humanity to achieve our maturity. I've actually written a lot on this. I wrote an entire book on the topic of the ECSC and why it worked in 2018 called Bridge to Global Governance. If you're interested, you can also look for that on Amazon. I don't see any comments or questions so in that case, I will end here. Take care. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.