If someone from the year 2015 traveled ahead to the year 2215, I imagine there would be many technological improvements that they would not recognize, just as if I traveled ahead to the year 2415, 200 years in the future. While the technology would be altogether foreign, the system of government is less changed than one would imagine given predictions from the early years of globalization. Back then, people were predicting that the ultimate result, indeed the only logical outcome, of globalization was a world government in which people began to see themselves as one human race instead of by their nationalities. However, people who were predicting such a utopian society failed to see the undercurrents and movements that would make this ideal impossible two hundred years later. What follows is a brief history of the last two hundred years, highlighted by major international events and trends that led to the current system of government before spending some time discussing that very system of government and the world as I know it today in 2215.
In 2015, many experts were predicting that the only logical outcome of globalization was the move to abolish the state system and, ideally, work to form a single world government. While transnational corporations and organizations threatened this utopia, these experts nonetheless concluded that the declining power of the state would continue and would be rendered useless in a world where everyone works together with equal rights and opportunities. However their idealism and utopian vision failed to take into account the very real and very powerful undercurrents of nationalism, insecurity, supremacy, and individualism that would shatter this dream not long after it was conceived. Among these, the strongest influence and thus the strongest factor in leading to the current system of government we have today is nationalism, as many of the subsequent movements and events of the past two hundred years can be attributed to nationalistic tendencies and prejudices. It is important to also remember the role that powerful states played in developing the modern world, as they were unwilling to give up their authority and were often legitimized by the actions of their citizens. While some states inevitably would lose in the modern era of imperialism, those that were powerful to begin with and who were proactive and saw trends were able to firmly establish themselves.
While discussing the topic of citizens legitimizing the power and the authority of the state, it is beneficial to trace the history of environmental degradation. In the late 20th and early 21st century, the problem of environmental degradation suddenly became a global issue that states and citizens were forced to respond to. Citizens of more globalized states increasingly saw the problems of environmental decay as detrimental to their own survival, even if those problems occurred halfway around the world. Having no other alternatives, they turned to the only source of authority that was legitimate enough to bring about change: the state. Citizens increasingly put upward pressure on the state to enact environmental regulations within the borders of their state, while also forming international advocacy groups that lobbied on their behalf in states around the world. Though international in scope, both of these moves reinforced the power of the state. Thus, the power of the state system as a whole was reinforced as states became the ultimate (and really the only) arena in which the struggle for environmental preservation played out. In the last half of the 21st Century, the more powerful states enacted stricter environmental regulations and laws designed to preserve the environment for the foreseeable future. In addition, these states began to penalize companies who used the weaker states with less restrictive environmental regulations, by imposing higher taxes and, equally severe, by instituting tax breaks for those companies that did not pollute anywhere in the world. This put pressure on companies which in turn put pressure on other states to enact tougher environmental laws, which gradually they did. Meanwhile, the powerful states used their economic leverage to coerce states into enacting tougher environmental regulations or face economic consequences, which the weaker states had no choice but to accept.
As environmental regulation and the preservation of the environment became a global reality, transnational companies began to lose some of the economic incentives of doing production in weaker states because they could no longer pollute with little economic impact in those states. This brings me to the next important advancement which was the movement away from transnational and international corporations back to the national company that sells products domestically and globally. The best example for this shift is the United States, as indeed they were the leader in many of the changes that have occurred over the past 200 years. After the Great Recession of 2008 (there have been subsequent recessions since that have been as bad if not worse, thus we now designate them as the Great Recession of so and so years), citizens of the United States increasingly put pressure on the state to “bring jobs back to Americans.” Facing political pressure at home, the US began to offer huge tax breaks to corporations willing to bring production and other low wage service jobs back to the United States to boost their own economy. Companies jumped at the prospect of lower taxes because, despite the increase in labor costs and for environmental regulations, the tax incentives were so great that the costs of moving back were greatly offset and thus the profits of each company were larger. Though it initially moved slowly, companies eventually began flooding back into the US market to take advantage of the increase in profits. In effect, this was the first major blow for globalization as defined by late 20th Century experts. Up until this point, the course of globalization had increasingly interconnected the world economy. However this was the first time that the global economy was broken up into smaller domestic markets.
