COVID-19 and the Global Economic Crisis: Stumbling Blocks or Stepping-Stones Toward an Effective System of Global Governance?

We humans are strange creatures. We often tend to put off making important decisions and taking vital action until we hit a crisis point. We do this in both our individual and collective lives. The problem is that in today's world some of the decisions we have steadfastly refused to make can spell the difference between life and death. We are learning this the hard way with the coronavirus pandemic and its twin, the growing global economic crisis. 

And yet, there are still constructive choices we can make. Rather than stumbling blocks, we can choose to treat these crises as stepping-stones helping us build an effective system of global governance fit to respond to our collective needs in the 21st century and beyond. We have known for a long time that climate change poses a dire threat to life on earth in many different ways. We have also known that the continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons increases the threat of a nuclear war, which, whether deliberate or accidental, will have horrific consequences. Yet, we have been content to stick our heads in the sand and abdicate responsibility for making collective, global decisions that will ensure that these nightmares are mitigated or never come to pass. 

We have made the same mistake with respect to the looming threat of pandemics. For years, we have talked about the possibility of such an event, and yet we have failed to take the necessary steps to ensure that we were prepared to tackle such a crisis swiftly and effectively. While some voices have for many years been calling for the creation of a limited form of global government, most of our leaders have been unwilling to countenance such an idea. Yet, finally, in the face of the enormous physical, economic, and mental suffering we have begun enduring in the wake of the coronavirus, we are starting to hear voices among the world's leaders calling for the creation of some kind of system of global governance that is capable of responding to the needs of the 21st century. Such voices should be encouraged and applauded.

Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Arancha González Laya, expressed her view in a piece published by The Washington Post today that it is "time to be bold and envision new ways forward for our international institutions." She clearly articulated the goal: "to find ways to reinforce the institutions that work, replace those that do not, create those that are missing and, overall, promote simplicity, effectiveness, coherence and cohesion." 

What an incredible call to action! This is precisely the kind of leadership we need — one that is willing to acknowledge and dispense with systems that are not working and no longer ensure the well-being of those they were created to serve. And one that recognizes the need for collective consultation in order to conceive of new global structures: capable of managing collective problems that impact humanity as a whole.

Also today, the views of Gordon Brown, the former prime minister of Britain were clearly laid out in an article published by The Guardian.  He cut straight to the chase, urging world leaders "to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic." 

He highlighted the obvious yet often unacknowledged fact that "this is not something that can be dealt with in one country," rather it is something that requires "a coordinated global response," starting with "some sort of working executive." 

This kind of call confirms world historian Arnold Toynbee's predictions in the last century that — despite our strenuous resistance to any notion of a world government — once we faced an existential threat, we would rapidly,though reluctantly, abandon our resistance in favor of a world government, albeit limited in scope to what is absolutely necessary to effect the global management of global challenges.

We, the people of the world, have a choice to mitigate our global suffering and to ensure that our hardships have not been in vain. It is up to us, one and all, to demand of our leaders that they seize this opportunity to demonstrate the statesmanship, vision, and courage required to build those global decision-making and enforcement institutions we so desperately need to meet the urgent needs of an inextricably interconnected world.

The COVID-19 Pandemic: We Sink or Swim Together

If there is one thing the world is learning rapidly, it is that tackling the global COVID-19 pandemic  requires acting collectively to manage a collective problem. This has been a lesson that humanity has long resisted as it has stubbornly clung to outworn habits of nationalism and competition fueled by all sorts of fear such as fear of the “other” or fear of insufficient resources.

Over the years, circumstances have afforded us ample opportunity to learn the importance of collective action. We have confronted a number of growing global crises that endanger our peace and security. Climate change, migration, the growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and nuclear proliferation rank high among them. And yet, despite the severity of these crises, we have been unwilling to give up our old maladaptive habits of focusing on our self interest, both on the individual and national levels. We have stubbornly refused to admit that the advantage of the part can only be ensured by guaranteeing the advantage of the whole, and that we are all better off when our primary loyalty is to the human race as a whole. We have failed to understand that if we are to thrive as individuals and nations we must ensure that all nations and all peoples can thrive.

