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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 2 (October 2000)

Our World Government

26 August 2000

Pekka Korhonen
visiting associate professor
International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, Kyoto.
pekka@nichibun.ac.jp; pkonen@jyu.fi

The contemporary world seems to be in a flux, and we who are living within it are not able to see its structure clearly. One tendency is - once again - the struggle of nation states and proto nation states for independence from imperial political formations such as Russia, China, India and Indonesia. The empires struggle to keep their domains and spheres of influence intact, while at the same time they are forced to adjust themselves to the economic changes taking place in the world. The Russian Drama is constantly in the news, and the world has been educated about Indonesia during the past couple of years.[1] China's problems with Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guangdong and other coastal provinces are well known. Kashmir and Punjab are normally mentioned in the case of India, but there are corresponding independence movements also in other parts of the empire, such as Assam.[2] This tendency is not normally conceived as global because the four empires are relatively poor, lacking at present a global reach, but nevertheless it is a mighty spectacle touching directly the lives of roughly one half of humankind. This discussion presents the picture of a multipolar world, with bigger and smaller, stronger and weaker political entities fight for a place for themselves.

Another tendency is continental regionalism centered around successful economic cores, with less emphasized, but existing political overtones. The European Union in Europe, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, the United States and Mexico are the typical examples. In East Asia the degree of institutionalization is lower, but Japan, China, South Korea and the ASEAN states act as a corresponding subgroup in various international organizations, such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM), or ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). A lot of diplomatic actitivity takes place among these countries, but thus far they have not yet set up a specific institution of their own. If strengthened, these continentalist tendencies would point out to the gradual emergence of a tripolar world, but at the moment little drama is connected with this tendency, as most apparent activity is middle aged and old men dining with each other in various capitals and high class holiday resorts.

The third main tendency, overlapping with the other two, is the emergence of a unipolar world. This discussion concerns the position of the United States in respect to the rest of the world, because in terms of its capabilities the United States stands in a class of its own, far removed from any other country or even any realistic alliance of countries. The standard political theory with which the situation is normally discribed is the classical theory of hegemony with the United States in the position of hegemon.[3] Economic discussion uses the concept of globalization, but also here the underlying assumption is that the United States is the ultimate source of initiatives and norms for regulating activities. Both concepts, hegemony and globalization, imply a drastic fall in the importance of the soveraign state - except in the case of the United States, which alone remains in the position of retaining the possibility for unilateral action. The United States is by far the strongest economic and military power that ever existed on earth, and no real challenger appears on the horizon for the time being. It is curious to watch the behavior of American political and economic experts in international conferences nowadays; they have always been self-confident, but a decade ago their confidence was tempered by the relatively poor performance of the American economy compared with Japan and other East Asian countries. Nowadays there are no such limits. The United States is of course bound by the natural laws of gravity, requirements of politeness towards other countries, and ordinary human frailty; its power is by no means limitless or invincible. Nevertheless, during the next few decades the United States seems to be able to impose its will on the rest of the world without fear of serious opposition. As David Bobrow, one of the leading American security experts, put it in a recent conference: "There is plenty of time." [4]

Bobrow's reference to time in that sense is interesting, because the concept of time has appeared rather widely in the American public agenda lately. The most obvious point refers to the future. The new millennium began half a year ago, and few failed to notice how magnificiently it was greeted in the United States. Both domestically and abroad the United States was presented as an actor ready and capable of achieving great things during the new millennium. Stratfor in its forecast claimed that 'in our mind, the 21st century will undoubtedly be the American century'. [5] At 21 December 1999 the President and the First Lady, in their public invitation for the nation to participate in the three-day celebrations, used the expression 'America's Millennium'. The text cannot be found in the White House home pages any more, but the expression lives on in the web pages that Washington Post dedicated for remembering the event.[6] A century, and even more a millennium, is not necessarily a concept of linear history. A millennium is so long that it is not meaningful in terms of human lives. A millennium is plenty of time. It can best be understood as an expression synonymous with the concept of stability. It is an extended present rather than the future. It reassures its proponents and their auditories that we have arrived at a stage where the basic structure of the world is considered stable, with the United States at the top, and the situation is expected to continue without essential changes during our lifetime, and perhaps also during the lifetime of our children.

