Eton College Orwell Society: 23 February 2010
Speech by Keith Best, Chair of Executive Committee, World Federalist Movement

We have just passed the sixtieth anniversary of the untimely dear of Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, and while I do not mourn the passing from office more recently of those with that name it is appropriate that I should be giving this address to the society which bears the name of a proponent of a federal socialist Europe (set out in his 1947 essay "Toward European Unity"). Being a former Conservative MP I should not subscribe to the socialist view but endorse the federalist sentiment.

Let me ask this audience two questions. Who here thinks that the idea of world government is fanciful or even insane? I see that a few of you entertain that view. Now let me ask if anyone here thinks that the world well manages its affairs, whether in terms of conflict resolution, bridging the ever increasing gap between rich and poor and ensuring a sustainable environment? No-one has put up their hands.

The idea of world government or better global governance is neither mad nor unobtainable so long as there is the political will and the acceptance of the imperative to achieve it. Many beliefs or accepted wisdom of unalterable situations have been changed in the past: the nature, shape and movement of our Earth, the evil of slavery and there remain more totems to be knocked down.

World government, of course, is not a new concept. The Roman Empire produced pax Romana through which St Paul, as a Roman citizen (civis Romanus sum), was able to appeal to Caesar to be tried in Rome. This universality of law and jurisdiction was, however, achieved by conquest and not consent. We then had the spiritual as well as temporal global governance through the universality of the Catholic Church. Inevitably, this gave rise to the conflict between canon law and national law – Thomas a Becket was sacrificed not least because of his refusal to accept the subjugation of the former to the latter. This growing nationalism and concept of sovereignty was enhanced by the doctrine of the divine right of kings, encapsulated in the cry of William Shakespeare’s Richard II:
“Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed King.”

The belief that the monarch was God on earth put that institution in a seemingly unassailable position until their vulnerability was exposed through their need for money. In the UK the personification of absolute monarchy was beheaded in Britain’s brief experiment with republicanism and when Charles II was invited to return it was with more limited and shared power. The growth of constitutionalism and the democratic voice of other sections of society led to our constitutional monarchy initiated by the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the substitution of an invited monarchy.
The diminution in the power of monarchy, not universal, did not diminish the growth of the supremacy of the state. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia is seen as setting out this supremacy which put the interests and goals of nation-states as superior to those of individual citizens and the monarch. The Peace of Westphalia is said to have ended attempts at the imposition of any supranational authority on European states. This "Westphalian" doctrine of states as independent actors accompanied the rise of nationalism which equated states with their populations which mostly shared a common language and culture. States were regarded as equal in international law but had the power of their own self-determination and the right to act without intervention from other states in their internal affairs.
This principle continued unabated with disputes being determined through war and the consequent maintenance of standing forces until the massive bloodletting of the two world wars in the last century. There was a recognition that the nation-centric anarchy had to give rise to a collective global supra-national influence. The First World War resulted in the League of Nations but was doomed by isolationism. The Second World War led to a more concerted effort to provide a global balance to nationalism in the United Nations. Yet even though the preamble to the Charter proudly states that its purpose is for “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” the reality is that it is we the states of the United Nations rather than the peoples of the world who run the show. The principle of the supremacy of states is retained. It was in this atmosphere that the director of a press service in the decade to 1940 with offices in Paris, London and New York called Emery Reves wrote in 1945 an enduring work called The Anatomy of Peace which is as relevant today in its analysis and vision as it was sixty-five years ago. It was published a few weeks before the explosion of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
Shortly after Horoshima some journalists visited Albert Einstein and asked for his opinion. He said that the atom bomb means that we need a world government and urged them to read the recently published Anatomy of Peace and that Mr Reves answers their questions better than he could. The cover of the book had on it an “Open Letter to the American People”, signed by Owen J. Roberts, J.W. Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Elbert D. Thomas, and other dignitaries, which began:
The first atomic bomb destroyed more than the city of Hiroshima. It also exploded our inherited, outdated political ideas. A few days before the force of Nature was tried out for the first time in history, the San Francisco Charter was ratified in Washington. The dream of a League of Nations, after 26 years, was accepted by the Senate. How long will the United Nations Charter endure? With luck, a generation? A century? There is no one who does not hope for at least that much luck - for the Charter, for himself, for his work, and for his children’s children. But is it enough to have Peace by Luck? Peace by Law is what the peoples of the world, beginning with our selves, can have if they want it. And now is the time to get it.
Emery Reeves pointed out that since the time of Ptolemy in the second century the belief that the Earth was the centre of the universe with all else revolving around it lasted unchallenged for fourteen hundred years until in the fifteenth century when several Italian thinkers, of whom Copernicus was pre-eminent, went back to pre-Ptolemaic “Pythagorean opinions” and the understanding that Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun and the concept of the relativity of motion. He uses this as an analogy for what he sees as a Ptolemaic world in terms of nation-states relations whereas in reality we live in a Copernican world.
The Second World War had left Europe devastated and in need of the Marshall Plan for its rebuilding. War had proved costly not just in terms of human lives. Increasingly, with so-called smart munitions and high technology war is pricing itself out as a solution to disputes between states. For the USA the 2010 financial year war request totals $139 billion including $130 billion for both Iraq & Afghanistan. In 2009 the cost of Britain's military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq soared to more than £4.5bn. Wars are now more immediate with instant pictures circulating the world in real time. The body-bags are more visible than ever before. The media and public opinion react to the human cost far more these days than ever did the American public to Vietnam and yet, at a time when more perseverance might have led to a different result in Indo-China, it was public opinion which, in effect, caused the American withdrawal.

