The Unification of the World as a Project and as a Process. The Role of Europe

Year XLI, 1999, Number 3, Page 150

The Unification of the World as a Project and as a Process. The Role of Europe

LUCIO LEVI

1. The Common Vision of the Future is in Question.

What is new and striking about the birth of the euro is that, at the point reached in the process of unifying Europe, it seems easier to progress toward a federal outcome than to regress and to further the disintegration of the European Union. The political alignment of parties opposed to the European project has gradually shrunk to an almost trifling size. At the same time, the disintegration of the communist block has brought down the international front opposed to European unification, while the United States, whose conception of the new international order to be built is not shared by Europe, does not have the power to oppose Europe’s progress toward unity. On the contrary, with the euro the European Union is starting to modify power relations in the world. The remaining obstacles lie in the inertia of the past, the forces of national conservatism. The national governments, after their decision to renounce monetary sovereignty and to deprive themselves of the leverage upon which the control of the economy depends, cannot postpone any longer the creation of a European government. The strategic objective of the European Constitution means that high on our agenda is the conclusion of the European unification process: the European Federation, i.e. a power capable of governing Europe and speaking with one voice to the world.

The turning point in European and world politics determined by the birth of the euro requires that a clear answer be given to this question: what will be the federalists’ role in the new political cycle, in which Europe will become a more and more active player in world politics?

What is not in question is our common commitment for the European constituent assembly as a strategic priority, which shall not be given up even if we should consider certain the irreversibility of the process. And it shall not be given up because the constituent objective shows the way in which we can arrive at that political Europe which so many great political, economic and cultural personalities have indicated as the goal to pursue after the establishment of the euro. This is the last significant difference (both as political judgement and political commitment) between European federalism and Europeanism.

But since in politics the future affects the present, the same objective of the constituent assembly, illumined by different visions of the future, takes on different meanings. Moreover: the different vision of the future inevitably extends to the interpretation of the past, because if the illumines the future, the future also illumines the past.

Up to now we have taken for granted that there were no substantial differences on the federalist interpretation of contemporary history. We have to admit realistically that this is no longer true. Differences exist about the meaning of globalization and its implications for the crisis of the state and for the world unification process, about the relationship between European unification and world unification, about the role of the European Federation in promoting world unification and about the role of the federalists after the ratification of the Constitution of the European Federation. Therefore we have to adjust our analysis to the new problems and to the new historical situation, and concentrate our efforts in the attempt to reconstruct a common vision of the future.

To be divided on these matters has no serious consequences when it occurs among the traditional political forces, because the point of reference of their thought and action is the established powers. For the Federalist Movement, which has chosen to challenge the of the established powers in view of the construction of new supranational powers, a division on the vision of the future can jeopardize its very survival. The strength of organized federalism lies above all else in its superior capability to understand the fundamental trends of contemporary history, which has allowed us to foresee the turning points of European and world politics. Without this awareness, our Movement lacks the nourishment necessary for its survival.

In view of this, the first problem is to set the discussion on the role of the Movement against a background of an interpretation of contemporary history. It must be clear from the start that the choice among various interpretations of history cannot be based on the of empirical verification. It is a matter of conjecture, which only the future can confirm or belie. However, political action is impossible without making assumptions on the future, and the criterion for choosing among different assumptions lies in their ability to give an interpretation of history, to shed light on the chaotic flow of events, to make the interpretation compatible with the facts we know, and to organize these facts in a logical fashion.

Here I intend to explain my view-point. I do not claim it is the right one. My intention is simply to give a precise form to my ideas, as only in this way can the discussion be useful.

2. Compatibility of the Objectives of European and World Unification.

In the current debate within the Movement, there are some who hold that the objectives of unifying Europe and the world are incompatible. In reality the two objectives are part of a single project. The present strategic objective is the European Federation, but this in turn must be considered as a means to pursue the objective of the world federation.

Currently in fact, there is an attempt to rediscuss the world-oriented choice made by the Movement at the Congress in Bari in 1980. It has been stated that that choice was “instrumental”[1] with respect to the objective of the European Federation. In reality the meaning of the formula “uniting Europe to unite the world”, which was launched on that occasion, is exactly the contrary: it was to affirm that the European Federation is a means with respect to the goal of the world federation.

The reason for that choice may be explained in the historical context created after the first European Parliamentary election by universal suffrage in 1979. At that time, the federalists judged that the constituent process of the European Federation was starting. Hence the decision to prepare a new cycle of their political commitment, that for the world federation, which would take shape after the achievement of the objective of the European Federation. How far-sighted that choice was can be appreciated today particularly if we consider that it was made during the cold war, but at a point when it was possible to perceive that history had taken a new course: the scientific revolution had started to give impetus to the process of globalization and to determine the decline of the superpowers’ influence.

This was the historical judgment given on that occasion: “a new era has started, a new thinking must take shape”.[2] The basic idea was that world peace had to be the political priority of our time: an idea amazingly in tune with some aspects of the “new political thinking” which inspired Gorbatchev’s perestroika a few years later. It was a challenge for all European federalists, who had to come to terms with the new global dimension of problems fundamental for the future and survival of mankind. The survival of organized federalism depended upon the ability to cope with that challenge, which required that a dialogue be opened between the European and world federalists with a view to their unification.

3. The Unification of the World as a Project.

The real strength of federalism lies in its project of universal peace, the only one which allows the conception and realization of a situation that “ends all wars and forever”.[3] This is the ultimate meaning of federalism, a meaning that is not fully brought to light with European unification, which must be seen as a stage of the process (which starts, but is not accomplished, in Europe) toward the unification of the world.

However it is to be noticed that there are two ways to consider the unification of the world, which can be considered as a project and as a process. In other words, there are two approaches to the problem of the unification of the world (not to be confused, as they often are in the current debate): that of the normative theory (project) and that of the descriptive theory (process).

The unification of the world, seen as political project, takes on a full meaning in the perspective of the federalist normative theory. Indeed federalism does not represent the only possible approach to the problem of unification of the world. For example, the advocates of Global Governance claim they do not want a world government.[4] In contrast, the federalists claim that Global Governance may be seen as a phase of a process that leads to a world government. Our idea is that federalism represents the most comprehensive approach, although it is an open theory, and the challenge of world unification is a strong incentive to develop its so far implicit assertions.

When Kant, 200 years ago, for the first time in history, started the reflection on world federalism, he laid down the foundations of the building (still unfinished) of a normative model which responded to the following demand of reason: to define the contours of an ideal society and an ideal state, intended as the end point of the historical process. More precisely, the elaboration of this model fulfilled two needs: on the one hand to have a criterion by which to evaluate the different forms of government that occurred in history and to measure the distance separating individual forms of political organization from the ideal, and on the other hand to guide the action of those committed to improving political relations with a view to the progressive construction of a peaceful world order.

It is then possible to state that, seen as a project, the unification of the world belongs to the sphere of values and is independent of any consideration about its political topicality. Other ideas belonging to this same field relate to the nature of peace, the relationship between federalism and the other ideologies, federalism as the ultimate ideology, the structure of the world federation and the federal reform of the United Nations: the creation of a bicameral system at world level, the transformation of the UN General Assembly into a world parliament, the transformation of the Security Council into a world senate composed of the representatives of the large world regions, the assignment to the Secretary-General of the role of world government, and so on. However remote these objectives may be, not only it is legitimate to talk about them, because it means defining in a rational way the ultimate objectives we pursue and giving them credibility, but it is also necessary to discuss them, because, if the ultimate objectives are not defined, neither it is possible to chart the course we must take and its intermediate stages. It is a theoretical task comparable to the one that occupied the European federalists when they tried to outline the Constitution of the European Federation even at a time when this objective was not yet on the agenda.

Now, there are those who consider it illegitimate to take a definite position on this matter on the pretext that the goals in question are not relevant to the present. If we rely upon this argument, Kant’s whole majestic intellectual construction regarding the relationship between peace, law and world federation, which belongs to the field of normative theory of federalism, should be confined to the history museum and banned from the federalist debate. Instead, not only it is legitimate to resume Kant’s theses, but it is also appropriate to try to adapt them to the changed direction of contemporary history resulting from the emergence of Europe as the potential vehicle of federalism in the world, the globalization process and the limits of the UN, namely its inability to assure peace and to govern the world.

So, truly, now that the European unification process is approaching a federal outcome and it becomes thinkable to devise the extension of the federal model beyond Europe’s boundaries, primarily in the regions where processes of economic integration have already started, and later on at world level, the theoretical work started by the Movement with the Bari turning point and with Albertini’s last writings on peace, is of more current interest than ever.

If after the birth of the euro the Bari formula “Uniting Europe to unite the world” were no more topical than before, the European Federation would become the ultimate objective and then federalism would degenerate into European nationalism. This is the inevitable consequence of the position of those who, inspired by a supposed political realism, do not want to make explicit the world dimension of federalism and even call it a “flight into the future”.[5]

European nationalism represents a real danger from which we must not only keep our distance, but which we also must denounce and strongly oppose, because it is the alternative to federalism, which in its fundamental inspiration is world wide. It is already among us, and is already starting to take shape, for instance in the of those who describe the European economic and monetary Union as a fortunate island or as a shelter which protects Europe from the storms, without bothering about what Europe should do to build a new world order. It is the well-known position which promotes the idea of a Europe locked in on itself like a fortress, whose relations with the rest of the world are determined by strength. European nationalism is in keeping with the nationalism of other peoples stepping up on the world political stage (as in the case of India), a phenomenon which the The Federalist article entitled Moving Toward a World System of States calls “an important weapon of liberation”.[6]

Political realism is unable to see a part of reality which is right before our eyes: the first manifestations of the world unification process, the emerging of mankind as an entity aspiring to exercise its sovereignty and to deprive the old sovereign states of their authority.

