#continentalism

“We must make the United Nations continue to work, and to be a going concern, to see that difficulties between nations may be settled just as we settle difficulties between States here in the United States. When Kansas and Colorado fall out over the waters in the Arkansas River, they don’t go to war over it; they go to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the matter is settled in a just and honorable way. There is not a difficulty in the whole world that cannot be settled in exactly the same way in a world court.”

-Harry S. Truman (The S. stood for nothing)

Somewhere around 1100-1300 AD (100-300 APS), five chiefdoms in what would become the State of New York, the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk, were in a state of perpetual war with each other. A shaman, possibly of the Huron nation, Deganawidah, along an Onondaga orator named Ayenwatha (who’s name would be later corrupted to Hiawatha), would call a meeting with the chiefs of the five nations. Deganawidah, speaking through Ayenwatha due a speech impediment, proposed the nations band together to end their warring and ultimately become stronger. The chiefs are skeptical, so Deganawidah gets out some arrows. He takes a single one and snaps it in half. He then takes five arrows together in a bunch, and tries to break all of them at once, but he can’t. Four of the five chiefs are convinced, but not Tododaho of the Onondaga. Deganawidah says that the main Onondaga village can be the headquarters of the new confederacy and its representative will have the title Tododaho. That’s enough for Tododaho (when arguments fail, go with bribery!), and the League of Peace and Power was born (a.k.a. the Haudenosaunee (“the People of the Longhouse”), the Iroquois Confederacy, the Iroquois League).

Deganawidah composed a constitution for the confederacy, the Great Law of Peace, outlining a system of government for the newly joined nations. There was a council composed of the Tododaho and 50 sachems chosen from the fives nations by each nation’s clan leaders (who were women by the way). When issues arose, the Tododaho would call together the Council to find a resolution. Each sachem was succeeded by his nephew, unless the nephew was unfit and any of the sachems could be impeached if the clan doesn’t like what he’s doing. Each nation had a different number of sachems, but the Council votes had to be unanimous, so the unequal numbers were irrelevant in terms of decision-making. Each nation could govern their own internal affairs, but the Council controlled the affairs between each of the five nations, as well as foreign affairs (with the exception of declarations of war; that was up to each individual nation). In the event of huge emergencies, the Council had to talk directly to the people to let them decide.

Deganawidah, now known as the Great Peacemaker, was successful. The five nations had ended their wars and were unified. The League would become the most powerful native state in the Americas following the fall of the Aztec Triple Alliance and the Tawantinsuyu (“The Four United Provinces” or Inca Empire). During the Beaver Wars in the 1600′s, the Iroquois League, in an attempt to gain a monopoly on the fur trade with the Europeans, would defeat most of the neighboring native tribes and chiefdoms, and even fought the French to a draw (most other Native American groups were not able to have that level of success against a European power). Through the war, they carved out a territory consisting the northeast quarter of what would become the United States. Later, beginning in 1713, the Tuscarora nation of North Carolina would move north and were admitted into the League. The six nations would stay unified and free from war with each other until the American Revolution, when the six nations would split over which side, British or Rebel, to ally with (Washington would quickly send a force to crush the British-aligned Iroquois, so it’s unclear as to whether the League would’ve stayed together).

In 1744, after some brief skirmishes along their borders, the Iroquois League and the Colonies of Virginia and Maryland agree to a peace treaty, with the Iroquois selling their holdings in both Virginia and Maryland to each colony. At the treaty signing, Canasatego, an Onondaga diplomat, gives his colonial neighbors some friendly advice: “We have one thing further to say, and that is We heartily recommend Union and a Good Agreement between you our Brethren. Never disagree, but preserve a strict Friendship for one another, and thereby you as well as we will become the Stronger. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable, this has given us great weight and Authority with our Neighboring Nations. We are a Powerfull confederacy, and by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power; therefore, whatever befalls you, never fall out with one another.”

