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Why have the World Federalists Failed?
Keynote Speech at the Joint Annual Meeting of
World Federalist Association and World Federalists of Canada
by Troy A.P. Davis, Executive Vice-president of the
World Citizen Foundation
and Secretary of the 50th Anniversary of the popular mandate for
World Citizenship (1998-2000).
30 August 1998, Toronto
Thank you Mr. Chairman/Madame Chair, I want to thank you all for having me here today, and especially Mike Kronisch who, without having ever met me, was very supportive of having me as a
guest speaker. I hope he won't regret it after he's heard me! Thanks also to Tim Barner and Fergus Watt for finding such a wonderful space on the programme. I am also honoured and I must say quite intimidated to speak in such
august company, especially just before the Presidents of WFC and of WFA: Dr. Lois Wilson and John Anderson, who have so much more experience than I do, and who are surely much greater diplomats. I feel probably like a beginning
band feels when opening for Michael Jackson and Madonna. No resemblance to Madonna or Michael Jackson implied of course! Though I am not the youngest participant in this annual meeting, nor am I even a member of the WFA Youth
Caucus, I feel that in a sense, I represent the new generation on this last plenary panel. So while I may bring a fresh perspective on old ideas, I also ask for your indulgence as this is my very first major speech in English since
I started working for the World Citizen Foundation earlier this year, and I have still have much to learn, as indeed I have during these last two days. I am a brand new member of WFA but with some long-standing
connections. One of them is through Frank Bourne, who has been a member of WFA since 1947, and serves on the Board, and whom I have known for many years. I am very pleased that Frank also serves on the Executive
Committee of the World Citizen Foundation which I have the honour and privilege to lead. Another connection with the World Federalists is through another one of your most long-standing and outstanding members, WFA and WFM
Vice-president Barbara Walker. Barbara was my high-school counsellor who after hearing my wish to go to MIT to study physics - my intent was to invent teleportation and get the Nobel Prize in Physics! - foresaw that my special
contribution to the world would not necessarily be in physics, and therefore she recommended I also apply to Harvard. Turns out she was right. I ended up going to Harvard and majored in physics there. But though I loved physics, I
was interested in so many other things that I never made a good physicist. So thank you Barbara from saving me from a life as a mediocre physicist in some second-rate lab. Another connection is though Bill Pace, whom I saw
regularly during the last 5 years at the meetings of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, when I represented at the time Business and Industry on the Steering Committee of NGO/Major Groups. In Germany, Stefan
Mögle-Stadel, the President of WFM-Germany is a very good friend of mine and we work together to promote our common ideas. Finally, Peter Davidse, the Executive Director of the Dutch World Federalists was just appointed to the
Board of the World Citizen Foundation. And of course many of my world citizen friends are world federalists as well. Let me start my remarks by patting ourselves on the back. What are we doing right? Well, we apply many of the
modern strategies and marketing techniques which are used in today's world. In fact, we are probably light-years ahead, thanks to the talented staff of WFA and WFM, than 99% of all NGOs. For instance, we build coalitions around
specific themes, thus multiplying the impact of the message. We segment the market by producing many different brochures geared to different themes or target groups, WFA uses the latest fundraising techniques and fundraising
possibilities allowed by law. WFA, WFM and WFC produce well-written and professional looking 2 colour brochures. We know how to motivate the troops as we have witnessed this weekend with awards, parties etc. BUT, and this is a
big but. Why, as John MacCready said at the inter-generational dialogue on Friday night, is progress so slow? Indeed, why today, when the Cold War is over, when we have seen our planet from space, when global environmental
problems have both spurred the development of what is nearly world law and have accelerated the development of the one-word idea, when television and the Internet allow instant communications, when economic globalization is not
only a hidden reality, but in the mainstream press, in many political campaigns and is a fixture in public discourse, when the 2 year celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the World Citizenship movement are taking place, when the
International Criminal Court finally was conceived, and when Koffi Annan himself calls for a Millennium Peoples Assembly, indeed why aren't we making more progress when it looks as if the historical conditions for our cause have
never seemed so good? That is the crux of the issue. My messages today will be quite simple. To make it easier on you, I will announce them right at the start and then go back to some of them. Message 1.
To achieve our vision of a peaceful world governed by democratic world law, we need to have a quantum leap in the numbers of people supporting us. I.e. from the low thousands to the millions and tens of millions. Message 2.
