Chapter 21. The Political Structure of Sustainable World Development

Every country is part of a natural, easily outlined region for production and distribution. Unequal trade between economies on opposite sides of the earth, while ignoring the fact that every region in the world could both feed itself and produce its own needs, is economic insanity. This monstrous situation can only be because of politics, and bad politics at that. The world’s engineers and progressive economists obviously were not consulted.

Adequate Resources and Markets for Efficient Economies

As a large population is essential for industries that require mass markets, progressive people have recognized and championed the integration and efficiency of large economic regions. These industries require a multitude of natural resources that are only available in specific regions of the earth. Engineers and economic planners can judge what countries form natural regional zones for efficient production and distribution.

Towards that goal, the Central American states formed the United Provinces on July 1, 1823, with a constitution based on that of the United States. This was only the first of over 25 such attempts at forming a viable united nation out of the fragmented Central American countries.1 All Latin American countries could logically form 1-to-3 integrated regions that would support a balanced market economy and serious efforts are again being made to integrate those economies (keywords Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba, China, Russia). Though there are over a thousand languages throughout Africa, several efficient economic regions are conceivable. After WWII African nations tried to form a U.S. of Africa and repeatedly tried to organize viable political and economic unions.2

The cultures of the Middle East have pride in centuries of grandeur under the Sumerian, Hittite, Phoenician, Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Mesopotamian, Persian, Islamic, and Ottoman empires. Time after time the social capital built by these great societies was destroyed as civilizations clashed. The rich cultural history, common language, and the bond of Islamic religion would be a solid foundation on which to build community identity and a regionally interdependent economic infrastructure. Muslims have tried to do this by forming a “Moslem Brotherhood” and an “Arab League” that reach across those artificial borders. They continue to speak of one Arab nation consisting of a number of Arab states.3 Egypt, the Sudan, and Yemen formed the United Arab Republic in 1958, were joined by Syria and Iraq in 1963, and then fragmented back into previously dictated political boundaries.

Africans are trying to establish an African Union (AU). Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, with a market of 314-million consumers, have formed a regional bloc called ASEAN that, until the 1997-98 financial meltdown, was making rapid progress in developing their economies and markets.4

Small, fragmented, weak developing world countries were designed by imperial powers of Europe specifically to keep them powerless. Their small political groupings and small economies prevented their development of autonomous strength. While regional organization and development must have been the dream of progressive thinkers in every dependent country, the dismembering of these regions before they could become viable nations has been the policy of all empires.

Witness the response of President James Monroe’s secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, to the previously described attempt to form the United Provinces in Central America:

Adams and Congress stalled until it was too late for the two delegates to attend. Even if they had arrived in time, Adams had placed the two under strict instructions not to join any kind of alliance, not to assume that Latin Americans could ever form a union of states, and not to in any way compromise the right of the United States to act unilaterally in the hemisphere when it suited Washington officials.5

After WWII, the nations of Africa were not only breaking free, they were coalescing into cooperative blocs. Forty years of massive destabilizations shattered those merging countries and their hopes. After the Cold War they are again speaking of economic cooperation and with powerful and well armed economies to trade with (China, India) they may yet break free.

A Political Framework for Democratic-Cooperative-(Superefficient)-Capitalism

The political framework under which the necessary worldwide transfer of technology and tools can be carried out either through a fully democratized United Nations or a fully federated earth.6 Democratizing the UN would be federating the world from the top down. The developing world first forming trade alliances and then fully federating will be federating the earth from the bottom up. The UN has long been working on these problems and has collected most of the necessary statistics. The representatives of many of developing nations are already cooperating, and industrialization is their shared goal. Thus world federation and an end to wars is possible.

If the decision were made to provide industrial tools to the developing world, an agreement could readily be made between most countries within a region. As the first capital would go only to those that are amenable to a just society, there is no need to obtain the consent of every country. Though actually propaganda for public consumption as the West mobilized to destabilize the Soviet federation, these were the stated rules under which the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe.

Our policy was “directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.” Any government that was willing to assist in the task of recovery would find full cooperation, but any government that maneuvered to block the recovery of others could not expect help from us. “Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.”7

Europe has moved beyond that original rebuilding and is forming one cooperative unit of 500 million producers and consumers with one currency. With the proper support such as in the rebuilding of Europe, instead of destabilizations, Africa and Latin America could form, and are forming, economic unions as they industrialize.

