In the new phase of world politics begun after the crisis of the unilateral system, dominated by the United States, Europe has to face two difficult challenges:
- to reposition the European economy in the new economic order that will emerge after the big disruptions caused by the economic and financial crisis;
- to position itself in the new security system set out for a difficult transition towards a multipolar order, hopefully cooperative.
The passage coincides with the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

There are three priority fields where the capacity of the European leadership to give the right answers shall have to prove itself, lest Europe be marginalized in the international arena; the international community, however, will not succeed, without Europe's contribution, in achieving a stable and thriving organization.

The economic answer
In order to get out of the current difficulties, Europe has to reach two goals:
- to implement the project of a sustainable economy, both in the environmental and the social fields, through actions on the supply side;
- to relaunch its productive capacity in the traditional sectors, through innovation and by stimulating demand.

To finance the project of a sustainable economy, the implementation of the plan put forward by Delors is crucial. The plan envisaged the issuing of Union bonds to support, on the one hand, research in the energy and environmental fields, and, on the other hand, to implement the necessary physical and technological infrastructures.

The budget of the Union must be oriented towards investments and it is therefore logical that there shall be a part in capital account – as was expressly envisaged for the European Carbon and Steel Community (ECSC) and Euratom – with the issue of European bonds covered partially by the self-financing capacity of the realized infrastructures themselves, and partially by an “ecological tax”, for what concerns research. The Lisbon Treaty offers, if a strong political will will emerge, an institutional framework sufficient to realize, at least in a first phase, such a policy aimed to supply European public goods.

To support the more traditional production, instead, it is necessary to act by developing research and innovation and by backing the demand side, but taking into consideration the fact that Europe, as all the other advanced areas, must strengthen its saving capacity. This situation is in our case worsened by the aging of the population, only partially mitigated by immigration, given the population density already present in the old continent.

The European integration process allowed to give, in the past, original answers to the Keynesian problem of adjusting demand to the productive capacity, through the enlargement of the market to neighbouring underdeveloped areas, little by little included in the development through the enlargement. This, in a way, re-proposed Ford’s idea that a development cycle would develop if purchasing power is given to the marginalized classes, like the factory workers.

The first case, in the Sixties, was represented by Italy, then followed in the Eighties by Spain and lastly in 2000 by the Central European countries, first of all by Poland. If it is not possible to use the enlargement to this end any more, it is nonetheless feasible to achieve similar results through the association of new countries.

The most relevant case is represented by Russia and the other ex-Soviet republics, in particular Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The “European economic space” once imagined for Great Britain and the other EFTA countries is the institutional architecture model that could allow to realize the integration of the Russian economy with the European internal market and, furthermore, stabilize the energy supplies needed by Europe through an agreement between the CIS and the European Union. This would allow to introduce in Russia the rules of the European internal market (as it is the case in Norway) respecting the economic rules also in the CIS area, with the guarantee of a common Court.

The second case relates to the Mediterranean Union where, together with an integration of the market, a cooperation is essential in the field of the new energies between the two sides of the Mediterranean sea, according to the projects worked out by the German industry that, however, require the creation of a sort of ECSC co-managed by Europe and the countries of the other side.

Both projects have relevant security aspects and are feasible only if Europe moves forward in this field as well.

The monetary issue
Without a stable monetary framework it would have been impossible to maintain, in the medium term, the European common market; hence the decision – for many inconceivable and impossible – to realize the euro.

The same is valid at the world level: without an adequate solution to the monetary disorder caused by the impossibility for the dollar to sustain any longer its role as reserve currency, the development of world trade is at risk, and can lead to a negative spiral of inflation and protectionism, giving to the economic crisis a disastrous outcome, as happened last century between the two world wars.

Europe has a primary interest in achieving a stable international monetary system, being the economy most dependent on international trade. Furthermore, Europe cannot accept that other states (the US and China) pursue monetary policies that lay onto the euro's exchange-rate the cost of adjustment. An agreement like a worldwide European Monetary System (1979), with the identification of a common anchor like the European-currency-unit basket, is the claim that Europe has to put forward in the international monetary circles, taking advantage of the availability expressed by the Governor of the People’s Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan to use a revised Special Drawing Rights system to this end.

Therefore, Europe must unify its presence at the IMF, at least for the euro-zone countries, and negotiate a new Bretton Woods. The Lisbon Treaty offers all the procedures needed to obtain a single EU representation in order to speak, as already happens at the WTO, with a single voice.

The Euro-Group
The Lisbon Treaty, with its provisions on “enhanced cooperation”, offers to the euro-zone countries the legal possibility to put into effect among them, but using the Union's institutional structures, all the initiatives needed to have a “European economic government”, not only in the monetary field but also for the issuing of Union bonds by federal specialized agencies, to which special taxation rights should be given, especially in the energy and environmental fields, as it was the case for the ECSC.

This is a possibility with a particular political significance, because it depends only on the will of those countries more open to the federalist perspective, that are therefore in a position to isolate the resistances of the more nationalist countries.

Security
The Lisbon Treaty establishes in the field of security and defence a system similar to the one envisaged by the EMS in the monetary field.

Consultative bodies are created (at that time the Governors’ Committee, now the Foreign Ministers’ Council chaired by the High Representative, assisted by an embryo of European diplomatic service), but there is a lack of intervention power. Foreign reserves remained at that time, with the EMS agreements, under the control of the national central banks, and only with the Maastricht Treaty did the ECB acquire the right to make use of them, even if they remain nominally deposited for the most part in the national central banks. The intervention powers still remain in the hands of the national governments, thus frustrating the real possibility for the Union to be listened to at the international level.

In the EMS framework there was, however, a point where national sovereignty was, at least partially, limited, and that was related to the countries participating in the exchange-rate agreement (the “monetary snake”), whereby no country was allowed to devalue its currency without the consent of the other participating countries: from 1981 to the institution of the ECB in 1999, the exchange-rate between the German mark and the French franc remained stable, overcoming ever more violent currency crises. This was possible thanks to the decision taken at Maastricht to proceed towards the common currency. Without this perspective, the EMS would have melted like snow in the sun.

In the Lisbon Treaty, the equivalent of the exchange-rate agreement is, in the security field, the “structured cooperation” in the military field. Without the starting up of structured cooperation, the perspectives in the foreign and security common policy agreed in Lisbon are bound to simply be non-existing, more than to resoundingly fail.

If a group of states, politically significant, decides to go ahead and implement the Treaty’s provisions, a difficult and stormy phase of international relations will begin, but if, as in the case of the mark/franc, the agreement between Germany and France holds on, a possibility will be created that, faced with the pressure of the security problems at world level and with the inadequacy of the Lisbon Treaty, an alternative will emerge, as happened at Maastricht, to move from a common foreign and security policy to a “single” policy, at least for a group of states.

In that context, the institutional conditions needed to manage such a unified power will be defined, taking into consideration though that these could not prescind from guarantees of democratic control (as happened with the European Defence Community project, 1950) and therefore from decisions of a constitutional nature.

What is to be done
The first step for avoiding the final marginalization of Europe from the building up of a new world order is therefore the activation of “structured co-operations”. The initiative, contrary to what is applicable to the economic and monetary sector, where the responsibility lies in the hands of the European bodies (Council, Commission, Parliament), here lies in the hands of the member states and in particular of France and Germany: in other words, we need to resume the project that France, Germany and Luxembourg launched on the eve of the Iraqi war, as an alternative to the alignment with the Bush-Blair position, which turned out to be a failure.

The decision to set up an “enhanced cooperation”, however, must envisage a first element of sovereignty transfer (as envisaged in the EMS agreement on exchange rates) that can only consist in sharing, at least among the participating countries, the permanent seat in the UN Security Council given to France at the end of the second world war, as a winner country.

As Germany had to sacrifice its own currency for the sake of the realization of the euro, likewise France must offer to Germany to finally close the inheritance of the second world war, and share its UN seat, as wisely suggested by the new German Government as an alternative to their nationalist position to claim a permanent seat for themselves.

If the Union will be able to make the needed, feasible steps in the economic and monetary fields, the confidence of the citizens in the European unification project will come back, as already happened after the different crises that marked the long path from Ventotene up to the present day.

The promise of one European foreign and security policy will not, most likely, be kept, but, in a moment of crisis, if the European citizens will gain again the confidence in Europe, it will be possible, starting from the agreement among the states that will activate a structured cooperation, to go forward with the decisive step towards a common sovereignty, giving Europe, after the “purse”, the “sword” too.

Monnet and Spinelli
European unification began thanks to the ability of Jean Monnet – with his proposal in 1959 of the creation of the ECSC – to seize the moment when a transfer of sovereignty from the national states to Europe was possible, and thanks to the political struggles of Altiero Spinelli, who was able to exploit the European Defence Community project to appoint the ad-hoc Assembly and launch the European Political Community, later rejected in 1954 by the French Parliament.

Mario Albertini, who was leading the European Federalist Movement after Spinelli, was able to unify the capacity of supporting pro-European initiatives: with his Campaign for the direct election of the European Parliament he enabled Spinelli to come back into action and resume the struggle with the project of a Treaty for the European Union, voted by the newly-elected European Parliament in 1984; and with the struggle for the European currency he enabled Robert Triffin to continue Monnet’s action, which ended in the Maastricht Treaty in 1991 and the coming into force of the euro in 1999.

The journey has been a long one, but we are at the final stretch: as everybody knows, the last meter to go is the most difficult.

The Euro-Group from Monetary Union to some kind of budget solidarity

The European Union has made another of those laborious leaps forward she always proved to be capable of in the most critical moments of her history. The decisions taken on May 9 by the Council of Heads of State and Governments, regarding the financial support to be given in case of necessity to Greece and to other countries being eventually hit by speculation attacks, mark the start of a practice (if not yet the introduction of a principle) of financial solidarity among the countries participating in the economic and monetary Union. It is a complex solidarity, as is complex the inter-dependence among the EMU countries: not only a solidarity from rich countries to poor countries, but also a solidarity among rich, because the main contributor to that intervention will also be its main beneficiary. Germany, in fact, as a creditor of Greece through its own banks, would suffer more than others from a default.

Stored away the institutional innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty and installed the new bodies of unitary representation, the Union was able to handle the repercussions on its weaker regions of the very grave crisis triggered by the US financial irresponsibility. As always in the history of the European integration process, they are initially inter-governmental interventions, but they are bearing signs anticipatory of subsequent institutional consolidations. Among these there is to point out: the possibility to issue up to 60 billions worth of euro-bonds; the sharing of the intervention-Fund financing according to the quotas of each country in the ECB; the possibility of an ECB intervention on the secondary market in case of speculative selling of State securities issued by member countries of the euro-zone; the commitment for a more efficient coordination of the economic policies of the EMU countries; the intention to put into effect the powers of accounting and statistical control that the Commission is provided with; the Franco-German entente (on which the agreement of the other euro-zone countries is still to be reached) regarding a levy at the European level to be imposed on banks, earmarked for creating a fund to confront crises without resorting to public debt or to the taxpayers.