We have a historically unique opportunity to really achieve within the next decade our goal of a world democracy because of the convergence of many factors, including technological and economic globalization and all
the activities and events around the Millennium. Even such a glitch as the Y2K problem has a positive angle for us. Message 3. We have organized very well, but the results of our activities have been a drop in
the bucket of what is needed, and our "market share" as measured by the percentage of members with respect to the US population has in fact declined by about 95% since our heyday in the late 1940's. How come we have such
a low membership base today, when the Cold War is over and the objective historical conditions for reaching our goal have never been better? Please think about this. We must be doing something fundamentally wrong.
Message 4.
We must be ready to reconsider our most cherished assumptions and our personal attachments to these assumptions, in order to regain market share. And I would suggest as one essential step to work much more closely with World Citizens who are our closest brothers and sisters in arms. I mean, how do you think any serious donor who wishes to give or leave a few millions, or any serious journalist who does background checks would react when they discover that the movement which pretends to seek to unify the world is at war with itself? Well, you can kiss these millions and these friendly articles goodbye.
Message 5. The major reason World Federalists have survived is NOT through their better message, but through their excellent and vastly improved organization which has consistently raised what we in business
call 'productivity'. But this improved professionalism did not - and of course never will be able to - prevent the above-mentioned decline which is really due to a lack of vision, a laxity in intellectual rigour, the constant mixed
signals we send out about the UN as well as the wrong name for our product,. And my last message is an offer to WFM as a whole - and now I speak not as a member of WFA but as Executive Vice-president of the World Citizen
Foundation. Let's jointly launch at The Hague Appeal Conference next May, on the model of the global coalition to Ban Landmines, or on the model of the global coalition for the International Criminal Court, a new Global Coalition
called "Global Coalition World Democracy 2010". Not only will this new global coalition take us finally back to our own roots, but by creating an open vehicle in which any part of civil society - as well as friendly
governments - can participate, we will be able to generate the practical roadmap to a world democracy, a roadmap which was sorely missing up until now. By having this concrete roadmap of which the Hague Appeal for Peace and the
Millennium People's Assembly I submit should be the first two important milestones, we will be able to inspire and galvanize again the energies and enthusiasm not only of youth and of disenchanted voters world-wide, but also of
large potential funders. A simple rule of fundraising from extremely rich people is the following: offer them a strategic plan, and a plausible roadmap for where you want to be which will have the highest impact for their money.
Small visions do not inspire people like Soros, Turner and others like them. It is important to understand that even the staunchest supporters of our idea will not give us big money if they don't see us, the proponents of this idea
be at the same time visionary but with a plausible roadmap. Where are the Soroses, the Turners and the Gates on our donor's list? At least the first two seem to have the same goal as we do. So why don't they support
us? I submit that it is because they don't trust that we have the right combination of guts, flawless execution and vision. They made their money with that combination, and they instinctively respect more someone else like them
than, in essence, the bunch of well-meaning and gentle, but totally irrelevant crackpots they see us as. That is not what I want to be in life! Before I go further, allow me please to backtrack a little and give you a bit more of
my background. Many of you know either personally or have heard the name of my father Garry Davis. My father became an enthusiastic World Federalist right after World War II when Cord Meyer was President. But he quickly became
frustrated with the slow progress of events in an age when a third world war to be fought with nuclear weapons was not a far-fetched idea. After reading Emery Reeve's book The Anatomy of Peace, he decided to try to get more
public attention for democratic world government, which at that time was the official policy goal of the World Federalists, by renouncing his US citizenship in Paris on May 25, 1948 and declaring himself a citizen of the
world. That was the start of a popular movement so huge, especially in Europe, that it is difficult to fathom today. My father was endorsed by the leading intellectuals of the time, including Einstein, Camus and
Schweitzer, and was reviled by both the right and the left. My grandfather Meyer Davis who was a pillar of the US establishment and had been the preferred bandleader of US society and US presidents for 20 years, and who later
played at Jackie's wedding with JFK and JFK's inauguration was appalled. But my father's bold actions gave a massive boost to the movement towards world government, and incidentally, also to the World Federalists
movement. But he did not do it by talking of federalism, which is a technical word no average person can relate to emotionally, but in talking about world citizenship, referring of course to a government which was always
referred to as a world federal government. So how to get millions of people excited? Well, history teaches us. And in fact, common sense teaches us, psychology teaches us, Madison Avenue teaches us. It all boils down to the same
thing! USE LANGUAGE WHICH PEOPLE RELATE TO IN THEIR LIVES. What does this have to do with us? Well everything! Are we using such kind of language? Or are we using dry technocratic language, the language of college-level
