Posts Tagged ‘United Nations’
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it”*…
The proliferation of nations around the world in the 20th century was largely a result of decolonialization; the central mechanism that arose to allow dialogue and coordination was the U.N. Kal Raustiala suggests that the 21st century and the challenges that it presents need a different understanding of statehood and a different approach to international cooperation…
The global expansion of self-determination over the past century was an essential step in human freedom that reversed centuries of racial domination, liberated hundreds of millions from European colonial control and yielded dozens of newly sovereign states. This proliferation of states nevertheless exacerbated a core weakness of the international order: the ability of humankind to solve the most dangerous challenges of the 21st century. From climate change to pandemics, many of the most pressing problems seem to require not more (and more fragmented) autonomy, but rather more collaboration.
How to square the circle of meaningful self-determination with more effective collaboration is thus a question of the utmost importance. Short of a still-undefined form of planetary politics or a radically revamped United Nations, Europe may provide the most compelling model for the future — one that properly respects self-determination but embeds it in an entity large enough to tackle the truly global challenges of today.
Meanwhile, the norm of self-determination faces a more direct attack, one that looks not forward to a post-Westphalian future but backward to an imperial past. Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine’s independence is an attempted reversal of self-determination, a disturbing shift after decades of movement in the other direction. It also directly challenges a largely unspoken notion: that peoples should not only enjoy self-determination, but also self-definition.
Russia is hardly alone in manipulating self-determination for its own ends. China oppresses minority peoples in Xinjiang and Tibet. The United States contains over 500 Indigenous nations as well as islands, such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii, with strong independence movements. Scotland seeks to break free of the United Kingdom; France faces Corsican and Basque nationalism.
Our world of 200 or so independent nations could easily be broken up into 300, 400, 500 sovereign states. (Indeed, the median state in the world today is already smaller than Los Angeles County in population.) True respect for the principle of self-determination might demand — or at least permit — such an outcome. Whether the world can function effectively is another matter…
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Europe may provide the most compelling model for a future that respects self-determination but embeds it in an entity large enough to tackle the truly global challenges of today…
Who is “a people”? Which peoples should get a state and get to govern themselves? Who draws the borders? How do we manage collective threats? Eminently worth reading in full: “Who Gets A Nation?” from @NoemaMag.
* George Bernard Shaw
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As we contemplate citizenship, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that U.N. General Assembly passed its first resolution, establishing the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), “to deal with the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy.” It languished, lapsing into inactivity by 1949, and was officially disbanded in 1952.
Still, the spread of “atomic technology”– and the proliferation of nuclear arms– continued apace… leading to the establishment in 1957 of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. For example, pursuant to Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (signed in 1968), all non-nuclear powers are required to negotiate a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which is given the authority to monitor nuclear programs and to inspect nuclear facilities.
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination”*…
A remarkable true tale from the always-illuminating folks at Planet Money…
This is a story about how an economist and his buddies tricked the people of Brazil into saving the country from rampant inflation. They had a crazy, unlikely plan, and it worked.
Twenty years ago, Brazil’s inflation rate hit 80 percent per month. At that rate, if eggs cost $1 one day, they’ll cost $2 a month later. If it keeps up for a year, they’ll cost $1,000…
“How Fake Money Saved Brazil,” from @planetmoney and @NPR.
For an even more complete telling, listen to the podcast: “How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil.”
* Oscar Wilde
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As we follow the money, we might recall that it was on this date in 1941, in his State of the Union Address, the president Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined the Four Freedoms— the fundamental values of democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. These precepts were furthered by Eleanor Roosevelt, who incorporated them into the Preamble to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Who is to say plutonium is more powerful than, say, rice?”*…
Rice is the most valuable agricultural commodity on the planet. Hundreds of millions of metric tons of it are produced every year, an amount valued at more than $300 billion every year. Billions of people around the world rely on it as a staple of their diets, and have done so for millennia all over East, Southeast, and South Asia, and beyond.
But the rice that’s so popular today has a distinct beginning as a cultivated crop, a beginning that arrived somewhere along the Yangzi River more than 10,000 years ago. (The rice traditionally grown in West Africa, and which was brought across the Atlantic by enslaved people and merchants in the early modern period, stems from a separate domestication event. It’s not as productive as its Asian cousin, and so is less widely cultivated now.)
