The idea of a unitary world government has been around quite a long time, envisioned by Ancient Egyptian kings and the Greek Stoic school of through as a world kingdom, by both the Ancient Chinese cultures of the Great Unity and the 15th century Spanish "father of international law" Francisco de Vitoria as a world republic.
While thoughts of grand kingdoms and federations are nothing new, a government that governs sovereign nations is in fact a rather new idea. It was only in 1795 when Immanuel Kant first put forth the idea of a league of nations to promote peace between states. In the 1800s, the so called Concert of Europe was a precursor to this idea. It established an informal system by which any of the four major powers that defeated Napoleon (Austria, Prussia, the Russian Empire, and the UK) could call a conference to discuss potential action to be taken. The "Concert" wasn't really a formal organization tho - more of a joint treaty.
Over the course of almost 100 years between 1864 and 1949, several Geneva Conventions established protection of wounded soldiers and civilians in international armed conflicts by signers of the conventions. This lead to the development of the Red Cross as well as medical organizations with other symbols like the Red Crescent and the bizarre Red Bearded Monkey-Turtle symbol depicted at right. (Oh its supposed to be a lion and a sun? Why does a medical organization have a symbol with a sword?) And the Hauge Conventions of 1899 and 1907 established the first modern laws of war defining war crimes.
The League of Nations
Kant's idea finally gained some purchase in 1920 after the end of World War I when the League of Nations was established. While it sounds like some kind of indestructible group of comic book super heroes, it actually had little staying power, or power of any kind as a matter of fact.
Like the Concert of Europe, it was established by and gave most of its powers to the victors of war - World War I in this case - in the form of permanent Council members (UK, France, Italy, and Japan). Like the North American Articles of Confederation, the League of Nations relied on its members to voluntarily enforce its resolutions and policies, with similar effectiveness. The United States notably refused to join the League, some countries (like Germany) were initially barred from joining, and many others only joined temporarily. Even the powers that did stay in the league didn't trust their fate to other nations and gave themselves de facto veto power. On top of the unanimous or near-unanimous requirements for many resolutions to pass, it was incredibly difficult for the League to take any significant actions.
The League of Nations was also not really what Kant imagined when he wrote about his idea in 1975. He envisioned a world without national standing armies, where actions that would prevent peace would be prosecuted, and states would be strictly non-interventionist with other states. The League in no way promoted these kinds of ideas, and its successor has continued in the same vein.
The United Nations: Return of the League
After World War II, the international community saw the League of Nations as a failure, having been inadequate to prevent the most catastrophic war in history. The United Nations was created in its wake (or more accurately, in its downdraft) in 1945, after being pushed by US president FDR. It became yet another council of victors, this time the victors of WWII.
The UN charter talks a big talk, having been created for no less than saving "succeeding generations from the scourge of war". It's made up of representatives appointed by the its member nations and occasionally calls troops together for peacekeeping missions.
Strangely, much of the UN charter concerns itself with what the UN is or is not allowed to talk about, even prohibiting the General Assembly from making recommendations during disputes unless the Security Council requests it. The UN charter is a word salad of by and large redundant and meaningless legalese which can be summed up by the following three real powers of the UN:
Funding studies (Articles 13 and 62)
"interruption" of economic relations, communication, and diplomatic relations (Article 41)
demonstrations, blockade, and "other operations by air, sea, or land forces" (Article 42)
All the other articles and provisions relate to what the UN can and cannot talk about or recommend, and various procedures - ie things that aren't powers. Honestly, the number of times you read "the such-and-such body may make recommendations about such-and-such" could make a person want to shoot themselves.
The UN is also a system that builds in second-class nations. Similar to the League of nations, there are five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. And substantive action (articles 41 or 42) require the unanimous support of each of those five nations. The hypocrisy of this is palpable when compared with point 1 in article 2 of the UN charter stating "the Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members."
Chapter II of the UN charter makes it clear that any but the permanent members only have representation as long as the General Assembly or Security Council says so. Chapter IV and V makes it clear that some countries are subordinate to others - only some countries get the privilege of being in the Security Council.
And there are real benefits to the governments of nations that are elected to the Security Council. "They get more US and UN aid, better terms and more programs at the IMF, World Bank, and a host of other institutions. Many leaders .. prefer to sell this influence."[1] While more aid and better terms sounds good, that aid is usually exploited by autocratic governments to tighten their stranglehold on their people. Nations that are part of the security council become less democratic, see more restrictions on freedom of the press than other nations, and see their economy grow an average of 1.2% slower. Its clear that influence in the UN is used as just another commodity to be bought and sold by oppressive governments.
While all members of the UN are ostensibly bound to "settle their international disputes by peaceful means", the United States and other nations were allowed to go forward with invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq without any significant UN response. "The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures." - Quite the threat! I'm sure all the members that have ignored UN provisions (including the US) are quaking in their boots.
