Building a Just World Order: Alfred de Zayas, author. A book review.

 

What comes first?  Massive institutional change required to create a just world order, or the massive popular support required to make that institutional change possible - and then stick?

From my work over the last 4.5 decades on human rights, global health, the UN Charter, then 4 years (1998 – 2002) as Issues Director for the World Federalist Association in WDC – it appears little has changed to achieve a global democratic solution.  I am certain that solving this problem will require a reversal of the order our movement has always taken.  I urged WFA’s leadership on this with the release of each of three reports from President Bill Clinton’s bi-partisan Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21^st Century.  His commission started in 1999 and its third and final report was released March 2001.    Unfortunately, both WFA’s leadership and the Bush administration ignored its findings and clear warnings.  WFA understandably continued to advocate for the ICC - because President Bush removed the US from it his first day in office.   WFA ignored the warnings, while the Bush Administration also ignored it, then started planning for the invasion of Iraq using the fear of its possession of nuclear, bio, and chem WMD.  Strategically, his Administration was committed to positioning US military power in the heart of Middle-East oil.  To Al Qaida, that was a gift that keeps on giving.

After 9-11, 2001 WFA had the perfect excuse to advocate for ‘world law’ instead of a ‘world war’ against terrorism, a tactic that could never be defeated.  Oddly, WFA’s new leadership decided that would not be a good path and instead prioritized the environment.  Later, around 2002 WFA went broke  -having made virtually no progress in advancing global governance, nuclear disarmament, or US military cuts.  A few years later WFA was rebirthed as Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) thanks to the economic blessings from many highly intellectual minds and progressive pocketbooks. 

My experience with WFA decades ago convinced me that it had two fundamental weaknesses. One was not walking its talk of changing the international system and creating stronger world institutions. Instead the focus was on controlling nuclear weapons, achieving disarmament, and attempting to build some legal structures necessary to prevent war.  Important objectives...but entirely inconsistent with the direction that the world, American minds, and dual-use technologies were heading. 

Now, with hyper political polarization in the US - largely driven by Truth decay and social media, while over 20 other democracies back slid into populists’ movements to seek strong leaders - us globalists push the cart from behind with the horse.   

Important question!  Why do you believe people in democracies clamor for strong leaders?  A simple partial answer exists, yet I’ve not heard any pundit make it.  Here it is - powerful and ignorant minds persist in believing globally interdependent disruptive forces can be stopped or reduced by nations based on independent national and department decisions.  “Delusion” is the word Albert Eintein calls this fantasy if independence.  Simply because everything in the known universe is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable. And only a global effort can remedy this. Not walls, powerful militaries, prosperous economies, strong leaders, or prayers. 

What’s needed first, is a vast majority of the world's population generating the political will needed to prevent these disruptive forces from leaving their place of origin- then ignoring map lines.  The solution must first begin in every local community globally.  Starting with primary health, basic education, clean water, safe sanitation, and other basics – simply so people have the energy and will to unite.  Then take coordinated actions in transforming our existing failed UN global architecture.  A system and structures that have always put the protection of national sovereignty and wealth  - above the protection of human rights and nature.

It is difficult to persuade people to support fundamental changes in international institutions when their immediate concerns are child survival and family protection. With community security next.  Certainly, anyone can see that it is particularly difficult to persuade nations to surrender or substantially reduce military capabilities when they do not trust one another - and believe their own security may depend upon maintaining them.

If we are serious about transforming the existing system – we must reverse the sequence.

Rather than asking people to reform the UN first -  so it can solve the world’s problems, we must first demonstrate that international cooperation can help solve the life and death problems most people experience every day.  Even when there are no wars.

This means beginning with the fundamentals of human well-being: health and education.  And by health, it means health in its broadest sense.  Health of the mind, body, and spirit; family; community; environment; government; and economy. These systems are not independent. They irreversibly interconnected.  And a weakness in one increasingly produces weakness in the others.

Those who engineer the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights understood this wisdom. But the powers then rejected any need for power to enforce them.  Thus, we have the insanity of the world we see today.  And we must admit that the 30 basic rights within the UDHR will never be enforced by laws.  But most of these basic rights can be purchased!   And the must be urgently- to avert catastrophic global consequences within all nations.  Failing Covid supply chains and closing the strait of Hormuz were minor disruptions to what’s possible if current wars expand or AI gets out of control.

In June 2023, Bank of America Chair & CEO, Brian Moynihan spoke on the state of the economy, the U.S. financial system, and capitalism. He said, ‘the SDGs will cost approximately’ “$6 trillion annually”. “Governments are too debt burdened” and “charity is insufficient”. “Business leaders” “like the oil companies” and others must step up and prioritize a balancing of ‘short-term gains’ with ‘long term interests’. ‘Profits must be good for business and society all the way down to the community level’. “Capitalism” “requires a greater purpose than making more profit.” Neither capitalism or profit making is sustainable without these SDG goals being achieved.'  C-span covered this interview hosted by the City Club of Cleveland. Program ID: 529044-1 https://www.c-span.org/video/?529044-1/bank-america-ceo-remarks-city-club-cleveland

Never before has humanity had so much wealth.  Cost is not the issue.  The issue is the sanity of the three progressive movements (Peace, Environment, and social/economic Justice), and the thousands of organizations within each, not forming a Movement of Movements (a MoM).  For at least 5 decades they have been competing with each other for money, active members, media attention, and time with key policy makers.  While conservatives have united while teasing us with distractions - weakening us further.

The UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals provide an extraordinary framework for achievement of purpose.  The health of people, nature, government, and the global economy.  They translate the broad aspirations of human rights and sustainable development into concrete areas of human need. The SDGs themselves were designed as a comprehensive, integrated, holistic, and syncretistic agenda in which economic, social and environmental objectives are indivisible, not individually prioritized.

Consider a different theory of change: Meet basic human needs → improve the health and security of communities → build trust in cooperation → create public enthusiasm for solving shared problems → generate the political will for institutional reform → strengthen the international system.

That sequence is fundamentally different.  Beginning with institutional reform and hoping that improved institutions will eventually produce healthier societies is pie in the sky- and you all know it.  There’s a term the defines doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.  This means I’m insane believing progressives will ever unite.  Over the last few years, I repeatedly invited major globally focused organizations and institutions to take up this challenge.  Rotary International, Bahais, Citizens for Global Solutions, Charter for Compassion, I AM Humanity, United Nations Association...(over a hundred others) but each progressive organization’s mission bubble of was impenetrable. Each had a vital and important mission with a global vision, but none picked up the MoM flag.  

Time is running out.  The evolution of technology (now with exponential growth on top of exponential growth), accelerating far beyond our mind’s linear capacity for thinking (now with the decline of rational thinking), plus our former flatlined capacity for government change – now going backwards – the evolution of war, weapon systems, government debt, environmental extremes, and the capacity of new, cheap, and unprecedented ease of developing bioweapons using AI... nuclear disarmament should be the least of our worries.

The moral and practical case for eliminating nuclear weapons is overwhelming. But expecting nations to disarm while international tensions are rising—and while powerful nations continue to distrust one another – develop new weapon systems – during a time of enormous political challenges... OMG.

I became a world federalist after reading Emery Reves’ 1945 book ‘Anatomy of Peace’.  As a biologist I trust fundamental principles. Rarely the human principles that ignore them.

“Once the mechanics and the fundamental causes of wars – of all wars – are realized, the futility and childishness of the passionate debates about armament and disarmament must be apparent to all.  If human society were organized so that relations between groups and units in contact were regulated by democratically controlled law and legal institutions, then modern science could go ahead, devise and produce the most devastating weapons, and there would be no war.  But if we allow sovereign rights to reside in the separate units and groups without regulating their relations by law, then we can prohibit every weapon, even a penknife, and people will beat out each other’s brains with clubs.”  Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, 1945

“The main focus of international attention must move beyond the symptoms of weapons proliferation to its causes.  It may seem easier to control supply, yet it is demand that raises the tide of proliferation.”   Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for Jan-Feb 1999, p. 76, "Book Note" on Kosta Tsipis and Philip Morrison's book, "Reason Enough for Hope."

Disarmament requires trust. Trust requires security. Security requires confidence that one’s basic needs and interests will not be abandoned. And confidence is difficult to create among populations experiencing poverty, poor health, inadequate education, environmental degradation and political instability.  In any civilization the prioritization of maternal and child health and survival must be a foundational priority.

This is particularly important in an era of truth decay, declining trust, indebted budgets, and rising tensions among powerful nations. Information itself has become a battleground. Populations are increasingly exposed to competing narratives, misinformation and political polarization. Under those circumstances, asking nations to make historically unprecedented concessions in their security policies becomes extraordinarily difficult.  Therefore, we must make the case for international cooperation in a different way.

A united world once eradicated smallpox.  A simple virus that killed more people in the last century than all the wars, revolutions, and genocides combined.   Today any virus can be weaponization to make smallpox seem the common cold.

Health for all, nature, and the global economy will make stronger families and sustainable communities.  This would make institutions trustworthy instead of an abstract global ideal.  It’s an inspiring vision that is possible through international cooperation, coordination, and the human caring that is in the very DNA of our global social species.

Something the ideology of politics, national sovereignty, and the extremely wealthy have resisted in solving human problems first.  This is what’s been missing in UN reform.

De Zayas was right regarding the international system needing substantial reform. But the reform movement needs to change its starting point. We must not waste our energy trying to persuade people to reform an institution in the hopes of eventually producing humankind’s well-being.

We must invest first in humanity and nature – to demonstrate the value of cooperation to best make the political demand for institutional reform.  This is the foot bridge to a just world order.  The most realistic path toward achieving it.  The ultimate objective remains the same: a world in which nations can resolve their differences without war, where forms of WMD no longer threaten humanity, where international law has genuine authority, and where global institutions are capable of addressing other problems that no nation can solve alone. This is the foundation upon which just and sustainable institutions can stand.   And the foundation for making effective reform politically possible.

By first building healthier people, families, communities, and economies, we will build a healthy and sustainable environment.  Then build institutions capable of protecting and extending that health.

Building human well-being first will provide the public enthusiasm, trust, and political legitimacy needed to accomplish the much larger transformation that de Zayas envisions.

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson (another wrestler).

“The future depends on us--on our ideas, our votes, and the decisions of those we put in power.   Mario Vargas Llosa, Liberalism in the New Millennium [2000]

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." -  Thomas Paine