The End of Sovereign States

At the end of the Second World War and just before the inauguration of the United Nations, a significant though obscure book was published called “The Anatomy of Peace.”  The author, Emery Reves, proposed that the reason for war was the illegitimate rule of illegitimate states which distorted freedoms.

Reves said:

“In the middle of the Twentieth Century, we are living in an era of absolute political feudalism in which the nation-states have assumed exactly the same roles as were assumed by the feudal barons a thousand years ago…..There is nothing kings, emperors or tyrants ever did to their subjects that nation-states are not doing today.”

While it can be said that colonialism and blatant hegemony came to a relative end when the Berlin Wall came down and glasnost spread to Eastern Europe, in reality the United States in particular has continued to justify hegemony in the false name of democracy.  Other countries give America a complicit wink because the United States – at least until recently – was the catalyst to world economic growth.

But world growth really means that a few nations control most of the wealth and another few get a trickle down effect which helps a few within those developing nations to become rich while many continue live in squalor or substandard conditions devoid of any dignity.

Sovereign states by their very nature  can only concern themselves with the welfare of other sovereign states in so far as those nations buy the goods and services we want to sell and we buy the goods and services they have to offer.

This is a purely economic pact between sovereign nations and, in general, when poorer, resource-poor nations violate international law, the western world doesn’t usually give hoot unless there is an outcry which could lead to the defeat or ouster of the ruling elite.  Then the leaders will posture and take a band aid action to quell the violence and silence the critics.

If I sound cynical it is because for 58 years I have watched history repeat itself.  The strong nations subjugate the poorer ones, steal natural resources and then leave the looted conquered lands to warlords and Machiavellian dictators and scoundrels.  Somalia is a blatant case in point.

The only solution to insure that the continued flow of oil and the ecological salvation of the planet is to relinquish the arbitrary borders between people and ideas.  We must not let the hegemony of the United States and its allies continue just because the leaders of these nations can sound benevolent.  History has proven again and again, they are not the sheep but the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

We cannot rest in peace as long as almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.  They are the pirates of Somalia who have chosen terror as the only way to balance the economic playing field.  Sovereignty is a disease which can only react to war, poverty and tyranny when the economic interest of the sovereign nation is in jeopardy.

The sovereign nations of the world have become an anachronistic reminder that the anatomy of peace can only be achieved when a large portion of the world’s population can participate in the technological advancement of an elite few nations.

Every day I communicate with people from all corners of the globe and although at times we can misinterpret each others’ intentions, with each passing day we are learning that we are all brothers and that no king, no president, no dictator has a right or duty to group us and box us off from each other.

President Reagan got it right in words if not deeds when he said:  “Information is the oxygen of the modern age.  It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.”

It is time to prove the late President was right.  Let all of our people go.