The Path to World Government, Part III

STEP 3. MAINTAINING WORLD PEACE

RESOLVING CONFLICT RESOLUT ION:

A world government that depended solely on negotiations to resolve conflicts would be impotent and doomed to fail.  It might as well not even be attempted.  This globe of ours is such a troublesome, contentious place that it is  too much to hope that the unbroken chain of violent  outbreaks, going back to the very beginnings of recorded history, could be interrupted by the mere intercession of a world constitution no matter how carefully crafted and how well intentioned.  There are simply too many factors ensuring the continuation of hostilities: the pressure of overpopulation; food, water, and energy shortages; environmental degradation; and a tinderbox full of economic, racial, national, religious, and ethnic tensions.   And, if history is any judge,  there is every reason to expect that a variety of nut-cake extremists will always be on hand to capitalize on the misery arising from these problems-each eager to contribute his own ingenuity to the horrific acts of his predecessors.  Nor should we be surprised if, some day in the future, one of these gentlemen shows up armed, not just with Saddam Hussein’s pretend H-bombs, but the real thing.

My friends, you have to put an end to this scourge.  How?  Even the most casual survey of recorded history should convince anyone that national sovereignty is far more often dependent on the application, or the threat thereof, of force than by peaceful means.  It follows then that any vision of the future, that did not take into consideration the dominant role of force, was either dangerously naïve or altogether foolhardy.

At the risk of alienating those among you deluded by a mystical belief in universal love and harmony, the advance of your movement for a world government will be rudely thrust aside if you do not build into your constitution a new front-line defense against conflict in all its ugly manifestations.  Your new world government must be joined hand-in-hand with an international police force.

THE FALLACY OF LAW-AND-ORDER:

Oddly enough, those who claim to be the most devoted to world peace have also been the most adamant in resisting the only realistic means of attaining it: prompt forceful intervention-in other words, force as the first resort.  Force as the first resort?  The thought alone is enough to send cultured young ladies swooning onto the nearest divan, United Nations delegates dispatching word to their capitals of yet another trigger-happy American cowboy run amuck, and pacifists herding their children out of earshot.  Nor is it hard to imagine what responses such apostasy might provoke among these groups: “barbarous!” “insensitive!” “gross disregard for human life!” “why the very idea is a throwback to the Middle Ages.”

The watchword of diplomats is, of course, the opposite.  Peace, or at least the illusion of it,  must reign.  To promote it they have erected the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, and a number of other such tribunals.  And these formidable institutions are served by the International Law Association with fifty regional branches around the world whose lawyer members are dedicated to such issues as compensation for the victims of combat, protection of persons and property, international civil litigation and so on.  On paper, it is a formidable array to be sure.

On the ground, however, the application of justice is somewhat more problematical.  The refugees in Darfur, the slaves in Niger, the malnourished peasants in North Korea, the downtrodden multitudes in the Middle East, the survivors of the ethnic wars in the Balkans, and other oppressed groups around the world might be forgiven for wishing that the legions of attorneys, marching back and forth between courthouses, would march to their rescue instead, trading in their briefcases for AK-47s along the way.

This is not to disparage the role for peaceful settlement in world affairs.  It is, of course, a vital part of the law-and-order paradigm that underlies western civilization.  But it is only half the stor y.  The other half of the equation is “order,” and it is the purpose of this posting to contend that we will never enjoy a peaceable world until international order and international law are indivisibly linked and precedence is given to “order” in the pursuit of this objective.

THE VIRTUE OF ORDER-AND-LAW:

The total reliance on peaceful means to resolve world conflicts is all the more inexplicable when one realizes that the notion would be considered laughable by one and all in every arena but the international.  At the national, state, and local levels the principle of order-before-law is well established if not commonly enumerated.  In the event of a holdup, for example, government officials do not rush an attorney to the crime scene with instructions to deter the criminal by reciting the precise legal code he is in the process of violating.  Nor is any attempt made to warn the criminal that, should he persist, volunteers from the Salvation Army will hunt him down and demand that he thenceforth pursue the ten steps to righteousness.  Practical experience suggests that neither of these stratagems would be particularly helpful-the criminal mind being less susceptible to peaceful persuasion than we might like.  When a crime is committed we have learned to dispatch policemen first and involve attorneys second.

The reason a policeman is effective in quelling crime on the street (and an attorney is not) is that the former is empowered to use brute force.  At his waist he carries a hand gun, his squad car contains more lethal weaponry, and on his chest he wears a badge that entitles him, under prescribed circumstances, to execute his fellow human beings.  And if he alone cannot supply the requisite force in any given situation, he is equipped with a radio that can summon as many similarly armed colleagues as necessary to overpower any opposition with overwhelming strength and prompt dispatch.

Yet despite the formidable force that the police can bring to bear, we welcome their being afoot and reserve the bulk of our complaints to there not being enough of them.  And if by any chance we forget that civil peace rests upon their presence, there are incidents enough worldwide to remind us of reality.  The looting of Baghdad in April, 2004 serves as example of what can happen to a city when there are no police on hand. Post-Katrina New Orleans is another.

