Lecturer: Luis CabreraGriffith University, Brisbane, Australia

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The World Government TraditionRecall the Stoics on world citizenship

(2000-plus years ago)In China, 5th Century BCE philosopher

Mozi, is reported to have said, when asked the way to “universal love and mutual benefit,” that it was “to regard other people’s countries as one’s own.”

Dante, Monarchia (ca. 1310): universal peace requires universal government

Various arguments for European unity through the 19th Century

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Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius in `Gladiator’

The 20th CenturyIn the first half of the 20th Century,

the most prominent advocate of the world state was the novelist and social critic H.G. Wells.

His thought informed much of the work on world government that appeared following World War II, when the ideal enjoyed an unprecedented popularity.

You probably know his fiction workhttp://www.waroftheworlds.com/

The First World Government Heyday, 1944-1950

The first heyday of the world state, which lasted roughly from 1944 to 1950, came in part because of the devastation caused by World War II, and in part because of the terrible new dangers of nuclear weapons

Congressional hearingsReader’s Digest 23,000 reader groups

(Reves)

In Britain and EuropeHenry Usborne, MP, in his maiden

speech to the House of Commons in November 1945, urged Parliament to lead the way to a United Commonwealth of Nations

Usborne founded the All-Party Parliamentary Group for World Government, which at its height claimed membership of more than two-hundred MPs.

In France, Sarte, Camus, and other leading intellectuals, along with tens of thousands of street demonstrators, supported “world citizen” Garry Davis’ call for a global constituent assembly.

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Albert EinsteinIt was during this period that

Albert Einstein made his oft-quoted statement that he would rather face the risks of global tyranny under a world state than global nuclear war in a world of competing states.

Einstein helped establish the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, whose members staged a vigorous public campaign for world control of nuclear weapons (not WG). Einstein did support WG explicitly.

The Underlying Hobbesian argumentThomas Hobbes, 1588-1679Leviathan—1651

Hobbes made a foundational argument for political legitimacy. To escape perpetual war and misery, he said, humans must be in political community with a firm, authoritative ruler.

Hobbes in the 20th CenturyMost heyday authors were making versions

of the Hobbesian argument.In the new nuclear age, they said, nation-

states needed “a power to keep them all in awe” and prevent them from destroying the entire world.

Bertrand Russell

“Either war or civilization must end, and if it is to be war that ends, there must an international authority with the sole power to make the new (atomic) bombs.”

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Hiroshima was the spurhttp://www.lclark.edu/~history/HIROSHIMA/ Russell: “It is impossible to imagine a more dramatic and horrifying combination of scientific triumph with political and moral failure than has been shown to the world in the destruction of Hiroshima.

Hiroshima Aftermath

Hiroshima AftermathBurned body of a Japanese boy

United NationsMany in the heyday had hoped the United

Nations would look more like a world government.

They were disappointed when the most powerful states refused to cede significant aspects of their sovereignty to the new body.

For example, the five most powerful states insisted on a Security Council veto at the San Francisco conference where the UN Charter was devised.

A New Heyday?Today, growing global economic integration

has revived interest in the idea among some prominent scholars

WTOEuropean UnionCompetitive globalizationNot to mention the continuing nuclear threatSee Craig, and Cabrera, “World Government:

Renewed Debate, Persistent Challenges,” in European Journal of International Relations

Current Proponents of security-based argumentsCampbell Craig, Aberystwyth“In the long term, deterrence is bound to fail: to

predict that it will succeed forever, never once collapsing into a nuclear war, is to engage in a utopian and ahistorical kind of thinking. … When it fails, the ensuing war is likely to kill hundreds of millions of people, and possibly exterminate the human race (172).

Craig, Campbell (2003) Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz. New York: Columbia University Press.

Alexander WendtOhio State UniversityWendt, an international relations

scholar best known for developing the “Constructivist” approach to the study of IR, argues that a world state is inevitable.

For Wendt, the key is the way in which a struggle for recognition by states can be seen to mirror the struggles that Hegel identified as occurring between individuals.

Wendt, Cont.For Hegel, the micro-level struggle for recognition

ultimately led to collective-identity formation and the development of the nation-state.

Wendt argues that states are ‘people’, and new technologies have undermined whatever strong claims might have been made for state self-sufficiency, both increasing the costs of war and enlarging the scale on which it is possible to organize a state.

States’ struggles for recognition will be as powerful as those of individuals in promoting movement toward a global collective identity and global state with a monopoly on collective violence (2003: 493). 18

Is a full monopoly needed?Deudney’s argumentIn “Propositions” and his 2007

book, Deudney argues for non-hierarchical control of nuclear weapons in a much more integrated global system.

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Deudney, cont.Virtual nuclear arsenals: states would disarm but

retain the ability to relatively quickly re-arm should the need arise.

Concurrent authority: states would not be able to decide unilaterally to fire a nuclear weapon -- would have to obtain a portion of the launch code from an international security authority, among related safeguards

Global constitution: would profess the world government’s primary purpose–to avoid both world anarchy and world hierarchy–and stipulating that no suprastate organ would be authorized to employ coercion beyond the application of criminal law to individuals.

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World War III?Deudney speculates

that it could need another major war to actually launch a global government of any kind.

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A posible critique of the straightforwardHobbesian argument Representative arguments: Einstein, CraigStates *will* find it in their self-interest to

cooperate on security matters short of creating a world government.

Iterated prisoner’s dilemmaNuclear cooperation to date“Imposing” WG could promote instability

The critical traditionImmanuel Kant, 1795

(To Perpetual Peace): a system of democratic republics closely cooperating would be an appropriate goal for the global system.

Full world government would lead to tyranny and a stifling of democratic politics.

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Critics, cont.Orwell, 1941: “What is the use of

pointing out that a World State is desirable? What matters is that not one of the five great military powers would think of submitting to such a thing. All sensible men for decades past have been substantially in agreement with what Mr. Wells says; but the sensible men have no power...”

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