American philosophers provide another illuminating point. Discussion of political time has been one of the central features of Theory and Event since its inauguration in 1997. Wendy Brown pointed out in the first issue that contemporary left and liberal discourse is dominated by events, and most often rather banal ones. The discourse is continuously being trapped by responding to the unceasing flow of more or less dramatic events that take place throughout the globe (italics by PK), making political thinking itself difficult, as thinking is being replaced by the taking of political positions in respect to the events. She also gave an interesting reason for this: the pace of late modernity and the increasingly tabloid character of all media may have something to do with it, but the main reason seems to be that there are no more any political formations that would respond to other types of political discourse. [7] In a later article Wendy Brown argued that one of the political formations that have disappeared from the United States are unified citizens' movements, united by common critique and common vision, sharing a collective perception of political time. There are no such movements any more, because what would such a movement do, what would it oppose, what would it demand, and in whose name would it be doing this? [8] There is no raison d'etre for such movements any more. Also Paul Patton pointed to the increasing importance of events in his analysis of the Deleuzian concept of Kairos, [9] while Sheldon Wolin presented the same phenomenon by saying that the temporalities of economy and popular culture, governed by the needs of rapid turnover, have displaced the temporalities of the political. Pointing out the changed temporalities was his answer to the question he posed, namely "Why is political theory so difficult today?" [10] Samuel A. Chambers recently approached the same problematique. [11]

If the basic structure of the world is ready, there is no reason to try to change its structural aspects any more, and thus political theory as tied to revolutionary or reformist movements has become devoid of meaning. [12] That kind of activity has been replaced by taking positions to events. Against what or for what do you take positions? Your points of reference are of course the acts and non-acts of the Federal Government of the United States. The events are no more only domestic issues, but as Brown pointed out, a citizen of the United States nowadays needs to respond to all kinds of events taking place anywhere in the world. Moreover, the taking of positions towards the government of the United States is not limited to American citizens; also that has become global individual activity. Old Foreign Affairs, where Americans and those from abroad debate the issues of American foreign policy is the classical example. The present article is another one. Most international media, academic journals, and the internet world provide countless venues for taking such positions and airing one's opinions.

Hegemony is an established theoretical concept, but it may be too narrow and too historically loaded for grasping the dimensions of the present situation. The concept of globalization points to a new aspect, whose political aspects have not yet received enough attention. An argument can be made that we have actually arrived at a stage where various classical theories of world peace wanted to take us, namely that a world government has been set up to take care of us. The globe is integrated not only in terms of trade and investment flows, media coverage and the internet, but also in the way it is governed. The United Nations, the classical candidate for that role, is only marginally connected with the de facto government. At the hub we have the Federal institutions of the United States, aided by various international organizations, and a number of national governments of formerly independent states around the world.

The system of governance is not novel, even though it appears in a novel setting. Paul Krugman has argued that in terms of economic structure the world during the 1990s began to resemble that of the nineteenth century. [13] The political structure goes even further back in time to the feudal period. The Frankish empire a millennium ago, governed by Charlemagne with the help of his trusted lords, servants, and his Academy, could serve as an example. In some senses a better comparison might be Japan half a millennium ago, because Tokugawa Japan had little to do with the outside world. Similarly, the world now is a relatively unified island alone in the universe, having no contacts with other sentient beings on other planets. The Japanese example may highlight the fact that a unified empire does not necessarily need a tangible outside threat to stay together for a considerable amount of time; the same result can be achieved also because of the internal dynamics of the situation.

Thus we now have a king to rule our world, elected every four years to sit on his throne in Washington. In global terms the election process is not especially democratic, because the electorate is so limited, but the election of kings never was democratic. It always was a distinctly aristocratic or family affair, just like the election of the Japanese shoogun. We have a world government, composed of various councils of dukes, counts, barons, and daimyoo, elected from their respective constituences, meeting in a plethora of international fora such as G8, UN, IMF, OECD, NATO, CSCE, APEC, ASEM, ARF, etc. All important international organizations nowadays have the United States as a member, and even the less important ones are dominated by trusted companions of arms from the cold war days, such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and members of the European Union.These councils are aided by modern technology, such as airplanes and mobile phones, but because there are so many complicated issues to deal with, and large constituencies have to be taken into consideration, actual decision making is not necessarily any faster that it was 500 or 1000 years ago. We have a world ideology centering on democracy, liberal economy, human rights, and protection of the environment. The theology allows for movement in the sense of convergence towards a common goal, and it is supportive of economic achievements, but the overall message is about stability. With the help of English as the global language, world news, and world consumerist culture it spreads effectively to all corners. Also all the pronouncements of every single council meeting is about stability, the same principle that helped the Tokugawas to set up a system of governance that lasted for two and a half centuries. There is a number of sectarian ideologies floating around, as there always have been, but they do not have much force. Socialism and Communism still exist, but do not have much appeal; Muslim, Asian, or European unity is being discussed, but there are few concrete steps. The same thing that Wendy Brown noticed about the United States, the absence of serious revolutionary movements, holds true also for the world-island empire.

