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1 Historical antecedents
⢠Empires in history
⢠The decline of empires
⢠World government as empire
⢠Contract-based universal government
⢠Conclusion
The contemporary notion of world government involves a direct extrapolation of the typical national government of today to encompass all the countries of the Earth. As is the case with today's typical national government, such a government would not confine itself merely to enforcing peace among its component regions; it would also endeavor to improve the welfare of its citizens by means of various institutions and procedures supported by enforceable laws. Its distinction from the typical national government would be not so much in purpose as in extent. This notion of world government is relatively recent, only coming into precise focus and full fruition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Long prior to the recent historical past, however, men could and did imagine a universal political organization encompassing the entire worldâor more precisely, the entire known world at a particular time and place. In the ancient past, no one, whether African, Asian, European or American, was aware of the actual geography of the world, and of the diversity of peoples and civilizations residing on its surface. But from earliest recorded history, empires existed that embraced expansive territories and numerous diverse peoples and cultures. During periods of imperial expansion, the rulers of these empires dreamt of extending their authority to cover the entire known world of their time. Of course such dreams were never realized, but even so, we may discern in them the indistinct forerunner of the contemporary notion of a supernational political organization encompassing the entire world.
In this chapter we shall consider in what ways the imperial concept from the early recorded history of human civilization is similar to the contemporary world government concept, and in what ways it is different. Instrumental to the rise and fall of all historical empires was warfare. As technological progress in the modern era has proceeded, the weapons of war have become ever more deadly and destructive. The idea of bringing a world government into being by means of warfare, in the same way that the historical empires were brought into being, seems fully untenable. But exactly when did humankind start to conceive of a universal political authority brought about not by warfare, but by the free, contractual consent of the governed? Toward the end of the chapter, we will address this important question.
Empires in history
Although virtually unthinkable in the contemporary world, empires have figured prominently in the history of human civilization.1 Examples include the Persian empire in southwest Asia founded by Cyrus II, the ephemeral Greek empire constructed from the conquests of Alexander the Great, the famous Roman empire that incorporated much of what is today Western Europe and extended far into the Middle East and North Africa, the great Muslim empire from Spain to India resulting from various holy wars following the death of Mohammed, the Mongolian empire established by Genghis Khan that at its height stretched from Eastern Europe to the coasts of Asia, the Inca and Aztec empires in the Americas, as well as various Far Eastern empires in China, India, and elsewhere. The âage of explorationâ in early modern history resulted in the foundation and development of the great colonial empires of the Western European nations: those of Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, and the Netherlands. These empires brought under the political and economic control of the metropolitan nations vast territories in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
There have been two primary, and often complementary, motivations to empire-building: augmenting âhomeland securityâ (to borrow the contemporary US expression), and augmenting economic prosperity. Subjugating neighboring states prevents them from mustering armies for the invasion, conquest, and plunder of the imperial homeland. At the same time, such subjugation may, and probably will, enhance the long-term economic welfare of the homeland, either through outright expropriation of the subjugated people's goods and services in the form of tribute or taxes, or through the gentler mechanism of requiring the subjugated people to engage in economic trade under conditions favorable to the imperial homeland. The relative importance of these motivations varies depending on the nature of the empire. In the case of ancient empires such as the Roman, the initial motivation may have been to quell disturbances and incursions along the borderlands, while economic incentives became more important following the conquest and incorporation of neighboring territories. In the case of the Western European colonial empires, on the other hand, the metropolitan nations were never in danger of invasions mounted in the colonial territories. In these cases, economic motivations toward the normalization of trade were paramount, albeit military action was often necessary at first to pacify colonial territories and open them to trade.
The title of âemperorâ has long exercised a powerful fascination among those political leaders whose authority begins to extend significantly beyond its original boundaries, and this phenomenon persisted even into relatively recent times. For example, in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I), inspired by the victories of French armies in Europe and Egypt, proclaimed himself âEmperor of the French.â In 1852, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the original Napoleon, followed in his uncle's footsteps by proclaiming himself, after a successful military coup, the Emperor of the French as Napoleon III. In 1871, William Frederick Louis, previously king of Prussia, was proclaimed âGerman Emperorâ upon the unification of Germany following Prussia's victory in the Franco-Prussian War. (Ironically, France's defeat in this war marked the end of Napoleon III's tenure as Emperor of the French and the initiation of the Third French Republic.)
Among the Axis powers of World War II, the Japanese already had an emperor, Hirohito (albeit a figurehead), and it is reasonably certain that had the Axis won the war, both Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini of fascist Italy, having assumed control of the erstwhile colonial possessions of Britain, France, and the Netherlands, as well as absorbing the massive ex-Soviet territories, would have soon proclaimed themselves emperors. However, these most recent aspirants to imperial dominion went down to defeat in World War II, and since then the weight of global public opinion against empires in general has been such that no sensible national leader would ever admit to harboring imperialistic ambitions. For example, following World War II several Eastern European nations were brought under military occupation by Soviet armies and became part of what was commonly described by critics as the âSoviet empire,â the components of which comprised not only these nations but also the various non-Russian SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republics) already part of the USSR. But the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was sufficiently sensible not to proclaim himself an emperor.