In 1754, the 7 Years’ War begins. Most of the world is caught up in it. In the United States, the American theater of the war is referred to as the French and Indian War (Native Americans fought on both sides, the Huron and Algonquin tribes sided with the French, the Iroquois League, British allies since the Beaver Wars, fought on their side). Ben Franklin, fearing the French-aligned Native American threat to the British colonies, proposed they band together under a single government under his Albany Plan. He even drew up a morbid little cartoon to push the idea. This colonial unity was a new idea, and said to be inspired by the Iroquois League. Ben Franklin himself said, “It would be a very strange thing, if six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union … and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies.” The debate about how much influence the Iroquois had rages on. But at the very least, seeing the League shows the Americans that a union can be made.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, rebel leaders starting musing about colonial unity again, this time to defend against the British threat instead of Native American. In 1776, the Continental Congress began drafting the Articles of Confederation, partly based on Franklin’s Albany Plan, and it was ratified in 1777. This would be the first constitution of the United States of America. Aside from empires and hedgemonies, there are three kinds of superstates: federations, confederations (or confederacies or leagues), and unitary states. In unitary states, like the United Kingdom, the central government has full control over its member states. In confederations, the member states retain most of their sovereignty, with central government having very little control. A federation has a balance between the power of the member states and the central government. The US Confederacy, built on the want of each member state to retain sovereignty, was weak, ineffectual, and poor, and was replaced by the current US Constitution in 1789, the beginning of the United States as a federation, as it still is today. The Constitution contains what is called the Supremacy Clause, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” Our central, federal government is the highest power of the state.

Not everyone was happy with having a federation. A stronger central government, meant the member states lose a lot of their power and sovereignty. They no longer have full rule over themselves. The anti-federalist movement was strong in the South, who felt the federal government tipped power in favor of the North, and industry-heavy North was not in favor of slavery. Not to be slaves of a central government that might take away their slaves, they argued for states’ rights, for their state governments to be able to ignore the federal government if they so choose. The federal government said, “Yeah right”, the Southern states secede from the Union (based on super-rigged elections by separatist firebrands, and even despite the rigging, the vote to secede in each state tended to be like 51%) and attack federal forces at Fort Sumter. The rebel states form a confederacy, the Confederate States of America and do battle with the United States of America in a civil war.

US/Union/Federal troops would often speak of preserving the Union, all the states agreed to unify in a federation and the individual state governments have no right to leave that union and take their populaces with them. Confederate leaders often spoke of fighting for states’ rights. President of the CSA, Jefferson Davis, said, “The government of the United States is a compact between the sovereign members who formed it; and if there be one feature common to all the colonies planted upon the shores of America, it was the steady assertion of, and uncompromising desire for, community independence.”

Many Confederate generals, being former US Army soldiers, were pro-Union, but couldn’t agree to fight against their own state. To them, their states were sovereign countries, their homelands. Their loyalty was to their states first, and the United States second. As Colonel Robert E. Lee said in 1861, “With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling and loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State — with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be used — I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword.” As for most Confederate soldiers, they spoke of going to war because it’s so, so easy to draft poor farmers and send them into battle.

The United States defeated the Confederate States and ever since, the supremacy of the federal government has gone largely unchallenged. The war decided that the US would stay a federation. The states’ rights movement is largely marginalized. For us today, our loyalty is to the United States first, and our individual states second. This all has been taught to us and reinforced so much without us even knowing. The word ‘state’ means a sovereign entity. The United States of America is a state. But to us, a state is a section of a bigger power. I’ve befuddled so many people by using country and nation and state interchangeably (it’s always great see (I’ll add too, country used to refer mostly to the land, as in, “This is nice country”, and nation referred to groups of people, many Native American groups are called nations, but were organized in tribes and chiefdoms, not states). The Civil War was so decisive, it smashed the patriotism there was for Virginia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, etc. The idea that our respective states are secondary in power is thoroughly ingrained in us. I like that. It’s the beginning of the end of that old tribal mindset, of us versus them. The end of patriotism and the beginning of cosmopolitanism.

From 1914-1918, World War One happened. It was big and bloody and stupid. After the war, many states got together and formed the League of Nations, and international organization with the purpose of preventing another huge war from happening again. Its members would be bonded together, mutually disarm, solved international disputes through courts, and create a lasting age of world peace. Then World War Two happened. The League had been indecisive and crappy and most of the world’s states weren’t even members.

After WW2, a new international organization was formed, with the intention of fixing the problems the League had. This was the United Nations. In terms of getting full membership, the UN has been incredibly successful. Of the world’s (sort of) 197 states, 193 are members of the UN. Three of the four nonmembers (The Holy See, Niue, and the Cook Islands) aren’t members by choice. The fourth, Palestine, would like to be a member, but that’s a tricky situation. But overall, the world has banded together into a confederacy, a weak confederacy, but still, a single government nonetheless. We should all be ecstatic. Just as the Iroquois and the US became stronger and ended war among members by joining under a single government, the whole world has finally done so and have the chance of reaping the same rewards.