political science classes? Are we using words such as citizen? Or are we using words such as federalism? Don't get me wrong, I am not against federalism. All I am saying is that we are selling a good idea in the wrong
package! And, not only that, we forgot what the real goal was all about. Our real goal, I thought, is a peaceful world governed by democratic world law. By constantly talking about federalism, we have mistaken the goal for the
means. And I submit that this is the real reason for our decline into quasi irrelevancy today. Our vision should not focus on a particular means, our vision should focus on the real goal we have: world peace through democratic
world law. By focusing on the means, we lead people away from our goal. It is as if Kennedy in 1960 instead of saying "In 10 years, we will walk on the Moon" would have said "In 10 years, we'll use a big rocket, oh
and incidentally, we'll use it to fly to the Moon". Would you rather be a member of the Space Society or of the Rocket Society? That is the difference between citizen and federalist. I agree, we need rockets and
federalism, but never put the means before the goal if you want to inspire large numbers of people. What if by a stroke of political genius or by technological improvements, we could reach the goal of a peaceful world governed by
democratic world law in another way than through either federalism or the UN? Would we fight it? Would we reject it? We would be crazy to! This is the essence of the lack of intellectual rigour I was talking about earlier. By not
being 200% clear on this, we send out totally mixed signals to potential new members or donors, to the media, the general public and to civil society at large. Let's go back for a second to 1948 and 1949. What are the lessons of
that time? Why did people and journalists, still today, put my father in the ranks of Buddha, Socrates, Jesus or Francis of Assisi? Why was he labelled both the Second Coming of Christ and the Antichrist? How did he manage to arise
such depths of feelings? Okay, it was a special time just after the war, BUT, he related to people as people, i.e. as citizens, not to them as subjects of an abstract structure. He captured the spirit of the times and got people
excited. But people don't get excited about abstract concepts. People get excited about other people and about things which directly affects their emotions. I submit that the word 'citizen' is the most abstract word you can use
and still conduct the successful global mass media and PR campaign we need. We will never get the support of millions of people using the word federalism. It is as if we tried to get mass popular support for quantum mechanics. I
personally love quantum mechanics as theoretical physics was my major in college, but there is no way on earth you will get any popular movement in favour of more quantum mechanics research, even if the future of the world depends
on it. An easy real-life example is NASA which uses the "sexy" images coming from Mars at the time they seek popular support to increase their budget. You will never see them promoting to the public the scientifically
much more important research into the large-scale structure of the universe. Why? Because it just won't fly. Federalism just does not fly! I am sorry to say this so brutally but if we continue on this track, we will
never
change the world. And not only would you, the founders of the World Federalists, never see a peaceful world governed by democratic world law, but neither would I nor the younger members of the World federalists, nor even my and their grandchildren.
We simply have to accept that our cherished word federalism, while it should remain in the explanation of our activities as a preferred means, cannot be the name of our product if we pretend to get out of our intellectual ivory
tower, or if we want to follow the advice of Dr. Lois Wilson when she said yesterday while honouring my good friend Ross Smyth that Quote "We have to talk to people outside of ourselves". End Quote One
last point on this subject, because I am afraid that otherwise I won't leave this room alive! Even if I haven't convinced you so far, I ask you to consider the following realities: federalism is a word most popular
in a small number of countries for historical reasons, but in many others, especially developing countries, it has been equated with an instrument of oppression. I was told that the British in the Caribbean put down revolts by
indigenous people in the name of federalism. The federalists in Brazil are not the federalists, but the federal police, not exactly renowned for their gentleness and incorruptibility. In other words, I submit that our
insistence on federalism can be counter-productive on a world-wide basis if it brought out upfront like we do today. It recalls the worst clichés of the arrogant Westerner trying to lord it over the third world. In fact, even
people from NGOs at the UN who have known Bill Pace for years, who is one of the most cool-headed and gentle people I know, totally distrust world federalists. They see it as a rich white people's game, irrelevant to them, with
even an undertone of a US plot to take over the world by further reducing the sovereignties of developing countries. Isn't that ironic given the official US position? But if that's the type of perception we are up against from
people who are in daily contact with one of our most articulate representatives, then what do you think people inside those countries who may only see our name think of us? But you know all this already. I have been told about
the long debate inside WFA surrounding the word federalist. My own two-bit is that I say it is time that we change the name to citizen to reflect our philosophy that people are sovereign first, not states. Anything less than that