Now, however, the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus is giving us a unique and unprecedented opportunity to learn this lesson quickly. Indeed, we are being given a crash course in the truth of the oneness of humanity and its inextricable interdependence and in the need for collective action. The stakes are high — it's do or die for many. We  can and are learning this lesson, albeit slowly: Whether at the city, county, state, national, or international levels, we are being painfully forced to learn this lesson, kicking and screaming as we go.  

The good news is that our self-destructive behaviors — including excessive focus on nationalism, xenophobia, and racism — are simply long-standing habits, and habits can be changed. Renowned historian Arnold Toynbee, writing in the second half of the 20th century, concluded that the global community must change its habits if it were to survive. He went on to predict that it would ultimately do so, but only when confronted by an existential crisis — which he believed would be precipitated by the atom bomb. He theorized that, once confronted with such a crisis, humanity would rapidly shed its old habits — albeit reluctantly — and embrace new ones, including the recognition that we need some form of world government with the authority to ensure humanity’s collective interests.

The COVID-19 pandemic is demonstrating one of the areas in which we must have mechanisms of global governance — including collective decision-making and enforcement — to protect the world community against global pandemics. In this regard, we are gradually becoming conscious that we need to engage in collective action, collaboration, and coordination on a scale never seen before. We are learning this at different levels — within countries, such as the U.S., where it is becoming apparent that our response is a patchwork one, depending on which city or state we live in. We are also learning this at the regional level: The European Union is beginning to grasp that there needs to be far more coordination at the regional level to take steps protecting the citizens of the EU. To this end, the EU has taken initial steps such as closing the EU's common borders. And we are beginning to learn this at the global level where organizations like the World Health Organization have been trying to get nations to act but lack the authority to pass binding regulations that governments would have to follow, let alone the ability to enforce their recommendations.

It is time to ratchet up our learning. Just as the virus is spreading exponentially, so too must our awareness of the oneness of humanity and of our inextricable interconnectedness grow, resulting in the acknowledgment that it is time to build a new system of global governance fit for the 21st century and beyond.

The awareness we need is perfectly summed up by the following analogy offered a number of years ago by Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.  He observed that there had been a time not long ago when the nations of the world were like self-contained boats sailing on the sea of international life. Each boat had its own captain and crew, and the main purpose of the international order was to create rules that ensured that the movements of these boats were coordinated to avoid accidents. However, time has moved on. Our current reality is completely different. Given the unprecedented degree of our interconnectedness, our situation could more aptly be described as that of a ship consisting of 193 cabins, each representing a nation state. The problem is that, while each cabin has its own captain and crew dedicated to maintaining order within that cabin and serving it, the ship as a whole lacks both captain and crew.  

What we may well ask, are the concrete implications of this analogy? The first is that in a time of global crisis, such as the world faces with the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no one at the helm of our ship capable of steering us clear in the stormy and turbulent seas. Nor do we have hands on deck dedicated to the collective good — the business of saving the ship as a whole  — rather than the narrow well-being of the members of one or other of the cabins onboard. The second is that the principles and rules by which the inhabitants in one cabin govern themselves could actually prove detrimental to people in other cabins and could cause the ship as a whole to sink. It is not hard to recognize how this plays out in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic where actions taken by one national government such as restricting the export of medical supplies would detrimentally impact the citizens of other nations. 

For humanity to survive and thrive all this must change. We must quickly craft new global decision-making institutions that have the authority to pass binding regulations to protect us all in certain narrow spheres where the only solution lies in collective action. We also need global enforcement mechanisms to ensure that all nations comply with these collective rules.

We Owe it To Ourselves to Elect Honest and Trustworthy Leaders

The accelerating spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, brings with it some valuable lessons and opportunities for growth. We are learning firsthand the dangers of putting up with leaders who are dishonest and untruthful and who are more concerned with their own interests, whether political, personal, or financial, than the interests of the people they represent. We are becoming more deeply aware that truthfulness and trustworthiness are no longer qualities that are merely desirable in our leaders. Rather, they are essential and non-negotiable criteria of electability, as our very lives depend on them.  

