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Mar. 19th, 2014 11:11 pm'Most people are reluctant to accept that war and national sovereignty are indissolubly linked, and that to be rid of one they must also relinquish much of the other. The belief in the need for complete national independence is very strong in most people.
Curiously (or maybe not so curiously), that belief tends to be less strong in governments than in the people they govern. The United Nations was not founded by popular demand. It was created by governments who were terrified of the path they were on and who could not afford to ignore the grim realities of the situation. The people who actually have the responsibility for running foreign policy in most countries, and especially in the great powers, know that the present international system is in potentially terminal trouble, and many of them have drawn the necessary conclusion.
It goes against the grain to speak well of diplomats, but if they didn’t have to worry about the enormous domestic political resistance to any surrender of sovereignty, the foreign policy professionals in almost every country (without regard to ideology) would immediately make the minimum concessions necessary to create a functioning world authority, because they understand the alternative. Many of the more reflective military professionals would concur for the same reason. But it is politicians who are in charge of states, and even if they understand the realities of the situation themselves (which many of them do not, for their backgrounds and their primary concerns are usually in domestic issues, not international affairs), politicians cannot afford to get too far ahead of the people they lead...
..The United Nations as presently constituted is certainly no place for idealists, but they would feel even more uncomfortable in a United Nations that actually worked as was originally intended. It is an association of poachers turned gamekeepers, not an assembly of saints. One of the implications of a powerful United Nations that is rarely discussed by its advocates (for obvious reasons) is that a world authority founded on the collaboration of national governments would inevitably try to freeze the existing political dispensation in the world in the interests of its members, or at least drastically slow down the rate of change'.
Gwynne Dyer, War (2005)
Curiously (or maybe not so curiously), that belief tends to be less strong in governments than in the people they govern. The United Nations was not founded by popular demand. It was created by governments who were terrified of the path they were on and who could not afford to ignore the grim realities of the situation. The people who actually have the responsibility for running foreign policy in most countries, and especially in the great powers, know that the present international system is in potentially terminal trouble, and many of them have drawn the necessary conclusion.
It goes against the grain to speak well of diplomats, but if they didn’t have to worry about the enormous domestic political resistance to any surrender of sovereignty, the foreign policy professionals in almost every country (without regard to ideology) would immediately make the minimum concessions necessary to create a functioning world authority, because they understand the alternative. Many of the more reflective military professionals would concur for the same reason. But it is politicians who are in charge of states, and even if they understand the realities of the situation themselves (which many of them do not, for their backgrounds and their primary concerns are usually in domestic issues, not international affairs), politicians cannot afford to get too far ahead of the people they lead...
..The United Nations as presently constituted is certainly no place for idealists, but they would feel even more uncomfortable in a United Nations that actually worked as was originally intended. It is an association of poachers turned gamekeepers, not an assembly of saints. One of the implications of a powerful United Nations that is rarely discussed by its advocates (for obvious reasons) is that a world authority founded on the collaboration of national governments would inevitably try to freeze the existing political dispensation in the world in the interests of its members, or at least drastically slow down the rate of change'.
Gwynne Dyer, War (2005)