A parliament or the planet: George Monbiot nails his colours to the mast of a directly elected world assembly - Global Democracy

New Internationalist, Jan-Feb, 2002 by George Monbit

WHEN George Bush announced that he was engaged in 'a fight to save the civilized world', he was assuming powers and responsibilities he does not possess. Though his attack on Afghanistan was retrospectively legalized by the United Nations Security Council, it plainly offends the provisions of the UN Charter (which permits states to defend themselves against armed attack but says nothing about subsequent retaliation). But the Security Council, whose five permanent members also happen to be the world's five biggest arms dealers, tends to do precisely as the US requests. 'World leaders', in other words, can define their powers as they please.

This is just the latest manifestation of the permanent crisis of legitimacy which blights every global decision-making body. Those who claim to lead the world were never granted their powers: they grabbed them. The eight middle-aged men whose G8 meetings are the ultimate repository of global power represent just 13 per cent of the world's population. They were all elected to pursue domestic imperatives: their global role is simply an unmandated by-product of their national role.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which apportion votes according to the money they receive, are governed by the countries in which they don't operate. The UN General Assembly represents governments rather than people and, while in theory it operates on a one- country-one-vote basis, in practice a poor nation of 900 million swings less weight than a rich nation of 60 million. UN ambassadors, as appointees, are remote from the populations they are supposed to represent, but all too close to their national-security services. While some poor nations can't afford to send delegates to World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings, rich nations are represented by huge parties of business lobbyists. Many of the WTO's key decisions are made in secret.

There is, we are told by almost everyone, no alternative to this rule of finance and fear. We might not like the way the world is run, but even the most radical NGOs and campaigners tend to call at most for the replacement of the World Bank and IMF, while failing to address the political framework which legitimized them. There is, in other words, a widespread tacit acceptance of a model of benign dictatorship in which rich and powerful nations govern the world on behalf of everyone else.

In 1937 George Orwell observed that: 'every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.' Bourgeois socialists, he charged, were prepared to demand the death of capitalism and the destruction of the British Empire only because they knew that these things were unlikely to happen. 'For, apart from any other consideration, the high standard of life we enjoy in England depends upon keeping a tight hold on the Empire... in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation -- an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce to it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. The middle-class socialist, he insisted, 'is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his soul by sneering at the people who hold the Empire together'.

Since then, empires have waxed and waned, but that basic economic formula holds true: we in the rich world live in comparative comfort only because of the inordinate power our governments wield, and the inordinate wealth which flows from that power. We acquiesce in this system every time we buy salad from a supermarket (grown with water stolen from Kenyan nomads) or step into a plane to travel to the latest climate talks. Accepting the need for global democracy means accepting the loss of our own nations' power to ensure that the world is run for our benefit. Are we ready for this, or is there lurking still some

residual fear of the Yellow Peril, an age-old, long-imprinted urge towards paternalism?

As far as I can see, there is only one means by which this crisis of legitimacy can be effectively resolved. It's a notion which most people find repugnant, but only, I believe, because they have failed to grasp both its implications and the extent of their own acceptance of the undemocratic fudge by which the world is run. Global democracy is meaningless unless ultimate oversight resides in a directly elected assembly. We need a world parliament.

If, like most people in the developed world, you abhor this idea, I invite you to examine your reaction carefully. Is it because you believe such a body might become remote and excessively powerful? Or is it really because you cannot bear the idea that a resident of Kensington would have no greater say than a resident of Kinshasa? That Sri Lankans would have the same number of representatives as Australians (and more as their population increases)? That the people of China would, collectively, be 41 times as powerful as the people of Canada? Are you really a new internationalist or are you, secretly, an old paternalist?