4. The Unification of the World as a Process.

At this point we may take under consideration the unification of the world as a process. The uncertainty on the interpretation of contemporary history is such that in the current debate inside the Movement there are some who even question the existence of a world unification process. In order to extricate ourselves from this uncertainty, we must resort to the analysis criteria consolidated over the years in the federalist culture: historical materialism and the theory of raison d’état.

4.1 Globalization and the Crisis of the Sovereign State.

The economic approach is that most commonly used to study globalization. This point of view has serious limitations and does not allow a grasp of all the aspects of the phenomenon. As a matter of fact, globalization is not promoted only by economic incentives, but also and particularly by an irresistible historical force, stronger than the will of any government or any political party: the force that is triggered by the evolution of the mode of production. Historical materialism allows us to establish which phase of history we are in, the trend of the course of history, and to draw the ultimate consequences on the political and economic plane. The functioning of the economic system (and also of the market economy) would not be possible without laws and without the order assured by the state and by the world system of states. The economy is therefore controlled by politics, although ultimately the mode of production is the decisive factor in determining the course of history, even against the resistance of politics and the economy.

Since the mode of production ultimately determines the structure and the dimension of the state, historical materialism allows a relationship to be established between the mode of production and the state dimension, and in particular between the agricultural mode of production and the city-state, between the first phase of the industrial mode of production (utilization of coal and the steam-engine) and the nation state, between the second phase of the industrial mode of production (utilization of electricity, petrol and the internal combustion engine) and the state of dimensions as big as entire regions of the world. With the scientific revolution of material production (and the revolution in telecommunications and transport) the world federation becomes possible and necessary.

There is therefore a specific relationship between the globalization process, which is nothing more than an economic and social integration process on a world scale, and the mode of production made possible by the scientific revolution. This process, as slow as its evolution may be, creates the economic and social basis for the formation of a world people and a world state.

If historical materialism is not used as the criterion to understand the globalization process, it is possible to come to the conclusion (as some have done) that the globalization process has been under way since the inception of history.[7] This kind of assertion may be meaningful only if we remove the concept of globalization from its contemporary historical context, and in particular from the current turn in the evolution of the mode of production: the scientific revolution of material production. Without any criteria on how to place globalization in history, it is not possible to attach to it specific characteristics. The result is a dim nocturnal landscape in which all the cows are black.

A significant aspect of this process is that all the most powerful states, with the sole exception of China, belong to economic areas where processes of integration, of varying intensity and at varying stages of development, are under way. The political and economic relations within each region, although influenced by the presence of a dominant power (Germany in the EU, the United States in the NAFTA, Russia in the CIS, Brazil in the MERCOSUR, India in the SAARC) do not have the characteristics of traditional imperialism. They rather represent the need for cooperation among neighbouring countries, imposed by the necessity to form markets of regional dimension, allowing each economic area to compete with the others which are organizing themselves around the world.

The European integration process too is the result of the thrust given to social evolution by the second phase of the industrial revolution, which has imposed the formation of an economy and of institutions of regional dimensions, as premise to the European Federation. However this process, well before reaching its conclusion, just because it is happening in one of the most advanced areas in the world, becomes part of a more general process: the unification of the world, brought about by the scientific revolution. It is not the first time that such a phenomenon has occurred. The unification of Italy and Germany also came to maturity at a time when the inventions of the internal combustion and electric engines would soon determine the decline of the nation states and put European unification on the agenda of history.

Hence, because of the success of the scientific revolution, in the relations among the various emerging economic areas there is no alternative to cooperation, if the world is to continue to profit from an open world economy.

The guiding principle of all these events is that we are confronted with the crisis of the sovereign state as a self-sufficient political entity. It is a crisis that goes beyond the nation-states of the European continent and includes also the last superpower: the United States. A few facts are sufficient to show impressive analogies with the crisis of the nation states in Europe. The United States has experienced the inadequacy of its internal market dimension with respect to the requirements of international competition. Consequently it has promoted the NAFTA to compete with other markets of regional dimension which are forming in the rest of the world. Moreover, in some production sectors (for example in aeronautics) the internal market has become too small to bear the presence of several firms. Hence the formation of monopolies able to cope with international competition, as happened for example in the automotive sector in the nation-states involved in European unification. Consequently, if the rise of paramount positions is to be opposed, an anti-trust function must be activated at world level within a reformed WTO. Thus the United States experiences daily, like all other states, the limits of its monetary and fiscal sovereignty before the power of the big multinational financial and productive corporations, operating in the global market. The American government has lost its power to control the international speculative waves and tax evasion of the multinational companies, and to protect its citizens from the abuses of firms that acquired paramount positions in the domestic market.

On the other hand, the United States has had to accept the fact that the state is no longer the only actor in international politics. This is conditioned more and more visibly by new emerging subjects, like the multinational firms and banks or the non-governmental organizations, which have acquired an autonomy of action without precedent in history. All this demonstrates that globalization is not just an economic event, but a much more complex phenomenon, which also has a social dimension: the formation of the global civil society. This is an ambiguous reality, in which potentially progressive trends, like the eco-pacifist movement and the international voluntary service, are mixed with phenomena which greatly endanger world order, like international crime and terrorism.

In conclusion, globalization is a contradictory historical process, which, considered from the viewpoint of the evolution of the mode of production, coincides with the trend of the course of history. It is a process which must be controlled by politics, so as to subject it to human planning, and direct it toward new and higher forms of political coexistence.

4.2 European Integration and Globalization.

The debate on world unification has not yet managed to identify criteria to measure the level of maturity reached in the globalization process. Let us consider the facts, for instance market globalization and the abatement of tariff barriers obstructing the development of international trade. In 1946 the custom tariffs amounted to 50 per cent of the value of imported goods; today they have dropped to less than 3 per cent. Let us compare this process with European integration: the Kennedy Round, the Tokyo Round and the Uruguay Round, i.e. three negotiation cycles held within the GATT, reached results in 1994 comparable to those obtained within the European Community during the three transition periods which led in 1968 to the European customs union. These data allow us to draw some interim conclusions. Firstly, it may be stated that today the world is more integrated on the commercial plane than Europe was just after the end of World War II. Secondly, it may be said that the present degree of world commercial integration is comparable to that of the six-nation-Europe in 1968, even though the inequalities in economic and social development at world level are incomparably greater.

Here however a proviso is necessary. Not every state in the world is part of the WTO, an organization with 135 member states, which however has started negotiations for enlargement to about thirty more states, including China and Russia. As it is foreseeable that these negotiations will be concluded within a few years, the moment when the analogy will become exact has to be moved forward to the near future.

Certainly the political consistency of the GATT-WTO institutions is not comparable to that of the European Community. But this is because it is one thing to create a customs union and to give a treatment to a group of trading partners in the European region, and a very different one to realize a generalized tariff reduction to the point of practically eliminating them at world level. Whereas the construction of a customs union of regional dimensions required that the embryo of a supranational authority which could control the process be created, the abatement of tariff barriers at world level can proceed simply by multilateral agreements. The only significant institutional instrument of the WTO is its mechanism for settling trade disputes, which I will consider later.

4.3 Globalization of Politics from the Bipolar to the Multipolar Order.

Since politics is the field of human activity whose goal is to rule the historical process, in parallel to globalization of markets the trend to globalization of politics has also set in. The world system of states is the political context which, depending on how power is distributed among states, can assure (under the leadership of one state or the convergence of raisons d’état among several states) the minimum international order necessary to the functioning of the world market, but it can also fail in pursuing this objective (international disorder). This is why the formation of the world market does not proceed in a straight line, but in waves. This progression is the reflection of the political conditions that make it possible and can help or hamper it.

The end of the European system of states in 1945 and the end of the bipolar world system in 1989 represent two crucial stages of the globalization process in politics. The second World War, having determined the defeat of Germany, the loss of independence of the nation-states and the formation of the world system of states, swept away the European system, which was hampering the free development of relations of production and exchange beyond state borders. On the ruins of the European system, a bipolar world system of states arose. After the end of WWII the United States and the Soviet Union each undertook a project to unify the world, under democracy and communism respectively. After the conflict’s fiercest stage, the two superpowers came to an agreement on certain rules of peaceful coexistence, which represented the premise for the transition to a new era. It can therefore be said that the political unification of the world in hegemonic form represented the guiding principle of the cold war era.

The relative autonomy of politics explains how, during the second stage of industrial revolution, in which the tendency emerges toward the formation of states as large as entire regions of the world, but the tendency toward world unification is not yet ripe, the two superpowers aimed at unifying the world under their respective domination. History offers numerous examples of empires which unified through military conquest much larger territories than the dominant mode of production in a given epoch could allow. Consequently, even in times in which the prevailing form of production was agriculture, such large empires formed (for instance the Roman and the Chinese), that they styled themselves as universal. They were exposed however to powerful disintegrative forces, stemming from the difficulty of ruling effectively, from one single centre, a vast territory that was not sufficiently integrated in social terms, and of defending it from the other great powers.

The factor that ultimately brought about the end of the cold war and the decline of the superpowers was the scientific revolution of material production, which made the world more and more closely interdependent, with the consequence that an increasing number of issues have assumed a world dimension. Hence the need for world solutions and world institutions. Even though the crisis of the sovereign state, which was mentioned above, is a phenomenon which brought about the political decline of both superpowers, the critical factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union was its closed and authoritarian structure, which is fundamentally incompatible with the forces of the scientific revolution.

