Supranational political systems: empires, leagues, confederations, or federations formed between nation-states on either a temporary or a permanent basis in pursuit of common goals transcending national boundaries, authority, or interests.

Girding Together

Did nuclear scientist Harold Urey have the answer? He contended that “there is no constructive solution to the world’s problems except eventually a world government capable of establishing law over the entire surface of the earth.” But not everyone is so sure that this would work. In the past, effective cooperation among members of international bodies has been practically unattainable. Note an outstanding example.

After World War I, on January 16, 1920, a supranational organization, the League of Nations, was established with a membership of 42 countries. Rather than being structured as a world government, it was intended to be a world parliament, designed to promote world unity, chiefly by settling disputes between sovereign nation-states, thus preventing war. By 1934 membership had grown to 58 nations.

The League, however, was founded on shaky ground. “The First World War had ended on a note of high expectations, but disillusionment was not long in coming,” explains The Columbia History of the World. “The hopes centering on the League of Nations proved illusory.”

On September 1, 1939, World War II began, plunging the League into a pit of inactivity. Although not formally dissolved until April 18, 1946, it died, to all intents and purposes, as a “teenager,” not even 20 years old. Before its official burial, it had already been replaced by another supranational organization, the United Nations, formed on October 24, 1945, with 51 member states. How would this new girding attempt fare?

A Second Try

Some people say that the League failed because it was defective in design. Another view places the main blame not on the League but on the individual governments that were reluctant to give it proper support. No doubt there is some truth in both views. At any rate, the founders of the United Nations tried to learn from the ineffectiveness of the League and to remedy some of the weaknesses the League had manifested.

Writer R. Baldwin calls the United Nations “superior to the old League in its capacity to create a world order of peace, cooperation, law, and human rights.” Of a truth, some of its specialized agencies, among them WHO (World Health Organization), UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), have pursued commendable goals with a measure of success. Also seeming to indicate that Baldwin is correct is the fact that the United Nations has now been operating for 45 years, over twice as long as the League.

A major UN accomplishment was in the hastening of decolonization, at least making “it slightly more orderly than it would have been otherwise,” according to journalist Richard Ivor. He also claims that the organization “helped limit the cold war to the battleground of rhetoric.” And he praises the “pattern of global functional cooperation” that it helped produce.

Of course, some argue that the threat of nuclear warfare did more to prevent the Cold War from heating up than did the United Nations. Rather than keeping the promise embodied in its name, the uniting of nations, the reality is that this organization has often done nothing more than serve as a middleman, trying to keep disunited nations from flying at one another’s throats. And even in this role of referee, it has not always been successful. As author Baldwin explains, like the old League, “the United Nations is powerless to do more than an accused member state graciously permits.”

This less-than-wholehearted support on the part of UN members is at times reflected in their unwillingness to provide money to keep the organization operating. The United States, for example, withheld its dues from FAO because of a resolution considered critical of Israel and pro-Palestinian. Later, this major UN financial backer agreed to pay enough to retain its vote but still left more than two thirds of the debt unpaid.

Varindra Tarzie Vittachi, a former deputy director of UNICEF, wrote in 1988 that he refuses “to join the general lynching party” of those who disavow the United Nations. Calling himself “a loyal critic,” he admits, however, that a widespread attack is being made by people who say that “the United Nations is a ‘light that failed,’ that it has not lived up to its own high ideals, that it has not been able to carry out its peacekeeping functions and that its development agencies, with a few noble exceptions, have not justified their existence.”

The chief weakness of the United Nations is revealed by author Ivor, when he writes: “The UN, whatever else it can do, will not abolish sin. It can make international sinning rather more difficult, however, and it will make the sinner more accountable. But it has not yet succeeded in changing the hearts and minds either of the people who lead countries or of the people who make them up.”​—Italics ours.

Thus, the defect in the United Nations is the same as the defect in all forms of human rule. Not one of them is capable of instilling within people the unselfish love for right, the hatred for wrong, and the respect for authority that are prerequisites to success. Think of how many global problems could be alleviated if people were willing to be guided by righteous principles! For example, a news report about pollution in Australia says that the problem exists “not through ignorance but through attitude.” Calling greed a fundamental cause, the article says that “government policy has exacerbated the problem.”

Imperfect humans simply cannot form perfect governments. As writer Thomas Carlyle noted in 1843: “In the long-run every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom.” Who can argue against logic like that?