would be intellectual laxity and a moral lack of courage. Okay, I've said enough on that topic. I still want to live a long and healthy life after I leave this room full of world federalists. Can we recreate the popular
enthusiasm of 50 years ago? I say we can, but of course in a totally different way. Today we must think in terms of coalitions, something which both WFA and WFM are well versed in. Which brings us back full circle to the launch of
a Global Coalition World Democracy 2010. We the World Citizen Foundation will go ahead in any case, but we would much rather see the World federalists joining us on this one. It is a natural and it would hurt us as well if we had
to explain to other NGOs and to a sceptical press that in spite of their goal which is to achieve just that, the world federalists were too busy to promote a global coalition for a world democracy. We as World Federalists
just can't afford not to be in on this coalition at the very beginning. I know it's tough, but sometimes you just have to re-evaluate your priorities and turn on a dime, just as Bill Gates did with Microsoft just a few years ago
when he realized that they had badly underestimated the importance of the Internet. Basically overnight for a multi-billion dollar company, he switched the entire Microsoft strategy from one which at best tinkered with the
edges of the Internet, to one totally focused on it. This is my message to all world federalists today. And don't worry, this will be so inspiring that the resources will come in. Not only that, we will get more money for all
ongoing programmes as well, because all ongoing programmes then fall neatly under the goal of achieving World Democracy. The top priority for World Federalists everywhere today should be to design and launch ASAP a
strategy and a process to leverage the 50th Anniversary of World Citizenship, the Hague Appeal for Peace, the Millennium People's Assembly and other processes such the Alliance for a Responsible and United World, to achieve a true
world democracy within a reasonably short time frame, say a decade to sharpen people's minds. If we let these historical occasions pass, we will regret it our whole lives. This is the message I will to my other English, French,
German and Italian-speaking friends. The circumstances of 50 years ago were unique and the psychological situation is totally different today. But in many other ways, the situation is much better
today, and for the first time in history, the forces of technology and economic globalization which have created such problems, are also the tools we can use to control that unbridled and undemocratic globalization. Now the only thing missing is a clear and exciting goal and a nice and big PR campaign.
We have to express now more than mere sentiments for peace. We must act. The weak points of both the HAP and MPA today are that the outputs are simply agendas! The real output should be long-lasting excitement and mass popular
involvement. Both events should be milestones on roadmap to World Democracy, which is what WFA has been all about all about since its very beginning. Another thought about the UN is that it is today a monopoly. We all know
monopolies are bad and inefficient. So what do we normally do? Either regulate them very tightly, break them up, neither of which make sense for the UN, or introduce competition! Monopolies do not reform by themselves, they only do
under the threat of competition. Americans of all people should understood and support this idea. Healthy competition would shock the UN out of its complacency and cynicism, and could call the bluff of the proposed charter
review under article 109, probably the most neglected and lonely article of the entire UN charter! Before I close, I wish to share just one idea I had about a potential feature of the World Democracy which could become a built-in
safeguard. Indigenous people have been abused by centralized power over thousands of years, so the treatment of indigenous people by a World Democracy should be a litmus test, or an early warning indicator. In fact a World
Democracy could have as one of its safeguards an indigenous structure. Imagine the following as a way to create a balance of power within a World Democracy: why not have as part of this World Democracy a Global Council of
Indigenous Peoples Elders, which would have, if not a veto right on world law proposed by the World Parliament or Congress, than at least a very strong moral influence. Why such a council? Because first of all, sustainable human
development, which should be the first aim of the World Democracy, is really only sustainable if we reinvent our industrial civilization, and I personally believe that indigenous peoples globally are the ones who collectively
represent best the paradigm of living off the interests of nature, not its capital. If the World Democracy continues the present inefficient industrial paradigm, we are doomed whatever else we may do. Since we are in Canada, I
wish to close my remarks with a few French sentences out of respect for those among us who may be French-speaking. Those of you who don't, just in hang there for 2 minutes. Le problème de l'identité linguistique et culturelle du
Québec soulève beaucoup de passions de tous les côtés. Peut-être que l'idée d'une Démocratie Mondiale à l'intérieur de laquelle bien sûr le Canada et le Québec serait réuni est un élément de solution. Je ne veux pas m'aventurer
plus sur ce chemin car je ne m'y connais pas très bien, mais je voulais au moins encourager une réflexion sur une piste totalement différente de toutes celles dont j'ai eu connaissance jusqu'à présent. Merci beaucoup de votre
attention. Si vous désirez une copie de mon allocution, malheureusement non traduit, elles sont disponibles sur la table ici, et je suis bien sur disponible durant la pause-café et jusqu'au milieu de cette après-midi.
Thank you very much for your attention. If you wish a copy of this speech, some copies are available on a table right, and I will be available at the coffee break and until the middle of this afternoon.
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