When the East-West conflict ended, with the collapse of the communist regimes and with the break up of the communist block and of the Soviet Union itself, there were some who said too hastily that the United States had won the cold war. If this were true, the United States would have fulfilled their project to unify the world under its leadership. But the superpowers are like duellists who have wounded one another. Although the Soviet Union has dissolved, the United States is a declining power, which will inevitably have to abandon any ambition of world supremacy. And if this decline has not been perceived in all its amplitude, this is due to the sudden change in the world politics scenario caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has deprived the United States of its enemy.

The United States cannot stop the nuclear weapons proliferation in Asia, nor can it successfully check the international terrorism that attacks it at home and all over the world. And above all it is not willing to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers to keep its world leadership. It would be willing to accept this only if it were directly threatened, but it is hard to see where such a threat could come from. Thus, against those (like Iraq) who endanger the stability of the international order, the US merely strikes from afar, with bomb attacks which wear out the civilian population, but are ineffective in destabilizing Saddam Hussein’s power.

A similar decline in US international influence is happening on the economic level. The huge deficit in the balance of trade undermines the leading role of the US in the world economic system. Moreover it no longer commands sufficient resources to control the international financial crisis.

In short, the United States can no longer play the role of world policeman and banker.

With the fall of the communist regimes and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Second World has disappeared. The First and Second World are nowadays united in their acceptance of the principles of representative democracy and the market economy. The “two Europes” are marching briskly toward unity; the two former superpowers first abandoned their political and ideological competition, as they realized that their security was better assured by co-operation than by power politics, then one dissolved and now needs West’s help to recover, while the other is less and less able to fulfil its world responsibilities. The Third World, whose existence presupposed that of the other two, is no longer the vehicle of an alternative design: non-alignment. In addition, its identification with a vast, uniformly underdeveloped area has ended. The industrialization of China and India, and the economic integration of the South-American sub-continent are events anticipating a long-term trend leading to the convergence of the three worlds and to the formation of a new order whose outline is still undefined, but which will be the world without further qualifications.

At the root of the new course of world politics there are deep changes not only in the mode of production, but also in the organization of security. The potential of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is such that, if used, there would be neither winners nor losers. This makes the idea of a third world war irrational (even if not impossible), whereas limited wars continue to be a widespread phenomenon.

Even security can now be assured only at world level. This implies that the ineffective model of collective security, on which the UN is based, should be abandoned. The United Nations has never succeeded in imposing peace: when all states agree, there is no need for collective security; when they are in conflict, there is no collective security. The end of the cold war went together with the new concept of “mutual security”, introduced by the new soviet strategic doctrine, which allowed to start the drastic reduction of the war arsenals with the prospect of the elimination of all aggression weapons, in conformity with the new principle of “non-offensive defence”.

The new course of world politics is not only the effect of good will, but it is the consequence of a necessity in the first place. For the United States and Russia the cost of the armaments race has become unbearable. Not only their destructive potential, but also the weapons cost itself has brought about the crisis of power politics. Indeed its cost is so high that in the end it rebounds on those who practise it. In other words, in the era of global interdependence and weapons of mass destruction, might turns against those who hold it. This opens up the prospect of the exhaustion of raison d’état.

After the end of the cold war, there are no longer any powers that have the strength and resources necessary to aim at world leadership.

However the end of the cold war did not coincide with the start of a process of political unification of the world. The decline of the superpowers matches the rise of new states or groups of states in the world power hierarchy. The crisis of the nation states in Europe went together with the rise of the European Union. The birth of the euro will determine the fall of the United States world leadership over the international monetary system. At the same time, Germany and Japan, because after their defeat in the Second World War they had to abandon their role of military powers and did not have to squander vast sums of money in the armaments race, have become great economic powers and have increased their international influence. Finally, in the world’s South, while processes of regional integration are under way, powers, like India, Brazil and Nigeria, are emerging.

Of course, what I defined as the fundamental trend of contemporary history, that is the trend to unity, is not bound to come true at a steady pace. It is opposed by the tendency to fragmentation, which is an expression of the revival of nationalism.

The first and most significant display of this tendency is illustrated in Huntington’s book on the clash of civilizations.[8] According to this theory, civilizations are exclusive visions of the world, with no possibility of communicating with each other. This excludes any of a universal civilization, based on principles of coexistence common to all mankind and intended as the answer to the globalization process. This is the formula resorted to for instance by the present Indian government, inspired by Hindu nationalism, or Chinese nationalism, as a consequence of the discredit that has affected communism, is looking for a new basis of legitimacy in the neo-Confucian ideology. But there is also an American nationalism. The paradox is that it is the effect of their enemy’s disappearance, and of the consequent decline of the democratic ideology’s universal component, which was so steeped in anticommunism during the cold war era that it had mingled with it. American nationalism has become the justification for the survival of power politics, which however cannot (as the recent bombing in Iraq showed) make the world advance toward peace nor improve the international order. Yet it finds legitimacy in the lack of a world police authority, that forces the United States to continue to play its role of world policeman toward those who dispute the international order: the so-called rogue states and international terrorism, often supported these states.

But there is a second aspect of the tendency to fragmentation: ethnic nationalism, which exploits the space opened by the end of the world bipolar order and by the lack of a new world order. In the cold war era, the strong international discipline imposed by the blocs barred the route to nationalism. Its present popularity is also due to the fact that it looks like the alternative to the universal ideologies (democracy and communism), which during the cold war justified the big powers’ aspiration to world leadership.

Before these processes, American monopolarism shows its transitory nature. After the end of the bipolar order, world politics is tending toward a multipolar distribution of power. To have identified this trend is not the arrival, but the starting point of an analysis that must go as far as to identify the dynamics of the world system of states. First of all it must be recognized that the members of this system in the making will be the great world regions, and firstly the European Union. The success of federalism in Europe and in the world will make it possible to give mankind a formula of political coexistence that reconciles the nations’ independence and self-government with their belonging to federal communities of grand dimensions, and hence to tame power politics and to defeat the tendency to fragmentation.

4.4 Relations between Europe and America.

The analysis of relations between Europe and America can offer useful suggestions about the overall dynamics of the multipolar system. Will the prevailing nature of these relations be conflictual or cooperative? Can the rise of European power might be compared to that of Germany after its political unification, which challenged the British Empire with its world policy, undermined its role as stabilizer of the world economy, upset the European balance of power and dragged Europe into the World Wars? Or to that of the Soviet Union, which during the cold war competed with the United States for world leadership? Is it conceivable that Europe might aspire to replace the United States in the role of stabilizer of the world economy and world policeman?

Even if there are those who (like Martin Feldstein) maintain that the euro contains the seeds of the third world war, it is reasonable to think that Europe will pursue a policy of co-operation with the United States, with the prospect of a joint management of the world order, open to participation of other groupings of states. Supposing it were possible, a European policy aimed at the attainment of world leadership would have very high costs. But it is proper to raise serious doubts that Europe can succeed where two superpowers failed. It must be considered that the cost of armaments necessary to pursue this goal would be prohibitive. In addition, the revival of power politics would imply the interruption of the globalization process and the re-emerging of protectionism, as a vehicle to strengthen the power of each state and to weaken that of rivals.

The project of a Euro-American Equal Partnership that Albertini had identified since the Sixties[9] and confirmed in the of the Bari Congress, is the only one that makes it possible to govern the world unification process. It may become the main pillar that can sustain the building o.f world peace, just as the Franco-German axis was the first nucleus around which the construction of the European unity developed. The Equal Partnership obviously implies a convergence of interests, which, unless it confines itself to promoting only Euro-American interests at the rest of the world’s expense, will have to be extended to other subjects: first Japan, but also Russia, when it has recovered from the crisis that is plaguing it, and progressively to all other states, according to the model of concentric circles. The objective to pursue is an alliance or a “centre of gravity”[10] or even a confederal bond among a first nucleus of democratic states with a market economy, which could give a centripetal impulse to world politics, an intermediate stage on the route of creating what Einstein called “a partial world government”.[11]

In a multipolar world in which aspirations to world leadership have vanished, security and economic development for each state cannot be assured by power politics, but only by international co-operation. The stability of the international order and the functioning of the world economy in the post-bipolar era require a policy of co-operation, based on the convergence among the raisons d’état of the most influential States.

Only a Europe capable of action, equipped with not only in the economic and financial field, but also in foreign policy and defence, could exert a real influence on the United States, relieving them from their heavy world responsibilities and creating the favourable conditions to isolate nationalistic tendencies and to base the world order on the UN.

There is an analogy between the evolution of the European of states and that of the world system. For a long time the history of both systems of states was dominated by the struggle for hegemony. After the failure of the most powerful states’ attempt to prevail through force, it has become possible to take the route of co-operation in order to reach unity through consent. This happened because everybody was convinced that the reasons for co-operation are stronger than those for antagonism, and recognized the existence of superior common interests. The Second World War marked not only the defeat of the last attempt to unify Europe under the hegemony of Germany, but also the decline of the European victors (France and Great Britain) and the start of European integration. Similarly, the end of the cold war marked not only the fall of the Soviet system, but also the decline of the United States as a power. These events have been accompanied by the emergence of Europe and the affirmation of the need for Global Governance.

It is obvious to point out that the world is starting its unification in much more difficult conditions than those the European Community countries were in. The latter could base their integration process on conditions of significant homogeneity as far as their levels of development and their political regimes (industrial economies and democratic systems) were concerned, and they were under the United States protectorate, which eliminated military antagonism in Western Europe. If we compare the European and the world unification processes, it may be observed that they meet the same obstacle: the resistance of the states to transferring their sovereignty to a supranational government. There is however one factor that had an important role in promoting European unification and is not present in the world unification process: the threat of an external enemy. The incentive to construct world unity can only come from a convergence of interests among national governments, willing to face together the problems the states can no longer solve alone.

