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J. Mancham: Viewing Ourselves as World Citizens
Written by James R. Mancham, Founding President, Seychelles
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Delivered at IIFWP World Summit on Leadership and Good Governance, “Good Governance for a World in Crisis,” 2004
Looking at the geopolitical picture of the globe today what do we see? We see the USA, a federation of 50 states, prosperous and militarily over-powerful, with a defense budget of more than four hundred billion US dollars. We see a European economic community with nations ready to put aside past to create a collective bloc that could further the mighty. We see a Russia just taking steps towards a free enterprise system more to the process of piratization rather than privatization, with public assets being distributed to in-laws rather than according to law.
Looking at the Middle East, what do we see? The Palestinians and Israel are still locked in the vicious circle of escalating violence. We see colossal nations like China, India and Pakistan, each moving forward with its own independent nuclear agenda. We see North and South Korea in a state of tension and contentions with one of them ready to make use of its nuclear capacity in an attempt, we are told, to break away from its economic despair and isolation. We see a Japanese government dispatching a few soldiers to Iraq, despite massive opposition at home. We see Australia becoming part of a coalition in Iraq, not so much at the merits of the Iraqi situation but more under the reluctance of Canberra to call displeasure to Washington DC on account of its faith and reliance on the US nuclear umbrella vis-à-vis its long cursive threat of what Australians generally refer to as the threat of yellow peril.
We see the continent of Africa, despite her great wealth, like the oil in Chad, struggling for health, survival, and human dignity. We see Latin America whose nations feel menaced by the threat of cross border smuggling of drugs and ammunition. We even read about small island nations attempting to create a federation of island nations to fight the menace of global warming caused by the industries of the bigger nations. And from the United Nations we heard recently that Secretary General Annan has appointed a high level panel to study global security and reform of the international system.
To have blocks of nations in the global village competing for power, wealth and influence, one at the expense of another, remains a most disturbing factor insofar as the future of peace is concerned. Is there not a compelling urgency in view of the many appearing crises to find extra inspiration and determination to turn ourselves into citizens of the world rather than remaining as citizens of just one of the blocs.
The history of the United States of America can teach us important lessons, giving insight and motivation regarding today’s most important job on the earth, which is to turn the United Nations into an effective world federation with power to enforce international law. If we look at the history of the United States, we will see that in 1786 a group of Americans wanted independence from England. Under George Washington’s leadership, they won the war of Independence, gave birth to the 13 sovereign nations, worked together and signed the Articles of Confederation and the union. However, the cooperation which existed in the war evaporated in peacetime. We saw the USA trudging towards chaos, each of the 13 states could violate without penalty anything they had agreed to. Things were in a mess, just like the global village is today. And the truth is that after winning the war, the United States was tearing itself apart. It then became obvious that the Articles of Confederation had to be changed to converge in the creation of a Federal Government that would preserve the union and bring lasting peace.
The challenges that faced the founding fathers of the USA in 1787 seemed as great to them as ours do to us today in this global village. These people had the vision of putting the interests of the nation first. Now the time has come for us to think about putting the interests of the world first. There was once a great visionary called Victor Hugo who said no army in the world can defeat an idea whose time has come. It’s not going to be easy to achieve what we want. But like the Chinese and Confucius say, the journey of thousand miles begins with single step. We must move ahead to consider ourselves citizens of the world before we are citizens of any nation.