The IMF participation itself to the plan, ill-considered by many as an outrage against the ECB, must be seen, in my opinion, differently. The Euro-group is in a position of strength: it has its accounts in order, a balance of payments substantially balanced, a foreign indebtedness negligible, private savings capable of financing public investments and deficits. This strength allows Europe to show everybody without any hesitation or fear that she does not consider herself a “closed-in fortress”, but a part of the world system being formed. Much will depend on Europe's capacity to use the test of financial strength for a great political initiative. The euro-zone in particular, while its intervention in support of a new world monetary system based on cooperation, as China and other emerging countries have already called for, becomes ever more crucial, finds itself still coping with its internal contradiction of a currency lacking an economic government and a unitary representation in international organizations, and of one monetary policy with sixteen budget policies. The Greek crisis is the first serious test that highlights this contradiction, always denounced by federalists, which puts to the test the Euro-group's political management.

For proceeding with proposals and conjectures into the future, of which the Greek crisis has been the midwife, I think it is very useful to make a survey of the heated debate that preceded the Summit. To that end, I'm going to dwell on the following points: 1) the real dimension of the Greek financial problem within the monetary Union; 2) the speculative aggression set up by American financial institutions having Greece as the first target and the euro as the final target; 3) the suggestions of famous economists, above all from the United States, and even from the IMF, aimed at rescuing Greece and knocking down the ECB, the only obstacle to an inflationary policy; 4) the series of solutions put forward in Europe before the Summit, differing in their dosage of mistrust and cooperation; 5) a federalist approach.

1. Greece represents 2,6% of the EU's GDP. Judging the Union's state of health from a liquidity problem in Greece is as absurd as judging China from the public debt in Xizang (Tibet for the Westerners) or the United States from the balance of payment of Wyoming. Greece is one of the poorest regions in Europe, hence a beneficiary of the aids provided by the Union's policies. However, it is not at all true that from the moment it entered the euro there has been a loss of competitiveness in the country. To formulate a judgement of that nature, one has to consider the labor cost for unit of product, which, in the last ten years, showed in Greece a trend quite in line with that of Germany, the most virtuous country of the Union.

Even the concept of virtue, on the other hand, has been questioned by the ex-Friedmanites who are appealing today to a vulgar Keynesianism (no longer Keynesian but still national, whilst imbalances are global) and argue that Germany should consume more and export less. These economists (remarkable the campaign by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times) blame the surplus of current accounts in Germany for being the “cause” of the deficit of the weaker areas of the Union, but neglect to note: a) that only 44% of German “exports” is going to other member countries (among which the Eastern countries are getting an increasing importance), while 56% is absorbed by the rest of the world; b) that German exports are the final moment of a production chain involving other countries of the Union (for example, Italy's North-East is to a large extent a decentralized district of the German industry); c) that German savings, like Italy's and other European countries', match the demographic forecasts of population aging.

Actually, the budget of the Greek State is in line with that of other countries all over the world, after the mass destruction of world savings carried out by the United States. In Europe, a public debt at 100% of GDP is in the perspectives of even the countries most respectful of financial orthodoxy. Greece's public debt is higher than that of other member countries, as is natural to expect from a country that has still to catch up with the rest of the Union. Only in the case of the United States, due to a no-longer-tolerable double standard, it is considered “normal” that the country with the highest per capita income is also the most indebted with the rest of the world. In the EU, instead, it is considered normal that to be indebted are the poorer countries. Certainly the center-right Greek government, presided over by Karamanlis and supported by Bush, has made itself responsible of a policy of deficit-spending, reflecting, on the one hand, the structural weaknesses of the country, and, on the other, corruption-ridden situations common to other less developed countries. It would be wrong, however, to consider this as a fully-comprehensive reason of the Greek debt, so as to justify an oppressive attitude (Washington Consensus-like) towards the debtor, just now that the center-left government of Papandreou has shed light on the accounts and has resolutely started a painful recovery.

A significant part of Greece's public expenditure is earmarked for defence, due to an ancient hostile reflex with regard to Turkey, a country which cannot be kept out of the Union without jeopardizing the Union's strategic security and its multicultural roots. These absurd winds of war between a member country and a candidate country (remember also the events in Cyprus) are boosting, however, big businesses in the military industry, be it French airplanes, German submarines or Italian frigates, sold to Greece or to Turkey. It becomes clear, then, that there is a twofold responsibility of the Union: in the delay of the negotiations with Turkey, and in the supply of arms to two countries destined to pacification in the European framework. As to the military industry, it could find a very different kind of development in the planning of a European Agency for Armaments capable of adapting the Union's intervention capability to the new needs of “global” security.

2. A monetary war has been waged by Wall Street to divert world investors' attention from the only present-day possibilities of default of important sovereign States: the United States itself and Great Britain. Unfounded concerns over the euro, considered today the only possibility for diversifying public and private portfolios, have been deliberately created. Now we know that in 2001 Goldman Sachs helped the Greek Government led by Karamanlis to fix their accounts through their by-now well-known “financial innovations”, undermining the solid foundations established for the euro by the EU convergence criteria. A mine that today the same ones who planted it are going to detonate, simultaneously charging the euro-group of having let countries in the euro-zone that were not ready for such a step (so does, for instance, Paul Krugman, see NYT, February 15, 2010).

All these manoeuvres produce the effect of a temporary devaluation of the euro against the dollar, with corresponding speculative gains for the same old guys, but in the end they will benefit European exports, while they show the distrust of American managers in their own production system. The United States does not hope any longer to redress its fundamental imbalances through an increase in competitiveness, therefore it does its utmost to find finances for its civilian and military hyper-consumption, attracting other capitals from the rest of the world, and preparing thus the next imminent catastrophe. I presented in the last issue of this review Fred Bergsten's (Director of the Peterson Institute for International Studies) projections about the US accounts: should it persist on this ruinous route, it will soon be a failed State.

3. The end of the euro starts from Athens, hope the economists corroborators of Wall Street who, without declaring so, pursue the same scope with suggestions sometimes malicious, sometimes explicit.

The first citation is for Martin Feldstein (Harvard University), who suggests to Greece to leave the euro “temporarily”, just the time to go back to the drachma, devalue the same and then come again in the euro. The proposal contains too many mistakes for one to think that they are not malicious. In fact, it is not true: a) that the problem originates from a competitiveness gap (the trend of the labor cost for unit of product in Greece and in Germany from 1999 to 2008 proves the opposite); b) that, even in the case of competitiveness diverging trends, the resort to competitive devaluations constitutes a wise strategy (Europe chose the euro just to avoid the repeating of the policies followed between the two world wars); c) that devaluation is a convenient strategy in the specific case of Greece, which has an economy based on shipping, tourism and banking; d) that replacing one's currency twice, first when leaving and then when re-entering, is a zero-cost operation (whilst the ECB showed that it actually is a too costly operation for a country attempting to do so); e) finally, that the “temporary” exit of Greece from the euro-zone is certainly an operation with no consequences on its belonging to the Union.

In the second place, I would cite the more radical positions by Otmar Issing (President of the Centre for Financial Studies and a former member of the European Central Bank’s executive board) and by Luigi Zingales (Chicago University). “Europe cannot afford to rescue Greece”, Issing says (FT, February 16, 2010), arguing that the Maastricht Treaty would not allow Greece to be aided and that an intervention would create a moral hazard of enormous proportions. To the first point one may object that financial solidarity is contemplated by the Treaty (Art. 122). On the second point, there is to consider, on the one hand, the strength of the instruments the EU has to enforce the observation of conditional clauses applied to loans, and, on the other, the risk of increasing the probability of financial crises if the lack of confidence should spread. Zingales, on his part, draws the extreme consequences of Issing's position, and proposes to leave Greece to its fate “to unite Europe”. Greece should be expelled not only from the euro, but also from the Union. In his opinion, the “radical pro-Europeans” (translated: we federalists) do not take into account the fact that there would not be a consensus for an aid to Greece through an acceleration of integration. So, Zingales is considering already lost a political battle that is still under way, that could not be lost, and will end with a further advance of the European process.

A special citation, finally, is due to Olivier Blanchard. The economist with Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF goes straight to the core of the problem and asks himself: should the inflation target of the ECB be moved from 2% to 4%, would there be anything wrong? Opening a breach in the walls of the ECB to let a big inflation pass through seems to be indeed the final objective of this group of thinkers. Now that the Washington Consensus would revolt against the USA, the IMF's policy has changed!

4. The passage from the single currency to European financial solidarity starts from Athens, think instead those who wish to tackle the problem with the twofold objective of consolidating the Greek debt and resolutely defending the euro. Most of the proposals put forward with this commendable intention, however, are marked by “methodological nationalism”, because they aim not so much at the Union's overall interests as at balancing the interests between the creditors and the debtors States. Within the EMU, the concept of crisis of the balance of payments of one country has no sense: one must look at the balance of payments of the euro-zone. Of course, the markets may express a greater or lesser confidence with regard to specific issuers: Volkswagen or Fiat, the German Republic or Greece, Rhone-Alpes or Andalusia, Hamburg or Lisbon. Even a public issuer may “default”, as happened with the City of New York.

Among the best articulated proposals for an EMF, a prominent place has been taken by that formulated by Daniel Gros (Centre of European Policy Studies), in particular after the intervention in the debate preceding the Summit by Wolfgang Schäuble, Finance Minister of Germany, who was likely inspired by it. The special, and also questionable, aspect of Gros' proposal consists in suggesting that the cost of an intervention in favour of weak countries shall fall on those countries themselves, through the payment of a penalty (or insurance premium) proportional to their overrunning beyond the ceilings fixed by the Maastricht Treaty for the deficit and debt of the States participating in the EMU. Instead, it is interesting his suggestion of a bankruptcy procedure applicable to States and other public institutions (on the model of the US Chapter 11).

Schäuble's proposal (FT, March 12, 2010), of course, is political and does not go into technical details. He notes that the EMU finds itself for the first time “engaged in full surveillance over the fiscal and economic policy of one of the member countries”, urges everybody to follow a Bundesbank-brand orthodoxy and proposes to use the following instruments: a) an instrument forged on the experience of the “EU’s facility for medium term financial aid to non-eurozone member States”, which allowed to successfully confront the crises in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe; b) “emergence liquidity aid from an EMF to reduce the risk of defaults”, strictly conditional and costly, so as to discourage its use; c) “the EU statistical office Eurostat, having the right to inspect all public accounts where suspicion of manipulation is substantiated”. The most significant aspect of the proposal concerns, however, the institutional competences: “Political decisions about aid should be taken in the Eurogroup in agreement with the ECB”. When it goes to the core of the matter, Germany is not opposed to European solidarity, but requires, rightfully, that it shall be dealt with within European institutions.