Human Rights and Equality of Rights

The developed world and Western cultures are far ahead of most (but not all) societies in human rights, equality of rights, rights for women, and separation of church and state necessary for a productive modern economy. But we must not forget that full rights include economic rights and the developed world is able to give its citizens many rights and a high standard of living because of the massive wealth siphoned from the weak undeveloped world to itself through inequalities of trade. Under these unequal trades, one society’s good life and security is another society’s impoverishment and insecurity.

As democracies of weak developing nations have been quickly and regularly overthrown by imperial-centers-of-capital, the struggles to maintain control, or regain control, of the destinies of embattled societies have required authoritarian governments. When pushed to the wall, a society will collapse or it may maintain a semblance of control by retreating into the politically impenetrable fundamentalist beliefs of religion where equality and rights have little consideration.

All that would change if the pressures to maintain a region as a supplier of basic commodities were replaced by a sincere philosophy, and sincere effort, to support sustainable development. Few governments would endure for long if they rejected an offer to industrialize just because the conditions required a democratic government that recognized its citizens’ full rights. Leaders who were reluctant to surrender their dictatorial powers would, under these conditions, risk almost certain revolution. In any case, these dictators would have disappeared long ago were they not put in power and kept in power through the external support of imperial powers.8

Since the goal would be to win hearts and minds through democracy and development, continuing to support reactionary regimes or installing obvious puppets would be self-defeating. Most insurrections are attempts to regain control of a people’s own resources and destiny—in short, to gain economic freedom. If these desires for justice and rights were supported by the powerful, instead of denied, the world would quickly abandon war.

These insurrections could all be stopped dead in their tracks by honestly and effectively promoting democracy and capitalizing underdeveloped countries in trade for them giving up their weapons. This is what most are fighting for anyway. As production of armaments equaling several times the amount needed to produce industry for the world’s impoverished would be eliminated, the cost would be nothing and there would be further substantial gains to the world in not having its social wealth destroyed by wars.

The United Nations overseeing peace in Namibia and Cambodia and the united military efforts to enforce a peace in Korea, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq (even though they were actually re-imposing control by allied trading blocs maintaining access to cheap resources and valuable markets) have established the principle of a world body (a fully democratized UN or a federated earth) ensuring world peace.

If there is consideration of everyone’s rights (the lack of which is a fatal flaw in most peace efforts), this principle needs to be expanded to all nations so they can industrialize, feed themselves, live a respectable life, and start rebuilding their soils and ecosystems devastated by years of war and exploitation. A fully democratized UN could federate the earth from the top down or alliances of weak nations could federate it from the bottom up.

Security through Equality and Interdependence

As neo-mercantilist policies have been the cause of most wars, spheres of influence, power vacuums, balances of power, preponderances of power, containments, and realpolitiks, (all functioning under each imperial-center-of-capital’s Grand Strategy in the great game of who will control the world’s wealth) must be replaced by a guarantee of each society’s security.

World trade should be restructured to provide security through interdependence as opposed to the current insecurity through dependence. Under guarantees of secure borders, the lower the level of weapons the more secure every nation will be. With all the world gaining rights and freedom, spheres of influence (which means little more than dominance over other societies) will disappear. Without dominant—and arbitrary—military power, there would then be no power vacuums, balance of power or containment struggles. As opposed to the current guarantees of war and oppression, realpolitiks, realist and moralist statecraft theory will mean peace, freedom, justice, and rights for all instead of immediate insecurity for some and eventual insecurity for all. National security would then be obtained through world security. It would no longer be “international politics in the national interest but national politics in the international interest.”9

These ideas are not new. In 1899, the recognition of the destructive power of modern weapons led to the formation of a “convention for the pacific settlement of disputes which was adopted by 24 major states.” And, after the horrors of WWI, the General Treaty for the Renunciation of Wars was formulated and signed by some of the major powers on August 27, 1928.10 When a retired American five-star general laid out a plan to eliminate all the world’s nuclear weapons in late 1996, he was joined within six months by over 20 military leaders from virtually all the major industrial countries.

