TASTIER KIND OF CHALK
by Harold S. BIDMEAD
Life is not a more vigorous form of death, nor is peace a calmer sort of war. A federation is by no means an improved type of United Nations, which is a mere league. The differences are not of degree but of actual substance. It is essential that this fact be more widely understood if the federal idea is to make any real progress.
The differences are not only vital; they are numerous. The American League of Friendship lasted only a decade; its successor the Federated USA is over two centuries old and still flourishing, embracing four times as many States and forty times as many people. The League of Nations failed ignominiously, and its mirror image successor the mis named "United" Nations has an even more miserable record. Its own statistics admitted some years ago to nearly 200 wars and more than 20 million war deaths during its existence.
In truth, the UN ought to be neither blamed nor praised for any major political event, for the following reasons:
In contrast, a federation, having a government, can take action to enforce its decisions, which furthermore can be enforced with the minimum of violence since they act directly on the individual. Thus the innocent usually escape unscathed. Under a league system sanctions punish the poor and the weak rather than the guilty, and wars harm everybody. A federation also decides swiftly enough to prevent catastrophe.
Besides bearing within itself the seeds of its own destruction, a league is unable to finance itself. It has to pass the hat round. Its Members, being sovereign, decide whether or not to pay in full. Under modern conditions taxation has many undesirable qualities, since so much of it is wasted. A federation has power to tax for its own existence, but either the overall burden is much lighter or much more of it is spent to raise standards of living all round rather than on armaments with which to make life miserable.
In view of these facts it would seem clear that the Norwegian Nobel Committee was misguided in awarding the 2001 Peace Prize to the UN and that the UN Secretary General ought to have declined both awards. A cock ought not to take credit for the sunrise.
By the same token, the UN ought not to be blamed for acts of commission or omission committed in its name, e. g. the Korean war (resulting in nearly 8 million casualties and the North Korean problem) Somalia, Srebrenica and now the Sudan.
But one would regard it as suicidal folly to accept the job of Secretary General of an organization that functions like a bus whose engine is towed behind it on a trailer.
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