Draft Article: Hegemons and the World State

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Czernobog
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Draft Article: Hegemons and the World State

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Of my own devising, and posted in a separate thread because it isn't news.

Feel free to comment on, criticise, analyse, dissect, etc. this article as you wish.

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Hegemons and the World State


People, Hobbes said, are naturally brutish. In a state of what we might call anarchy or a State of Nature, their lives are 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'. While Hobbes may have been wrong about people, he was spot-on when talking about nations (I do not use the term 'nation-state' because it refers to a specific type of nation, made different from others by differences which will be discussed later on). As can be seen readily on the news, nations exist in a state of anarchy.

The laws of the UN, well-meaning as they are, are filled with loopholes, and the UN itself has little power. At war-crimes trials, generally only the losers are punished. Supranational organisations are weak and mean very little in practice. The question I ask is obvious – how to change this state of affairs?

It is now that we must look to the example of the Hegemon. I will take Imperial Rome as an example, along with the Chinese Empire, the British Empire, the Cold War period, and the current state of affairs.

The Roman Empire is an obvious example of a Hegemon. It lasted almost 2,000 years, from 27 BC to the year 1453. Its culture influenced the whole of Europe, its military power was unmatched in the Ancient World save perhaps by China. Yet it fell, as all empires inevitably do. Why?

Rome was struck by an excess of dynamism. The laws of succession were never formulated, the Praetorian Guard usually chose the Emperor themselves. A series of troubles begat the Crisis of the Third Century. And at the weakest point of the Empire Germanic tribes assaulted the weakened state. From that period onward the long decline began, until Constantinople fell in 1453 and with it all hope of recovery.

On the other side of Eurasia, China was struck by an excess of stability. For a thousand years China remained where it was, contemptuous of all foreign ‘barbarians’. The Late Ming began this policy of isolation; the Qing continued it, and by the time they began to try and modernise it was too little, too late. China collapsed into warlord states, and from the ashes the PRC arose.

The British Empire was unique among Hegemons, in that its domination was largely achieved by ‘soft’ or economic power. And as such its doom was caused by economics. The territories did not rebel – they simply became more trouble than they were worth. And the homeland never fell to invasion; it simply turned against the colonies.

The Cold War period is unprecedented in most of history, because there were for the first time multiple competing Hegemons on the world stage. The ancient world had been isolated; Rome and China had not competed directly because the vast stretches of Eurasia separated them – now new technologies made the world smaller, as it were, to the point where any given person in the US, a vast territory cutting across North America, was only separated from another by six degrees of separation. The Cold War ended with the collapse of one Hegemon – the Soviet Union – and began a period of uncertainty – which would be the next Hegemon, America or China? This uncertainty is still unresolved.

The current state of affairs is a fairly standard transitional period between Hegemons. It only remains to be seen whether China or America will rise.

Now onto the differences between types of nation. There are, when you get down to the most basic level, two types of nation. There is the multi-ethnic (though not always) ‘empire’ model, and the much more recent ethnic nation-state. For the Empire, we must look mostly to history.

Empires are typically centred on a strong leader. As Louis XIV said, “L’état, c’est moi” – “I am the state”. One can see this today in North Korea, little more than an absolute monarchy pretending to be republican. Some people have said that the troubles facing the Middle East today are a result of dynastic, as opposed to ethnic, politics. America is an Empire (although it is not dynastic) – there is no single ‘American’ ethnicity that dominates over all others. So was the Soviet Union, Austria-Hungary, Byzantium and many others.

The opposite is the mono-ethnic nation state. This is readily visible in the world today – one needs only look at Europe to see a patchwork of states dominated by one ethnicity.

The mono-ethnic state can easily devolve into a nightmare –for an obvious example, look at Germany from 1933 to 1945. But so can the Empire. The Stalinist Soviet Union was the closest thing to Nineteen-Eighty-Four’s Oceania the world has yet seen, and the world is glad that particular horror is only possible in fiction – Orwell’s state was doomed to fall to any objective observer.

Now back to the Hegemon. Hegemons, by their very existence, ensure peace and stability for as long as they are strong – the Pax Romana was not a fable. When they become weak or fall, all bets are off. The fall of the Roman Empire was immediately followed by the Dark Ages – a period where Hobbes’ truisms were never more correct. There have been a series of similar peaces too long to list here, all proving the same thing – that a strong Hegemon generates peace. One may also look to history – the primary reason no great war has been fought in 20th Century North America was and is the utter dominance in all matters of the United States.

Now on to the World State. As a corollary to the above, I propose – a single strong Hegemon controlling the planet’s entire land surface will ensure world peace as long as it survives. This hypothetical nation is the World State of H.G Wells’ dream.

One thing must be maintained about the World State – its creation must be peaceful, and it must occur, for in the nuclear age, one mistake will mean the end of civilisation, or at least a huge slide into barbarism. A World State with a monopoly on the use of force will prevent such errors.

National identities will not be removed – a German will think of himself as simultaneously German and a part of the World State, just as the Texan thinks of himself as simultaneously Texan and American. Indeed, one can see the World State as a gigantic, more integrated version of the European Union, which is already arguably a Hegemon. Ideologies, cultures, etc. will be left unchanged, except where they conflict with human rights, common decency, and a high standard of living.

The World State is currently unworkable due to the unwillingness of nations to embark on the grand project, but it must be wrought, if not for us, then for all our descendants.
You have ruled this galaxy for ten thousand years.
You have little of account to show for your efforts.
Order. Unity. Obedience.
We taught the galaxy these things.

And we shall do so again.
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