After all, Stalin's nemesis and fellow dictator, Adolf Hitler, had shortly before aroused fear and enmity throughout the world because of his obviously imperialistic intentions, which were clearly set forth in his 1925 manifesto, Mein Kampf. Hitler's protestations that the 1941 Nazi invasion of the USSR was motivated primarily by a desire to enhance, through preventive aggression, the homeland security of Germany, the rest of Western Europe, and indeed of the entire world, against the menace of Soviet Bolshevism, was not widely believed. Outside of Nazi Germany, the primary motivation was assumed to be economic and geopolitical in nature: control of the huge Soviet landmass would have given Nazi Germany access to vast amounts of natural resources and virtually unlimited Lebensraum (âliving spaceâ) for the German population. It was feared that this might have laid the groundwork for an eventual German world empire whose brutality would have rivaled that of the worst of the ancient empires.
Prejudicial accusations of imperialistic leanings are regularly directed against the leaders of today's paramount superpowers, the United States and the Russian Federation, whenever these leaders try to influence, by whatever means and for whatever purposes, events outside their respective national boundaries. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the abandonment of Marxist ideology by its former components and satellites in the early 1990s rendered the Russian Federation less vulnerable to accusations of imperialistic aspirations and behavior than it had been before. At the present time, the chief remaining target of these accusations is the United States of America, owing to its pre-eminent economic and military power in the contemporary world. For example, it is easy enough to draw parallels between the post-9/11 US military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the aggressive wars of historical empires in their eras of expansion.
On the other hand, it seems doubtful that the United States government intends to make the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq into the modern equivalent of such long-term Roman provinces as those in Galliae (France) and Hispaniae (Spain). Aside from global public opinion, the military costs of making these nations politically subservient to the United States, for an indefinite period of future time, would be astronomical. One reason for this is simply the large geographical separation between these nations and the United States. Indeed, one of the thorniest problems confronted by the current Obama administration is how to withdraw US forces from these countries with the least loss of face, a problem similar to that confronted by the Nixon administration in the early 1970s with respect to South Vietnam. In the final analysis, a literal âglobal empireâ controlled by the United States in the contemporary era seems highly unlikely, simply because the United States, for all its wealth and power, does not possess sufficient resources to establish and sustain such a dominion.
The decline of empires
Very little of the many notorious empires of history remains discernible in the contemporary world. Their component territories have mostly if not entirely devolved into the independent countries we know today. The ancient empires of Rome, Greece, Persia, China, and so on, were long gone as of early modern history. The American Revolutionary War (1775â83) took what is today the United States out of the British colonial empire, and the various Latin American wars of independence of the early nineteenth century ended the colonial dominion of Spain and Portugal in the Americas. The end of World War I saw the demise of the remnants of two ancient land empires which had survived into modern times: the Ottoman empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire. The two decades following the end of World War II saw the complete disintegration of the last remnants of the great Western European colonial empires. Clearly, the Age of Empire in human civilization is now finished.
Few people in the contemporary world mourn the passing of empires. In common parlance today, âempireâ is a derogatory noun and âimperialâ and âimperialisticâ are derogatory adjectives. Not only are empires assumed to have been created by aggressive warfare against peaceful neighbors, but once they have been so created, they engage in continuous oppression and exploitation of their vassal states and subject peoples. Thus, in George Lucas's renowned series of Star Wars science fiction movies, the principal villains (Darth Vadar and company) are in the service of âthe Empire.â Shortly after the release of the first Star Wars movie in 1977, and probably not coincidentally, US president Ronald Reagan, in a hawkish mood toward the Soviet Union, described that nation as an âEvil Empire.â Many people have condemned the post 9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States and a handful of its closest allies as imperialistic aggression.
The gladiatorial contests and public executions of early Christians that took place in the circuses of imperial Rome, among many other things, might be cited as evidence of the brutalizing tendencies of imperial culture. Of course, we do not have to go back into ancient history to find shocking examples of humankind's capacity for cruelty and brutality. The Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945 is only the most notorious of several similar regimes in the modern era. And we should also remember that the same civilization that mounted, for purposes of entertaining the masses, gladiatorial contests and public executions of Christians, also generated monumental achievements in art, science, literature, architecture, engineering, and law. In addition, the peace imposed by the Roman dominion over peoples who otherwise would have been constantly at war with one another, in conjunction with the efficiency of large-scale, organized economic production made possible by peaceful conditions, enabled both an increase in population and higher individual living standards. In short, there are few historians familiar with the civilization and culture of imperial Rome, in the perspective of the other civilizations and cultures of the time, who would be inclined to belittle the Roman achievement.
