The idea of a country seems pretty simple. I live in America, and I’m an American. She lives in France, and she is French. The Americans have a president who is their leader, the British have a prime minister, the French have their own president, and so forth.
But the way political decision-making around security issues ricochets around the world, from Western capital to Western capital, is making a mockery of commonly held conceptions of national sovereignty. In recent weeks, a British parliament vote on Syria forced the U.S. president to seek authorization from Congress, while leaked documents detailed extensive cooperation between the intelligence services of the U.S. and other nations. The president of Bolivia was forced to down his plane by Italy and France, just because he joked about having Edwards Snowden on board. And so on, and so forth.
This all demands the question: Why do we hold the conception that we live in separate nation-states? Well, it turns out that this question was actually asked after World War II, and the answer American leaders came up with was … we shouldn’t.
In fact, Western elites in America and Western Europe after World War II made a serious effort to get rid of nations altogether, and combine all “freedom-loving peoples” into one giant “Atlantic Union,” a federal state built on top of the NATO military alliance.
As odd as it sounds, the documentary evidence is clear. This movement did manage to create a “European Union,” which came from the same ideological wellspring as the “Atlantic Union.” Once we recognize that the Cold War saw the construction of a powerful international regime that explicitly sought to get rid of sovereign nations, these broad security architectures revealed by the Syria situation and the NSA spying revelations make a lot more sense.
The strange story of Atlantica
The effort to unite Europe and the U.S. started in 1939, with the publication of a book by an influential journalist, Clarence Streit. This influential book was called ”Union Now,” and had a galvanizing effect on the anti-fascist youth of the time, a sort of cross between Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” and Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.” Streit served in World War I in an intelligence unit, and saw up close the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles. He then became a New York Times journalist assigned to cover the League of Nations, which led him to the conclusion that the only way to prevent American isolationism and European fascism was for political and economic integration of the major “freedom-loving” peoples, which he described as America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and most of Western Europe. The Five Eyes surveillance architecture was created just a few years later, as was the international monetary regime concocted at Bretton Woods.
Reality check we are all united. It is one world and has been for a while. What happens anywhere can have effects on us all. You think not watch the stock market for a few days. The events in a place like Nairobi will affect us. Both financially and politically. Every event every problem are world problems not just American ones. The events in Nairobi show that these Al Qaeda splinter groups are capable of carrying out small life taking events that could have happened at the mall of America, or on British, French, Japanese, German or Russian soil almost as easily as Kenyan. These events will have a impact on the markets today either here or in the aforementioned places. Look at it as a huge worldwide corporation. A corporation of 206 wholly owned subsidiaries. Each subsidiary has it's own board of directors and it's own CEO,CFO, etc and makes it's own business decisions. But at the same time all 206 subsidiaries contribute to the bottom lines of world peace and the world's economic well being. That is the true situation of the world today like it or not. each country is dependent on many others to thrive in a secure, prosperous environment. Until all countries participate even unequally that will never be fully realized. As with a corporation of 206 wholly owned subsidiaries some of those (US, Canada, India, Germany, Great Britain, and yes even Russia) contribute a great deal more then other successful units. Other units ( Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen etc) contribute little or but still contribute in some meager way to the whole. unfortunately they have to be propped up by the successes of the others. It's the way it works and there are on isolationist islands left. Either you are in or you are out (North Korea, Iran
ReplyDeleteI found this to be interesting, a bit lengthy but interesting.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever watched a much smaller scale of human nature at work? I have seen church congregations go powerfully in one direction, achieving near greatness in achieving their goals. A new personality is added or a minor disagreement erupts and half of them leave for another church. Neither church ever achieves the past glory. Some people will never be able to get along with others. Many become leaders of countries.
ReplyDeleteNo personally I have never experience a great church congregation. It's not that I haven't tried they just all seem to possess the same hypocrisy over time.
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