World Peace and World Democracy

Peace and prosperity everywhere. This is what everyone wants. But how? Since we know that we cannot rely on simple wishful thinking, i.e., "everybody should be good", the only alternative remains a system of law to regulate conflicts. This is valid at every level of society, a village, a city, a state, a country, a continent or the world. Even conquerors who went to war to extend their territory famously resorted to law to maintain stability, which is the condition for peace and prosperity (for example the Romans, the Mongols, and closer to us the US states uniting in the late 18th century or the German states uniting in the late 19th century)

But while everyone accepts that law is necessary to have a just order where grievances can be resolved peacefully rather than by force, there is a strange reluctance to apply this principle at the world level. While democratically-made law exists at every other level, there is no democratic law-making for the world. At the same time, people complain about arms race, insecurity, nuclear weapons etc.

In the end, most reasonable people endorse the idea of a world democracy once it is explained to them, one with powers limited to global or basic issues (e.g. global environmental problems, prevention of war, and basic human rights). But while millions agree, the usual response is "But it is not realistic because other people don't agree". This is a negative self-fulfilling prediction. If a clever public relations campaign were conducted for this simple and compellingly logical idea, the latent public support would explode and feed an ever-increasing virtuous circle of increased support for the concept."

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