5. A European and cosmopolitan vision, to use Ulrick Beck's expression, allows us to draw up projects as if a government of the European economy were really in operation, both in domestic policy and in coordinating itself with the other world regions, in the interest of the Union, which was born economic as well as monetary. It allows us, for example, to think of Europe's unitary participation in the UN, the IMF, etc.; of a European initiative in support to China's proposal of monetary reform; of the creation of a world-level Rating Agency with the participation of the creditor countries (or, at least, of a European Rating Agency) and of a regulated market of SDRs; of a European-wide budget policy that is the indispensable complement of its monetary policy; of an industrial policy (including the field of services) that is entitled to use the whole range of instruments, instead of limiting itself to the trade policy (where the exclusive competence of the federal level already produces very good results); of Europe's ability to deal with the inevitable backwardness situations of some regions with well-financed regional policies and with efficient federal controls over the use of funds; of a relaxation of the rigid connection between income and worked hour, ever less meaningful in the knowledge-based economy, through social policies aimed to all residents, in order to prize their freedom of choice, creativity, unworried and fruitful alternation of active and inactive periods.

In such a framework, to the present generations it should be asked to pay (through taxes) their present consumption of public goods (including the so-called “external dis-economies”, both environmental and social), while to future generations only the burden of the investments producing benefits in the long term (public debt) should be left. The service of debts should always be warranted by the return on investments which, in the case of public debt, consists in the greater tax revenue made possible by the increase in GDP generated by the investments themselves. The European federalists' proposal for a budget policy of the Union would allow to finance projects with the above described features, through the issuing of Union bonds (taking advantage of the Union's high rating), and to cover the service of debt with Union’s resources of its own (for example, a carbon tax, a European tax on banks, a European value added tax); the creation of Agencies (Energy, Environment, Security) would allow in addition to earmark expenditures and control their allocation with public criteria, i.e. such as to counterbalance the distortions coming from a mere capitalistic allocation and to attract also private investments. That would be the truly European solution to problems like the Greek crisis.

Why and how can an Arab federal Union come into place? This question is important as it engages us in the examination of the origin and the formation of that federal union, and the impact it would have on the trajectory of its future development.

Dicey, a harsh critic of federalism for its weakness, conservatism and legalism, has nevertheless offered a key concept that could be used in the Arab context. He put forth two conditions for the formation of a federation: «A body of countries… so closely connected by locality, by history, by race, or the like, as to be capable of bearing, in the eyes of their inhabitants, an impress of common nationality… (and) the existence of a very peculiar state of sentiment among the inhabitants…they must desire union, and must not desire unity¹.»

Although he did not elaborate a lot on these two conditions, he acknowledged that this “close connection” between states includes, in addition to the above, a prior loose political alliance or common rule, and that a federation is the maturation of such a connection².

Wheare followed the same tradition but gave it more structure and detail. A federal government is appropriate for a group of countries or communities “if, at one and the same time, they desire to be united under a single independent general government for some purposes, and to be organized under independent regional governments for others. Or, to put it shortly, they must desire to be united, but not to be unitary”³. He differentiated between the desire for union and the capacity to have it, and through his comparative studies of four older established federations (USA, Canada, Switzerland and Australia) he identified seven conditions as motives for union⁴. Language, race, religion and nationality were not essential prerequisites.

Watts, after examining six newer federations (India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and the West Indies) expanded the motives for union to eleven, and these could also serve as motives for regional autonomy⁵. He argued that the absence of the capacity for union, a condition put forth by Wheare, did not prevent the new federations from working.

As shown in my first article, Arab nationalism, using a similar language and logic, stressed the motives for union, but disregarded the motives for autonomy. These were considered as reminiscent of old identities that would be replaced by modernization, as tools used by colonialism to divide and weaken the Arabs, or as false consciousness that education would dispel. Arab nationalists saw the motives for autonomy as obstacles that needed to be overcome, not to be institutionalized. Had they looked at them using a federal lens, they would have accepted them and given them a political expression. One reason why Arab nationalists took this position may be due to their acknowledgment that it was nationalism, particularly the awakening of Arabism and the Arab revolt of 1916, that played a major part in breaking up the Ottoman Empire. What the Arabs did to the Ottomans should not be repeated to the Arabs.

With this emphasis on the motives for union, it was easy for the Arabs to confuse union with unity, and with the failure to achieve unity, union was also forgotten. A clear distinction between the two is essential. In Dicey’s words, a “federal government will hardly be formed unless many of the inhabitants of the separate States feel stronger in their allegiance to their own State than to the federal state represented by the common government”. While Arab nationalists would certainly see this as an obstacle to unity, federalists would see it as a prerequisite for union.

However, this concurrent existence of motives for union and regional autonomy is not enough. What is more important, according to Wheare and Watts, is the relative equilibrium or balance between these motives to give a federation its meaning. King also cautions against the idea of “balance” because a perfect balance between opposing forces would mean “immobility”.

History shows that the Arab world had, in fact, lived with this “duality” of motives most of the time, despite the fact that one of them was emphasized and the other was discredited. It was the rise of Islam that gave the Arabs a true sense of political unification under a religious banner, the Caliphate. The Caliphate lasted from 632 to 1924⁶, and within this long span of time, it passed through different stages of function and scope, changed capitals⁷ and even languages⁸, but most importantly it went through changes in its structure of power and source of legitimacy⁹.

What is of concern to us here is central/provincial relations. In the early phase of this system, the Caliphate was strong and enjoyed direct control over the people because territories were limited. An Arab, in this context, would be living under the direct control of the center. However, the expansion of Moslem rule and the acquisition of vast territories necessitated the delegation of authority by the Caliph to a governor. The Caliph originally appointed the governor, but later, the governor assumed his position through his own military power. He ruled in the name of the Caliph and ensured the application of the Shari’a and relevant civil matters. In return, the Caliph recognized the rule of that governor/Sultan as legitimate and called on him for military assistance when required¹⁰. The rise of the Sultanate as the actual form of effective political and military leadership meant that the Caliphate had lost most of its powers, and was reduced to a mere ceremonial institution. Thus, an Arab was subject to the direct authority of a regional governor, and indirectly to the Caliph. He was subject to a dual authority but to markedly different degrees.

When we consider that both the Caliphate and the Sultanate existed side by side for centuries, it is not difficult to argue that both traditions of centralism and regionalism coexisted in the Arab world from an historical perspective. At times, there were three different but concurrent Caliphates in the Arabic/Islamic world, and within each different powerful Sultanates existed. If we consider the territorial dimension at the time of a weak Caliphate, a person residing inside the city of the Caliphate would be under the direct central control, while another person belonging to the same Caliphate but living in a different city under the Sultanate would be under the direct regional control. When the Caliphate was strong, the state was centralized. When it was weak, real power was in the hands of regional governors and thus was effectively decentralized. This resulted in very elusive boundaries, overlapping identities and multiple centres of power.

The Millet system of the Ottoman Empire was the closest thing in the Arab world to non-territorial federalism. The system allowed minorities (religious and nonreligious) considerable freedom in managing their own affairs, including worship, education, language, welfare, social services, tax and courts in family and civil matters such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. They also chose their leaders, who represented them with the state and negotiated on their behalf. Except for a few central functions important to the state as a whole, such as security and state taxes, those communities were left to manage their own affairs on their own, provided they did not challenge the authority of the state itself.

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, the nation-state inherited the scene and emerged as the main political actor. In very few countries, like Egypt, a sense of nationalism was well developed, but in most other cases, the nation state was a completely new phenomenon, a new reality. However, nation-state building was challenged by preexisting tribal, feudal, religious and local identities from within¹¹, and by regional security dilemmas and international pressure from outside¹². Despite the weak nation-building, state-building benefited from these challenges. The Arab-Israeli conflict and other regional security dilemmas were used to rally support for the survival and the expansion of states. Moreover, military regimes, often with socialist ideologies, facilitated the spread of statism. As a result, the state became strong in “security” matters, but in many other domains was unable to extend its authority within its territories. The unfolding crisis of state legitimacy was also further magnified by state mismanagement and lack of good governance in terms of representation and accountability.

Can we speak of an “Arab tradition of federalism”? Is it possible to construct a continuous thread of “duality” or multiplicity within the Caliphate, the Sultanate, and the Millet system, with the balance moving between centralism and regionalism and with overlapping multiple identities and a weak nation-state? According to Riker, “federalism is the main alternative to empire as a technique of aggregating large areas under one government”¹³. If the Arabs had been living in some kind of “empire” most of the time until the early 20^th century, can we not conclude that the Arabs have lived in the shadow of federalism without even realizing it? Whether an Arab tradition of federalism actually exists or whether this is just a fulfillment of Forsyth’s remark that federalism “with sufficient effort can be detected almost everywhere”¹⁴, is open to debate and further analysis.

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then our focus could move to the formation of an Arab federal union. How would this come into existence? Within the Arab context, the Rikerian model of federal bargain is the most likely way¹⁵. As the state remains the main political actor, both the expansion and the military conditions put forth by Riker apply. Within Arab-nationalism literature, there is a debate on where the expansion condition would originate, with Syria/Iraq and Egypt as the main contenders, reflecting the historical rivalry between the Nile and the Mesopotamian civilizations¹⁶. The rest of the Arab countries are weaker, have not traditionally been expansionist, and would thus represent the states receiving the offer.

At this stage, it is possible to arrive at some preliminary characteristics in the design of an Arab federal union, taking into account some of the issues that would have to be addressed in this respect. Despite the historical prevalence of the centralist tradition, the union would be highly decentralized, at least in the initial phase, because of the legacy of state nationalism in the last half century. States would be reluctant to give up their sovereignty and powers, and the functions given to the federal center would be limited. It would be only through the maturation of the federal system that the center could receive more power. This has been the tendency in other federations as well.

A second, closely-related feature would be the executive dominance of federal state governments. State governments would be highly represented in the federal institutions (Germany provides the closest federal example and the EU the closest federal-confederal model). This would require an intensive mechanism of intergovernmental relations, like governors, ministerial and prime ministerial meetings. The current structure of the Arab League provides an excellent base upon which to build such a mechanism.

An Arab federal union would have to tolerate different forms of semi-democratic government, at least in the initial phase. Unlike the US Constitution, which guarantees a republican form for all states, the EU includes different forms of governments. In the Arab world, there are at least three different forms of governance: Republic, Monarchy and Jamahiriya (in Libya). Within the first two forms, there are important variations in democratic governance and institutional design. Moreover, the dynamics between the federal constitution and state constitutions would be a source of tension. As both categories of constitution affect each other, and there are different forms of state constitutions, the development of the federal constitution would be dependent on the ability of the federal union to guarantee respect for the form of government of each state on the one hand, and the application of basic democratic governance throughout the federation on the other. This is similar to the US model, where the Southern States’ constitutions allowed for slavery and racial segregation, while the federal constitution stressed equality. This distinction endured for over a hundred years following the Civil War, but the federal constitution became the ultimate savior of individual liberties and freedoms.