As the United States began to dissociate itself from the global economy in terms of transnational corporations, the domestic economy flourished. Other states powerful enough to do so began to enact similar laws and offer similar incentives. Thus, powerful states began to monopolize the global economy as developing countries were left without corporations that would invest in and employ the people of their respective states. While trade picked up at an astounding rate, it was mostly one sided, with the products and goods of powerful states flooding the markets of weaker states and in effect creating spheres of influence. As we will see, these spheres of influence became solidified and hardened into neocolonialism through other events and movements that will be discussed later in this paper. Meanwhile, domestic economies expanded rapidly and the state was once again in charge of monetary policy within its borders. As the state reclaimed some of the power it had lost to globalization, other events threatened to undercut globalization and the idea of a world government.
In the year 2100, several state representatives took the floor of the United Nations and announced their willingness to codify the UN into an international government body that would slowly assume the powers of individual states until the UN became the single world government. This would be the result of the logical progression of globalization and indeed the utopia many had pictured in the year 2015. While many of the weaker states jumped at the idea because it would, they assumed, improve the lives of their citizens, powerful states naturally balked at the idea of willingly giving up power to an international governing body that would render them just one of over 200 member states. One movement that has been alluded to but has not yet been explicitly stated up until this point is the powerful and sometimes dangerous sensation of nationalism. While there were many events and movements after the fall of the Soviet Union that led experts of the early 21st Century to conclude that borders were disappearing and people were identifying less and less with a state, people failed to recognize the powerful undercurrent of nationalism that only needed a gentle push from world events to overwhelm societies and threaten the world government idea.
Beginning with the Great Recession of 2008, the idea of economic prosperity for all through globalization began to show some signs of cracking. This event, though not self evident at first, led many to question the security of globalization and how a lack of economic responsibility in one part of the world could have drastic and dramatic consequences for citizens and states who had nothing to do with that state at all. In effect, though this only became apparent over the course of the next century, the downfall of economic globalization and the interconnectedness of the world economy was largely that it was too interconnected and people felt that they were giving up their economic security. The idea of security, both economically and literally, will be addressed later. However, first we must further discuss the importance of nationalism and independence to the downfall of economic globalization, again using the United States as an example for wider global trends.
In the United States in the early 2000s, Americans began to lobby the state to create something known as energy independence. In effect, they wanted to decrease the reliance that the US placed on foreign oil by increasing their own production back home and thus, as a result, decreasing world trade. While this sounded beneficial for citizens of the United States, where jobs were coming back home, and there was less dependence on foreign states, other states who relied on selling that oil to the US experienced significant economic consequences. As world trade declined in this specific instance, other states powerful enough to do so, looked at the benefits that the US gained from producing their own energy and moved to do the same. Eventually, world trade in oil and energy disappeared, though this ended up being of no long term consequence due to the development of more sustainable forms of energy. More significantly, however, states that relied heavily on importing a certain goods and resources took the example from the energy independence movement and applied it to those resources as well, triggering a major retreat in global trade and a major blow to economic globalization. Meanwhile, the calls for jobs to be returned home in powerful states (called developed states at the time), meant that corporations became increasingly national in scope rather than transnational. On the economic side of globalization, by the year 2150, the world had become less interconnected in terms of trade than it was before World War II due largely to the economic forces that have been discussed previously.
It now becomes necessary to explain one of the strongest forces working against globalization and trace the history of its effects on the state. That force has been mentioned several times. It is, of course, the need for security. States, going back to their formation after the Middle Ages, have always existed for one primary purpose: to protect the citizens within their borders. Thinkers from the Enlightenment onward recognized the importance of a state that secures the rights of its citizens by saying simply that if men were angels, then no government would be necessary. However, as we know men are not, and never have been, angels and thus some form of government becomes necessary. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many were predicting that some form of world government could be achieved because there was no longer an us-versus-them mentality in international relations and thus no longer a real need for security from another state. While this is true, it overlooks one of the most difficult aspects of globalization to deal with, namely the threat of terrorism.
