Does national sovereignty have a future?

National Review, Dec 23, 1996 by Kenneth Minogue

THE story is told of how Charles II, back in the 1660s, presented to the Royal Academy an interesting problem: why does a dead fish weigh more than a living one? The scientists thought long and hard about this problem, coming up with many ingenious solutions. The actual solution lay in a different area altogether: the initial premise was wrong. Dead fish don't weigh more than living ones. There was no problem to begin with.

This abstract idea needs a concrete focus, and I shall take mine from a paper put out by the UN Committee on Natural Resources -- CNR to its friends, of whom, given its prose style, it can't have many. CNR belongs to a world of acronyms so powerful that we might well posit as their homeland the greatest power in the world of ideas: ACRONYMIA. The CNR is an "expert" committee of 24 members. Its mandate was formally approved by ECOSOC (UN Economic and Social Council) in July 1992 -- basing itself on earlier resolutions going back into the mists of bureaucratic time.

CNR believes that the issue of the supply of minerals ought to be considered as part of an "integrated approach to the planning and management of land resources." In pursuance of this approach, it offers to those who mine metals -- let us call them "metalkind" --"an overall global partnership for sustainable development." Offers of partnership here resemble the Mafia's offers of protection: devices for forcing yourself into the act.

Decisions on sustainable development must, we learn, "be based on the best possible information," and then follows this eye-catching sentence: "The kind of holistic and global view that is necessary is not readily acquired by individual enterprises and countries." This leads immediately to a conclusion: "The Committee therefore believes that the UN (alias the Committee itself!) has a critical role to play in coordinating and integrating information on key issues on a global scale." The Committee is going to "provide the new global links to improve the basis for global management strategies integrating environmental and development concerns."

The art of diplomacy was once described as saying "Nice doggie" while searching for a big stick. "Nice doggie" in this document is soothing talk of planning, integration, coordination, and "partnership." Self-defense, on the other hand, is locating the stick -- often a slim twig that will soon grow into a big stick. In this case, the twig is the simple sentence that metalkind (and nationkind) are incapable of acquiring "the kind of holistic and global view" that is necessary. Only an international committee of experts can do that. I am reminded of the bar man in the New Yorker cartoon who remarks to the drunk: "What we all admire is the way you have acquired megalomania without losing the common touch."

The UN project, then, is to find a solution to one big problem, and it is this style of thought -- instrumental rationality it is often called -- which we must consider. Solving problems is, of course, often a sensible thing to do. But earlier civilizations were parsimonious in construing the world as a nest of problems. Some things, they thought, just had to be endured. And sometimes even moderns like us feel that way. Back in the 1950s, the days of Dr. Dichter the great market psychologist, men and women were surveyed about what they most disliked in life. Men said shaving, women said menstruation. They were then offered an (as it turned out) imaginary pill which could dispense with these problematic inconveniences. Most rejected the offer. This response, like the dead fish, is a parable about the human condition.

A great deal of salesmanship, alias propaganda, consists in persuading people that they have a terrible problem which only the propagandist can solve. Hitler on Jews, or Marx on the bourgeoisie persuaded many to believe in a dead-fish problem. But there are many other forms of the dead-fish problem. Unemployment, for example, poses a famous rationality problem because our natural response to it is to say: how absurd that millions of able-bodied people should be sitting around idle when there are so many important things (renewing the infrastructure, etc.) that need to be done. When the question is posed in this way, the natural solution is to use the powers of government to create a natural labor force. That way leads to central planning of the economy. It is a perfect case where abstract instrumental rationality takes a lot of small problems and creates one great big disaster.

That example gives us a clue to the many dangerous assumptions concealed in our natural instinct for collectively instrumentally rational solutions to grand problems. We should be particularly critical of the assumption that small problems agglomerate together into One Big Problem which requires One Big Solution and consequently, One Big Solver. And what is clearly assumed in the bid for international regulation of metalkind is that the One Big Solver must have the power to impose a solution. Concealed beneath the euphemistic language is a doctrine quite explicit in many reports with an environmental slant: The very essence of global governance is the capability to ensure compliance.