Courts in an Arab federation could possibly play a more important role than those in other federations. The courts would have to decide not only on the constitutionality of acts, that is, whether an act by an institution is within the scope of functions and powers allocated to it by the constitution, but also on the substance of the case. It is more than likely, because of the Moslem majority or the influence of state constitutions, that the constitution of an Arab federation would include a reference to Islam as a source of legislation. As there are four different schools of jurisprudence and law in Islam (Hanafi in Iraq and Egypt, Maliki in North Africa, Shafi' in Egypt and Yemen, Hanbali in the Gulf states), a federal court would have to include representatives from all four schools for it to be perceived as fair and balanced. Laws relating to women, personal status, marriage, divorce and inheritance differ among Arab countries, although they are all derived from “Islamic law”¹⁷. An Arab Supreme Court would resemble the International Court of Justice, in which all the major schools of law are represented; and that was a major source of its legitimacy.

This brings us to the issue of representation. Who and what would be represented? Four types of representation are possible: people, governments, regions and minorities. Governments would be highly represented because of executive dominance, as has been previously shown. The states’ representations would reflect their de facto asymmetry in population, wealth or geo-political position, although this is potentially another source of tension, as it has been in Canada between those who champion the cause of equal representation and those who prefer asymmetrical representation. States with larger populations and wealth would have more representation, veto rights or opt-out options. Regional groupings, formed through common ties that have bound certain states like the Gulf and North African states, could be a third level of representation for regional development or asymmetrical relation. This is similar to the case of Belgium. Finally, minorities could be represented based on territorial and non territorial models depending on the specific condition of each, either within the states or within the federal union, or both. States that are reluctant to safeguard minority rights within their own territories may be less sensitive in allowing those minorities “federal rights” in return for other benefits.

This preliminary examination of why and how an Arab federal union may be formed opens further ground for investigating the features covered above and triggers thoughts on what other features could constitute an Arab federal union. We cannot be definite about the success of federalism in the Arab world, but while the motives for union and autonomy continue to co-exist, there could be merit in considering the application of the federal principle, in a gradual and experimental process to arrive at a working balance of union and autonomy, while accommodating the issues that confront the region.

Conclusion
What would be the significance of an Arab federal union? Time magazine, commenting on the Arab leaders' meeting in Cairo in 1945 to establish the Arab League, wrote that “if the Cairo conference succeeded, it would put into effect the Alexandria resolution (Alexandria Protocol) for unified educational, financial, commercial, legal and foreign policies by all Arab nations. It would change the balance of power in the Middle East, (and) might affect Britain, France, Russia (and) the US”¹⁸.

The Arabs thought they could avoid federalism because “nobody would have a federal constitution if they could possibly avoid it”¹⁹. But with the failure of Arab nationalism and the Arab League models, is it time to look for an alternative? Watts remarks that “the adoption of a ‘federal solution’ in each (new federation) was not an arbitrary choice but a last resort, a grudging compromise made necessary by the need to accommodate concurrent pressures for unity and for regional autonomy”. The Arabs were not completely unaware of federalism²⁰, they just thought they could do without it.

1 Dicey. Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, p. 75.
2 This has been the dominant model of forming federations to which Riker’s bargain applies and Alfred Stepan calls “Coming Together”, to differentiate it from a newer model of forming federations through devolution or “Holding Together”. For more details see Alfred Stepan, “Federalism and Democracy: Beyond the U.S. Model", Journal of Democracy, Vol. 10, No. 4 (October 1999), pp. 19-33.
3 Kenneth Wheare, Federal Government (London, Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 36.
4 Wheare, Federal Government, pp. 37-40; they are: military insecurity and common defense, independence from foreign powers, economic advantage, past loose political association, geographical neighborhood, similarity of political institutions and right leadership at the right time.
5 Ronald Watts, New Federations: Experiments in the Commonwealth (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 41-90.
6 30 years under the Four Guided Caliphs, 90 years under the Umayyad, more than 500 years under the Abbasids, 250 years under the Mamluks, 400 years under the Ottomans.
7 It moved from Medina under the Four Guided Caliphs, to Damascus under the Umayyad, to Baghdad under the Abbasids, with competing centers of Caliphate in both Andalusia (Spain) and Egypt, to Cairo under the Mamluks, and finally to Constantinople under the Ottomans.
8 The Umayyad emphasized the “Arabic” nature of the Caliphate, however, under the Abbasids, Persian was widely used in the circles of power by the secretarial class at the capital. Turkish became the official language of the Caliphate under the Ottoman Empire.
9 Thomas Arnold, The Caliphate (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965). Hamilton Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, Beacon Press, 1968).
10 Ira Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 6 (1975), p. 364.
11 Andrew Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997). Shryock reveals how tribal history is transmitted orally and considered the only “true” history, and with the existence of multiple tribes with changing balance of power among them, there appear to be many “true histories”, distinct from the official unifying “history” of the state, which in itself is another tribal history of the ruling Hashemite family.
12 Bahgat Korany, “The Arab World and the New Balance of Power in the Middle East”, in Michael Hudson (ed.), The Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999).
13 Riker, Federalism, p. 5
14 Murray Forsyth, Unions of States: The Theory and Practice of Confederation (Leicester University Press, 1981), p. 7
15 Craig Volden, “Origin, Operation, and Significance: The Federalism of William H. Riker”, Publius, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Fall 2004), pp. 91-93.
16 Philip Hitti, “The Possibility of Union among the Arab States”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 4. (Jul., 1943), pp. 722-732.
17 Amira Mashhour, “Islamic Law and Gender Equality - Could There be a Common Ground? A Study of Divorce and Polygamy in Sharia Law and Contemporary Legislation in Tunisia and Egypt”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2005), pp. 562-596.
18“Arab Federation?”, Time, February 26, 1945. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792001,00.html
19 Ivor Jennings, Some Characteristics of the Indian Constitution, p. 55, quoted in Watts, New Federations, p. 98.
20 Mohamed Bakr Hussein, Federal Union between Theory and Practice (Cairo, 1977), Mohamed Anwar Abdel Salam, The American Federal Union and its Meaning for Arab Unity (Cairo, 1974), both in Arabic, plus several federal union proposals from Arab University Graduates (1955), Arab Lawyers Union (1957) and some statesmen and politicians from 1950s to 1970s, in Youssef Khoury, Arab Unity Projects 1913-1987 (Beirut, Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1988) (in Arabic).

The UN climate summit in Copenhagen has failed to achieve its main purpose: To seal a global deal that will lead the way towards a low-carbon world. There can be no doubt about this dramatic shortcoming. Despite all the public attention and all the scientific recommendations for immediate action, over 100 heads of states and governments did not agree on an ambitious plan to reach the 2 degrees target. In the coming weeks it is time to analyse the result and draw lessons from Copenhagen in order to make the forthcoming climate change summit in Mexico City at the end of next year a success.

There were many reasons for this outcome of the Copenhagen conference, but at the heart of all the debates one issue was crucial: global justice, in this case, global climate justice gains growing attention. The Climate conference served, more or less, as a public arena for the dispute about a new definition of equality and justice.

On the surface, this conflict was a conflict between North and South, between rich and poor, between developed and developing countries. But a closer look at the debates clearly shows that the world in general is changing. Developing and emerging countries are no longer the same. It might even be the case that we will witness the demise of the G77 group and that it has, for the last time in history, served as a representation of all developing countries. China and many big emerging economies tried to hide behind the safe wall of moral superiority, which developing countries tend to use as their main weapon of choice.

But in the last night of the negotiations it became clear that China’s interests are no longer in harmony with the interests of everyone else in the G77 group. They rather reflect its own desire to become a global superpower without any restrictions by international agreements. Even at the cost of some African countries or the desperate Micronesian States, which face disastrous environmental consequences.

In the end, however, it would be too simple to just blame China and dissent among developing countries for the negative outcome of the Copenhagen summit. The developed world carries its fair share of responsibility for the failure of the summit: The hardly ambitious appearance of the US delegation, with Barack Obama’s press conference before the end of the negotiations as a climax, the clumsy and not particularly diplomatic behaviour of the Danish prime minister and conference president, Lars L. Rasmussen, and, finally, the shortcomings of Europe’s climate diplomacy in the run up to Copenhagen speak for themselves.

But which lessons can we learn from Copenhagen? What should Europeans concentrate on in the run up to the summit in Mexico City next year? First, climate justice has to become the leading principle guiding future negotiations. The need to reduce global emissions by half in comparison to 1990, while, at the same time, coping with a world population of around nine billion people by 2050, has major implications for every one of us: In the middle of this century, every person on this planet will have to be restricted to the use of not more than one ton of CO2 per year. This very basic rule has to apply to everyone. It requires both that Americans fundamentally change their way of life (a 95 percent emissions reduction in average is required) as well as a different attitude to unlimited emissions growth for China. This crucial aspect (‘one man, one ton’) has to initiate an industrial revolution that should start in Europe. And better today than tomorrow.

Second, aside from dramatic emissions reductions, Europe has to find a new way for leading international climate negotiations. Unilateral commitments and financial contributions are necessary and helpful, but not completely sufficient. The European Union has to develop a new form of climate diplomacy, using the instrument of Europe’s ‘soft power’ in foreign policy in order to convince other parts of the world to join in. This sort of leadership was missing in Copenhagen.

Third, the United Nations needs a fundamental reform. Without changing its working methods and decision-making rules, global governance will be conducted elsewhere, in other arenas. Heads of states and governments demonstrated their inability to find a solution to one of the most pressing questions for mankind. The parliaments should be more involved. Parliamentary methods – openness and majority voting – could pave the way out of the intergovernmental deadlock.

Despite all the frustration about the result of the Copenhagen climate conference, Europeans have to look ahead and find new solutions to fight global warming. The defeat in Copenhagen is not the end of international climate policy. It is just one step in a long process. In Mexico City, next year, there must be another opportunity to find a global solution for a global problem. In the meantime, we have to develop a new way of approaching and managing international climate policy. There is now some time for thinking.

The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has Article VIII calling for a review conference every five years to see how the terms of the Treaty are being respected and its goals promoted. As this Treaty, a cornerstone of arms control efforts, came into force in 1970, there has been every five years a review conference starting in 1975.