The UN, rather than being any kind of government is instead a forum where the governments of the world can come together and talk. In this way, it's somewhat of a success. It's also successfully given flat earthers something to talk about. It has provided a place for countries to voice their concerns and discuss their feelings. And it has has modest successes as a kind of government funded non-profit institution. But the UN itself has no significant real power.
The problems of the UN are eerily similar to the problems of the League of Nations and the American Articles of Confederation in that its members rarely pay their dues in full and on time, it relies on requesting that nations provide them with military and other resources, there's no executive office to enforce treaties, and there's no central court to settle disputes between nations. The UN can act only when it can convince nations to act for it.
There is the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has the power to sentence convicted persons with imprisonment, fines, or confiscation of property (via the Rome Statute). But the court has no jurisdiction to challenge the actions of the UN and the court has no way of enforcing its judgments other than by voluntary cooperation of a national government. The ICC also generally only has jurisdiction over its members, but 1/3 of the world's nations are not members, including the US and China.
The ICC has only convicted ten individuals, all from African countries, and in most of the cases national authorities (eg in Congo or in Belgium) made the arrests and handed them over to the ICC. Most if not all were cases where the individuals in question were already seen as enemies of the state of Congo. In cases where indicted persons hold good standing in their own government, there has been no cooperation and the ICC has no way of correcting that.
To use the dimensions of government to describe the UN, it has a moderate number of leaders, very little representation of the people, no separation of powers, unclear but very broad limitation of powers, very high level of agreement needed for action, and almost no coupling to its sub-governments - the nations of the world. The fact that UN representatives are appointed rather than voted in is especially troubling for a body claiming to advance the interests of democracy. This dichotomy of attributes means that the UN will have consistently unfair policies, applied haphazardly among the small number of various cases it ends up dealing with. And this is exactly what we've seen the UN do - mostly nothing, but when it does act, it picks and chooses the violations to take action on based on politics rather than rule of law.
By my account, the UN is only a modest success in providing a forum for international discussion, but is a massive failure in terms of prevention of international violence and war. For example, in Bosnia in 1995, 600 Dutch troops sent UN peacekeepers who watched 8,000 men and boys slaughtered without taking any action.
And its easy to see why. The UN is, by any respect, hardly even a government.
International Law
The following video is a good description of the current state of international law - a patchwork of treaties between various nations (which are like statues) and uncodified "common custom" (which are like common law) created between nations and also by thousands of tiny international organizations:
The current laws of war are a hodge podge of laws and custom created treaties with a rather odd methodology. The ruling for Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State noted that:
"International law of war is not formulated simply on the basis of humanitarian feelings. It has as its basis both considerations of military necessity and effectiveness, and humanitarian considerations, and is formulated on a balance of these two factors... [T]he use of a certain weapon, great as its inhuman result may be, need not be prohibited by international law if it has a great military effect."
Part of the odd nature of this philosophy is that weapons that kill are preferred over weapons that wound, the idea being that more suffering is caused by weapons that wound and don't kill. Also, this methodology seems to assume that the side that should win a war is the side with the better military. Certainly this is better than nothing - the international laws stemming from this philosophy limit the very worst of war. But why allow any war at all?
The Next Leap
It's clear we've failed to keep the peace internationally and that we, as humanity, have no way to ensure any kind of humanitarian standards to all people. Countless unchecked government violence of all kinds is perpetrated worldwide, by and to rich and poor nations alike. Over 7 million people have died in genocides since 1960. Over 130 civil wars have been started since 1950 (25 of which are still ongoing as of 2024). Over 100,000 people have been dying every year in armed conflict recently. This all points to the failure of the UN to achieve its primary purpose: preventing war.
Currently when nations disagree, there is often very little to prevent them from attacking each other. Our best deterrent to war these days is the win-win dynamics of international free trade (and the corresponding lose-lose dynamics of war) and the principle of mutually assured destruction via nuclear weapons. Worse yet, civil wars are almost always either ignored by the rest of the world, or are used as political playgrounds where countries choose which side(s) to send weapons and resources. Rather than putting any effort into stopping civil wars, nations of the world simply put more fuel on the fire and watch it burn.
While deaths in armed conflict has drastically decreased since the 1970s, the fact that we haven't had a third World War speaks far more to the power of democratization and globalization than it does to any imagined success of the United Nations.
I talked briefly in a previous post about the power of federations to foster peace and cooperation. Peace has only become the norm in areas with a stable government that uses force to prevent violence. In the international theater, there is no such government. What we need is a democratic international federation in order to enforce world peace.
I propose an international government with the modern three branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive), each with officials elected directly by the residents of all nations in the world. Most importantly, this government would be limited to creating and enforcing policy only on government agents, because it would be disasterous to form an international government that has broad powers to limit the freedoms of individuals - in such a case there would be no escape.
"I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself. The objective of avoiding total destruction must have priority over any other objective." - Albert Einstein, 1948
In my next post, I'll discuss ideas on how to achieve world peace, and justify that an international government is the only credible way to do it.
References
The Dictator's Handbook by De Mesquita and Smith, page 179-180