COVID-19 is affording us the opportunity to witness firsthand the disastrous ramifications of a culture of obfuscation, concealment, and outright lying that has become endemic to our social and political lives worldwide. In the midst of this public health crisis, the inability to trust what our leaders tell us can prove fatal. If we find our leaders have downplayed the severity of the contagion as occurred in China, Iran, and currently in the United States, why should we believe them when they tell us that it is time for drastic measures such as quarantine? Similarly, if our leaders have misled us regarding the availability of medical equipment such as masks, ventilators, and hospital beds, we are more likely to believe rumors and to discard instructions not to hoard materials, such as masks, that must be reserved for our health workers — our first line of defense.  

Even when it comes to the likely economic fallout from the coronavirus infection, our past experience with health crises indicates that only one third of the economic impact is attributable directly to the crisis, for example as a result of death, inability to go to work, and reduced production. By contrast, as Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund explains in a recent interview on the PBS News Hour, a whopping two thirds of the economic impact is due to loss of confidence and uncertainty. Leaders have the responsibility to bolster our confidence by being open, transparent, and truthful; at the very least they must refrain from behavior that exacerbates any existing uncertainty and confusion or contributes to loss of confidence.

The good news is that if we don't like the state our world is in, we are not stuck with it, nor are we doomed to repeat the habits and patterns of the past if they no longer serve us. We have the opportunity to make different and more empowering choices that will eventually change our social reality. We could begin by demanding that candidates for political leadership be known for their qualities of honesty, truthfulness, and consequent trustworthiness, which we know are so crucial to our wellbeing and security. We should prioritize such qualities over platforms and promises, many of which are often left unfulfilled. 

If we are to be successful in electing leaders worthy of our trust, we must first be willing to continually hone our ability to investigate the truth without prior prejudices or conceptions. In other words, we must refuse to abdicate our responsibility to discern the truth by blindly believing everything we are told regardless of the reliability of the source.  

Having adopted this new mindset, we must examine the motives, record of service, and demonstrated qualities of the candidates. In the digital age, such information is relatively easy to ascertain. It is not hard to glean information about a person's past dealings, both in matters of family and business. If a candidate has shown themselves to be incapable of being faithful to their spouse, the one person they have sworn to love and cherish all their lives, why would we expect them to treat us, the unknown masses any differently? It doesn't make sense to assume that, once in office, they would miraculously transform their character and demonstrate a high degree of loyalty to their electorate. Maybe they will, but chances are they won’t. The same holds true for those who have demonstrated their untrustworthiness in business dealings. If they have been in the habit of cheating, lying, and fraudulently dealing with their business partners, vendors, or customers, why would we have any expectation that they would behave differently once they are in positions of power and subject to greater temptation of larger rewards? It is similarly easy to ascertain a person's motives based on their record of service: Have they been more interested in advancing their own ego and interests or have they consistently demonstrated that they put the interests of their communities above their own?

In sum, our experience with the coronavirus, while painful, is also providing us a rich opportunity to build a more peaceful and secure world. If we start by recognizing that we have the power to make different, more constructive choices by honing our individual ability to investigate the truth for ourselves and by demanding that our leaders possess the qualities of honesty and trustworthiness, we will have taken some crucial strides toward such a peaceful and secure world. 

The Coronavirus: Looming Disaster or Golden Opportunity?

Over the past year there has been no shortage of looming disasters that pose a serious threat to humanity including uncontrollable wild fires and forest fires precipitated by climate change, and the dangers of an accidental plunge into nuclear war as a result of miscalculation and brinksmanship.  The recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, is now likely to become the pandemic that we have been fearing for some time. Although much is still unknown about the virus, what experts do know is that it is extremely contagious, like the infamous 1918 Spanish flu that infected approximately one third of the world's population and killed between 20 and 50 million people, and that the new virus' likely mortality rate is 1% to 3% of those infected. While the threat to human life is already engendering fear and anxiety, knock-on impacts to the global economy are likely to be just as severe. To contain the virus borders are being closed, flights canceled, whole towns locked down, factories and schools closed, and sporting, entertainment, trade-show, and other large events canceled. In a world as interconnected as ours is, such restrictions disrupt manufacturing and retail supply chains, with the dual effect of threatening access to supplies and potentially causing a global recession.