If the contemporary system of world government is here to stay, the great political debate of the twenty-first century might be about our rights as citizens of the world to participate directly in the elections of the President of the United States. If national borders melt away under the sway of globalization, the same process obviously touches also the borders of the United States. A rather strong moral argument can be made in favour of such participation, because the result of the elections obviously has an influence in the lives of every one of us. How many actually would like to vote is a separate issue; direct political participation on the global scale becomes a relevant philosophical and political problem once a world government has been institutionalized. Changing temporalities can make political theory difficult, but they can also open new horizons.

Notwithstanding, we are living in a deeply moralistic world, where dramatic events of suffering and misery constantly force themselves into our mental presence. We are supposed to do something, either directly or by influencing the government of the United States. A contrast with Immanuel Kant's moral view of the world, as it was presented in Zum ewigen Frieden, written in 1795, is illuminating. Also Kant was deeply concerned about the suffering, persecution, immorality and violence in the world, but the idea of immediate economic sanctions or military reprisals was alien to him. Unconcerned engagement was what he preferred, and he did this on moral grounds. Because Kant regarded societies as ethical entities capable of moral development, he recommended that they should be left free to develop in their own pace. [14] All outside interferences distort the innate social process of learning. Of course Kant conceptualized countries as separate, sovereign entities, with relatively little intercourse between them. The point is that we are not using that conceptualization any more. The heightened emphasis on the present, the demand that injustices should be corrected immediately where ever they happen to take place, is exactly something that comes from domestic politics. In our actions and demands we are treating the world as a unit, where governance is possible, as if it was a single state under a capable government. As the world has turned into an island empire, a corresponding demand for governance of the island has also emerged. It is not simply that the United States is imposing its hegemony over a reluctant world, but we ourselves are calling a Hobbesian Leviathan into existence. Our fear of the return of the Cold War, and the conceptualization of world events as moral issues demanding strong moral action, are the psychological mechanisms by which this change is being effected. The normal expectation during any kind of major crisis, whether political, economic, or a natural disaster, is for the United States to do something, usually under the auspices of the UN, or NATO, or IMF, or some other international body that once again require the dukes to hold a council meeting. The continuous succession of events and the contracted global sense of time reinforce each other. Even though we do not yet call it such, we actually behave in ways revealing that a world government has already been established.

An inspection of the agenda of the G8 summit held in Okinawa, Japan 21-23 July reveals the scope of that branch of government. The leaders of the mightiest countries of the world would be expected to discuss issues of high politics, and they did. The leaders called for progress in the START arms reduction process to maintain the antiballistic missile treaty, and they also gave their support for the reform of the Security Council of the United Nations. However, the state and management of the world economy received much more attention. A new WTO round of trade liberalization should be launched in the near future, but the presidential elections of the United States in November may preclude the launch already at the end of this year. The main issue, nevertheless, was the global wave of information technology revolution, including the internet, and what would be its effects on poor countries and poor individuals, financial business, and taxation. The meeting came to the conclusion that fair taxing principles should be established, and at least for the time being international commerce on digital information, such as music, should be left outside of taxation. Fight against cyber crime is also important, as well as against illegal trade in diamonds, because the latter exacerbates armed conflicts and thus human suffering. All parties should engage in dialogue concerning the safety of genetically modified foods, and the need for intellectual property protection was recognized in the case of studies of the human genome. Countries, international organizations, industries and private citizens were encouraged to strengthen partnership in the fight against infectious diseases. Most of the items in the agenda are not hoch Politik, but rather something that would appear on the agenda of many national governmental meetings. The G8 treats the world as an arena for domestic types of policies. It acts like a world government, and thus it is one.

Will it continue? It is quite possible, though by no means guaranteed. The crucial issue is of course leadership: the less there is of it, the more stable the system. Because the world does not have any outside goals, it does not need strong leadership. Practically all of the goals of the world are immanent, just like most of the goals of the Tokugawa shogunate were immanent within Japan. The Tokugawa system of governance was based on practically independent fiefs, called han, where the daimyoo were allowed to rule as they pleased. Japan was really a collection of separate small states, with their own armies, polities and economies. The central government at Edo limited itself to issues relating to the outside world, overall defence and economy, and a few issues of national ideology, such as eradicating Christianity and encouraging Confucianism. The daimyoo allied to the Tokugawas gathered sporadically as a council for discussing general lines of policy. The stability of Tokugawa Japan resulted partly from the fact that the Tokugawa's did so little. They granted privileges to their faithful retainers, but after the general warfare had subdued, they did not try to crush their former enemies after making sure that a grand alliance or rebellion against the Tokugawa's had become more or less impossible. Various kinds of expensive but nonmilitary construction projects were imposed on them, draining their finances, but otherwise they were left in peace. Parallels with the contemporary global system of governance are obvious.

