by Harold S. BIDMEAD
Federalists are sometimes reproached for paying too much attention to the problem of making war unnecessary. Their critics assert that the danger of war between nations is less imminent than the urgent ecological problems such as pollution and "popullution", soil erosion and water scarcities.
Such critics would change their attitude if they raised their eyes towards a slightly more distant horizon, to the time when such evils, if not tackled satisfactorily, will result in an epidemic of bloody conflicts throughout the world. It is thus necessary to construct a new world order in which interpopular disputes can be settled peacefully. It is important that the settlements be enforceable. More essential still, they must be enforceable without violence.
The only way known to mankind whereby law can be enforced peacefully is that it shall apply directly upon individuals, on each potential lawbreaker. Justice has no use for weapons of mass destruction. And if settlements are to remain peacefully enforceable, they must be based on the principles of democracy.
To this end we must eradicate that cancer of humanity, nationalism, national sovereignty, the claim to act as judge and jury in one’s own case. If we accept this definition, and can establish alternative means of settling disputes between peoples, we shall have gone a long way to removing not only interstate war, but civil war too, perhaps the more prevalent kind in the modern world, the one likely to become even more common unless we do something about it now.
The world needs to unite to solve global problems, but in all other respects most of us desire to remain separate. The federal solution is the only one known to political science that can satisfy both these desiderata. The ideal democratic interpopular system can hardly be expected to embrace the entire world at the outset, arising like Venus fully grown from the waves. But we must make a start towards this ideal. In any event, the initial nucleus democratic federation might be sufficiently wideflung and strong that none would dare to threaten it, and so just that none would wish to do so. Its influence might be such that it could protect human rights almost everywhere in the world. It would surely be so successful that everyone outside would eventually clamour to join in.
In a federal world, peoples such as the Gypsies, Tamils, Kurds, Basques, Sames, Inuits, Native Americans (the list seems endless) would be political constituencies in the federation, with elected representatives on the legislature. Thus their grievances could be aired and dealt with without any need or excuse to resort to violence. The cure for terrorism lies at its source. Systems like the UN (that second League of Nations) are merely efforts to constitutionalize and legalize world anarchy, attempts to keep the peace by warlike means, which punish the poor, the weak and the innocent rather than the guilty. Thus all systems based on national sovereignty are pretending to cure the disease of war without harming the germ that causes it.
***