4.5 A New Bretton Woods: Towards a World Economic and Monetary Union.

Let us now take into consideration the future prospects of the globalization process. The history of the European integration process shows that, after the attainment of the common market objective, the necessity to proceed toward the economic and monetary Union became inevitable. In other words, it became clear that two instruments were required to manage the single market: a single currency and common economic policies. The process of European economic integration was able to achieve its goal of the customs union in 1968 thanks to two international factors: the use of one currency (the dollar) and the military protection of the United States.

The end of the Gold Exchange Standard in 1971, which started a period of floating exchange rates and great monetary instability, is linked to the weakening of the American leadership over the western world and to the increasing competitiveness of the European economy. From these changes the need arose to create an area of monetary stability in Europe (EMS), as an intermediate stage on the way to the economic and monetary Union. Creating a protection against the floating of the exchange rates was an indispensable condition for the European market to function.

The growing monetary instability which today endangers the globalization process and may bring about the risk of a dramatic return to protectionism, is a consequence of the decline of the world economic and monetary stabilizing role ensured by the United States since the end of the Second World War. The birth of the euro marks the beginning of the transition to an international multipolar monetary order.

The fact is that the European Union has no wish to replace the United States in its role of leader and stabilizer of the world economy, as Germany tried to do when the British Empire began its crisis. Hence a new world economic order may rise only if based on co-operation among the great economic areas: first of all among those of the euro, dollar and yen, and later with the other economic areas as they reach such a of integration as to feel the need of a single currency.

The problem then is to set up an international multipolar monetary order that promotes cooperation and settles conflicts, as happened with the establishment of the EMS within the European community (a community of states without a leading power) as an intermediate on the way to the single currency.

A new Bretton Woods. i.e. a reform of the international financial institutions, must in the first place conform to the principle of extending representation in the centres of decision-making. That is, around the table where crucial decisions are made for the future of the world economy, there must be seated the representatives of the major economic areas. A political body must be formed, which Delors defined “Economic Security Council”,[12] but it could simply be the enlarged G7 (indeed the emerging G20).

This body will have to co-ordinate its members monetary policies with the other policies necessary to correct the distortions of a globalization process left to the free play of market forces. In this context, the analogy with the problems that the European Community had to face after the transitory period of the common market (Economic and Monetary Union) is evident.

It is not just a matter of rebuilding an international order only, but of responding to global questions, like unemployment, international migration, social rights, child labour, health, environment, etc. These problems are reflected in the activities of international economic organizations, but find no appropriate answers, in the absence of the necessary powers and because of the plurality of bodies dealing with these problems. It will therefore be necessary to increase the powers of the new international economic institutions, and also to create a centre to coordinate functions that are presently dispersed in many institutions operating independently from each other (G7, IMF, WB, WTO, ILO, UNEP, etc.).

Finally, international financial resources must be considerably increased, in order to make them more effective in facing critical situations. The Tobin Tax, to be collected on international short term capital flows (the main cause of monetary disorder), would allow resources to be assigned to these institutions, which then would have more autonomy and capacity for initiative.

4.6 Foreign and Security Policy in Europe and the New World Order.

The comment in the French government 1994 white paper on defence, that “for the first time in its history, France does not have direct threats at its borders”,[13] is valid not only for all European Union countries, but also for the majority of the other states, especially the most powerful ones. For this reason the European defence model must be conceived so that Europe can make its contribution to the construction of a stable international order and an open world market. The European armed forces shall be committed to intervene, if necessary, against those threatening the attainment of these objectives. The French government drew its conclusions from this new conception of defence, abolishing compulsory military service, setting up a small professional army, and proposing a civilian service. These are the main features to which the future European defence model should conform. But it has to be emphasised that this model cannot be put in practice at national level. The nation-state does not have sufficient resources to provide the European army with the technologies (information system and satellites to survey the theatre of operations) required to operate independently of the United States, nor has it the force and the consensus necessary to stimulate that commitment to civic values among young people that only a European civilian service in a European Federation could raise.

The creation of a European government responsible for foreign and security policy is essential for any real reform of NATO, because it would change the power relations between Europe and the United States. Simply enlarging NATO to the East generates suspicion in Russia and could be a factor in reinforcing nationalism and military power groups in Moscow. The way was opened to enlargement through an agreement between NATO and Russia: the Founding Act of the NATO-Russia agreement, signed in 1997, which decided Russia’s entry in the NATO as an associate member, has wiped out the Yalta borders. However, the Founding Act is limited by the fact that it is an agreement between only two political subjects. Consequently its interpretation leaves room for some ambiguity: whilst the Russians give the impression that they would like to condition NATO’s action, the Americans maintain that this will not happen.

This shows that the missing link, which would let the world evolve resolutely toward a peaceful order, is a Europe able to act as one single subject. A Europe with its own independent system is not perceived as a danger by Russia. Europe is in a position to profoundly influence trends in world politics, in the first place conditioning US foreign policy and driving it to a closer co-operation with Russia. More generally, it will eventually play a pivotal role between East and West, and North and South, because it has a vital interest, unlike the United States, in developing positive relations of co-operation with the neighbouring areas of the ex-communist world, the Mediterranean and Africa. The first task is to complete European unification toward East and South. At the same time it is necessary to strengthen the international institutions (OSCE, Lomé Convention and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership) binding Europe to its neighbouring continents.

NATO, left without an enemy as its former is tending to become a partner of the United States, will change its nature in the presence of an independent Europe. Its powerful war machine is subject to a system of mutual controls to create a climate of trust, so that it will be useless to maintain a great military apparatus and the trend will be to arms reduction. This is a function similar to that performed by the OSCE, toward which NATO is naturally converging. If NATO has a future, its basic function will no longer be to defend its members from external aggression, but to take part in international police operations within the OCSE or the UN.

With a Euro-American equal partnership it would be possible to start an initiative to create a collective system in Asia, which the Americans alone are unable to cope with. The success of this initiative requires the support of Russia and Japan, the two Asian powers most closely connected to the western world, and then a Trans-Euro-Asian Security System could be progressively extended to the rest of Asia, according to the proposal contained in Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard.[14] The easiest way to realize this project seems to be the extension to the whole Asian continent of the OSCE and of the principles of mutual security and non-offensive defence, which made it possible to overcome the East-West conflict and could help the world overcome the North-South conflict.

Owing to the nuclear tests of India and Pakistan and the US inability to stop nuclear proliferation, the security problem in Asia is high on the political agenda. This potential nightmare could provide the incentive for the major powers to seriously pursue the objective of eliminating nuclear weapons, which the great majority of the UN member states subscribed to in 1995 by indefinitely renewing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This objective could be pursued by instituting a world authority empowered to control nuclear energy, as proposed by the Baruch Plan as early as 1946. The mechanism that can offer the UN efficient means to control the disarmament process at world level is that of on-site inspections, tested successfully in the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe and by the treaties for nuclear weapons reduction, and more recently carried out in Iraq by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The only political player that can pursue this project is Europe. As the reconciliation between France and Germany has relieved military tensions in Europe, and as detente between the United States and Russia has coincided with the end of the armaments race in the northern hemisphere, the birth of the European Federation could change relations between North and South, and promote the participation of the developing countries in the construction of a new world order.

4.7 International Co-operation, Convergence of Raisons d’état and Intermediate Situations between International Anarchy and World Federation.

This analysis, based on the principles of international co-operation and convergence of raisons d’état, has been criticized, arguing that federalism represents a theoretical alternative to these two principles, and that resorting to them means yielding to the internationalist conception of politics. This criticism does not take into account the fact that transition from international anarchy to world federation cannot be accomplished in a leap, without a long evolutionary process and the formation of intermediate institutions (the case of the formation of the United States of America is an exception, explained the presence of unique historical circumstances).

Any consideration about world unification cannot but refer to the precedent of European unification, which clearly shows that overcoming national sovereignty is a long term process. And that leads us to a consideration on intermediate situations.

As early as 1960 Albertini (in his article on The French “Force de Dissuasion”[15]) corrected the theory that Spinelli presented in his article in 1957 titled The Mockery of the Common Market,[16] in which he forecast that the common market would fail because of the lack of European federal institutions. Albertini explained that the success of the common market was to be ascribed to two political conditions: the eclipse of the sovereignty of nation-states and American hegemony over Europe. Although he started from the theory, expressed by a branch of liberal thinking (from Adam Smith to Lionel Robbins), that the functioning of the market mechanism implies definite political conditions and although he had learned much from this doctrine, Albertini detached himself from it. He did not think that the state represented the only political premise for the functioning of the market. According to Albertini, there are certain international power arrangements that partially substitute the role of the state and permit the activation of certain market mechanisms on the international level. Thus, the crisis of the nation-state, caused by the inadequacy of this form of political organisation in the face of the internationalization of the production process, activated American hegemony over Western Europe and the convergence of raisons d’état among the member states of the European Community. These are the political factors that explain how the common market formed without a European Federation.

In other words, it was possible to go on building European unity even without the European Federation simply on the basis of co-operation among states within confederal institutions. Some objectives which the constitutional line of thought believed could only be attained through the European Federation (the common market, the single currency, have been attained earlier. Of course, the European Federation will make those acquisitions irreversible, because they will be put on the solid foundations of a European government. Yet the fact remains that the functionalist approach made it possible to build part of European unity without a European state.