Nevertheless, when it comes to international matters the fundamentals of law enforcement, so universally accepted at every other level,  are not merely ignored, they are virtually condemned.  Apparently no United Nations delegate worth his salt dares raise his voice regarding a dispute between nations without first proclaiming, “force must be a last resort” by which he means, “negotiations are the first-through-the-penultimate last resort.”  Thus he is certain to argue for reasonableness, negotiations, moral consensus, and express good will as the means of settling the dispute.  With, I might add, the same results speculated upon earlier in conjunction with an attorney’s hypothetical attempt to halt an ongoing robbery.

The question thus arises, why is there universal acceptance of force within national boundaries and why is it universally condemned without?  Logic would seem to argue that, if anything, the opposite were true.  At their very worst, internal rogues might be responsible for a score or so deaths; external rogues have proven themselves capable of producing millions of them.

LEGAL vs ILLEGAL FORCE

Moreover, historical trends would seem to argue for ever more encompassing law enforcement.  The personal safety enjoyed today by the inhabitants of developed countries is a relatively recent phenomenon.  One doesn’t have to go back many centuries to a time when marauding brigands, local feuds, and arbitrary rule made life for the average person a chancy proposition.  Gradually, in many parts of the world, populations learned to protect themselves by setting up institutions at the local level, then regionally, and finally countrywide-the governing principle being that the scope of law enforcement had to be comparable to that of the criminal activity it was assigned to overcome.  As a logical extension of this process, there would be good reason to suppose that the umbrella of safety provided by local police will continue to widen so as to cross national boundaries.  Indeed, the threat posed by international terrorism and nuclear armed ballistic missiles that can be targeted anyplace on earth, would seem to make this natural culmination of an age-old self-evident trend mandatory.

Much of the blame for the world’s failure to submit to the rule of law can be laid, of course, to short-sighted, xenophobic national interests.  But there is also honest, if misplaced, confusion between illegal force and force that is legally authorized.   Unfortunately, thus far on the international scene, the world has known only instances of the former: marauding armies, the violation of humane norms, the oppression of peoples, the destruction of cities, and so on.  Since the end of World War II, there have been some two-hundred and fifty “illegal” wars throughout the world-an average of over four per annum.  It would not be surprising, therefore, if these are the brutal images that come to mind in connection with an international police force.

On the other hand, the world community has no familiarity with an effective international legal force modeled after the local police.  When suggestions by eminent people along this line have arisen at the end of both world wars, they have been promptly squashed.  Obviously, the time has come to put matters aright.  A world government unable to defend itself and its proponents is unthinkable.  It must  be equipped with a police force  that is both powerful and empowered.  And, to my way of thinking, the best place to start is what we know already works,  your local police force.

THE FUNCTIONS OF LOCAL POLICE:

The operations of local police are so familiar we seldom give them a second thought.  However, a listing of law enforcement’s most salient features is helpful if we are to project them onto the international scene.  In this connection it would be well to remember that the set of rules governing police activity is the result of a trial-and-error evolutionary process going back centuries.  And the fact that it has been adopted in more or less the same form by every democratic country attests to its efficaciousness.

The primary duty of the police is to promptly quell disturbances to the peace with minimum loss of life and property.  In addition to merely reacting to violent incidents, the police are also expected to anticipate them and respond proactively.  These functions have several important implications for the purpose of this essay:

a) Provided the disturbance falls under the police force’s legally established purview and is within its geographical jurisdiction, it is empowered to act autonomously.  For example, a policeman need not get approval from the city mayor before chasing after an escaping bank robber.

b) Whether the disturbance involves an unruly crowd, a gunfight with a gang of terrorists holed up in a building, or a prison riot, the police are expected to assemble overwhelming force to quell it.

c) Police are expected to unilaterally take appropriate action whenever and wherever they feel warranted on the basis of past experience.

d) Good police work includes the strict implementation of the law’s minor provisions-nipping trouble in the bud, as it were-to discourage major incursions of the law.

e) The police are required to assume routine duties such as traffic control as a means of discouraging violations of the law.

f) Police are expected to maintain good public relations with the community by such means as encouraging communication with its members, conscripting recruits from the local populace, and providing instruction to school children.

It is important to note here that in none of the above functions do the police have a judicial responsibility other than in peripheral matters such as the collection of evidence and guarding suspects.  It is explicitly outside their realm to decide issues of guilt or innocence and to decree punishment.

INCORPORATING CODE FOR AN INTERNATIONAL CONSTABULARY:

Expanding the tried-and-proved local police methodology to international matters  would yield an institution-let’s call it the International Constabulary, or IC-far different than the peacekeeping forces hitherto employed.   Structurally, it would composed of individual standing units each operating within proscribed geographical limits and each drawing upon the manpower and resources available within its jurisdiction.  If the size of a regional police force was insufficient to apply overwhelming force in a given situation if could call upon as many other regional forces as necessary.  It would be capable of acting autonomously and, if need be, preemptively.  And it would have to be strong enough to apply overwhelming force in cases of conflict between nations and/or within a single country whether caused by insurrection, the overthrow of governments, the outbreak of genocide, or simple anarchy.  But whatever the situation, the IC activities would be limited to the restoration of peace.  Final adjudication of disputes would rest with the international courts.

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