Negotiations leading to the Treaty were carried out for nearly the whole of the 1960s in Geneva, and each article was the result of long discussions and compromises. The Treaty has three main goals based on the realities of the 1960s – the middle of the 1945-1990 Cold War, with the USA and the USSR as the main protagonists. The main aim, as indicated in its name, is preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons beyond the five States which already had nuclear weapons when the Treaty was negotiated: the USA, USSR, England, France, and China.

In the 1960s, there were estimates that at least 20 States had the scientific know how to develop nuclear weapons, such as Japan, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa and Brazil. There was a fear that if an ever greater number of States had nuclear weapons, the rather stable but yet dangerous “balance of terror” that existed between the USA and the USSR could be upset. Since the two leading powers were also leaders of military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, it was feared that nuclear weapons could be transferred to other States within the alliances. In practice, the USA posted nuclear weapons to European allies such as Germany, but the weapons remained under US control. The transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons to Cuba, under Soviet control but in unclear conditions, led to the Cuban Crisis of 1962, one of the Cold War’s most tense confrontations. Thus the Treaty prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons from the five named nuclear-weapon powers to other States.

In exchange for States renouncing the possibility to develop nuclear weapons, they were to receive aid in the development of peaceful nuclear energy. The 1950s-1960s were periods of general enthusiasm about the use of nuclear energy as a motor of development and freedom of dependence on oil. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was set up primarily to promote the use of nuclear energy in the spirit of the American policy of “Atoms for Peace”, and only very secondarily as a “watch dog” agency to see that nuclear programs were not diverted to military uses.

The five recognized nuclear-weapon States pledged themselves in the Preamble and in Article VI of the Treaty to take steps toward nuclear disarmament as well as general and complete disarmament. The Preamble sets out the aspirations of the Treaty: “Desiring to further the easing of international tension and the strengthening of trust between States in order to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery pursuant to a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control…”

Each Review Conference has been concerned with how well these three aspects – non-proliferation, promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and the disarmament initiatives of the five nuclear-weapon States were being carried out. To make matters more complicated but politically realistic, the policies of the nuclear-weapon States which have never signed the NPT – India, Israel, Pakistan – colour the discussions in each Review. North Korea had ratified the NPT, but then withdrew in 2003. Each State has the right to withdraw under certain conditions. Iran is a member of the NPT States, but questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the control of the IAEA on its peaceful nuclear activities and if nuclear material is being enriched to weapon-production level.

There are deep disagreements over the evaluation of each of these three dimensions, although enthusiasm for peaceful nuclear energy has cooled since the 1960s. However, developing countries want to keep the peaceful nuclear energy option open and usually complain that not enough money is given to the IAEA to promote nuclear energy. Currently, there is increasing attention being given world-wide to alternative energy possibilities and the need to develop a real world energy policy. Thus, the Review basically concerns nuclear weapons: Is non-proliferation working as a durable policy? Are the five nuclear-weapon States disarming? What is to be done with the nuclear-weapon States outside the NPT?

These questions re-appeared with force during this 2010 Review Conference held from 3 to 28 May at the UN in New York. In order to highlight the issues, by chance or not, outside events came to bring home to the delegates that they were at the heart of world politics.

North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean ship, the Cheoan, in the Yellow Sea near the contested maritime border between North and South Korea, increased tensions between North and South Korea, drew in US support to the South Koreans and worried the governments of both Japan and China. While military action is unlikely, the division of Korea into two opposed States was highlighted and the need to resume serious negotiations on the future of Korea – not just the nuclear weapon program of North Korea – is increasingly evident.

The second major event during the Review was the agreement – if it was an agreement – on 17 May of Iran with Turkey and Brazil on the exchange through Turkey of Iran’s 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium in exchange for a smaller amount of higher-enriched uranium for the Tehran Research Reactor. There is deep mutual distrust concerning Iran’s nuclear policies – in fact, concerning all of Iran’s policies – which carries over to the evaluation of this agreement. This agreement concerning Iran serves as a reminder that IAEA safeguards do not operate in a political vacuum and that the Turkey-Brazil-Iran pledges are only first steps in the confidence-building needed to negotiate wider regional agreements. Some have claimed that the USA is now “moving the goal posts” on the Iranian-Turkish-Brazilian agreement, which resembles earlier suggestions and what had seemed at the time an Iranian-French-Russian proposition of exchange which the US seemed to approve. It is still too early to know how it will play out, since some factions in Iran consider such an exchange as an infringement on Iranian sovereignty. For the moment, the Brazil-Turkish initiative has “lowered the temperature” world wide, and cooler heads seem to have won out, but the situation merits close attention.

The nuclear weapons of Israel and their meaning for Middle East policies have long been “an elephant in the room” of the NPT Reviews – too large not to notice but too dangerous to deal with, if anything else in the review process was to be done. After the Iraq-Iran war had nearly caused the 1985 Review Conference to fail, there was a start to a realization that the Middle East and nuclear weapons needed to be looked at. This realization grew slowly and in 1995 there was an annex to the Final Declaration of the Review proposing that a conference on a potential nuclear-weapon-free Middle East should be called. In practice, “the time was never ripe” and so in 2010 the call was renewed. This time a date for a conference was set for 2012. It is to be called not by the UN, but by the five permanent States of the UN Security Council.

However, the US National Security Advisor said at the end of the Review Conference: “As a co-sponsor of the 2012 Conference, the US will ensure that it will take place if and when all countries feel confident that they can attend. Because of the gratuitous way that Israel has been singled out, the prospect for a conference in 2012 that involves all key states in the region is now in doubt.”

The fighting in Afghanistan and certain areas of Pakistan are daily news, so that the Pakistan-India nuclear-weapons policies remain crucial issues, even if the Review Conference did not want to deal with another “elephant in the room”. Thus there were weak calls for India and Pakistan to join the NPT, as if they were not nuclear-weapon States. There were no indications that India-Pakistan relations would be influenced by NPT Reviews, although some framework needs to be found, as bilateral India-Pakistan talks – when they occur – do not progress toward meaningful compromises and reduction of tensions.

US-USSR (now US-Russia) nuclear weapons and their strategic policies have always been too obvious to avoid. However, the US and the Russians have always had a joint, common position in the Reviews: “Leave us alone, we are doing the best we can through bilateral negotiations”. Thus, in practice, after repeating that Article VI is not being met in a meaningful way and that “general and complete disarmament under international control” is on the agenda of no one, all NPT States go back to “business as usual”. There are repeated calls for serious negotiations on nuclear weapons disarmament and the strategic policies of the nuclear-weapon States, but such negotiations seem far off. The Geneva-based Conference of Disarmament (CD) has made little progress since the end of the Cold War, not having been able until 2009 even to set an agenda of issues on which to negotiate. Now the CD members are stuck with the impossibility of agreeing on setting up working groups on the different agenda items.

However, the idea of a world without nuclear weapons is being mentioned more frequently now than at any time since the end of the Cold War thanks to President Obama. Nevertheless, the USA and Russian strategic policies are based on the continued deployment of nuclear weapons. England, France and China have made no dramatic advances toward abolishing their more modest supply of nuclear weapons.

The Final Document, a Chairman’s Statement, on which the governments agreed after a good bit of last moment negotiations says: “The Conference recognizes that nuclear disarmament and achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons will require openness and co-operation, and affirms the importance of enhanced confidence through increased transparency and effective verification.”

The Chairman, Libran Cabactulan of the Philippines, read the 29 page consensus document. It was only on page 22 that civil society was mentioned. “All States agree on the importance of supporting cooperation among governments, the United Nations, other international and regional organizations, and civil society, aimed at increasing confidence, improving transparency and developing efficient verification capabilities related to nuclear disarmament.”

The holding of a conference on a Middle East Nuclear-weapon Free Zone is the only item with a fixed deadline prior to the 2015 Review. It may disappear from the world agenda as did the 1995 Middle East statement. Perhaps, if “civil society” does organize around a 2012 Conference, some progress may be made. The 31 May Israeli attack in international waters of boats trying to break the Gaza blockage and the strong world-wide reactions to the attack highlight, if needs be, the tensions of the area. A conference on a Middle East Nuclear-weapon Free Zone could be a forum for a multilateral approach to the conflicts of the area, and thus a focus for non-governmental pressure. It may also be agreed that the tensions prove that such a conference is impossible, and 2012 will “come and go”. Personally, I prefer the first alternative.

“Global and local matters are more intertwined than ever before. Ultimately it is in the streets of your cities and towns that the value of what is decided here (the UN) will be tested. You are essential partners. It is there, in the daily lives of your citizens, in their safety and security, in their prosperity and sense of opportunity that our progress will be most visible, and our setbacks felt most keenly. While our Goals are global, they can most effectively be achieved through action at local level.” (Kofi Annan¹)

Setting controversies aside on the origins, nature and scope of the phenomenon called “globalization,” there is a consensus on the fact that, among many other things, it carries with it the change from a State-centric model to a complex, multilevel relations system. It is in this process that a deep phenomenon takes place, dominated by trends that would seem to move one against the other: an upward, aggregating movement – with supra-national instances –, and a fragmenting, downward movement – with sub-national expressions –; in parallel, a modification of the terms of the relationship between state and civil society takes place. As it has been pointed out, a world of bifurcations and perforated sovereignties appears, in which territoriality-defining criteria have to be corrected in the light of new commercial and techno-productive patterns, of new forms of international relations, of changes in the interrelation between domestic and foreign affairs and the alteration of intergovernmental links. In short, new procedures are established in the handling of world affairs.

Adapting themselves to the logic that guides them, the supranational and subnational levels are progressing according to their own specificity, interrelating in diverse domains and manners. In this work, our interest is focused on the subnational level, understanding as such both the major administrative units within a country – provinces, regions or their equivalent denominations –, and the town- and city-halls. It is unnecessary to mention the evidence of the increasing relevance of these players, be it with regard to internal development – political organization, management of the economic life, relations with civil society, etc. –, as well as external relations – towards their own regional environment and the world scale. Any record on the public activities of no matter what country, will show a great deal of external initiatives involving cities or regions: conferences, commercial missions, agreements of diverse kinds, establishment of local bodies' representations abroad, participation in international organisms and networks. They cooperate, compete, issue statements, sign agreements, form interest groups and alliances, create their own instruments for international action and broaden their external projection. A reflection of this phenomenon is the increasing interest that the performance of these subnational units has stirred in the field of social sciences and, within this setting, the hypotheses about the roles that may be assigned to them, naturally under certain conditions, in the demands of democratization into the entrails of every society and in the world order.

In any case, some warnings should be made before moving on. In the first place, the identification of a tendency must not be mistaken for its complete realization, and consequently the analytical effort must focus on the complex interactions between old (which usually re-emerges) and new. In the second place, when pondering any given phenomenon, it is worth foreseeing the potentialities that may or may not come to their full expression. Lastly, both global-reaching transformations as well as those related to a lesser reach, happen with different peculiar traits in the central areas and in the peripheral regions.