Spinelli reached the same conclusions in his Report on Europe, published in 1965, where we can read: “Today an initial European reality exists... Europe does not have yet a political head, but has already a body, which is that of the Communities. It was the functionalists who won the struggle for the creation of the first vital institutions, therefore the small part of Europe that was born is neither the people’s Europe, nor the states’ Europe, but that of supernational bureaucracy. The political problem raised by the federalists and the confederalists is far from disappearing, but the eurocratic reality has persuaded both to put aside their out-dated polemics against the functionalist method. Both accept now the Europe of the offices with their firm construction of detailed common rules. But both demand the subordination of this administration to a political authority: to a federal government in the first case, to a conference of heads of state in the other”.[17]

As far as the European institutions are concerned, they show that economic integration (the formation of a unified economic area) and political unification (the creation of supranational political structures, like the European Parliament elected by universal suffrage) rest on two structural conditions. The first is economic and social interdependence among nations. The second is the disappearance of military antagonism among states.

It is obvious that the premise for the process of economic integration is the disappearance of war as a means to solve international conflicts. It is true that, according to the federalist point of view (from Kant to Lord Lothian), peace can only be assured through the Federation. However, the disposition on the part of the states to renounce the use of force to solve their disputes must be considered the fundamental condition for any process of integration.

This concept can be usefully applied to interpret the European integration process, which profoundly altered relations between states, determining such a radical change in the expectation of war as to make power politics disappear altogether. Co-operation, instead of antagonism, has become the fundamental trend of the foreign policy of European Community member-states.

This concept may also be expressed as “convergence of the raisons d’état among several states”.[18] The development of processes of cooperation and economic integration would be impossible in an international climate of tension, power politics, continual threats to state security and an impending risk of war. In contrast, international co-operation and even more so processes of integration create “de facto solidarity”[19] (an expression of Monnet’s) among states, due to the formation of a solid network of supranational interests that would be endangered or even sacrificed in a world living in a climate of insecurity or tensions. His awareness of the importance of this aspect of the European unification process led Albertini to call Monnet’s functionalist approach “weak federalism”.[20]

These concepts can be used to study the world unification process.

4.8 European Unification as a Model and Engine of World Unification.

The success of political action in building the European Federation will be crucial for the future of federalism, because it will demonstrate that it is possible for a group of states to live together, transcending national differences, and in particular transcending nations divided centuries-old conflicts. The European Federation will be not only a model for the unification of other regions and for the whole world (UN reform), but will have the role of engine of the unification of the great world regions and of the whole world.

First of all, the example of Europe’s federative process will accelerate similar processes, at various stages of development, currently under way in other regions of the world; will reinvigorate federalism in the United States and India, where it has undergone a centralistic regression; and will raise the problem of the federal reform of the UN.

Moreover, it must be considered that the European Union is the prime trading power in the world. Consequently, it has a vital interest in keeping the world market open and strengthening the institutions that further this aim. This is the reason that has driven the European Union, against the resistance of the United States, to promote the formation of the WTO, which springs from the need to apply new rules to global competition and to enforce them universally.

The institutional innovations that characterize its structure foreshadow a new kind of foreign policy, a policy of unification, that does away with the use of power. Through aggregation forms, more or less tight depending on necessity, according to the model of concentric circles, the European Union created institutions that let it make economic ties with the whole world. Adhesion is the specific instrument of unification policy. Association and co-operation are the instruments necessary to prepare unification.

Let us now consider the European Federation’s contribution to the solution of security problems. The outline of what will be the European defence model is given by the internal and international context in which the European government will operate. First of all the multinational and federal structure of the European state will limit any aggressive foreign policy. Moreover the tendency of the world system of states to evolve toward multipolarism without a leading power, will help create favourable conditions for political stability and international co-operation. Based on these considerations, it seems reasonable to predict that Europe could entrust its security to a defensive system of small dimensions. And if it wants to keep a small military apparatus, its efforts will have to be aimed at promoting and protecting a world order founded on law, placing its troops at the disposal of an international police force under the United Nations’ authority.

The basic difference between the European Federation and all other Federations so far is that, whilst the latter underwent a centralization process due to the strong political and military pressure exerted on them by the major powers, the European Federation will be born in a world in which global interdependence and the decline of power politics will generate powerful trends to co-operation and international organization, which itself will help consolidate it.

The European Federation, as negation of the sovereign State, will be torn by two contradictory thrusts. On one hand it will tend to assert itself in a purely negative sense, as superseding the nation-state and hence remaining an open political organization without definite boundaries and able to promote unification of other regions and of all mankind through UN reform, and decentralized, i.e. lacking all institutional characteristics of previous sovereign states, being composed of federated communities wanting to keep a level of autonomy higher than in any previous federal constitution. On the other hand, the opposite impulse will be present, to close in on itself and to concentrate power, i.e. to form a collective identity similar to the national one, but which will anyway have a precarious character, considering the difficulty of rooting a national identity in a multinational society and in a post-national era.

5. The Foreign Policy of the European Federation and the Role of Federalists.

In the new political cycle which in practice has already opened with the birth of the euro, the main reference point of organized federalism will be the foreign policy of the European Federation as a vehicle to expand federalism in the world. Europe will be the leading country of federalism, just as in our century the United States has been for democracy.

5.1 What will the Role of Federalists be after the ratification of the European Constitution?

At this point we have to ask ourselves if it will be necessary, as some say, for federalists to commit themselves politically in the European Federation.

It is to be noted that in the United States the federalists engaged in such a policy after the ratification of the Constitution, because the federal institutions were so weak that they were at risk of collapse. People were scattered across the vast territory of the East coast. The lack of roads made communications and transportation so difficult that generally a trip from New Hampshire to Philadelphia, the first capital of the United States, took almost two weeks, from Georgia almost three. This simple fact is sufficient to show how little the United States people were integrated from an economic and social point of view, so that it looked almost hopeless to organize practically self-sufficient States into a single political form, even one as mild as the federal system. The dangers of disintegration stemmed from the limitations of the dominant mode of production (agriculture) and from the means of transportation (horse and ship), which made the possibility governing such a vast territory from a single centre such a precrious enterprise.

In consideration of this, it is difficult to see what forces today could be so strong as to require the commitment of federalists to a policy of strengthening the European Federation. Ethnic nationalism, which currently represents the most threatening tendency to disintegration and is an expression of the crisis of legitimacy of the nation-state, will very likely be reduced by the institution of the European Federation. And even more tenuous appears the possibility of an external threat to
the federal institutions.

It is apparent that the choice of a political commitment to strengthen the European Federation represents a dramatic breach with the past: the relinquishment of our autonomy. As a matter of fact, this is the necessary consequence of a commitment directed to associating oneself with, and therefore preserving, European power. It is now many years since Alhertini wrote: “Nobody will force the federalists — even if it is with their contribution that Europe, for which they are fighting, will be formed — to back up the European government. Even at the cost of being jeered at, as has happened, the most politically aware federalists always stated that their place in Europe will be the opposition”. And then: “I would like to explain this paradox: to participate in building a state which we already know we must criticize. It is by no means puzzling. It is the paradox of progress along the way of revolution. Revolution is worldwide and universal. For this reason any progress along this way loses its meaning for those who take responsibility for it, unless they accept this fate: to stay in opposition after the accomplishment of this task”.[21]

These are clear words which anticipate the choice some people would lay before us today.[22] We must be aware of the consequences of such a choice. Anyone wishing to be part of the European power must declare himself willing to serve the raison d’état of the European Federation, to come to terms with European nationalism and to lose his federalist soul.

The revolutionary parties of the past experienced a similar drama: democracy in one single country after the French revolution, to resist against the encirclement of monarchies; socialism in one single country after the Russian revolution, to resist against the encirclement of capitalism. The necessary outcome of those choices was the betrayal of the universal values of which those revolutionary parties were the vehicle, and nationalism.

Of course, somebody will have to handle European power. But is this our task? Those who govern a state have different responsibilities from those who are pursuing revolutionary objectives. Whilst we are sure that there will be some who will govern Europe well, even if they have to serve its raison d’état, it is hard to see who, beside the small group of federalists, will pass on to future generations and to the rest of the world, the torch lit by Spinelli on Ventotene. I am sure that there are forces in the Movement willing to accept this new challenge.

5.2 European Federalists Once More Face the Choice between Party and Movement.

The experience of the formation of the United States of America shows that the commitment in the policy of strengthening federal institutions was accompanied by a parallel organizational choice: the formation of a federalist party, which ruled the United States during two terms, carried out the necessary consolidation work of the federal institutions and, when it showed dangerous authoritarian attitudes, was ousted from government and replaced by the Republican Party.

And truly, if the political commitment of federalists in Europe will not end with the federal constitution’s coming into force, but will have to continue indefinitely, as some claim, the Movement is a tool that looks totally unfit for the requirements of the political struggle in a fully established state. The choice of the European federalists to organize themselves into a Movement was determined by the need to escape the conditioning of the national political struggle and to promote the front of pro-European forces against those of national resistance, placing a dividing line between nationalists and federalists.

Moreover the Movement’s structure was chosen to carry out role of initiative, which implies that the role of execution be given to the established powers (parties and governments). If this division of labour still has a sense (and I think it has, even if we think of the of the political commitment for the world federation), it should be clear that the consolidation of the European Federation is a task the European government and the European parties. Consequently the choice to engage in the European political struggle after the federal constitution and inside its institutions will require a coherent organizational choice: the transformation of the Movement into a Party.

In reality the organizational choice of the Movement is still the most suitable for effective action in a world where the European Federation will be an active player in world politics. In other words, the Federalist Movement will have to keep its autonomy of theory and action with respect to the European power, which will the commands of its raison d’état, not always coincident with the development of federalism in the world. The fundamental value to safeguard then, is federalist autonomy. Albertini’s advice on the policy of opposition, to be promoted by federalists after the formation of the European Federation, should be assessed in this prospect. Federalist autonomy will not necessarily mean opposing every choice of the European government, but only those that will tend toward a closed state and European nationalism.