Another bastion of the Westphalian system is crumbling, namely the inviolability of intervention by states in the internal affairs of other. The genocide and scandals of what happened in Rwanda, the Balkans (Srebrenica) and Darfur has increased serious debate about humanitarian interventions such as were seen in Cambodia by Vietnam, Bangladesh (then a part of Pakistan) by India in 1971, Kosovo by NATO (the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia), Iraq by U.S.A. (2003 invasion of Iraq) and Georgia by Russia (2008 South Ossetia war): some of these may have been weak cases in international law but the humanitarian need was obvious. Armed intervention under the convention of international law should be only at the behest of the country’s government but when, as in Somalia and Afghanistan there is no effective government or where there are failed states then it has been established by practice that this in itself does not prevent such intervention.

Our lifetime has seen the end of condoned colonialism in its manifestation of territorial aggrandisement. Although there were some benefits to the colonised we should never forget that the conquistadores and the East India Company went out to exploit and plunder as well as to proselytise Western ideas and religion. We now have a new, more subtle colonialism of language and ideas through the internet as well as tension in the name of religion which is more to do with the fear of cultural colonialism. These are global influences. They cannot be dealt with at national level. That is the meaning of federalism (a system of government which is observed in the world’s two most powerful and most numerous democracies) and its constituent element of subsidiarity which is so misunderstood in the UK. Essentially, its principle is that matters should be resolved at the lowest level of government appropriate to them and reserved upwards to higher authority only when that is necessary. So, far from being the concept of big government or a super-state it is the opposite – local government wherever possible. My late friend Sir Peter Ustinov who was President of the World Federalist Movement for many years until his death in 2004 used to describe federalism as the “F” word in debate in the UK as it was and remains so misrepresented here. It is used as a term of abuse for the European Union and to signify tyrannical power. Yet these views are counter-intuitive and, often deliberately, distort the true meaning of federalism as I have described it.

The phrase “world peace through world law” sums up the aspirations of the World Federalist Movement. It is a recognition that advances in better global governance, human rights and management of our natural resources are, in themselves, transitory unless they are enshrined in binding international instruments. These are the pillars on which future development and success are built and ensure that we do not slip back into discredited ways of the past. The Westphalian system set out a convention of relationships between states but one which was state-centric in what happened within those states and always relied ultimately on the law of force rather than the force of law. The absence of such a tribunal was made manifest by such acts but had been recognised long beforehand. The International Court of Justice was established under the UN Charter and came into being in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice which, itself, had been created in 1922 as part of the League of Nations. Despite being active in its early days the Permanent Court fell into dissuetude under the pressure of events in the 1930s. Perhaps it was this failure to be able to deal with German territorial aggression that led to a greater determination that its successor body should be more effective. Yet it can function only with the consent of the parties to a dispute for its judgment to be binding and there is still no mandatory universal jurisdiction which is something for which the World Federalist Movement campaigns.