It is no wonder that our typical response is either to feel fearful, helpless, apathetic, and sink into despair or to feel angry, frustrated, and quick to blame someone else -- the people of some other country, health officials, or even our neighbors and friends who unwittingly carry the infection and expose the rest of us to it. While such reactions are understandable given the level of risk associated with the spread of the coranavirus, and the many uncertainties that accompany its spread, in reality both reactions are destructive and do not serve us. Moreoever, when we feel helpless or angry and blame others, our perceptions of the options available to us tend to be blinkered. When we need to be most creative and energetic in crafting constructive responses and solutions, we become apathetic, depressed, and anxious. We also become more prone to a fight-or-flight response and to conflict with others. All of these emotions ultimately lead either to inaction, delayed or half-baked action with too little done, too late, or to endless blame-games that, in the end, also do not help us meet the challenges at hand.

What if instead of viewing these same events, including the spreading coronavirus, as looming disasters, we were to view them as a supreme opportunity for humanity to finally learn to communicate in a spirit of goodwill and transparency, and to cooperate and collaborate on finding workable solutions that benefit us all? What if instead of viewing other nations and their actions as enemies and threats, we viewed them as indispensable and valuable allies with whom to join forces in the fight against a global threat? Commentators like David Ignatius of the Washington Post and experts like the editors of Nature Medicine are starting to suggest that the coronavirus presents us with a unique opportunity to do just this. For this to happen we need to change our perspective on social reality from seeing disparate nations each concerned exclusively and foremost with its own well-being to seeing a single global organism, a single global community that is interconnected in much the same way that the limbs and organs of the human body are connected. Just as it would be nonsensical and futile for the liver to claim that it was not concerned about the health of the kidneys because it was focused first and foremost upon its own well-being, and just as the heart could never be truly healthy in a body where the lungs were riddled with disease, so, too, is it nonsensical and futile for individual countries and social groups to claim and act solely or even primarily without regard for the consequences and benefits to other countries and groups. What if we understood that the only way to guarantee the well-being and health of any one of our nations requires ensuring the well-being of all nations? Such a shift in perspective would reveal new ways of organizing our global community, of decision-making and behavior that open up new and effective pathways to addressing the seemingly intractable challenges of our time.  

Such a shift in perspective requires both awareness and acceptance of the reality of our unprecedented interconnectedness as a global community of nations and of the imperative to act together collaboratively in order to solve collective challenges. It also requires us to acknowledge that we have the power to make different, more empowering choices. I will elaborate further on these thoughts in subsequent weekly blogposts that are part of a new series about indispensable mindsets and habits that will bring us the global peace we so dearly want.  Please stay tuned.

New Book: Bridge to Global Governance

New Publication!

My purpose in writing this book is several-fold. My primary aim is to propose a workable first step in the creation of global decision-making institutions that can effectively and efficiently attend to the urgent and immediate needs of the 21st Century. I hope to demonstrate that it is possible to build a global system of governance that serves all the peoples of the world and that is founded upon the principles of federalism. I believe that the best approach is to start in a narrow sphere of international endeavor and then to build outward, gradually and methodically expanding into broader spheres as success inspires confidence. As a starting point, I propose breaking the logjam caused in our global life by the complex of three seemingly intractable problems: global warming, inequitable distribution of energy, and nuclear proliferation. Success in this urgent but narrow sphere of international endeavor would bring immediate benefits to all and thereby engender hope, free us from the grip of paralyzed will, and inspire confidence to expand the spheres in which we apply this methodology, covering ever-widening areas of collective need.