In any case, the federalists shall have the task of serving as the critical conscience of the European government, and this will be possible provided they maintain an autonomous capacity to put forward ideas, to goad the government into action, and, if necessary, to act as the opposition.

6. How to Conceive the Transition to the World Federation.

The analysis of Europe’s role in the world allowed us to penetrate into an unexplored region and consider one aspect of the transition toward the world federation. Now is the moment to discuss this theme in comprehensive terms, taking into account that it is the most important theoretical-practical problem in view of setting up a strategy for the world federation.

Hans Kelsen’s most significant contribution to the definition of federalist thinking lies in his discussion of the transition toward the world government. Kelsen agrees with Kant’s view, according to which the fundamental goal of law is peace, and the only way to assure a universal and permanent peace and to eliminate war is the extension of law to the whole planet. Since the essential characteristic of law is to institute a coercive order, giving the monopoly of force to the government within a state, in order to realize universal peace it is necessary “to unite all individual States… in a World State, to concentrate all their means of power, their armed forces, and put them at the disposal of a world government under laws created by a world parliament. If States are allowed to continue their existence only as members of a powerful world federation, then peace among them will be secured as effectively as among the component States of the United States of America or the Cantons of the Swiss Republic”.[23]

However, Kelsen tries to place this project in history and in particular in the context of the negotiations between the big powers, that led, after the end of the second world war, to the foundation of the UN. His book Peace through Law was published in 1944, one year before the foundation of the UN, but even then Kelsen was able to state with confidence: “At present, however, such a World State is not within the scope of political reality, for it is also incompatible with the principle of equal sovereignty upon which, according to the Declaration signed by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China on November 1, 1943, at Moscow, the international organization to be established after the war shall be based”.[24]

Kelsen then shifts his consideration to the process of transition toward the world state: “From a strategic point of view”, he says, “there is but one serious question: What is the next step to be taken on this road?”[25] A political project, however noble and important it may be in its intention to improve the conditions of political coexistence, is confined to the realm of dreams if it does not identify possible ways to fulfil it.

Kelsen notices an amazing similarity between the anarchy of primitive communities and that of the international community. On this similarity he bases his assumption that the transition process from the primitive society to the state juridical system offers an orientation criterion with regard to the international community evolution. In other terms, transition toward world federation is a long term process comparable to the establishment of the first forms of state, whose political structure crystallized at the end of a long process of centralization of power. “Long before parliaments as legislative bodies come into existence”, he writes, “courts were established to apply the law to concrete cases. It is interesting to note that the meaning of the word ‘parliament’ was originally court. In primitive society the courts were hardly more than tribunals of arbitration. They had to decide whether or not the crime had actually been committed as claimed by one and if the conflict could not be settled by peaceful agreement, whether or not one party was authorized to execute a sanction against the other according to the principle of self-defence. Only at a later stage did it become possible completely to abolish the procedure of self-defence and to replace it by execution of the court-decision through a centralized executive power, a police force of the State. The centralization of executive power is the last step in this evolution from the decentralized pre-State community to the centralized community we call State”. And he concludes: “We have good reason to believe that international law… develops in the same way as the primitive law of the community”.[26]

Consequently, Kelsen assumes that the creation of an international Court represents the first step on the road leading to the world federation.

The institutional evolution ofthe European institutions confirms this assumption. The first European Community institution which asserted itself as a supranational power was the European Court of Justice, then the European Parliament, as a result of its direct election, increased its legislative powers and progressively asserted itself as an international assembly; in the end the governing power of the European Commission will come.

There is however one aspect of Kelsen’s conception which looks outdated: he sees the world federation as a federation of nation-states. He does not consider any government level intermediate between national and world government. The limit of this institutional proposal lies in the fact that it does not solve the problem of inequality among states, which is the cause of one of the most serious flaws of the UN General Assembly, because it implies the equalization of city-states, like San Marino, with continent-states, like China. The subsidiarity principle would require that the nation-states be represented at macro-regional level and that the great regions be represented at world level.

6.1 The Rise of World Judiciary Institutions.

Whereas during the cold war the UN, deprived as it was of powers of its own, was paralysed by cross-vetoes between the two superpowers, after the fall of the Berlin wall and the disintegration of the communist block and the Soviet Union there is no longer any state with enough power and resources to aim at world leadership. As a consequence there has been the affirmation of a new generation of international organizations like the WTO, which set up a judiciary mechanism for the settlement of trade disputes, and the International Criminal Court (ICC), endowed with direct powers over individuals who committed crimes against humanity. The rise of such judiciary institutions seems to confirm Kelsen’s assumption. They show that a process is under way, which has to cope with powerful opposing forces entrenched behind the bastions of national sovereignties, to form an international order based on law and guaranteed by judiciary institutions, which first arose in remote times in the process of building the state.

These institutions reflect the structural changes in the world system of states resulting from the globalization process and the formation of global civil society. State sovereignty is conditioned in a growing and pervasive way by an ever increasing and tangled network of international treaties, agreements and regulations, which represent definite constraints on the autonomy of state governments and parliaments. It is a significant sign that a process is under way to go beyond the traditional distinction between internal and foreign policy. Hence the need for world institutions to perform the tasks that the national ones can no longer accomplish.

If then the states want to further enjoy the advantages of an open world market, they need regulations and an arbiter to settle their conflicts. It is true that they continue to be reluctant to accept as binding the sentences of the international courts. However the necessity of peaceful coexistence and of complying with the rules on which peaceful relations among states depend, drives these to look for an arbiter to settle their conflicts. This is the significance of the judiciary mechanism instituted within the WTO to resolve the trade conflicts among its member states.

More innovative is the significance of the ICC, which unlike the ad hoc tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo and those set up to try the crimes committed in ex-Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, will have a worldwide and permanent competence. On the other hand, unlike the International Court of Justice, which has the power to settle conflicts between states, the ICC will have the power to indict and punish individuals. The most significant novelty of the ICC is that individuals will be subject to international law. This is the newest trend of international law in the contemporary world: the trend to go beyond the distinction between international law, which traditionally applied to states and regulated relations between states, and domestic law, which applied to indivito individuals and regulated relations between individuals. In other words, with the ICC a first step is taken on the road leading to the creation of a direct power of the UN over individuals.

This means that a first step has been taken on the way to limitation of state sovereignty. As stated by Jesse Helms, President of the Affairs Committee of the Senate of the United States, what the American government fears is that its soldiers involved in missions abroad could be judged by an international court. That the question raised by the ICC is the limitation of national sovereignty, is confirmed by the French government, which announced that the ratification of the Treaty will require a constitutional amendment which legitimates the power of an international court to indict a French citizen.

Of course the ICC will not operate in a political vacuum. It will not be independent of the relations of power which govern the world; on the contrary, the conception of international justice of which it will be the vehicle, will reflect the leading ideas of the world, and particularly those prevailing in the Security Council, which is the informal world government. As long as the world is divided into states, any government will give its own, different interpretation of international justice. Without a world government and a world parliament we lack the conditions to make international justice prevail.

“Where there is no common power there is no law, where there is no law there is no injustice”.[27] Hobbes wrote this lapidary sentence in Leviathan, when he was considering the problem of the formation of the modern state. It applies perfectly to the contemporary problem of the construction of the world federation. To those who claim that “there will be no peace without justice” the federalists reply that there will be no justice in the world without peace and that there will be no peace without world government.

All this must not conceal the fact that with the ICC the first step has been taken on the way to sanction the principle of individual responsibility at international level. The assertion of new principles in political life is as important as their realization, because it defines new reference points which permit a long-term orientation of political action. Is not the arrest of Pinochet the most evident demonstration that a new principle (according to which even statesmen can no longer consider themselves above the law) is asserting itself in the international political life? And note that this happened even before the ICC started to operate.

The federalists, who share with the peace movement the aspiration to international justice, have a vital contribution to make in identifying the strategy to turn that aspiration into reality. As the construction of European unity shows, the way to make law prevail over force in international political life is by forming new democratic powers above the states. If the first step on this road is to confirm the binding character of the sentences of the international courts, firstly of the International Court of Justice, which is to become the World Federal Supreme Court, it is necessary to aim at building independent legislative and executive bodies at world level.

Lastly it is worth noting one fact which is certainly not accidental: both the WTO and the ICC are institutions whose formation was promoted by the European Union. This is confirmation that the main objective of Europe’s foreign policy is the formation of an international order founded on law. It is worth noting that, whilst the 15 states of the European Union voted unanimously for the institution of the ICC, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council were divided (only France, the United Kingdom and Russia voted in favour). The influence of the 15 represented one of the determining factors that tipped the scale in the ICC’s favour. This is not negligible, because the United Kingdom, resisting very strong pressure from the United States, chose to vote with the rest of Europe. The United States, precisely because they are the last superpower, are reluctant to hand over to a supranational authority the power to judge and to punish international crimes and would like the ICC to be subordinate to the Security Council. With similar motives China voted against the Treaty. With its refusal to subject itself to an international judge, the United States disclosed the decline of its authority and gave up its role of moral guide of the world, which is destined to pass into Europe’s hands.