The basic issue in the reformation of the UN Security Council is the admittance of Japan and Germany as permanent members. They are not members because during World War II they were enemy states, but during the Cold War they were faithful retainers of the United States. A permanent seat at the Security Council would be the equivalent of granting both countries additional fiefs where they could promote themselves. If the interpretation used in this paper is anywhere near validity, the permanent seats would be more important symbolically than practically, because the United Nations would no more have much to do with actual governance of the world. The generally benevolent tone with which both European and East Asian regional integration is viewed from the United States can be interpreted from the same point of view. It is payment for former services, and creating an obligation to continue in the role of close retainers. In military terms both areas remain dependent on the United States. Increased economic efficiency in East Asia and Western Europe would at the same time create difficulties for former Socialist countries, forcing them to be preoccupied with their domestic economies, engaged with costly and difficult projects of national reconstruction, without being able to regroup again. There is no need to encourage any more any separatist movements; the movements and newly independent states can be left for the most to look after themselves, unless they catch media attention and moral fervour demands that something has to be done. The three contemporary tendencies outlined at the beginning of this paper, nationalist, regionalist and global, would not actually be incomplementary with each other. They would rather all work together to stabilize the world system.

A unified world alone among stardust does not need overall efficiency. The Tokugawa system was not especially efficient, because after the structure had been set up, there was little work to be done. Most of the samurai class was idle during the long peace of 250 years, in vain waiting for an enemy to appear from somewhere. A part of them were needed in duty as guards, and a few lucky ones entered the bureaucracy, the only venue where one could show one's skills and advance in rank. But most samurai had nothing to do. But even in the bureaucracy there was not much work. In the central bureaucracy at Edo a normal workday began around 10 AM and ended about 2 PM, with lunch in the middle. Degrees in relative levels of efficiency are important, though. Tokugawa government tried to ensue that it had the relatively best means of gathering information, the most alert soldiers, and that its finances were sound compared with those of the daimyoo. For a long time it was able to maintain this relative difference. But otherwise too much efficiency is the enemy of stability.

At the moment it seems that the only actor capable of destroying the newly born world government is the United States itself. An intelligent and determined new president, well versed in international politics, with an ambitious agenda of making some drastic reforms in our imperfect world, would only cause resentment in the rest of the world. The world does not need a strong leader, because no external political force remains to be overcome. On the other hand, a president who was not too bright, had little experience of foreign affairs, and who would easily fall pray to the charms of young beautiful women, would with relative certainty guarantee that the world government will continue stabilizing itself. He would stumble every now and then, giving a very human face to the throne, and allowing the media to be filled with nonserious but exiting gossip. He would conduct American foreign policy as if it was world domestic politics, and his inefficiency would assure the dukes and barons that they can continue minding their own affairs in peace in their own constituencies. The whole world would gradually slow down to a peaceful existence, after the psychological mind sets of military and economic competition of the contemporary generations would have passed to the grave, and new generations would have accepted the world as it is. Shouldn't we welcome the new government of the world?

***

2. Baruah, Sanjib (1999) India Against Itself. Assam and the Politics of Nationality, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

3. Bobrow, Davis B. (1999) 'Hegemony Management: the US is the Asia-Pacific', The Pacific Review, 12, 2, 173-197; Bobrow, Davis B. (1999) 'The US and ASEM: why the hegemon didn't bark', The Pacific Review, 12, 1, 103-128.

4. Bobrow, Davis B. (2000) 'American Views of Asia-Pacific Security: Comprehensive or Military', Paper presented at the Workshop on 21st Century World Order and the Asia Pacific, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, 7-8 April.

5. http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/FORECAST/decadetocome/us.asp

6. http://160.111.100.129/

7. Brown, Wendy (1997) 'The Time of the Political', Theory and Event 1:1, 2-3.

8. Brown, Wendy (1998) 'Left Conservatism, I', Theory and Event 2:2, 16.

9. Patton, Paul (1997) 'The World Seen From Within: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Events', Theory and Event 1:1, 16-19.

10. Wolin, Sheldon (1997) 'What Time Is It?', Theory and Event 1:1, 2-6.

11. Chambers, Samuel A. (2000) 'Spectral History, Untimely Theory', Theory and Event 3:4.

12. See also Korhonen, Pekka (2000) 'The Temporal Modes of Climbers and Aristocrats', The Eurasian Politician, Inaugural issue.

13. Krugman, Paul (2000) The Return of Depression Economics, London: Penguin.

14. Kant, Immanuel (1984) [1795] Zum ewigen Frieden, Erlangen: Harald Fischer; (1983) Perpetual Peace, and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, Hackett.

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