Terrorism, for the purposes of this paper, will be defined using the definition provided by the state, though understanding that there are other definitions of terrorism and sometimes it is difficult to define precisely what terrorism is, such as the Fort Hood shooting that was labeled “Work Place Violence”. Terrorism, as defined by the United States, “The term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents". It is relevant only to discuss the definition of terrorism by a state for this purposes of this paper. Terrorism, as a result of globalization, rapidly spread across the world as terrorists began to use the tools of globalization to recruit people to their organizations and missions and also to carry out the attacks themselves. As has been the case throughout history, citizens join together and give up some of their privacy and liberty in the name of security. As terrorism evolved into a global threat, people throughout the world became nervous and worried that they would not be safe, especially those who were in the stronger states, whom were often the targets of attack. Citizens, fearing chaos and insecurity, turned to the one apparatus capable of dealing with the emerging threat and, at least psychologically, could provide them with the safety they so desperately craved: the state and its military capabilities. The state was also using the tools of globalization to its advantage and began tracking threats through new technologies, often impeding on the privacy rights of citizens who were more than willing to waive those rights in the name of security. While states gained the legitimacy from their constituencies to combat the threat domestically, stronger states felt that weaker states were not doing enough and that terrorists were congregating in states that could not effectively combat them due to a lack of resources, intelligence or will. Strong states, rather than attempting to work with the weaker states to combat the threat, began to trample on the sovereignty of their immediate neighbors in the name of national security through the use of targeted military strikes, surveillance and clandestine operations. While in the past this may have caused an uproar from the international community, due to the global nature of the threat and because all strong states were actively participating in these types of operations, there was no international condemnation and thus nothing to stop the stronger powers from influencing the inner workings of the weaker states. Because of the need for security, strong states began to impose their will on weaker states and subject them to an ever hardening subservient sphere of influence.
One of the single most important moments in the formation of the system of governments we have today occurred in 2124, an event we call the beginning of World War III. In the 21st Century, experts predicted that a world state would be inevitable because of the advances in technology that would allow weaker states to challenge stronger states militarily, leading to the need for a world government to regulate disputes that could result in a nuclear war. (IS WORLD State) After World War III, however, the exact opposite occurred. Despite the best efforts of the original nuclear powers, nuclear proliferation became a reality once Iran built their nuclear weapon in 2052. A nuclear arms race ensued as Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries felt threatened and wanted nuclear weapons in order to ward off a potential attack. For nearly 60 years, the threat of a nuclear retaliation kept an uneasy peace in the Middle East, similar to that of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. For years, people regarded this uneasiness as the Cold War of the Desert, however, just as the desert turns hot when the sun comes up, so too did this war. In 2123, a new, very nationalistic and very radical government came to power in Iran threatening to launch a nuclear strike on Saudi Arabia if it did not denounce a speech given on the floor of the United Nations calling for an embargo on Iran until it relinquished its nuclear weapons. The United Nations, sensing impending doom, tried to mediate the dispute. However it proved inept in doing so and Iran’s supreme leader eventually made good on his promise on June 23rd, 2124.
The unprovoked attack led to retaliation by Saudi Arabia, beginning the first and only nuclear war in history. Immediately, Middle Eastern countries aligned with one side or the other and began launching their own nuclear strikes. Though defensive technology had increased to the point where some of these strikes could be intercepted and stopped, others made it through and hit their targets. As the death toll mounted, states around the world scrambled to ensure that the fighting did not spread and engaged in very tense negotiations to keep powerful nuclear states out of the war. These efforts were done on a bilateral and multilateral scale as the United Nations was marginalized as a result of being unable to stop this war and this destruction. After nearly a year and a half of fighting, the Middle East laid in ruins as every country involved in the war had depleted all of their nuclear weapons. The powerful states then scrambled to mediate a peace agreement between these countries, but the damage had been done, both to the region and to the idea of a world state. (Israel?)
I believe it was necessary to go into detail about the event in order to fully understand its significance to the global system of politics and how it has developed into what we have today. The utter destruction of nuclear weapons was put on display in this war and strong states were appalled and wanted to ensure that something like this could never happen again. As they had done previously with counterterrorism, stronger states began to infringe upon the sovereignty of weaker states by coming together to ensure that the weaker states would not have nuclear capabilities. As stronger states began to impose their will upon weaker states, they began to carve out spheres of influence, in some ways replicating the old empire and colonial system. Though the weaker states retained their own government and nominal “sovereignty”, they became increasingly subjected to the will of the strong state that dominated them and were often forced to comply with the stronger state or be at risk for a military strike or embargo.
Some states that were by no means weak, but were not particularly strong either, decided to form super states to try to maintain their place in the emerging world order. The European Union, first assembled during the early 21st Century as a loose association of independent states, gradually solidified membership as states began to give up their sovereignty to join with other states under a larger world body. Though many experts predicted this would happen on a global scale, there have been only two instances to date of this happening, the aforementioned EU and a similar body called the African Union. The EU gradually, through legislation passed by the superstate government, took on the identity and governing capabilities of a modern state. Some member states were kicked out and others left voluntarily until there was a very strong state with formidable economic and military powers spreading across the European continent. Though there are still some local differences, namely in language and lifestyle, no longer are people identified as “British” or “German” but rather are just “European” and citizens of the EU.
The last part will be about the world in 2215 and tying all the previous pieces together.