Another purpose of this book is to demonstrate the power of even a handful of individuals, particularly those in positions of leadership motivated by only the best interests of humanity rather than self-interest and exhibiting certain sterling qualities like freedom from prejudice, to bring about organic and far-reaching changes in the structure of our global governance institutions that in turn foster peace, prosperity and stability in our global society. In a world where the rule of strongmen seems to be once again on the rise, where leaders unabashedly stir up the ugliest and most divisive of human emotions like xenophobia, racism, and sexism to gain and maintain their grip on power, and where the forces of nationalism appear to be gaining ascendancy resulting in the increasing fragmentation of human society, I believe it is essential that we remind ourselves of a better world which could be ours if we only bring ourselves to demand leaders with qualities that inspire trust and engender unity.

Lastly, but by no means of least importance, I aim to illustrate the power of consciously and deliberately weaving a set of universally agreed, global ethics into the very structures of our global governance institutions. It is not sufficient for our leaders to possess ennobling qualities. In addition, the very composition, voting structures, and processes that govern our institutions must also embody principles of oneness, equity, and uncompromising focus on the collective good to inspire trust and confidence in the governed and guard against the corrosive forces of self-interest and corruption.

The model I propose is based on the remarkably successful European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) adopted after the Second World War to enable the recently warring countries to rebuild their devastated economies and national polities despite critical shortages of coal and steel without falling into the same traps that doomed the same countries after World War One. As I will explore in depth, we can derive much inspiration and many lessons from the ECSC about how to solve the complex, entrenched problems facing us today, in particular the three-fold complex of global warming, inequitable distribution of energy, and nuclear proliferation. The ECSC had many strengths from which we can learn, ranging from the way it came into being, to its composition, funding, powers, and guiding principles, and most importantly to its role in bringing a lasting peace to Europe. The  successes of the ECSC inspired confidence among its member nations to deepen and expand their cooperation to encompass additional domains of economic, security, and legal policy in what we know today as the European Union. Although the ECSC also suffered from certain weaknesses, these are no less instructive as we strive to shape global governance institutions that are fit for purpose for the 21st Century and beyond.

In this book I hope to offer a useful model for action. Although the argument rests on textual resources and analyses, footnotes would obstruct what I hope is a natural flow of ideas. Those who wish to dive deeper, however, will find these sources in a bibliography at the end of the book, broken down by chapter.

World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.

---Robert Schuman, May 9, 1950

Get your copy today at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, or www.kobo.com.

A World Parliament: Precisely the Collective Decision-Making Our World Needs

Although obvious, it bears repeating and reflecting on the fact that we live in a world that is deeply interconnected and interdependent.  The strides we humans have made in communications, transportation, trade and finance, have brought to the point in which our destinies are intimately linked together.  Our interconnectedness has, indeed, made of us a single organism.  While there are many benefits to be derived from such an interlinking of destinies, there are also inevitable downsides.  The greatest downside is that we are increasingly susceptible to systemic, collective risks.  We do not have to look far to identify some of these systemic risks.  Chief amongst them are climate change and nuclear proliferation, with all the dangers they pose to our very survival. These risks also include terrorism, migration, global financial crises, genocide and other egregious human rights abuses, to name a few more.

The collective and systemic nature of these grave risks and dangers demands a collectively agreed-upon response.  To arrive at such a collective response, we must consult, cooperate and act together. And yet, we find ourselves in this bizarre position of lacking the very collective decision-making and enforcement institutions that our world so clearly and desperately needs.  Our systems of global governance are extremely primitive. Designed as they were to address the needs of a bygone time, they are astoundingly unfit to address the problems of the 21st century and beyond.  One of the great thinkers of our time, Kishore Mahbubani, has summed up our current state of affairs perfectly.  He likens humanity to a ship carrying 7 billion people.  The ship is divided into 193 cabins. While each cabin has its own captain and crew, the ship as a whole lacks both a captain and crew.  It is consequently adrift on the seas, without anyone to guide it therefore finds itself at the mercy of gales and storms.