The International Court of Justice (sometimes called the World Court), however, can only deal with disputes between states and not deal with individuals. This lacuna has been recognised also for some time but without practical implementation until the United Nations resolved in 1948, following the war crimes tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo, the need for a permanent court to deal with such atrocities perpetrated by individuals. The seed change would be that justice would be meted out not by the victors in a conflict but by an independent court acting on behalf of the world community with judges drawn from around the world. The creation of such a body, however, had to await the ending of the Cold War and WFM had been in the forefront of urging action. We created the Coalition for the International Criminal Court which consists of more than two thousand NGOs worldwide. We were in Rome for the signing of the Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 and have continued to work closely with the court and its judges, eighteen of whom were elected fairly and transparently in February 2003, since it came into being in 2002.

It now has 110 countries with a further 38 which have signed but not yet ratified the instrument – the most noteworthy being the United States which, even worse, has removed its signature indicating that it does not intend to be bound by the statute. Sadly, this political decision is based on a false view of the Court – that US citizens and those in the armed services might be indicted spuriously and brought before the Court. Yet this would happen only if the US itself were unwilling or unable to institute proceedings against such persons – the international jurisdiction only bites if the state itself will not take action.

Many of those countries that have ratified the statute have had to enact changes to their own domestic constitutions removing the inviolability from prosecution of their heads of state – a revolutionary nail in the coffin of the Westphalian supremacy of states in itself. There is no doubt in my mind that on a more mature reflection of this period of history the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be seen as a milestone of the development of international law in which it became justiciable against individuals as well as states. The Court can deal with the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. WFM will propose, where appropriate, the addition of other offences but this can be done only with the agreement of the states parties. Both terrorism and drug trafficking have been suggested.

There is a further development which is worthy of note. For years in Westphalian mode the relationship between the state and its citizens has been dominated by the obligation of the citizen towards the state, such as paying taxes, observing domestic law and fulfilling national service in which the ultimate price of life can be demanded by the state, rather than what obligation the state might owe to the citizen. In 2005 the then Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan’s initiative to the General Assembly outlined the concept of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) which was embraced by the General Assembly Member States in its Outcome Document (paragraph 138-9) of the 2005 World Summit thus: “Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
This was truly historic. WFM has created a coalition of NGOs similar to that for the ICC in order to promote this concept further. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon released a report on 12 January 2009 entitled Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, the first comprehensive UN document on the RtoP. The report clarifies how to understand RtoP and outlines measures and actors involved in rendering the norm operational. Based on paragraph 138-139 of the World Summit, the Secretary-General suggested a three-pillar approach namely (1) the protection responsibilities of the state, (2) international assistance and capacity building and (3) timely and decisive response to prevent and halt genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is early days but this has the potential to turn upside down the old order of relationship between citizen and state encapsulated during the Cold War by President John F Kennedy in his inaugural address on 20 January 1961 when he pointed out that two great and powerful groups of nations were overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war and stated “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”

No-one can pretend that the world is a perfect place. We have an imperfect global governance structure in which major economic decisions which affect all the people of the world are taken by an unelected and self-appointed group of nation states in the G7(8), G22 or other groupings while we see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Events threatening the peace of the world which should be dealt with effectively by the Security Council of the UN are neglected because of the actual or potential use of the veto by the Permanent Five – which are the victor states of the Second World War no longer representing the powerful and regional balance of power in the world today. The anomaly in which nationalist Taiwan had the Chinese seat long after mainland China had become more important was rectified as long ago as 1971 but the situation remains whereby the European Union has two permanent member states and countries like Brazil, India and Japan have no permanent representation. WFM believes that the veto should be abolished in any event and if, as we do not advocate, further permanent members are added to the Security Council then they should not be able to exercise the veto.

