[OT] [HIST] Thoughts on World Government

<DISCLAIMER: I hope no one considers this post in poor taste. Current
events and news items have drawn my attention and brought these thoughts
to mind. I'm not making "light fare" of any real-world happendings,
which are awful.>

In the wake of what has gone on recently, we're seeing discussions (and
actions) in the legislatures of many nations on topics such as
  - unifying law enforcement capabilities (similar definitions of
terrorism, common extradition laws (at least within a power bloc),
harmonizing of international extradition/investigation laws, plans to
share data between agencies across national boundaries, greater liason
between agencies of law enforcement and intelligence across national
boundaries)
  - unifying customs and immigration laws (or at least harmonizing them,
which isn't a far cry from unification) including things like a North
American Perimeter. 
  - international cooperation from many nations to address problems of
global scope and to attack extranational asymetric threats

And these are only some of the moves we see afoot, not to mention the
things going on in NATO, the coalition building being engaged in by the
US State Dept. (sometimes with a bit of bribery or leverage, but
coalition building nonetheless), and moves afoot at the UN and the
International Criminal Court. 

And there is a movement afoot that realizes hotbeds of oppression,
locales in which proxy wars are fought, areas where despots are
suffered... these collectively end up representing a place for villains
to recruit and therefore are an international problem. Perhaps the
solution will be containment, perhaps liberation, perhaps diplomatic
pressure, trade sanctions, encouragement for the people to rise against
their corrupt and oppressive regimes, perhaps a marginalizing of proxy
war fighting, perhaps some foreign policy attention to world trouble
spots - the global nature of the new world is finally sinking in. One
nation's problems (internally or with its neighbours) can now be thought
of as a global issue, since any conflict can spill over with global
reach. 

Now, it is admittedly a long way from countries cooperating on issue X
to eliminating national borders and placing oneself under a central
authority. But let us just say that this may represent the building
blocks of some form of transnational governance... perhaps under the UN
or perhaps under some other collective body of nations. 

We can see the strengthening of common law within "blocs" (which could
eventually include one another, thus forming a larger world-sized bloc).
Given the level of international cooperation and the way that these
things develop, this suggests an evolutionary trend towards common
governance - things like a Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(enforced), common law (at least for some things) across many countries,
common international conventions on crime and terrorism (and defence),
agencies within countries closely cooperating, and a general world
movement towards (slowly...) market economies and some form of
democracy. 

It strikes me that we may be seeing the precursor to the UN of the
GZGverse. The real world may be resembling art in this case (or maybe
Jon is just shrewd in guessing the direction trends are taking - he's
not the first to suggest this direction, mind you). 

Perhaps the UN of the GZGverse was an entity built by international
consensus with roots in common law enforcement, global solutions to
terrorism and ecological and financial problems (caused by tightly
interlinked market economies), etc. which just evolved into a larger
role as the entity that keeps the nations from fragging Earth or one
another completely. 

I don't think "nations" will go away, even if we get some GZGverse-esque
World Gov't, because we still have a basic human need (sort of like the
needs for unity, security, freedom, etc) to differentiate ourselves -
this is what drives small groups to differentiate themselves (and
individuals from groups) into subsets of the larger whole. This won't go
away... but perhaps by 2183, a method of allowing this differentiation
exists while the larger governmental framework preserves the basic
safety and integrity of the world and deals with threats of global
scope. 

Just a thought, but current events seem to have given us some grist for
the mill. 

Tomb