6.2 The Transformation of the Security Council into the Council of the Great Regions ofthe World.

One of the most significant consequences of the end of the bipolar world order is that the present composition of the Security Council has become anachronistic. Hence the need to enlarge and transform it from the five big powers’ directorate into a more reèresentative body. This problem can be tackled in two different ways. The traditional one is to open the Security Council doors to the strongest states that have risen to prominent positions in the world hierarchy of power. There are three variants to this proposal. The first is to bestow a permanent seat on Gernlany and Japan. The second proposes the enlargenlent of the Council to five new permanent members (in addition to Germany and Japan, three states belonging respectively to Asia and Latin America); but the right of veto would not be given to the new members, and furthermore the number of non-permanent members would also be increased. The third, promoted by Italy, proposes to add to the present two categories of Security Council members, a third one of ten semi-permanent members, selected from a list of states representative of the great regions of the world, which should alternate more frequently (one out of three two-year-periods).

What these projects have in common is the intention to enlarge the Security Council composition to the strongest states and to entrust to them the representation of the interests of the smaller states belonging to the same region. So Germany would represent the Benelux countries, the Scandinavian ones and those of Central-Eastern Europe, Japan the Far East countries and part of the Pacific area, and so on.

The states that are most actively committed to changing the composition of the Security Council are those defeated in the Second World War. It must be remembered that Japan, Gernlany and Italy, just because they are classed second, third and fifth among the states contributing most to the UN budget, are asking for the recognition of a status corresponding to their contribution. The two proposals trying to modify the Council composition to these states’ advantage are proportioned to the ambitions respectively of the two big economic powers (Germany and Japan), and to those of a medium pwer, like Italy, which cannot aspire to a permanent seat.

The plan to assign a permanent seat to Germany and which corresponded to the objective of reaching a quick solution to the problem of the Security Council reform (the so-called quick fix), supported by the United States, proved to be not very realistic, and was dropped. It would have strengthened the supremacy of the North over the South of the world and would moreover have given Western Europe three seats and hence an entirely disproportionate weight. Similar difficulties beset the second project, now supported by the United States because the Latin American, Asian and African countries are not willing to let the biggest countries of their respective continents represent them.

All these solutions (including that regarding the institution of the semi-permanent members category) arouse the hostility of those left out, particularly of those most qualified to a seat in that body. They reflect the principles of domination and inequality that have shaped the present Security Council structure, but are by now inadequate to meet the present needs of the world and incompatible with the objectives of equality and justice that are becoming paramount in international relations.

The best way to achieve an equitable reform of the Security Council is that involving the formation of regional groupings of states. The reorganization of the world order on the basis of these groupings of states represents not only an alternative to the power hierarchies determined by the difference between states of varying sizes, but also to the world fragmentation into a galaxy of small states and statelets, contrasted with very large states.

In fact, the huge disparity in the size of member-states represents the biggest obstacle to the good functioning of the UN. The constant increase in the number of member-states (there are currently 185, more than three times as many as in 1945) shows an alarming trend toward fragmentation and anarchy. It is necessary to let these regional groupings form within the General Assembly, and increase their cohesion, so that they can later express themselves in the Security Council.

The growing cohesion of the European Union as a player in the UN is closely correlated to the degree of advancement in the unification process. A recent survey on the voting behaviour of the European Union member-states within the UN showed a cohesion rate of 86 per cent.[28] Therefore the European Union already acts in the great majority of cases as a single entity in the UN. This means that the conditions to bestow on it a permanent seat in the Security Council are maturing.

In September 1997, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies carried out an inquiry into the UN, approving a document that recommends assigning the European Union a permanent seat in the Security Council. The Foreign Affairs Minister Dini, in his speech to the General Assembly on September 25, 1997, made reference to this proposal, preparing the ground for a solution different from the one so far supported by the Italian government. But the objective of the European seat in the Security Council is now part of the German government programme and of the programme worked out by the European People’s Party for the European elections. This means that the most influential German parties now share this objective. The growing agreement around this prospect is a consequence of the birth of the euro, this novelty whose significance the whole world is wandering about; it will greatly increase the capacity of the European Union to intervene in the world economy and will bring nearer the moment when Europe will speak with one voice on the political level also. The weakness of Europe’s international role is due to the fact that its political decisions on foreign and security policy are to be made unanimously. This is the vacuum that has to be filled to make possible the entrance of Europe into the Security Council. This would make it possible to recognize the right of every member state to be represented in the Security Council without discrimination between permanent and non-permanent members, and at the same time to solve the problem raised by Germany’s pretensions. Admitting Germany into the Security Council would be an incentive for it to develop an independent foreign policy with to the European Union and hence a spur to the revival of German nationalism.

The European Federation, precisely because it represents the spearhead of the regional unification processes now developing in the world, can take the initiative to reform the Security Council along regional lines. With its entrance into the Security Council, the European Federation will become for the rest of the world the model of reconciliation among nation-states and the vehicle to transmit to the other continents, still divided into nation-states, the impulse towards federal unification.

In conclusion, this solution offers three advantages: 1) all states (not only the strongest ones, as happens now) could be represented in the Security Council through their respective regional organisation, 2) the hegemony of superpowers and inequality among states could be progressively overcome by the reorganization of the UN into groupings of states with equivalent dimensions and powers, and in particular the developing countries of Africa, the Arab World, Latin America, Southern Asia and South-East Asia could find in their political and economic unification the way to free themselves of their condition of dependence, 3) the unjust discrimination between permanent and non-permanent members could be finally overcome by replacing the right of veto with the majority vote.

6.3 UN Democratization and World Parliament.

The most serious contradiction of our time is that the problems upon which the people’s destiny depends, like security, control of economy or protection of the environment, have taken on international dimensions, while democracy stops at the states borders. As a consequence, democratic institutions, having lost control of the strategic decisions, are limiting themselves to governing the secondary matters of political life. So the peoples are excluded from controlling problems which determine their future. We have to face problems of global dimension on which our fate depends, while the world is divided into independent and sovereign states which do not accept a superior government. The consequence of such a situation is that the world government belongs to the big powers (which operate on their own or in world-scale decision centres, like the UN Security Council, the G7 or the IMF) and to multinational financial and productive corporations.

The most revolutionary objective of our time is the democratization of the UN, which would take the world government away from the control of the big international power centres mentioned above and would put it in the hands of the people of the world. It is a long term objective that can only be reached gradually. But now is the time to seriously consider it, to identify the direction of the path leading to the democratic government of the world.

After the recent extraordinary advancement of democracy in Latin America, in most of the ex-communist world and in Asia, the democratization of the UN no longer appears a distant goal. As a matter of fact in the UN General Assembly, for the first time in history, there is a majority of democratic States and even China has started economic and social reforms that can take it gradually to democracy.

The creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly is the first step on the way to UN democratization. The easiest way so far identified to create an embryo of a world parliament is the one suggested by article 22 of the UN charter, which provides for the creation of “a subsidiary body” of the General Assembly, as deemed necessary to fulfil its functions, without adopting the amendment procedure, requiring unanimity of the permanent Security Council members and a two-thirds majority of member-states. Such an assembly could evolve, according to the European Parliament model, to the point of turning the General Assembly into a world parliament. The Joint Assembly of the Lomé Convention and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, which include representatives of several continents, show that it is possible to create a similar body within the UN. Ever since it was published for the first time in 1992, the world federalist project to institute a UN Parliamentary Assembly has been discussed and often supported during debates regarding UN reform and Global Governance. Here it is worthwhile at least mentioning the favourable resolutions approved by the Canadian Parliament in 1993 and by the European Parliament in 1994. But the magazines, politicians, intellectuals and NGO’s that have declared themselves in favour of the project are countless.

We have to ask ourselves now if it is necessary, as some claim, that all UN member-states must have a democratic regime before a campaign to create a UN Parliamentary Assembly. The fact that the political regime of every state in the world does not yet have a democratic structure, does not constitute an obstacle for initiating a campaign for the democratization of the UN. Although in theory democracy at national level must precede that at world level, in history the two processes do overlap. The action for the democratization of the European Community started when much of Europe was under fascist and communist regimes. The completion of European unification and its full democratization are nearer today just because those objectives have been on the political agenda for fifty years, ever since the Community was formed by six states.

The Forum og global civil society, which should hold a meeting of non-governmental international organizations before the 55^th session of the General Assembly in the year 2000, to Kofi Annan’s proposal, may represent the start of the UN democratization process. It represents recognition of the NGO’s role in world politics and a vehicle that will give a voice to international civil society, particularly if, as has been proposed by many, it becomes a permanent institution. The Forum of Civil Society, an assembly lacking any real democratic representativity, as the expression of the NGO’s and not of the people’s will, may be compared to medieval parliaments, in which the social orders were represented, not yet the people. And just as these had a function to limit the power of the absolute sovereign, the Forum of Civil Society will limit the absolute power of the sovereign states governing the UN. In conclusion, as the medieval parliaments are a distant ancestor of the present ones, so the Forum of Civil Society may be an institution anticipating the world parliament.

The European Federation, as a laboratory of international democracy, will become the leading country of this new political formula and will tend to extend this experiment to the world level, that is to promote the democratization of the United Nations.

6.4 The Expansion of the Governing Functions of the Secretariat-General.

The UN architecture, reformed along democratic lines, will give shape to a bicameral legislative system composed of the council of the great world regions (the Upper Chamber) and by the world parliament (the Lower Chamber). As far as the governing functions are concerned, they will be performed by the office of the Secretariat-General. So far this body has been subordinate to the choices of the Big Five which hold permanent seats in the Security Council. The UN democratization process will progressively reduce its subordination to the Security Council, so that it could receive its investiture (and if necessary no-confidence) from the world parliament.

It may be supposed that the Secretary-General will perform the role of Prime Minister, while the various specialized UN organizations will perform the functions of ministries: for instance, the WTO will be the ministry of international trade, the FAO the ministry of agriculture, the WHO the ministry of health, the ILO the ministry of labour, the ITU the ministry of telecommunications, the IMF the ministry of finances and the BIS the central world bank.