Cities have been active players in this movement, frequently heading this international opening up, that can take bilateral or multilateral forms. Naturally, beyond the significance of new global and regional trends – boosted by the impact of integrating initiatives expressed in the form of new regionalizing waves –, such a projection acknowledges extensive antecedents. Cities possess a long trajectory in international relations. Since the Greek city-states, we can identify trans-territorial growths of cities and their roles as trading hubs and urban network systems. In western history, the nature of their role has undergone constant modification. If during the Middle Ages they acted as political and administrative centres, their role underwent a deep transformation since the industrial revolution, when they became the central space for economic activities of material production, concentrating modern industries and factories. Current trends are manifesting new modifications in this sense.

The example of Quebec is generally taken as one of the earliest records of subnational entities' actions in the international plane, aiming to create their own representation space abroad. In the times when the Province of Quebec was divided into Upper Canada and Lower Canada, international relations were part of the British imperial policy; some members of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada sought to establish relations with the British Parliament first and then with the United States of America, and between 1816 and 1833 an agency was established in the region of the imperial metropolis. Years later, Quebec opened its first General Agency in Paris in 1882, even before Canada as such had a delegation overseas; the second was opened in London in 1908 and the third in Brussels in 1915.

The early 20^th century witnesses the establishment of the first transnational network of cities, created in Belgium in 1913. On that occasion, and responding to the initiative of a political sector, a Congress was held in which over four hundred delegates participated, representing town-halls from twenty countries. It was during this congress that the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) was founded.

As the century went by, the establishment of city networks appeared increasingly connected to the idea of city-“twinning”, particularly after World War II, with the intention of preventing new conflicts. An example of this are the links established in 1944 between the Canadian port-city of Vancouver and the recently liberated port-city of Odessa, which helped in the reconstruction of the latter. Or the 50 mayors who in 1951, convinced that Europe would not be able to overcome its difficulties without unifying its strengths, founded the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CCRE - CEMR), introducing the notion of “European citizenship”, and from this the concept of “twinning”. Germany and France had a leading role; more than half of the twinnings may be credited to them. This movement was one of the factors that contributed to avoid military confrontations, creating a climate that favored a convergence and that will later materialize in the form of the agreements that gave origin to the European Community. That gesture, of great symbolic impact at the time, has become a movement of local governments that bet on a concerted multilateral action for conflict prevention, for improving coexistence and promoting peace. Some examples of this are the World Conferences on City Diplomacy (supported by the UCLG), the Mayors for Peace network, that gathers at least 3,150 mayors from 134 countries, or the “Proyecto Guernica: Ciudades por la Paz” (Guernica Project – Cities for Peace) during the 2008 Mercociudades Annual Summit, aiming to consolidate a “Network of Cities for Peace” in the region.

In 1957, the World Federation of United Cities was created. A year earlier, President Eisenhower had launched the People to People² initiative, a forebear and inspirator of the acknowledged Sister Cities Network. In his remarks of September 11, 1956, at the People-to-People Conference, he said: “If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together and to leap governments – if necessary, to evade governments – to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other”. Some find in this speech the introduction of the idea of city diplomacy. This organization currently includes 2,500 communities from 137 countries worldwide.

Several more are the examples that can be taken into account. These experiences express ways of articulating the characteristics of urban culture, linked to diverse international and regional belongings, postwar reconstruction demands, the search for coalitions, the struggle between blocs, the conditioning factors of domestic scenarios, that were – as well as the increasing transnational flows of people – facilitated by the changes in transport and communications technologies.

Some surveys indicate that today there are no less than fifteen city global networks in existence, plus a substantial amount of networks with a regional scope, along with hundreds of organizations oriented to deal with specific problems³.

An indicator of the dimension acquired by this phenomenon is the creation in 2004 of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), a leading organization acting as spokesman for local governments in the global domain. Its main goals are to promote cooperation and integration of local governments, increase the influence of these governments and the organizations that represent them in global governance, and ensure a democratic and efficient world organization. “Renewing and deepening our partnership with the United Nations and the global community, and building an effective and formal role for local government as a pillar of the international system,” are stated to be their guiding principles.

As reflected in the initial phrase of this article, in the words of the former UN Secretary Kofi Annan, the UCLG has become a relevant spokesperson in the UN with regard to major world issues: the environment, climate change, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), global urban problems, the world development agenda, Aid and Cooperation for Development, women, natural catastrophes, AIDS and other pandemics, Alliance of Civilizations, among others; however, it has not yet gained a formal consultative status in that organization, for which it is working relentlessly.

There are divergences in the way of denominating these “new” international players, which are usually mentioned as subnational units or entities, non-central governments (NCGs), sub-state or infra-state units, territorial actors; they are ways of denominating them, each one expressing a criterion based on the juridical or functional features of their hierarchical relationship with the State. Likewise, the ways of framing and typifying their performance differ: they are seen as an expression of management, action, external projection; as a particular variation of international relations – subnational international relations –; as alternatives forms of diplomacy – para-diplomacy, subnational diplomacy, multilevel diplomacy, etc.; as a reflection of a trend towards decentralizing Foreign Policy and, more recently, as an expression of the emergence of new ways of governance, in which multiple levels of government intervene.

This international action began being approached chiefly from two analytical viewpoints: on the one hand, according to its effects on Foreign Policies – a domain that belongs to the exclusive competence of national governments –, with a stress on the question of how these expressions of para-diplomacy affect State sovereignty; and on the nature of the phenomenon, i.e. if they do constitute external policies or if they are manifestations of internal policies that are internationalized. On the other hand, starting from the acknowledgement of their impact on intergovernmental relations, particularly (but not exclusively) in States of a federal nature, and moving on in the study of the link between that type of regime and foreign policy. A particular chapter is constituted by the inclusion and treatment of the issue within the framework of regional integration processes.

Current trends are boosting both in intensity and in depth these relations, from which the subnational entities' international activity acquires diverse orientations, meanings and potentialities. It is probably the multilateralization of such links and the way they constitute themselves in means of articulating local levels with issues affecting global governance what makes this subject ever more relevant, opening an alternative of new scenarios that require an attentive follow-up.



1 Kofi Annan: New York, 8 September 2005 - Secretary-General's remarks to "United Cities and Local Governments", http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=1660
2 The People to People program aims to improve understanding and dialog between peoples, by means of education, the direct interchanging of ideas and experiences between communities
3 Such organizations include: Cities Alliance, World Association of Mayor Metropolises, World Association of Cities and Local Authorities, World Federation of United Cities, Eurocities, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, Council of European Municipalities and Regions, East and Southeast Asia Regional Network for Better Local Governments, Europe-Latin America Urban Cooperation Program, International Local Government Partnerships for Urban Development, Arab Towns Organization, Managing the Environment Locally in Sub Saharan Africa, Mercociudades, Red Andina de Ciudades, Asociación Internacional de Ciudades Educadoras (AICE), Ciudades Unidas contra la Pobreza, Foro de Autoridades Locales por la Inclusión Social (FAL), among others

The destiny of freedom and rights appears to be increasingly dependent on the strong thread that ties it to the Internet, to the digital world and the continuous novelties that it offers, the interests arising from it, the conflicts of interest that take on unprecedented dimensions and meaning. Freedom technologies merge with control technologies, the individualistic fragmentation entails the creation of new social links. The same distinction between what is mine and what is yours seems to give way to the sharing of everything that is accessible on the web, thus questioning the traditional foundations of an ownership that, to many, appears again as a “theft”, since knowledge is seen as independent from its author and takes on the appearance of a common good.

In this new world, where wonder and anxiety mingle, usual references are wavering and radical questions are being asked concerning the complex set-up of our societies. What powers are actually governing the world and what is the meaning of this entity hastily defined as the “people of the web”? This reality can be accessed in many ways and it is worth mentioning some of them.

The death of privacy was announced in many occasions. «The only privacy left is the inside of your head. And maybe that’s enough» (in the movie ‘Enemy of the State’, 1998). «You have no privacy: accept it» (Scott McNealy, managing director of Sun Microsystems, 1999). «Can privacy survive in an age of terror?» (cover of ‘Business Week’, November 2001). «Privacy? It is a concern of the past» (Facebook’s prophet Marc Zuckerberg, and Twitter’s Evan Williams, 2010).

In spite of this endless stream of highly peremptory announcements, the protection of personal data, i.e. of our “electronic body”, is considered as a fundamental right of all people by the Lisbon Treaty and by the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, which came into effect on December 1st, 2009. Are we faced with an aging constitutional logic, a legal theory that toys with illusions of the past? Then, let us look at one of the most sensational facts of the recent years, i.e. the refusal by Google to accept the censorship imposed by the Chinese government, which led to Hillary Clinton’s strong intervention in defence of freedom of expression and privacy for anybody navigating the Internet. Hence, not only is the thesis of privacy insignificance denied, but the relation within the so-called G2, i.e. between the two major powers, is deteriorated by a conflict rooted in two opposite visions of individual freedom.

Suddenly, the fundamental rights that have always been sacrificed to the imperatives of geopolitics and economic relations, appear on the international scene as an asset that cannot be swept aside by the predominance of political realism or by the technologists’ arrogant statements. All this takes place not only as a result of a burst of awareness of the deep meaning of rights, but for reasons related to the specificity of the Internet. Hillary Clinton was quite aware of what it means today to meet with the people of the web, spread beyond any kind of border. To the international public opinion, jealous of the new opportunities offered by technologies, she presented the United States as the champion of a freedom that is no longer “American” or “Western” (and, for this reason, always associated with the suspicion of an hegemonic claim of one culture over the others), but is perceived as universal for the mere fact that it is now shared by over two billion people. In the age of the (alleged) end of ideologies and the decline of any great “narrative”, these fundamental rights appear as a narrative capable of revealing the common root of the Iranian students’ protest, the refusal of censorship by the Chinese Internet users, the fight of African women against injustice.

But, through her intervention, Hillary Clinton has also uncovered the true power relations that innervate today’s world. Google is not just one of the most powerful multinational companies. It is a power in itself, stronger than the power of an infinite number of national states, with which it negotiates on the same level. To achieve this, it requires a strong - chiefly political - approval, that was obtained through the dramatic turn of events related to the conflict with China, which introduces it to the world as the champion of civil rights in the future leading countries. But this strong approval cannot be left to an economic subject, it cannot be “privatised”. In these conditions, the declaration of the American Secretary of State also sounds like the public claim of a role that politics cannot discard.

In fact, Google’s nature does not only involve the libertarian element that rightly aroused Timothy Garton Ash’s enthusiasm. Google is also an essential component of what was appropriately defined as «Big Data», with an obvious reference to the «Big Farma» used to describe the overwhelming power of pharmaceutical companies. Can these powers remain totally out of control?