So, what can we do?  Before we begin, we need to get clear about one thing:  human institutions, policies and laws are there to serve our well-being and happiness.  It makes no sense for us to sacrifice ourselves to uphold any of these that no longer serves our purpose.  So, if what we really need is a collective decision-making institution to determine determine things like the the kinds of energy we can use going forward to ameliorate global warming; or the means of ensuring that all nations have equitable access to clean energy to meet their needs and to clean water and sufficient food; or effective ways to regulate arms production and put an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and if our current institutions do not have the capacity to do what is needed, then isn't it time to think about creating a World Parliament that can do these things?

The two most important elements we need to think about and watch for in crafting an effective World Parliament are:

1.  Ensuring that the World Parliament has the requisite power and authority to pass binding laws in certain narrow spheres in which all nations and peoples have a collective interest.  These spheres, as mentioned above, include but are not limited to, climate change, the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and egregious human rights abuses including genocide.  In other words, we want to give this Parliament the kinds of powers that the current General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) lacks.  While UNGA provides a wonderful forum for appointed representatives of governments to come together for periodic consultation and discussion, it simply lacks the authority to pass laws that are binding on the nations of the world, because the UN Charter never gave it such authority.

2. Ensuring that the World Parliament we establish with the requisite authority to pass laws that bind us all in certain narrow areas of collective interest, properly and adequately represents all the peoples of the world and that there is no democratic deficit.  To achieve this end, the members of this Parliament should be directly elected:  The citizens of each nation should be able to elect their representatives to such a Parliament in proportion to the size of their population.  This election can, and ideally ought to be, confirmed by each government.  After all, many of us elect representatives to our local councils, state legislatures and national legislatures.  Given that we have now evolved into a global community, why can we not also elect our members to an international legislature?

Over the years, there have been some proposals regarding interim steps we can take towards the establishment of such a Parliament.  One such proposal made in 2015 is that we begin by creating a UN Parliamentary Network to serve as an advisory body to UNGA.  The idea is that this Network would bring together parliamentarians from national governments to New York at least once a year, in September, to share with UNGA grassroots concerns (including those of the private sector and civil society) about matters that affect global security and justice worldwide, and to inject fresh ideas into the debates at UNGA.  The problem with this suggestion is that it does not address the fundamental deficit of binding decision-making ability at the UN.  In other words, adding a Network that is to function essentially as an advisory body to an existing body (UNGA) that is already toothless in terms of its ability to pass binding legislation for the collective good, does not move the ball forward. On the contrary, it could be viewed as merely adding another cumbersome layer to an already-bloated UN bureaucracy.

The Network if composed of parliamentarians that have been elected in their nation-states, as currently proposed, does, however, go some way towards addressing the problem of democratic deficiency.  Although it would be even better if its members were directly elected by their citizens.  As this proposal evolves, it is important to ensure that the members of the Network are truly in touch with the various grassroots communities in their countries and are able to convey their true concerns and sentiments and are not relying solely or mainly on civil society and the private sector for their information.  Although civil society has an important role to play in international life, the truth is that NGOs are unelected and self-appointed and tend to function more like lobbying organizations.  They generally do not represent the majority or even any minority of people. Yet, by effectively networking and mobilizing their members they can wield a disproportionate influence on decision-making and shaping of global politics.  Moreover, NGOs have their own agenda and sources of funding and their nature, impact and interests have become almost impossible to measure according to scholars.  This should lead us to ask the important question: why should they have the ear of international decision-makers when the citizenry do not?

A different proposal for an interim step to be taken towards establishing a World Parliament,  one that has garnered some support, is that we establish a World Parliamentary Assembly.  Like the Parliamentary Network, the idea again is that this Assembly serve as a consultative body to the UNGA.  The proposed logic is that while the UNGA represents governments (its members being the appointees of member governments), this Assembly would form a second chamber that represents the voice of the people.  The argument is that such an Assembly would be similar to the Common Assembly that served the European Communities (the European Economic Community, and its two sister communities, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community). However, we should stop and remember that the situation in Europe was very different to the state of play of international institutions today.  The three European communities already had a very strong legislative and executive arm (the Council of Ministers and Commission respectively) with the authority to propose, pass and enforce laws that bound their member states.  Under those circumstances it made sense to inject the voice of the citizens of the members states into the decision-making process by creating a Parliamentary Assembly representing the people, and giving it a consultative role that would evolve over time to encompass co-decision-making powers.  By contrast, as of today, we have no institutions at the international level that resemble either the European Council of Ministers and the European Commission in their authority to propose and pass binding laws, therefore begging the question of the value to be gained by adding yet another purely consultative body to the mix of of institutions that lack decision-making powers.

