‘The world today is undergoing both changes and turbulence and some regions are still engulfed in war. China always stands on the right side of history and is ready to work with all countries to advance world peace and development and build a community with a shared future for humanity.’
Chinese President Xi Jinping
Few would argue with this quote from Xi Jinping’s new year address, as reported in The Times on 1st January under the title, ‘Xi makes bid for global leadership in new year vision’. The problem is that, as the article and subsequent comments reported, the means to that end speak more of domination than of participation.
It's hard to think or any other leaders who frame their ambitions in global terms so clearly, although there’s plenty of evidence for a similar yearning for domination. Trump speaks of fortress America and exerts force in order to impose his will, with Venezuela being the most recent example. Putin pushes for restoring the might of Soviet Russia with his invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Europe struggles on with its own complicated and bureaucratic pursuit of consensus.
All the while, the United Nations provides little more than a talking shop.
But, as we commented most recently on 15th December, the world is in desperate need of global answers, and for leaders who take global responsibility seriously. It's worth looking back over the past eighty years to ask how we have become stuck in this impasse of political shortcomings.
In a BBC4 review of the life of author John le Carré last week, he oberved that after World War 2 there was a view that capitalist democracy would inevitably result in fascism, and that social democracy was therefore the only acceptable solution.
There are those who might express some sympathy with that view today, with characters such as Trump and Farage exhibiting a range of elitist attitudes. However, democracy has not served any political interpretation well, largely because it is so short-termist: hence the stratospheric public debt levels in both the United States and European countries, including the United Kingdom. There are still no political alternatives embracing egalitarian capitalism.
In the wake of the Hamas atrocities on 7th October 2023 our commentary was entitled, ‘Unbridled revenge is not the answer’, and we called for much stronger global governance from the United Nations so that crimes such as these could be handled by an international police force rather than by the devastating military action that we have now witnessed over the past two years. If such an approach to law and order were available today, international crimes such as ethnic persecution, mass murder and drug trafficking could be handled by this appropriately-equipped international police force rather than the indiscriminate destruction that we have seen in Gaza and the U.S. military action that we’ve just seen in Venezuela.
But such a strengthening in global authority requires a real strengthening in governance. This calls for transformation of the United Nations in order to give it democratic legitimacy through individual participation. However, if this is to be met with agreement from all segments of its nation-based membership, from the giant autocracies to small island states, we would need a transition process which would not set national executives against this emerging global governance,
A good way to achieve this would be to use the fact that national democracies are so short-termist in character, in order to provide an elected chamber of the United Nations with a long-term oversight role in repect of national legislation. In the past, we argued for such oversight being provided in the United Kingdom by the second chamber of the British parliament: the House of Lords. Perhaps we should not spend time pursuing such a plan at a purely national level, but instead look for it in a global context.
There are, of course, other features which have changed the political landscape since World War 2. The sinister existence of nuclear arsenals in the wake of the devastating end to the war in Japan is particularly significant in this respect. When talking with a friend last week about the need to empower the United Nations through building democratic legitimacy, he drew attention to the implication of nuclear weapons owned by individual nations, which he considered might render global governance very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve; this being due to the way that possession of nuclear weapons locks countries into their national mindset. He may well be right.
But let's imagine that, in pursuit of genuine participation for all, these countries with nuclear arsenals could be encouraged to view them not so much a means of making existential threats but more as a backstop safeguard which would underpin their opportunity for constructive dialogue rather than simply building their national fortress walls?
This constructive dialogue, which would have to start in the UN Security Council, could then explore options for finding agreement for those seemingly elusive solutions for enabling genuine participation for all. With the permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France) containing all three of the world’s dominant autocracies, perhaps they could search for the way to turn Xi Jinping’s global ambition as set out in our quotation into a reality.
A year ago I sent this letter to António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations through the office of the UK Mission to the UN, setting out some of the major issues which need tackling at a global level. I’m still awaiting a reply, but the prize for establishing global leadership from the UN is immense: long-term measures to achieve a stable environment, a more equitable and participative existence for individual humans across the world, and the maintenance of law and order through an international police force rather than having to resort to military action.
How about this for a New Year resolution?
Gavin Oldham OBE
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