‘'The UN is not leading on peace-keeping, and that's the bottom line’
Martin Griffiths, former UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs
The massive parade of autocratic military might in Beijing a fortnight ago was clearly designed as a response to Donald Trump's threats and MAGA postings. However, it echoed military posturing in Hitler's Germany from the early 1930s, and there were even some Nazi-style salutes to be seen in those pictures from Beijing.
International conflict and tension have risen massively over the past decade and a determined focus on re-armament has been the inevitable consequence, but with weaponry more existential than ever.
Until a few years ago, the highest priority for global cooperation was clearly climate change, but now it's almost as if no-one in power cares about wrecking our environment any more. Kemi Badenoch’s latest pronouncement about extracting every last drop of oil and gas from the North Sea symbolises this aspect of short-termism, and last Wednesday The Times showed how her comments reflect popular opinion in their report, ‘Warnings about global warming begin to leave British voters cold’.
Meanwhile, the third great injustice of our time — massive wealth inequality — hardly gets a look-in as top-heavy governments set about stealing as much private capital as possible in order to deal with their bloated public finances, before they get anywhere near helping those suffering real poverty and disadvantage.
Fiefdoms used to be regional in character a millennium ago: now they’re national in character. The establishment of nation states resolved inter-regional problems as a response, but now all our biggest problems are international; quarrelling nations and introverted populations cannot resolve them, just as quarrelling regions could not sort out their differences a thousand years ago.
This is why we urgently need global democracy, and why the United Nations needs to evolve from appointment by nations to elections by people throughout the world, in order to achieve it.
I recall several years ago meeting Angus Forbes, the founder of the Global Planet Authority movement. His concern was focused on climate change, and I remember him setting aside my proposal for changing the governance structure of the United Nations on the basis that it was incapable of moving to a system of democratic legitimacy. He may be right — but I hope not, as there is no other international structure which is remotely capable of handling these major issues of conflict, environmental change and the massive extent of poverty and deprivation for so many people.
On 14th November 2022, we proposed that the move towards empowering the United Nations with democratic governance could start with the United Kingdom choosing to allow its own representative to be democratically elected: we never received an answer to that proposal.
Our international problems have, however, now become so acute that it would take far too long to adopt an evolutionary approach. We should instead press for an elected global chamber to sit alongside the assembly of representatives, and thereby to demonstrate its legitimacy by building a new basis for global debate and governance.
From this democratic oversight the UN would have the authority to form a global police force which could deal with criminality — such as the Hamas hostage-taking in Israel — without resorting to war. It would also build accountability for UN peacekeeping forces to stop conflict between nation states, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Climate change regulation would also be a central responsibility for this global democratic oversight which would be in a stronger position to require the compliance of nation states with measures passed at the global level. On several occasions we have described short-termism as the Achilles’ Heel of democracy, and that's why the elected global chamber in the UN would be invited to make their choices based on long-term perspectives. This would significantly support the gravitas which would be attached to their climate change decisions.
Wealth inequality also stands a much better chance of being properly addressed at a global level, and meaningful change in this area would significantly reduce the push for migration and all the unrest that is generated thereby. The political and social strains are showing acutely in both the United Kingdom, with its massive demonstrations last weekend, and the United States, erupting in gun violence once again.
Writing in The Times last Friday in an article headed, ‘Farage has a point: church must listen to migration fears — dismissing those concerns outright risks pushing these people further from the church they love’, Martyn Snow (Bishop of Leicester) calls for ‘a conversation about our national identity’. However, with all its experience across the Commonwealth, the Anglican Church ought to be more concerned with global identity and convergence and, as a short-list contender for the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyn Snow should be addressing these global concerns.
There are two major pillars for achieving a more egalitarian form of capitalism which would significantly reduce the reliance on excessive state intervention in the form of socialism with all its attempts over the past 75 years. These are inter-generational rebalancing and ‘Stock for Data’, and they will both be most effective working at a global level.
When nations give priority to concepts such as ‘levelling up’ or other local initiatives in their search to tackle poverty, they only prioritise what happens within their own borders. Why else would they axe overseas aid at the first opportunity? But it is the massive wealth discrepancies between different nations and continents that give rise to large scale migration, and the world therefore needs to apply solutions such as inter-generational rebalancing on a global basis.
At the centre of inter-generational rebalancing is the need to recognise the human life cycle. Global hypothecation of inheritance levies, principally driven from ‘first world’ nations, would enable the substantially higher birth rates in deprived nations to benefit with starter capital accounts and life skills training for these disadvantaged young people.
Likewise, the application of equity stock issued globally in recognition of human data and creativity would enable populations in all countries to benefit from the wealth generation power of today's technology.
But in order to make all these processes work, we need democratic legitimacy for global governance. This will require a total change of mindset; but if we don't do it the world will continue to hover dangerously close to the cliff edge in all the above respects. Perhaps Sir Keir Starmer might set aside some time to discuss this global democratic perspective with Donald Trump during his state visit this week.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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