Against this unsatisfactory situation there are multinational companies which bestride the world with incomes more than the gross domestic product of many member states of the UN: they are accountable to no effective global institution other than how their activities are affected by the World Trade Organisation.

There is a democratic deficit at the global level. That is why the idea of democratic world government has found adherents. After the Second World War both Churchill and Eisenhower favoured the idea. The Preamble to the UN Charter states: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” yet the UN system is a global body of states not peoples. That is why WFM advocates a UN Parliamentary Assembly which might either be an adaptation of the existing Inter-Parliamentary Union which has Observer status at the UN or, as a separately constituted body, develop similarly to the European Assembly, namely first with nominated representatives by the participating states’ national assemblies or parliaments and then develop into a directly elected representative body – no doubt involving complicated election procedures as this would probably have to be done on a geographically regional rather than nation state basis. Such a body and/or its committees would hold the Security Council and other executive organs of the UN to democratic account.

What about the need for rapid humanitarian or military intervention to prevent or deal with threats to peace, genocide and natural disasters before they develop to uncontrollable levels? Another topic of active debate is the creation of a UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS). This would enable rapid and co-ordinated response to natural disasters such as in Haiti or for deployment of peace-keeping forces to keep combatants apart from each other or groups indulging in mass slaughter. We contemplate a standing UN force of individuals who owe their allegiance to the UN and not to their national contributing countries. It is not a new idea but one that is long overdue in implementation. The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) explores the role of civil society in conflict prevention and peace-building as well as developing a common platform for effective action on conflict prevention from the local to the global level.

These, then, are the building blocks for a better managed and more democratic global governance system with both legitimacy and accountability. They contribute to the three necessary foundations for a better world: peace, justice and security. We need a new environmental court in order to ensure sustainability of our planet.

Democracy on federalist lines must become the norm in UN reform which includes transparent elections for posts such as that of the Secretary General. It requires a UN Parliamentary Assembly as well as more financial accountability and assurance of funds for tasks of the global body: 1) a call for increasing the accountability of the Bretton Woods Institutions to all UN Member States, and 2) an outline model for a levy on international currency transactions, which would fund development, peace, and environment initiatives, among others.

These are not new ideas but they gained momentum after the second of two disastrous world wars in the last century and the realistic threat of humankind ending its own and the planet’s existence through nuclear holocaust.

In a recent article in the Winter 2010 edition of Toward Democratic World Federation Prof. Lawrence S Wittner points out that in the United States of America immediately after the Second World War the idea of transforming the United Nations into a world government was endorsed by 45 important national organisations, including the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National Grange, the Farmers’Union, the United Auto Workers, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Young Democrats, the Young Republicans and numerous religious bodies. World Government Week was proclaimed in early 1949 by the governors of nine states and the mayors of about fifty US cities and towns. By mid 1949 twenty state legislatures had passed resolutions endorsing world government and in the same year 91 members of the House of Representatives (64 Democrats and 27 Republicans) introduced a resolution that the House should endorse world federation as a “fundamental objective” of US foreign policy.

This altruism and pan-globalism was stopped in its tracks, however, by the Cold War which dominated most of my political and military life. The chilling concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was one that both superpowers were confident could maintain equilibrium. Attempts to circumvent it were doomed to fail. Even the remarkable 1961 McLoy-Zorin agreement for planned total nuclear disarmament fell foul of deteriorating relations between the two powers.

When the Berlin Wall fell another opportunity was lost. The collapse of the Soviet Union could have provided a chance to regain the global philanthropy that existed at the close of the Second World War. The chance is still there. I hope that your generation will seize that chance and develop it. For one thing is certain: the path of unbridled nationalism and mistrust between states in which impoverished countries spend so much of their limited wealth on conventional weapons rather than feeding their populations leads not only to tyranny, mass poverty, resentment, terrorism and insecurity but also to the obscenity of genocide and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. A civilised world cannot continue to contemplate an imperfect global order in which that remains possible.

Keith Best
Chair of Executive Committee
World Federalist Movement