Although the proposal for a Parliamentary Assembly does not address the binding decision-making deficit, it does seem to adequately address the democratic deficit.  The idea being put forward is that the Assembly initially be made up of national parliamentarians or representatives that are directly elected by the citizens of member countries. While this proposal addresses the problem of the democratic deficit at UNGA by providing for direct election, we are still left with the question of how adding a consultative body to UNGA -- a body that lack authority to pass binding international legislation -- will help us arrive at the collective solutions we need, in the form of binding laws, to address our gravest global challenges.

This brings us back full circle to the proposal for a World Parliament made at the beginning of this article, a proposal that addresses both the binding decision-making deficit as well as the democratic deficit.  Is it not worth focussing our energies on a global plan of education to raise awareness amongst the citizens of all nations of the need for and feasibility of creating such a World Parliament whose members are directly elected by the citizens of all 193 nations, with authority to pass binding international legislation in at least one or two narrow spheres of collective interest? It is worth the experiment:  As time goes on and this body develops capacity, confidence and wins the trust of the international community, we can consider adding to its powers in further areas of collective interest that require swift and effective collective decision-making.

Why The UN Is In Danger Of Becoming Irrelevant

We live in amazing times!  Thanks to incredible advances in communications and transportation, trade, finance and technology, our world has become interconnected and interdependent in ways that are inextricable and unprecedented.  In reality, the world is functioning as a single organism with all the consequent benefits and potential dangers.  The problem lies in the fact that many dangers that were formerly localized now have the effect of endangering the entire organism very quickly.  An example of this, is the spread of viruses such as Ebola and SARS that create the risk of pandemics that can threaten the entire world.  Another example is that of Syria where what started off as protests clamoring for political change, evolved into civil war, the rise of insurgencies and the illegal use of chemical weapons.  Syria's domestic problems eventually spawned three world-encircling crises:  the flow of economic migrants and refugees to Europe and beyond, the creation of fertile soil for terrorist networks to flourish, notably ISIL, and the widening of the scope of the conflict with different countries such as the United States, Turkey and Russia arrayed on different sides of the internal conflict leading some to describe the war in Syria as a "proto-world war".

Yet, in the face of these growing global challenges and systemic risks to the international order, our systems of global governance have lagged far behind in their evolution and to the extent they exist, have demonstrated a remarkable incapacity to evolve in ways that can meet these challenges.  Our modus operandi as a world community has been to wait until a crisis has wreaked a great deal of suffering and havoc or until the eleventh hour, before we begin to act: witness the laggardly pace at which we have responded to the siren calls warning us of the disasters that lie in wait as a result of unmitigated climate change.  Our national leaders and international institutions have proven themselves unequal to the responsibility of being proactive and of cooperating and collaborating to manage common problems. To quote a former president of the UN Security Council: "The demand for global leadership has never been greater....the world has changed structurally, yet our systems for managing global affairs have not adapted" and so, he concludes: "Our world is adrift".

Many believe or assume that the United Nations can and will stem the tide of these global challenges and provide the global solutions we so urgently need.  This, however, is a mistaken belief.  The truth is that the the UN was created in a different era and was not equipped with the power, authority, legitimacy or tools it needs to properly address severe global challenges on the order of climate change, global financial crises, pandemics, terrorism, migration, genocide or the proliferation of nuclear weapons to name but a handful of the most severe crises of our times. As time passed, unfortunately, it failed to evolve as rapidly and drastically as was necessary to meet these challenges. Consequently, it stands in danger of becoming obsolete.

