The Sin is Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the old idea from the recent age of kings that each and every king was sovereign (ruler and rule-maker) over a certain chunk of land and people. The only, only big cheese! Of course, the king obeyed as did his people, the higher godly laws of whatever church or faith they believed in. The influence and sometimes real powers that churches, nobles emperors and other rivals to the king’s power are complex, individual historical matters that are beyond my simple diatribe. The sovereign rule of kings was never easy — the same conflicting mess we have now with sorta democratic societies — politics is messy, just like life! We are only clever animals. Who traditional, animals who traditionally, often, kill each other on the field of battle in the name of sovereignties and strange rationales.

My point being nations today are built on this historic idea of being the only “ruler and rule-maker” we citizens must obey. I have only to obey American laws, when visiting — the foreign laws of that country unless I am an official ambassador. So we have 193 very sovereign nations in the United Nations plus outliers like the ex-caliph of Isis. A 193+ sets of national laws! Plus at least 180 national armies to each support.

No international laws for individuals. Everything is by treaties between (theoretically independent) nations — you can fly here, bring your ship here, visit country X mit your passport. Loads and loads of rules and treaties. Keeps a lot of world lawyers busy so Z can ship meat to Y, etc, etc. We don’t vote for UN representatives or the head UN honchos — it’s a semi-permanent conference of nations with a lot of empty talk on what we ought to do. Everything else is dominated by treaty and common usage. And of course warfare domestically or between nations. 

Each nation (in theory) gets to decide which agreements and treaties to follow. For example, President Trump has announced that we will not join the Paris Climate Accord that goes in to affect into effect this year as it is now written. A big UN climate pow-wow was held in December, but nothing new was resolved. The U.S. is only one of 193 sovereign states, but we contribute 20+ percent yearly to global warming. The other 192 nations are (theoretically) free to try and meet the Paris Climate treaty goals and to occasionally war.

That’s what I mean by the sin of sovereignty that bedevils the United Nations. 

Sovereignty gets in the way of treaty-making to make a (slightly) more peaceful world. For example; a small group of powerful nations worked out a deal with Iran to stop, or maybe just slow down, Iran’s development of an atom bomb and join the “power nine” in “we will never use” possession. Under heavy economic and social sanctions, Iran finally agreed to the deal with the UN doing inspections, etc. Under Prez Trump, the United States rejected the treaty and clamped severe trade and business penalties on Iran. The other signatories and the UN have not quit the treaty. So far, Iran has not quit the treaty or folded, but tensions are high with the U.S.

Yes, I’m picking on us. There are really hundreds of treaty rejections or refusal to join in treaties that one can find. But my two examples have potentially brutal effects for all the 200 sovereign states and are so current! 

Sovereignty combined with nationalism is the fundamental weakness that saps the United Nations. It is neither the head ruler of the major rule maker! We need to remake, democratically, the UN in the nonviolent ways of handling conflict as Gandhi and King taught — non-violently — under a powerful world government, with a body of enforceable world laws overseen by powerful world courts. Create single world sovereignty that democratically rules!

Rationale’: the climate crisis, earth deep pollution, and the coming post-nuclear superweapons demand it! Now it is a bitch to contemplate that our less than 330,000,000 Americans will be outnumbered and outvoted by a billion Chinese, close to a billion Hindu, 800,000 Europeans and an equal number of Muslams in any type of fair, democratic world government. After all the U.S. Constitution—with its noble ‘All men are created equal’ left out slaves, women, and of course, Indians. But we also can’t go on hiding behind our military force and wealth. We’ve got a problem with “Mother Earth” who is at war with us and Is our most super- sovereign power. National sovereignty is a problem we have to out-grow!