Ten millennia in the past, rice grew a bit beyond its current range thanks to slightly warmer and wetter climatic conditions at the dawn of the Holocene. The people living around the Yangzi River, and slightly to the north of there, were quite happy to use the stands of wild rice growing in their homeland. Grasses might not seem like the most natural food source for people to exploit, because it requires a great deal of processing (grinding, cooking, etc.) to make it edible. As part of a forager’s diet, however, it offered advantages: It was plentiful, it was reliable when other food sources like wild game came up short, and if properly stored, it could last for years.
Around the Yellow River, northern China’s key waterway, rice didn’t grow. Millet, however, grew in abundant quantities. As their counterparts had done further to the south with rice, the inhabitants of northern China learned to process it. A couple of thousand years of experimentation led from simply collecting wild grasses wherever they were found to planting wild varieties in gardens and fields, then intentionally and unintentionally selecting for traits to make those grasses more productive and less likely to fall off the stalk. Farmers created their crops, the ancestors of the foods we eat today, and the increasing viability of the crops created farming as a way of life.
For a variety of reasons, successful farmers tend to have large numbers of children, who expand outward from their core areas, taking their way of life with them. This process of demic diffusion defines most centers of early agricultural innovation around the world. Farming begets more farmers, who tend to spread out. For this reason, Neolithic China – an environment home to not one but two distinct agricultural traditions – produced a stunning diversity of early farming cultures. Starting around 7000 years ago, after 5000 BC, these farming cultures exploded in numbers, scale, and complexity. They filled up new territories and built more and larger villages. Towns followed, and leaders in the form of chieftains and kings. Social hierarchies and inequality defined these new Neolithic societies, distinctions of rank that could be inherited across generations.
These were the foundations on which organized states, writing, and what we might eventually call “Chinese civilization” built, many thousands of years down the road…
Jared Diamond has argued that the advent of agriculture was “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race“; in any event, it was a watershed moment. Patrick Wyman explores the dawn of agriculture and of the social complexity it spawned: “Neolithic China.”
* “Who is to say plutonium is more powerful than, say, rice? One takes away a million lives, the other saves a hundred times as many.” – N.K. Jemisin, How Long ’til Black Future Month?
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As we contemplate cultivation, we might recall that it was on this date in 2017 that the U.N. General Assembly adopted 2019-2028 as the Decade of Family Farming. This program aims to serve as a framework for developing and promoting better public policies on family farming– an opportunity to contribute to an end to hunger and poverty as well as to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Here’s something that each of us can do to help the neediest.
“All history is the history of unintended consequences”*…
Your correspondent confesses that this piece is mildly geeky in an “inside baseball” kind of way. But beyond its importance in its own right, it raises a possible broader systemic issue worth pondering…
Urged on by broadband giants such as Charter Communications, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is pushing to confirm a Republican to the Federal Communications Commission. However, McConnell’s goal seems to extend further: creating a deadlocked Biden FCC 2–2, then blocking confirmation of a third Democrat. What McConnell intends as a gift to his corporate patrons could turn into a nightmare for them.
McConnell and his allies believe they can force the Biden FCC into a business friendly “consensus agenda” that will move forward on 5G and corporate consolidation while blocking Democratic priorities such as net neutrality and broadband subsidies for the poor. And perhaps that is how the Democrats will respond. But in this new world of total war between Democrats and Republicans, this deadlock creates the incentive and ability for the Democratic FCC Chair to use her authority over the agency’s bureaus to push back and pressure anyone standing in the way of a full commission.
Not everything at the FCC requires a vote of the Commission. The vast majority of day-to-day work happens through the FCC’s many offices and bureaus — all of which report to the Chair. These actions must be appealed to the full Commission before parties can go to the courts. Absent the usual rulemaking process, a Democratic FCC Chair can — and should — take large (and largely unreviewable) steps to advance a consumer protection agenda without a single Commission vote.