Control of the global economy, overcoming the North-South gap, sustainable development and the assurance of general security all require a strengthening of the UN Secretariat-General as the potential world government, by assigning it its own resources and by creating a corps of volunteers for emergency military intervention. Of course the realization of this project will meet the opposition of the forces of national conservatism. It is probable however that the European Federation, having itself grown out of overcoming national sovereignty, will be more inclined than other states to bestow new competences on the United Nations.

7. The Crisis of Political Parties, the New Revolutionary Movement and the Role of Organised Federalism.

The great revolutionary transformations which are the milestones of mankind’s progress in history, have never been promoted by the established powers. The latter try to govern the new course of events with the old, fixed mental and ideological patterns and with the old instruments of power. Revolutionary change, which creates new institutions and higher forms of political coexistence, is always the result of new social forces bursting onto the political stage. These forces provide a vehicle for new cultures, new values and new political institutions.

While the political parties have lost the force of attraction and capacity for mobilisation they once had, no longer succeeding in motivating commitment among young people, all over the world a non-governmental movement has grown up. This expresses itself outside traditional channels and political representation, and is the expression of a new dimension of political participation. It operates at all levels of political life (but more efficiently in local communities and at the international level, where the limitations of the established powers are more serious) in the sectors of peace, human rights, international justice, aid for development, the environment, cultural heritage, education, health, and so on.

The decline of the political parties is a consequence of the crisis of the state. Faced with the globalisation of social, economic and political life, national power is a standpoint from which it is impossible to see reality as it is and master it. Political parties are prisoners of the nation-states: like boats in a stormy sea, they find themselves in the trough of the wave, where they cannot see the horizon. In the suffocating confines of the nation-states, the process of political decision-making is reduced to the control of secondary aspects of political life and loses any meaningful relation with the real processes. Here lies the main root of the decadence of the moral and intellectual quality of the ruling class. When, in the debate among political parties, the great goals, those which make it possible to think of the future, are gone, politics deteriorates progressively into a mere power play which alienates the most dynamic and vital energies in society. For this reason, the political parties represent politics without a future.

On the other hand, the movements of civil are expressions of a commitment that, in its intensity and richness, is no less than that which once characterised active participation in the political parties. Particularly those which have set up an international organisation have established a meaningful attitude to the great problems on which the future of mankind depends, and have made a decisive contribution to forming world public opinion. They have acquired the role of interlocutors of governments in international and diplomatic conferences. Even if they have only advisory powers, they exert a real influence on world politics, as is shown, for instance, by the role played by the peace movement in the decision to dismantle the Euro-missiles, and by the role played by the human rights movement in the formation of the ICC. Their limitation lies in the fact that have a sectoral perspective: each movement deals with one single problem. They are an expression of civil society, that is, that pre-political area of social life where individual interests assert themselves and clash, but which does not produce those mediating mechanisms between interests which result in the need to promote the common weal. The civil society movements therefore represent the future without politics.

In spite of their present decline, political parties will still be necessary in the future as a means to orient public opinion, to promote syntheses among the expectations of civil society and to propose political initiatives. However, in order to continue to fulfil these tasks, they will have to undergo a process of radical transformation. First of all, they will have to take on an international dimension, if they want to regain control of the great problems on which the future of mankind depends. But this will become possible only when supranational democratic institutions have formed, in which sovereign states are reduced to the level of member-states of regional federations, and later on, of the World Federation. Secondly, political parties will have to open themselves to outside reality, accepting the contribution of civil society movements. Party Congresses will become the meeting point between these movements and the occasion for a confrontation over general political prospects, and the electoral programme will be the moment of synthesis between various social expectations that will come together in the parties. To sum up, the civil society movements can be seen as a stage of a process which, at the beginning, has an exclusively social character, but tends to increase its political significance and ultimately leads to the formation of supranational parties and governments.

Let us now consider the real and potential relationship between international non-governmental organisations and organised federalism. The commitment of non-governmental organisations to peace, environment protection, international justice and human rights defence are the expression of an active engagenlent similar to that of federalists. They are the most genuine manifestation of the world unification movement and of the necessity, largely felt by young people, to deal with the great issues facing mankind. They are at present a varied mass of groups large and small, linked by a common situation (globalisation). It is a movement dragged by the current leading toward world unification, but lacking the instruments to rule this process. It is not yet aware of its institutional objectives, nor has it worked out a political strategy. It occupies the political scene and it is now an accepted partner in dialogue with governments. To the extent that it interprets new needs, and is the protagonist in a process tending to redefine the political life, it is the vanguard of international democracy. It is the embryo of a new revolutionary movement.

The great world conferences which, beginning with the Rio Conference in 1992 on the Environment and Development, have followed one another in the last few years, have shown which are the two protagonists that will promote the world unification process. On one hand there are governments, which are the of the expression of the diplomatic dimension of the process. They are able to start the process, but not to bring it to a conclusion, because they think of world unification in terms of collaboration among sovereign states. On the other hand there are the civil society movements, which represent the democratic aspect of the process. When they become aware of their political objectives and join together, they will turn into what could be rightly called the movement for peace and international democracy.

What characterises the federalist position with respect to the other two is that it questions state sovereignty, whilst both governments and the peace movement are prisoners of the culture of the past and think of the solution of world problems in terms of international co-operation, that is co-operation among sovereign states. This may be defined as mundialism. There is a clear similarity between mundialism and Europeanism, the historical force that supported the European unification movement. And as we distinguished three forms of Europeanism,[29] it is possible to do the same with mundialism: diffuse mundialism is the widespread attitude in public opinion favourable to world unification; organised mundialism is formed civil organisations of world-oriented inspiration as a whole; and organisable mundialism is that part of public opinion and ofcivil movements that may be influenced by the mundialist movement. The historic task that the World Federalist Movement must accomplish is to bring federalist awareness to the peace movement and to lead it towards the strengthening and democratisation of the UN.

In other terms the objective of the federalist strategy is to transform mundialism into federalism. The events that led to the institution of the ICC showed the WFM’s capacity to place itself at the head of approximately 300 NGOs, on this basis conditioning and influencing the proceedings of a world diplomatic conference. It is no exaggeration to state that the ICC would not have been established without the vast movement of public opinion that expressed itself in the Rome Conference through the NGOs.

The lesson to learn from this fact is that only a great coalition of forces of popular inspiration can break the resistance of the governments. The democratisation of the UN, conceived as a stage on the way to the World Federation, could be the common objective on which the peace movement and the federalist movement can converge.

[1] F. Rossolillo, “European Federation and World Federation”, The Federalist, XLI, 1999, n. 2, p. 76.

[2] M. Albertini, “Unire I’Europa per unire il mondo”, Il Federalista, XXII, 1980, n. 1-2, p. 5.

[3] I. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1983, p. 117.

[4] Our Global Neighbourhood, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. XVI.

[5] S. Pistone, “Alcune considerazioni sul rapporto tra unificazione europea e unificazione mondiale”, Dibattito federalista, XVI, 1998, n. 4, p. 24.

[6] “Moving Towards a World System of States”, The Federalist, XL, 1998, n. 3, p. 183.

[7] F. Rossolillo, op. cit., p. 88.

[8] S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996.

[9] M. Albertini, “La révision de la politique atlantique”, Le Fédéraliste, IX, 1967, n. 4, p. 173.

[10] This expression is taken from Lord Lothian: cf. Pacifism is not Enough, London, Oxford University Press, 1941, p. 45.

[11] A. Einstein, “Open Letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations”, published in the New York Times of 23 September 1947. Cf. O. Nathan, H Norden (eds.), Einstein on Peace, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1960, p. 443.

[12] J. Delors, “Notre Europe dans le village planète entre survie et déclin” Europe. Agence Internationale d’information pour la presse, XLI, 3 September 1993, p. 3.

[13] M. Long, “Livre blanc”, La Documentation française, 1994.

[14] Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, New York, Harper Collins, 1997.

[15] M. Albertini, “La force de dissuasion francese”, Il Federalista, II, 1960, n. 6, pp. 331-337.

[16] A. Spinelli, “La beffa del Mercato comune”, in L’Europa non cade dal cielo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1960, pp. 282-287.

[17] A. Spinelli, Rapporto sull’Europa, Milan, Comunità, 1965, p. 31.

[18] M. Albertini, “Le problème monétaire et le problème politique européen”, Le Fédéraliste, XIV, 1972, p. 90.

[19] J. Monnet, Mémoires, Paris, Fayard, 1976, p. 355.

[20] M. Albertini, “Tesi del XIV Congresso nazionale del MFE”, in Sì al referendum per la Costituente europea. Atti del XIV Congresso, Rome, 2-5 March 1989, Pavia, EDIF, 1989, p. 17.

[21] M. Albertini, “Le radici storiche e culturali del federalismo europeo”, in Storia del federalismo europeo, Turin, ERI, 1973, pp. 75-76.

[22] F. Rossolillo, op. cit., p. 98.

[23] H. Kelsen, Peace through Law, Chapel Hill, The University North Press, 1944, p. 5.

[24] Ibid., p. 12.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[27] T. Hobbes, Leviathan, first part, chap. XIII.

[28] L. Boselli, “The New International Subject: The Policy of the European Community in the UN System”, in SIOI, Prospects for Reform of the UN System, Padova CEDAM, 1993, p. 78.

[29] M. Albertini, “L’integrazione europea, elementi per un inquadramento”, in L’integrazione europea e altri saggi, Pavia, Il Federalista, 1965, pp. 88-89.


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