This question has always worried the ‘people of the web’ who have, for a long time, seen any type of rule as an attack on their freedom. This was proudly proclaimed by John Perry Barlow in 1998, in the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: «Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, you have no sovereignty where we gather». The strength of the facts has denied this prevision. It is the national governments that are trying to tarnish Internet and its freedom and the time has therefore come not for coercive rules but for the opposite, that is constitutional guarantees for the web freedom, an Internet Bill of Rights. Hillary Clinton has announced to the UN an initiative on Internet freedom. However, this freedom is valid not only against the intrusiveness of the states, but is also projected towards the new “Lords of information” who, through gigantic data collections, govern our lives. In front of this situation, the word “privacy” calls to mind not only a need for intimacy, but synthesizes the freedom that belongs to us in the new world we live in. And Google embodies the simultaneous presence of opportunities of freedom and a sovereign power without control. Not a two-faced Janus, however, but a net that can be disentangled only by a “constitutional” initiative that should find its means of construction in the web itself.

The European Union can play a significant part in this process. Because, with the Charter of fundamental rights, it understood at an early stage the dimension of freedom on the web and acknowledged the protection of personal data as an independent fundamental right. But, even more so, because it should convince itself that it can exercise a political leadership, based on the fact that it is today the region of the world where the guarantee of fundamental rights is the strongest. On the other hand, we must sadly acknowledge that Italy (which, four years ago, was the first to go along the way that is now shown by Hillary Clinton, signing common documents with other States and putting the Internet Bill of Rights in the world agenda) is dropping out. Today, the Italian government and the majority come up with censorial proposals that isolate the country and drive it to the logic of authoritarian countries.


English version of the article Una costituzione per il web, in La Repubblica, 19 febbraio 2010, p. 38 .

Seventy years ago, on June 16^th, 1940, the British government under Winston Churchill took the remarkable step of offering complete and indissoluble political union with France. The proposal was one of the most innovative in the history of the two countries. It read as follows:

“Declaration of Union¹ – At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, The Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves. The two governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial, and economic policies. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France. Both countries will share responsibility for the repair of the devastation of war, wherever it occurs in their territories, and the resources of both shall be equally, and as one, applied to the purpose. During the war there shall be a single War Cabinet, and all the forces of Britain and France, whether on land, see, or in the air, will be placed under its direction. It will govern from wherever it best can. The two Parliaments will be formally associated. The nations of the British Empire are already forming new armies. France will keep her available forces in the field, on the sea, and in the air. The Union appeals to the United States to fortify the economic resources of the Allies, and to bring her powerful material aid to the common cause. The Union will concentrate its whole energy against the power of the enemy, no matter where the battle may be. And thus we shall conquer.”

It was an act of desperation. Europe was in crisis. During the seven years since Hitler took power, he had incorporated first Austria and then the Sudetenland into the German Reich, occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia, and overrun Poland. To help Poland but also thwart any further expansion, Britain and France had then declared war.

After some months of comparative calm – the period of the so-called ‘phoney war’ – Hitler’s troops had launched their spring offensive through neutral Belgium and the Netherlands, thus by-passing France’s main line of defence (the Maginot line), hemming in the British at Dunkirk and pressing on towards Paris.

In the final days of May, the British in Dunkirk had succeeded under heavy fire in evacuating 338,226 men (including 139,097 French) by ship, but at the high cost of six Royal Navy destroyers sunk and nineteen others damaged. The RAF lost 474 planes, while all the army’s heavy guns, tanks, and military transport had to be abandoned.

Meanwhile the enemy had reached the heartland of France. To save Paris from destruction, the capital was declared an open city, while the French government withdrew first to Tours, then to Bordeaux. Fearing that Hitler and his fascist allies might become the unchallenged masters of continental Europe, Churchill – who had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister – crossed the Channel several times for emergency meetings to encourage his French counterpart Paul Reynaud to continue the fight, and in particular to ensure that the French fleet did not fall into German hands.

Already in March, Britain and France had signed an agreement that neither country would make a separate peace with Hitler². It also contained a clause that in due course the agreement “might be expanded so as to give some contractual form to the continuance of Anglo-French economic and military collaboration after the end of the war.” Now, only two months later, the situation had changed radically.

Clearly something more was needed, some initiative which would raise the spirits of the defeated French – but what? The answer came not from the government but from the initiative of two civil servants, one British and one French, working in London as members of the Anglo-French Coordination Committee concerned with military supplies and at that moment dealing with the urgent need for more fighter aircraft. Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet had known each other since the 1914-1918 war, when they had been engaged on a similar task. Conscious that only a grand gesture could keep the alliance intact, they set about drawing up a draft declaration proposing a way of binding France and Britain more closely together: namely, that the two countries should become a single, indissoluble political union³. But how would such a political union function?

Salter’s peacetime experience in the League of Nations administration had taught him that the “intrinsic weakness” of an inter-state institution which leaves national sovereignty unimpaired is that it can lead to “a deterioration in the relation between its principal members (which) can quickly reduce it to impotence.” His conclusion⁴ therefore was that “a federation… is far preferable to an intergovernmental authority”.

Jean Monnet shared Salter’s views on the weakness of inter-governmental decision-making, though not his federalist aims. He deplored the allies’ current lack of a common command structure, which meant that until then – despite the existence of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council – Britain and France each seemed at times to be fighting its own war rather than confronting the enemy as a united force. In the prevailing situation such weakness could no longer be afforded.

Despite their differences, the two men succeeded in producing a five-page draft plan which they could both support. It proposed neither a federation nor simply a strengthening of the Anglo-French alliance, but something in between: namely that “France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union.” The two Parliaments would be united. There would be a single war cabinet and “all the forces of Britain and France whether on land, sea, or in the air, will be placed under its direction.” In other words, the two countries would become a single unified state.

Getting Churchill even to read this proposal proved to be impossible, essentially because – according to Churchill’s secretary Major Desmond Morton – Monnet lacked the necessary political standing to be able to speak for the French government. Persisting nevertheless, Monnet gathered together a small group to work on an improved draft. In addition to Salter and Major Morton, it included the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office Sir Robert Vansittart and René Pleven of the French economic mission in London.

The deadlock was broken by the arrival in London of General Charles de Gaulle, newly appointed Secretary of State for War in the French Government⁵. “I am here to save the honour of France!”, he is reported to have told Monnet’s wife Sylvia, and it was no boast. He read the draft text at a meeting with Monnet and the French ambassador Charles Corbin, and was impressed. This, he said, could give Prime Minister Reynaud the courage to continue the fight, if necessary from France’s North African territories.

Winston Churchill states in his war memoirs⁶ that he was at a luncheon at the Carlton Club on the 15^th of June when he first heard of the plan for an indissoluble Anglo-French union, “with the object of giving M. Reynaud some new fact of a vivid and stimulating nature with which to carry a majority of his cabinet into the move to Africa and the continuance of the war.” He does not mention that de Gaulle was also present and had handed him the draft text. His first reaction was “unfavourable”. He was “by no means convinced”, he wrote in his account of the meeting.

But Reynaud had already asked for France to be released from her obligations under the “no separate peace” agreement. It meant that Britain could be left isolated. At the June 16th cabinet meeting, Churchill reported on his conversation with de Gaulle, who had stressed that “some very dramatic move was essential… to keep M. Reynaud’s Government in the war and that a proclamation of the indissoluble union of the French and British peoples would serve the purpose.”

Vansittart was instructed to draft “some dramatic announcement which might strengthen M. Reynaud’s hand.” The Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax called together a small group consisting of Vansittart, Jean Monnet, René Pleven and Major Morton to begin work immediately on drafting a brief, final revision of the Declaration of Union⁷. This was then discussed in Cabinet on the same day. Some minor changes were made and some major points dropped. Those excised included references to the establishment of a common Anglo-French customs area and a single currency. The provision that the two parliaments should ‘unite’ was altered to ‘be formally associated’. Its final two paragraphs emphasized the need for France to continue the fight. This, for Churchill, was the essential point.

Once the text was agreed, General de Gaulle dictated it by telephone to Paul Reynaud’s office in France. He then made immediate arrangements to fly there in person, taking the written document with him. The following day Churchill was on his way for a meeting with Reynaud on board a British cruiser off the coast of Brittany, when he received a telegram from the British ambassador in Bordeaux informing him that Marshal Philippe Pétain had replaced Reynaud as prime minister and was opening negotiations for an armistice. The plan had failed.

Whether an Anglo-French Union could have worked effectively at that point in time with most of France under enemy occupation is doubtful. Nor would it necessarily have survived in peacetime. For some British government members, it was intended only to be a temporary expedient which would no longer be necessary once the war had been won.

On the other hand, in some circles the idea of a future Anglo-French political union had been unofficially discussed for some time. British Foreign Office files, for example, contain a report written by the historian Arnold Toynbee⁸ together with Professor Sir Albert Zimmern describing their visit to Paris in March 1940, when they had been approached by France’s previous Minister of Education, Senator André Honnorat, with a suggestion that “the French and British governments should, without delay, conclude a treaty of perpetual association between France and Great Britain, and should submit this treaty for immediate adoption by the British and French parliaments.”

Honnorat envisaged this treaty as “a brief and simple document providing for the pooling of defence, of the conduct of foreign policy, of the economic resources of the metropolitan territories and the non self-governing dependencies of the two Powers. French citizens should have the passive rights of British subjects in the UK and the British Empire, and British subjects should have the passive rights of French citizens in France, in the sense that neither French citizens on British soil nor British subjects on French soil should find themselves treated legally as aliens.”

Emphasizing the need for bilingual education in both countries, he added that “the proposed organs of government in certain spheres should be placed under some kind of joint parliamentary control.” And he concluded: “Even if Hitler’s Greater Germany were to survive intact, it would henceforth be confronted by another European power of still greater calibre and staying power.”

Attached to this report is a comment, possibly by Toynbee, stating that he was “struck by the fact that a number of Frenchmen, whose reaction to the idea of ‘federal union’ in the abstract was hostile, were prepared to think of this with approval as a nucleus to which other European countries might attach themselves at a later stage.” And a further handwritten evaluation signed by J.G.Ward of the Foreign Office describes the plan as “an admirable first step towards an Anglo-French union or confederation”, which “would be partly met by the latest draft of the proposed ‘separate peace’ declaration.”

So the idea of independent nation states sharing some aspects of their sovereignty for their joint benefit was not unknown even during the darkest days of the second world war, and although the proposed Anglo-French union was never realised it did arouse interest and even enthusiasm when it was first announced in the British press.

It planted questions in the public mind about the relationship between states and, in doing so, it challenged nationalism. Perhaps, too, it influenced Winston Churchill’s thoughts on the future shape of Europe. Speaking on the twin subjects of political unity and economic collaboration at the first Congress of Europe in The Hague in 1948, he pointed out⁹ that “It is said with truth that this involves some sacrifice or merger of national sovereignty and characteristics, but it is also possible to regard it as the gradual assumption by all nations concerned of that larger sovereignty which can also protect their diverse and distinctive customs, and their national traditions.”.