The UN has problems though. Five members, the US, the UK, China, Russia, and France, have permanent membership in the UN Security Council Court and can veto any resolution, and so, wield a disproportionate amount of power in relation to every other member state. There are large scale debates going on amongst the members states, freedom of religion vs. free speech, for example, between Muslim and Western nations respectively, leaving the UN as a whole in awkward positions sometimes when forced to pick a side. In 1984, the court case Nicaragua v. United States was decided by the International Court of Justice, the judicial branch of the UN. The US was found guilty of violating international law by supporting Nicaraguan rebels and mining in Nicaraguan waters and was ordered to pay reparations. The US decided not to pay, saying the Court had no jurisdiction, and later blocked any enforcement of the ruling through the Security Council.

I think the root to these problems is that the joining has happened too fast, having two negative effects. 1) We still have that mentality that our individual states should be sovereign. 2) There’s not enough common ground between all the member states. It’s one thing for 5 chiefdoms or 13 former colonies to band together, but for 193 states, it becomes very unwieldy. In both the Iroquois and the Americans’ cases, the member states, being close neighbors, shared language and religion and a common culture in general. Now literally every culture has been joined together.

There was another confederacy that formed from the ashes of World War Two, the European Union. Most of the European states would join. The result has been the most peaceful years in Western Europe’s history since the Pax Romana in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, as well as the EU currently being the biggest economy in the world by both nominal GDP and GDP PPP. They have become stronger. They have stopped fighting each other. Africa and South America, seeing the EU’s success, have followed suit with their own continental unions. I think these continental unions are a good intermediate step. It keeps the unification between neighbors, so there’s a lot of common history and culture. Enough for them to get along at least. We should keep the UN throughout the process, but it’s more likely to work I think, with a dozen members that 193.

States have increased in size over time, from the ancient city-states to the federations and continental confederacies of today. Unification into a strong global federation may be inevitable. Hopefully it is. We’ll be stronger. Warfare will be reduced and maybe even eliminated. We can help that process though. We must be open to the idea. We must start thinking of the higher governments, the UN or maybe a continental union, as supreme, and our respective states as just subsections of those higher governments. We need to see ourselves as citizens of the world first, Americans or whatever second, New Jerseyans or whatever third. Its ok to be sentimental of your homeland, but remember, the Earth is also your homeland.

Continentalism seems problematic to me, for a few reasons. 

For one, all of the continents have a lot of differences, and while Continentalism is in favour of preserving those differences, it doesn't preserve any sort of equality.

Not all of the continents are equal, and I mean that, of course, in the sense that the western world is much more advanced in terms of, in the very least, technology, but there's more than that. What sort of government do you think would arise out of a united South America, or united Africa? United Asia? 

I mean, you could argue that Australia, the USA (or NATO) and the EU would be dominating enough that they could create some sort of cohesion to restrict their continents into keeping to themselves, if not outright rule them. But what sort of governing bodies pre-exist to create a political distinction in Asia, Africa or South America? 

The current impacts of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism have been integral to wasting away the cultures of the majority of countries in the world, and that is frustrating. And as much as the western world needs to refrain from that, to try and impose a sort of arbitrary continental separation between  humans, as I understand continentalism to entail, would be similarly racist. 

Communicating with other countries and giving them some more choices would be much more ideal.  That doesn't even have to entail globalization, just, not an arbitrary separation of people by continent. 

The bottom line though, is I am not entirely sure how continentalism could really work as an overarching lens to understand a large number of situations though. Because if implying the differences in continents are so heartfelt is not inherently racist, implying that you understand all the differences per continent, per country and per community, that you would need to understand to fairly advocate for continentalism, is most definitely in danger of being racist. 

More on the difficulty of finding a structure to run the continentalist governments, these continents could be a cooking pot for nationalism. And if that weren't the case, there would have to be a world government to peacefully stabilize anything with relationships like that, not simply because of how the governments would be continental, but because of how the governments were specifically built up by continentalist ideology. And creating a world government would pretty much contradict the point of continentalism.