December 1987

"We the People of the World, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure planetary Tranquility, provide for global security, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Federation of the Planet Earth."

Is there time? Dare we hope?

Two hundred years ago in Philadelphia, the weakness of the Articles of Confederation was recognized. From the end of the revolution in 1783, lawlessness had reigned among the newly independent thirteen states. New York and New Jersey shot it out in New York harbor over the right to tax incoming ships; Maryland and Virginia threatened war over the Potomac; Connecticut settlers waged three wars with the state of Pennsylvania. So in 1787 a new Constitution was drafted, based on the federal principle, which allowed each state to rule itself internally but granted to the federal government the authority to resolve disputes between them.

Today, faced with major problems of a global nature (massive hunger, dwindling natural resources, exploding populations, pollution, conventional wars and the threat of ultimate, full-scale nuclear warfare), it is apparent to many that international lawlessness cannot be endured much longer if life on this planet is to survive. Isn't it odd that while we insist on the need for local, state and national governments, we tolerate (nay, many defend) anarchy on the international level? The federal principle, so effective in establishing and maintaining the United States and a number of other nations, the principle so revered, is just as valid when applied on a global scale and even more vital.

The most obvious mechanism for establishing enforceable world law is a strengthened, restructured United Nations. As presently chartered, the U.N. is a confederation of member states, with no power to tax its members for support, no power to enforce its resolutions, no power to enforce its judicial decisions, no power to move against members who violate its rules and no power to protect any nation from aggression by another.

Under an umbrella of world federalism, each nation would transfer part of its external sovereignty to the global authority, relieving it of the need to maintain burdensome military machinery. The world federation would have the power to settle international disputes and solve international problems through enforceable world law...