Nevertheless, there is no question that the great empires of the premodern past were founded primarily upon military conquest. It is also true that in the first flush of victory, the conquering imperial armies frequently committed terrible atrocities, both to revenge earlier outrages committed against imperial citizens by armies emanating from the now-conquered territories, and also to cow the defeated populations into unresisting submission in the future to the imperial authority. But once the conquest had been completed, the role of force and violence in the ongoing daily maintenance of peace and order was probably very much the same as it had been prior to the conquest. Certainly in the case of the long-lasting empires, archetypical of which was the Roman empire, a very serious effort was made by the majority of the emperors to maintain the loyalty of the imperial subjects by means of wise and benevolent governance, as opposed to maintaining their resentful and involuntary submission based on fear and terror.
On the other hand, judging from the regularity of armed insurrections against imperial authority within empires, efforts at wise and benevolent governance were frequently insufficient to maintain compliance. Imperial governments, of their nature, inevitably suffered from some major disadvantages relative to the local governments they supplanted. To begin with, there was a constant tension between the desirability of providing wise and benevolent governance over subject peoples in distant territories, and at the same time the necessity of maintaining a privileged status for those peoples closer to the imperial seat of power. There was also a permanent and unavoidable conflict between the motivation to benevolent governance, and the arrogant pride naturally engendered by the military conquest of other human beings.
In addition to the attitude problem, there was the possibly even more important communications problem. Assuming roughly equivalent attitudes among the political leadership, an independent local government would obviously have a more accurate and complete understanding of local conditions than a remote imperial government, and it would therefore be in a better position to implement specific laws and policies most favorable to public welfare under local conditions. Finally, there was the fact that despite their best efforts to âblend inâ with the local population, many officials of the imperial government would look, dress, and sound different from those they governed. It is a natural human instinct to be suspicious of and hostile toward those who are different from one's accustomed colleagues and companions. And there is also a natural human instinct to resent authority. Aspirants to unrestricted local government power were often able to put the natural âus versus themâ attitude among human beings to good use in raising rebellions against the imperial authority.
World government as empire
An empire is defined as a single political authority encompassing an extensive territory and incorporating numerous subsidiary political units containing many diverse peoples and cultures. There is obviously a close correlation between this definition and the common understanding of world government. Conscious or unconscious identification of world government as a form of imperial government is an important reason why the idea of world government is currently rejected by a large majority of the world's population. But is this identification valid?
Whether or not it is valid depends, to a large extent, on the origins and nature of the envisioned world government. If we imagine the world state coming about by military conquest following a devastating world war, as in Things to Come by H. G. Wells, that is one thing. On the other hand, if the world state is formed by peaceful contract among nations, as was the case with the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945, that is another thing. Furthermore, whether a world state would have to be formed via military conquest, or might come about through peaceful contract, depends critically on the nature of the anticipated world state. In terms of the political authority and military power of the world state, there is a wide range of possibilities, from the present-day United Nations at one extreme, to the omnipotent world state of conventional world federalist thinking at the other extreme. In today's world, the force of nationalism is very strong. Thus the more military power and political authority the potential world state is to possess, the greater will be the amount of skepticism and resistance to the possibility among the world's population.
We cannot at this point specify any particular world state blueprint as the basis for discussion. But on the basis simply of a âgenericâ conception of world government as a global political organization superior to its member nations, how might we assess the proposition that the liabilities of past empires would necessarily apply to a future world government? Against this proposition, we may cite three plausible points of difference between the empires of the past and a potential world government of the future. First, a world government would have few if any outside enemies that would pose a serious threat to its security. Second, a world government would possess significant advantages over the empires of the past in terms of transportation and communication. Finally, the democratic principle of political organization and decision-making is likely to be more important in a potential world government of the future than it was in any of the past empires.
Let us consider first the issue of outside threats. Although a certain amount of speculation is to be found in geopolitical literature written during the most successful and enthusiastic periods of imperial expansion, about extending the borders of the empire to encompass the âentire world,â or more precisely the âentire known world,â no empire in human history has approached this goal. No empire has possessed either the human and material resources, or the military and communications technology, to accomplish this. Even the greatest of the ancient empires encompassed only a small proportion of the Earth's total land area and population. For one thing, none of them incorporated the North American and South American continents, which of course were entirely unknown to the great ancient civilizations of Europe, the Near East, and the Far East.
Even leaving aside unknown continents, and confining consideration to the âknown worldâ of the time, none of the great empires of the past achieved anything approaching complete control. They all had powerful, hostile civilizations, many of them also of the imperial form, lurking just beyond their borders. In the event that any one empire experienced serious internal difficulties and disruptions, its external enemies were ready and waiting to exploit the weakness. Some of the less appealing internal characteristics of historical empiresâthe very attenuated democratic accountability of the political leadership, the glorification of military virtues, and the brutalization of the entire population from highest to lowestâthese are plausibly attributed largely to the fact that these empires were in effect huge armed camps, in which both the citizens and their leaders lived in perpetual fear of dishonor, despoliation, and death at the hands of foreign invaders.
In this we perceive an important difference between the empires of past history and a potential world federation of the future. Even if the membership of the world federation were not universal, if a sufficiently large number of the major world powers joined the federation at its inception, then the possibility of invasion of a member nation by a non-member nation would be slight. A world federation would not be subject to the same acute threat of foreign invasion that was such a major factor in the institut...