Even more powerfully, the Chair can effectively shut down the agency until Republicans approve a third Democrat. While this sounds like an industry dream, this would quickly devolve into an industry nightmare as the necessary work of the FCC grinds to a halt. Virtually every acquisition by a cable provider, wireless carrier, or broadcaster requires FCC approval. Unlike in antitrust law, there is no deadline for the agency to act. The Chair of a deadlocked FCC could simply freeze all mergers and acquisitions in the sector until Democrats have a majority.
If that does not work, the FCC Chair could essentially put the FCC “on strike,” cancelling upcoming spectrum auctions and suspending consumer electronics certifications (no electronic equipment of any type, from smartphones to home computers to microwave ovens, can be sold in the United States without a certification from the FCC that it will not interfere with wireless communications). Such actions would have wide repercussions for the wireless, electronics, and retail industries. But the FCC Chair could slowly ratchet up the pressure until industry lobbyists pushed Republicans to confirm a third Democrat.
Finally, we come to net neutrality. Stopping the Biden FCC from restoring the Obama-era legal framework for broadband is the grand prize that supposedly justifies McConnell’s unprecedented obstructionism. Even here, the next FCC Chair can act. At present, the FCC is suing the state of California to block California’s own net neutrality law. The FCC can switch sides in the litigation, throwing its weight against the industry and supporting the right of states to pass their own net neutrality laws. The FCC can do the same in the D.C. Circuit — no Commission vote required.
Political observers might question whether a Biden FCC Chair would take such brazenly political action and put at risk so much of the economy. Admittedly, Democrats often seem to lack the same willingness as Republicans to engage in Mutually Assured Destruction. But we live in a time of unprecedented polarization and partisan division — as the last-minute campaign to deadlock the FCC shows. The only way for President-elect Biden and Democrats to work with Republicans is to show them at the outset that they can be just as destructive to Republican interests and constituencies as Republicans are to Democratic interests and constituencies. And there’s no better way to do that than to threaten the corporate chieftains at the top of the Republican food chain, the ones currently urging Republicans to deadlock the FCC.
Rather than an industry-friendly “consensus agenda,” Senator McConnell and his Wall Street allies are setting the stage for a war of total destruction. Wise investors should sell now and wait for the dust to clear — if it ever does.
Harold Feld (@haroldfeld), Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge, on how Senator McConnell’s strategy of obstruction might backfire: “In the Republican War on the Biden FCC, Wall Street May End Up the Biggest Loser.”
* historian T.J. Jackson Lears
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As we focus on Georgia, we might recall that it was on this date in 1948 that the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of the 58 members of the U.N. at the time, 48 voted in favor, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote. Considered a foundational text in the history of human and civil rights, the Declaration consists of 30 articles detailing an individual’s “basic rights and fundamental freedoms” and affirming their universal character as inherent, inalienable, and applicable to all human beings.
The full text– eminently worth reading– is here.
Diplomatic Impunity…
The U.N. may be a beacon of hope and peaceful negotiation around the world, but it brings with it workers who use their immunity to park in front of fire hydrants, red zones, and anywhere else they please– it’s the stuff of urban legends and West Wing episodes.
New York is owed over $17 million in unpaid parking tickets; Washington, D.C., over $500,000:
New York’s top offenders:
Egypt – $1,929,142
Kuwait – $1,266,901
Nigeria – $1,019,998
Indonesia – $692,200
Brazil – $608,733
D.C.’s:
Russia – $27,200
Yemen – $24,600
Cameroon – $19,520
France – $19,520
Mauritania – $8,070
What do these countries have in common? Freakonomics (quoting Forbes) suggests that “the level of a country’s corruption (according to the Corruption Perception Index) predicted the level of parking ticket delinquency, along with a country’s level of anti-American sentiment.”
As we pine for diplomatic plates, we might compose a loosely rhymed remembrance of William Topaz McGonagall, widely considered to be the worst published poet in British history; he died on this date in 1902. McGonagall distributed his poems, often about momentous events, on handbills and performed them publicly (often, it is reported, to cat calls and thrown food). And he collected his verse into volumes including Poetic Gems, More Poetic Gems, Still More Poetic Gems, Further Poetic Gems, and Yet Further Poetic Gems. (Readers will find a selection of his poems here.)
McGonagall’s best-known work, a verse recounting of “The Tay Bridge Disaster,” ends instructively:
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
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