Integrating Diverse Nationalities, Races, and Cultures

Countries with diverse nationalities, races, and cultures have special problems. Everyone should have equal access to jobs and capital and equal representation in government. Once the countries in a region are industrially integrated and markets are open to all, everyone’s well-being will depend on cooperation. Such attainment of full rights, and the assurance of sanctions if war erupts, will eliminate most ethnic conflicts fought under religious banners—the former Yugoslavia was an outstanding example. Those diverse, federated, people were living cooperatively, peacefully, and broadly intermarrying until external powers allied with internal forces to expand their culture and wealth at the expense of Serbian Eastern Orthodox culture.11

The United Nations was specifically designed to be controlled by the imperial-centers-of-capital. Before it can effectively federalize the world it must become democratized along the lines of the World Constitution and Parliament Association Constitution, http://www.wcpa.biz, and other groups pushing for federation of poor nations such as: Earth Federation, http://www.worldproblems.net, United Planetary Federation, http://www.upf.org; and World Citizen Foundation, http://www.worldcitizen.org.

Endnotes

1. Walter Lefeber, Inevitable Revolutions (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), pp. 24-27. Back to text
2. Crucial documentary on a U.S. of Africa: Wind of Change, order at Films for Humanity & Sciences 800.257.5126, item # BVL30750; Organizations formed to further African unity are: AU (African Union); NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) OAU (Organization of African Unity); OAAU (Organization for African American Unity (founded by Frantz Fanon); OCAM (Organization Commune Africaine et Malagache); OERS (Organization of States Bordering the Senegal River); UDEAC (Customs Union of Central African States); OERM (Economic Organization of North Africa); EACM (East African Community and Common Market); CEAO (West African Economic Community); CEDEAO (The Economic Community of West African States). Francois N. Muyumba, Esther Atcherson, Pan-Africanism and Cross-Cultural Understanding: A Reader (Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press, 1993), Chapter 3 by Andrew Conteh, Chapter 15 by Edmond J. Keller, and Chapter 19 by Bamidele A. Ojo; Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa, by Harold J. Salemson, trans. (Westport: Lawrence Hill, 1978), p. 1. In South America, there are Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market), the Andean Pact, and many more. Back to text
3. Feroz, Ahmad, “Arab Nationalism, Radicalism, and the Specter of Neocolonialism,” Monthly Review (February 1991): p. 32. Back to text
4. Depth News, Manila, Quoted by World Press Review, March 1991, p. 46. Back to text
5. Lefeber, Inevitable Revolutions, p. 24. Back to text
6. One is The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 1 UN Plaza, New York, NY, 10017. Human Development Report, 1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) addresses these needs and is only one of their many publications. Back to text
7. D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 478; Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 414. Back to text
8. Sidney Lens, Permanent War (New York: Schocker Books, 1987), p. 27; John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard (Boston: South End Press, 1991). See Chapter 7 of this work. Back to text
9. Anna Gyorgy, Trans., Ecological Economics (London: Zed Books, 1991), p. 7; read between the lines of Robert J. Art, Kenneth N Waltz’s The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics (New York: University Press of America, 1993) and read the treatises on diplomacy by authors listed therein. Back to text
10. William Preston Jr., Edward S. Herman, Herbert I. Schiller, Hope and Folly (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. ix. Back to text
11. Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Yugoslavia, Colonizing Bosnia,” CovertAction Quarterly (Spring, 1996), pp. 31-37; Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft (New York: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 71-82; Catherine Samaray, Yugoslavia Dismembered (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995; Charles Lane, Theodore Sranger, Tom Post, “The Ghosts of Serbia,” Newsweek, April 19, 1993, pp. 30-31; Dusko Doder, “Yugoslavia: New War, Old Hatreds,” Foreign Policy (Summer 1993), pp. 4, 9-11, 18-19; Sean Gervasi, “Germany, U.S., and the Yugoslavian Crisis,” CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1992-93), pp. 41-45, 64-66; Thomas Kielinger, Max Otte, “Germany: The Presumed Power,” Foreign Policy (Summer 1993), p. 55. Back to text

This is a chapter from the book, Economic Democracy; The Political Struggle for the 21st Century. Visit that link for more information about the book.