1 Quoted in Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour, p.183
2 Foreign Office file FO371/242962, p.44
3 Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Chap. I
4 Lord Salter, Memoirs of a Public Servant, p. 201
5 Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de Guerre, L’Appel, p. 62
6 Churchill, op. cit., Chap. X
7 Cabinet minutes CAB65/7, pp. 316-8
8 FO371/242962, p. 87
9 Quoted in Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot, Chap. 1

Campbell Craig
“The Resurgent Idea of World Government”
Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 22.2, pp. 133-142, 2008

Thomas G. Weiss
“What Happened to the Idea of World Government”
International Studies Quarterly, no. 53, pp. 253-271, 2009


In the March 2009 issue of The Federalist Debate, we highlighted, with regard to an article by Paul Kennedy, the current in-depth revision by American historians of the “one and only thought”. The conviction is spreading that the prosecution of the globalization process requires international cooperation and potentially supra-national institutions. Co-operation is the globalization's raison d'état, like war is for the national States. The current debate, although we shall not underestimate dangerous nationalist, micro-nationalist and tribalist backfires, is rather concerned about the alternative between Global Governance and World Government.

The hostility to federalist ideas has subsided in many authors for whom the profession of “realism” constituted a precursory certificate of scientific worth. Campbell Craig and Thomas Weiss tellingly represent the revision in progress, as testified by the passages we reproduce below.

Campbell Craig observes: “The idea of world government is returning to the mainstream of scholarly thinking about international relations. Universities in North America and Europe now routinely advertise for positions in ‘global governance’ a term that few would have heard of a decade ago. Chapters on cosmopolitanism and governance appear in many current international relations (IR) textbooks. Leading scholars are wrestling with the topic, including Alexander Wendt, perhaps now America's most influential IR theorist, who has recently suggested that a world government is simply ‘inevitable’. While some scholars envision a more formal world state, and others argue for a much looser system of "global governance," it is probably safe to say that the growing number of works on this topic can be grouped together into the broader category of ‘world government’, a school of thought that supports the creation of international authority (or authorities) that can tackle the global problems that nation-states currently cannot”.

Craig believes that that idea, which was absolutely popular in the 1940s, lost vigor after “the failure of the Baruch Plan to establish international control over atomic weaponry in late 1946 signalled its demise, for it cleared the way (as the plan's authors quietly intended) for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue apace with their respective atomic projects. What state would place its trust in a world government when there were sovereign nations that possessed, or could soon possess, atomic bombs? Certainly, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union was willing to do so, and once the two states committed themselves to the international rivalry that became known as the Cold War, the impossibility of true global government became obvious and the campaign in favor of it diminished”.

The idea became topical again when the inability of the national States to deal successfully with problems putting at risk the world population, like that of nuclear proliferation, became apparent, so much so that the World Federalist Movement (WFM), Craig observes, has today about 50,000 members all over the world. “Theorists considering world government regard the thermonuclear dilemma as particularly salient, because it epitomizes the dangers of the continuation of the interstate system. As long as sovereign nations continue to possess nuclear arsenals, nuclear war is possible, and the only apparent way to put a permanent end to this possibility is to develop some kind of world government, an entity with sufficient power to stop states – not to mention subnational groups – from acquiring nuclear arsenals and waging war with them”. On this point there is by now a widespread agreement among scholars.

“Scholars nevertheless disagree whether an informal, loose form of governance is sufficient, or whether a more formal world state is necessary… The more important objections to world government posit not that it is impractical but that it is unnecessary and even undesirable. According to one such argument, the world should be governed not by a genuinely international authority but rather by the United States… The case against Pax Americana, however, can be boiled down to one word: Iraq. The war in Iraq has shown that military operations undertaken by individual nation-states lead, as they have always done, to nationalist and tribal reactions against the aggressor that pay no heed to larger claims of superior or inferior civilizations… In conceiving and executing its war in Iraq, it would have been difficult for the Bush administration to undermine the project of Pax Americana more effectively had it tried to do so. The United States could choose in future to rally other states behind it if it can persuade them of a global threat that must be vanquished. But, as Wendt implies, to do that successfully is effectively to begin the process of world-state formation”. With regard to the objections to a world government raised by Kant himself, Craig expresses his opinion considering them out-of-date in the present conditions: “One can raise two points in response to Kant's deeply important concern. First, he wrote in the 18th century, when the spectre of war was not homicidal and the planet did not face such global crises as climate change and trans-national terrorism. International politics as usual was not as dangerous an alternative to his vision of perpetual peace as it potentially is today. Second, as Deudney argues, there is one central reason to believe that a world government could avoid the temptations of tyranny and actually exist as a small, federal authority rather than a global leviathan. This is the indisputable fact that – barring extraterrestrial invasion – a world government would have no need for a policy of external security. States often become increasingly tyrannical as they use external threats to justify internal repression and authoritarian policies. These threats, whether real or imagined, have throughout history and to the present day been used by leaders to justify massive taxation, conscription, martial law, and the suppression of dissent. But no world government could plausibly make such demands”. Craig's conclusion is: “the deepest argument for world government – the spectre of global nuclear war – will endure as long as sovereign nation-states continue to deploy nuclear weaponry. Whatever occurs over the near-term future, that is a fact that is not going away. The great distinction between the international system prevailing in Niebuhr and Morgenthau's day and the system in our own time is that the chances of attaining some form of world government have been radically enhanced by the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a unipolar order. This condition, however, will not last forever”.

Thomas Weiss too cites some cornerstones of the thought about the United Nations and formulates a self-criticism of the scholars' contribution to the responsibility of its missed democratic evolution: “The usual explanation for this sorry state of affairs and institutional disarray is a lack of political will, great power politics, or classic collective action problem… but blame also should be apportioned to us scholars for our lack of imagination. We analysts of international organizations have strayed away from paradigmatic rethinking. We have lost our appetite for big and idealistic plans because so many previous ones have failed…”.

Weiss too, like Craig, tells us a story about the retreating from the idea of government to that of governance, and explains the confusion between the two, concluding that “as is worth repeating, at the national level we have governance plus government. And, despite well-known weaknesses, lapses, and incapacities, the expectation in Berlin, New Delhi, Brasilia, and Johannesburg is that existing institutions are routinely and predictably expected to exert authority and control. For the globe, we have only the feeblest of imitations-institutions that routinely help ensure postal delivery and airline safety, to be sure, but that routinely do far too little to address such life-threatening problems as climate change and ethnic cleansing”.

To the causes for such a state of affairs highlighted by Craig, Weiss adds the most recent: “September 11th and the Bush administration turned customary wariness toward international organizations into visceral hostility toward the UN. One now requires unknown powers of imagination to envision a Washington, DC, where the idea of world government would be a staple of public policy analysis. Yet in 1949, House Concurrent Resolution 64 argued in favor of ‘a fundamental objective of the foreign policy of the United States to support and strengthen the United Nations and to seek its development into a world federation’. It was sponsored by 111 representatives, including two future presidents, John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford, as well as such other future prominent politicians… Throughout the 1940s, it was impossible in the United States to read periodicals, listen to the radio, or watch newsreels and not encounter the idea of world government”. What happened then to the idea of World Government? “The short answer to the question […] is: the United States became obsessed with anticommunism; Europe focused on the construction of a regional economic and political federation; the burgeoning number of post-colonial countries shifted their preoccupations toward nonalignment and Third World solidarity; and scholars got out of the business”.

Also about the dispute between the supporters of governance and those of government Weiss overcomes his own previous positions and invites his entire profession to change their mind: “Proponents of global governance – and it would be difficult to say that I am not in this category, having edited the journal with that title from 2000 to 2005 – make a good-faith effort to emphasize how to best realize a stable, peaceful, and well-ordered international society in the absence of a unifying global authority. But this pragmatism also reflects an assumption that no powerful global institutions will appear any time soon, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. But agency is essential; and better problem solving will not simply materialize without more muscular intergovernmental organizations, ?rst and foremost those of the UN system. Paradoxically, intergovernmental organizations seem more and more marginal to our thinking at exactly the moment when enhanced multilateralism is so sorely required. And ironically, this reality coincides with a period when globalization – and especially advances in information and communication technologies along with reduced barriers to trans-national exchanges of goods, capital, and services, of people, ideas, and cultural influences – makes something resembling institutions with at least some characteristics of supra-nationality appear feasible… What gets lost as we struggle to comprehend an indistinct patchwork of authority is that current intergovernmental organizations are insufficient in scope and ambition, inadequate in resources and reach, and incoherent in policies and philosophies. It is humbling to realize how much our aspirations have diminished, how feeble our current expectations are in comparison with earlier generations of analysts who did not shy away from elements of a world government and robust intergovernmental bodies. At Bretton Woods in 1944, John Maynard Keynes and the British delegation proposed a monetary fund equal to half of annual world imports while Harry Dexter White and the American side proposed a smaller fund with one-sixth of annual world imports. As the late Hans Singer sardonically noted: ‘Today’s Fund is only 2 per cent of annual world imports. The difference between Keynes’s originally proposed 50 per cent and the actual 2 per cent is a measure of the degree to which our vision of international economic management has shrunk” (Singer 1995, 19).

“Like the United Nations itself, global governance is a bridge between the old and the as yet unborn. It cannot solve those pesky problems without passports that are staring us in the face: global warming, genocide, nuclear proliferation, migration, money-laundering, terrorism, and worldwide pandemics like AIDS… I still firmly believe that human beings can organize themselves to solve global problems. There are numerous ways to think about an eventual supra-national global entity, and human agency is an essential element for every one… Perhaps as much as any recent event, the global financial and economic meltdown that began last year… made even clearer what many less serious previous crises had not – namely the risks, problems, and enormous costs of a global economy without adequate international institutions, democratic decision making, and powers to bring order, spread risks, and enforce compliance. ‘The global financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related’ no less an observer than Henry Kissinger (2009) wrote on Inauguration Day, but the financial collapse ‘made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock.’ Most countries, and especially the major powers, are not ready to accept the need for elements of global government and the inroads that this would entail for their own autonomy. Nonetheless, the logic of interdependence and a growing number of systemwide and life-threatening crises place this possibility more squarely on the international agenda and make parts of a world federal government an idea that is both necessary and possible… At a bare minimum we require more creative thinking about more robust global organizations. It is certainly not far-fetched to imagine that over the coming decades we will see a gradual advance of intergovernmental economic agreements including a global currency along the lines that Europe has nurtured since the Second World War. Who would not have been denounced as a crank seven decades ago for thinking that political and economic union were possible among France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European states?”