1 MARCH 2055
 

Your Excellency,

Now that the world has at last agreed to call this month the first of the year, thus making September, October, November and December the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth in accord with their respective names - January and February thus becoming the eleventh and twelfth, I take this opportunity to wish Your Excellency a happy new year. This much belated global agreement is yet one more sign of increased interpopular unity.

Your Excellency has invited me to outline my views on the prospects of further political integration in the foreseeable future. Recent events have demonstrated that very little of the future can be regarded as foreseeable, but I shall do my best.

Our view of the predictable future is coloured by what has happened in the immediate past. Just as the now defunct North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) resolved not to restrict its membership to States bordering on the North Atlantic, the new name for the European Federal Commonwealth reflects the decision to include (as it did democratic Turkey and Israel) nations outside geographic Europe. It is not generally understood that the demise of NATO was due to growing recognition that democracies cannot allow themselves to be dominated by a military organization that ought to be subservient to a democratic legislature.

Most of the twenty-seven  members of the Federal Commonwealth (FC) are confident that its constitutional safeguards of genuinely democratic forms of government (not only in the federation itself but within the borders of each individual member State) make it safe to include as members even States that may need assistance in this respect for some time to come. Such has been the case with Turkey, which however seems to be making good progress in this direction.

The inclusion of Israel at the same time as Turkey has of course worked like a magic wand in pacifying the Middle East. This is expected to encourage the more rapid emergence of other democracies in that tempestuous region, particularly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq.

The new name and federal constitution for the FC has also had the effect of making States even as far away as Australasia show interest in membership. And the fact that federations such as Switzerland and Germany are flourishing members of the Federal Commonwealth indicates that there would be room in it even for such huge federations as the USA - provided it were counterbalanced by at least some members of the British Commonwealth. Some observers are even suggesting that this is the route along which future world political integration will proceed. In fact there are predictions that once this process reaches its conclusion, the era of world wars will be at an end.