Here are some of the reasons why the UN in its present form is not up to the task of managing common problems:

Firstly, the UN General Assembly, though providing a wonderful forum for representatives of nation states to gather on a regular basis to consult upon and discuss global affairs, suffers from two obvious defects: firstly, its members are not truly representative of the peoples of the world, in that they are not directly elected by them as members of a national parliament or legislature would be.  The institution therefore does not have the legitimacy it requires when it passes resolutions urging action in a particular sphere of activity.  Secondly, the UN General Assembly does not have the power to pass legislation that is legally binding on all its member states.  Consequently at a time in our collective history when we most need a viable collective decision-making body which can effectively address collective challenges, we find ourselves lacking.  For example, we need a world decision-making body (i.e. a world parliament) that properly represents the people of the world to determine what kinds of energy we can use to arrest global warming with its potentially disastrous consequences and to be the trustee for natural resources that are part of the common heritage of humanity, while regulating the production and ensuring the equitable distribution of such resources.  We also need a collective decision-making institution that can pass binding regulations in the financial arena that ensure that we will never again suffer from a global financial crisis that threatens the well-being of our planet.

Moreover, we need a world parliament that has the authority to levy taxes from individuals and corporations that would fund its critical activities that are in the global collective interest.  Such a fund might be used to help bail out countries in financial distress (like Greece), that would support research and development to find alternative clean sources of energy or that would fund the research and development of vaccines to prevent the spread of virulent pathogens that threaten the health of our global society.

Such a world parliament would also need to have the capacity to enforce its rules through an international executive that does not suffer from the fatal flaws of our current UN Security Council which brings us to the point that the Security Council is not truly representative of the nations of the world.  It is also hamstrung by the fact that its five permanent members have the right to veto a decision in support of restoring or maintaining peace even if all the other nations believe it is a good decision.  Moreover, the Security Council's mandate is vague and needs to be properly fleshed out so that it can act swiftly and with confidence knowing that it will not be accused of overstepping its authority.  Finally, the Security Council lacks some critical tools it needs to accomplish its mission of maintaining peace in the world.  For example, it lacks an international intelligence agency from which it can obtain timely, reliable, shared and transparent information on the basis of which it can make decisions to take action.  It also lacks an international police force serving at its behest to take timely, efficient and effective action to nip problems in the bud before they fester into unwieldy disasters.

To effectively counter our current global challenges we need to have an international executive that would serve in accordance with a universally-agreed-upon mandate and pre-determined rules arrived at by consensus of all nations. It would have at its command an international police force that would be comprised of units from all the nations of the world.  In short, it would act only collectively at the behest of the democratically legitimate parliament in accordance with collectively determined rules and through collective mechanisms.

Finally, the United Nations today lacks the ability to forestall many global conflicts because the World Court which is one of its agencies lacks compulsory jurisdiction to require nations that are in dispute to come before it so it can hear and decide these cases before they spill over into conflict that destabilizing peace.  It is untenable that at this moment in history when there is so much at stake, and local conflicts can so easily cascade into international conflicts that with potentially horrific consequences, including the use of nuclear weapons, that nations are not compelled to appear before a World Court to have their disputes decided peacefully.

Not only does the World Court lack compulsory jurisdiction, it also lacks the ability to enforce its decisions and essentially relies on the honor system for states to comply with its rulings.  We would never countenance a national judicial system in which a murderer was either given the option to show up in court to be tried or to opt out of a trial (i.e. no compulsory jurisdiction), or in which such a murderer once found guilty was asked to go and lock himself in a gaol cell and remain there for the duration of his punishment.  And yet, despite the fact that our world is now so interconnected and interdependent, we continue to put up with this manifestly ridiculous system that is not serving us well.  It is high time that we create an international court with both the power of compulsory jurisdiction to hear cases that could lead to international disputes and the means of enforcing its decisions, through the agency of an international police force.

Ultimately the larger lesson here is that if global institutions, such as the UN, or policies or procedures are no longer serving the welfare of humanity as a whole and if our systems of global governance are lagging far behind the movement towards global integration and interdependence, then we must be willing either to radically reform them or to create new alternatives that will ensure our peace, security and well-being.  We owe this to ourselves and to future generations.