Gothic BC

> Orwell was talking about Socialism/Communism. Big Brother is the Communist state.

And Huxley (Brave New World) was talking about capitalism, and it's equally bleak and frighteningly accurate.

> from sending in armies

The key thing being that they don't maintain their own armies, they ask member states to act on their behalf.

> Thirdly non-alighned states have created a tyranny of the majority

That's basically the fundamental flaw of democracy. It is a hard thing to work around.

> Do you think that EU states should lose official abmasitors to the General Assembly and instead get observers and then have one EU representative to the assembly?

No. I'd rather see U.S. states treated as nation-states in a economic union, as was intended in the Arcticles of Confederation rather than a single super-state. Same for the other super-states. The Soviet Union basically had this happen by default when the union collapsed.

And now, off to a meeting. There never enough time... ;)

"One world governing body"

That's an interesting phrase. I don't see that the UN is, in fact, a governing body so much as a diplomatic forum. It issues mandates and relies on the forces of member countries to back up those mandates, but does no direct governance. The fact that many member countries are involved in armed conflicts with eachother speaks to that. Greece and Turkey, for example, have their long standing conflict over Crete, but you'll find their forces cooperating elsewhere under the auspices of the UN. The UN is basically a facilitator for cooperation that would not otherwise happen and a collective voice for smaller nations that would not be heard individually.

Which brings me to the phrase you chose. In the world today the UN is the means by which a real "one-world governing body" is resisted and massive armed conflict between the powers that would be that governing body is prevented.

I'm afraid for lack of time I'm going to have to gloss over this in really broad terms and avoid specific example. As (or if) the thread continues I could bring in more specifics.

The trend across human history has been to larger and larger political entities. Currently we are seeing a transition from nation-states into super-nation-states (i.e. superpowers) that cover significant chunks of continents. The United States, China, India, the European Union (which can and should be considered a single super-state since in political form and function it is exactly the sort of union of states that the United States was originally intended as), and to a lesser extent Russia are all this sort of super-state. The UN provided the means for those states not already under the direct control of a super-state to reasonably resist being consumed by one of these super states unwillingly. If China, for example, were to annex Mongolia, Mongolia would be able to appeal to the UN, bringing the voices of other member nations, including the other super-states, to its defence diplomatically. Without such a forum then Mongolia's only other options would be to aquiesce or beg Russia to come to thier defence - either way their autonomy is lost.

If these small autonomous nations are all lost to one or another of the super-states then the only place to go from there is conflict between super-states, directly and openly, which would ultimately end in the consolidation of super-states into even larger political entities. That end one of two ways, either in perpetual war between two or three essentially totalitarian states as in "1984" or "one world governing body" which would be even worse.

Why? Because a one-world state, no matter how benevolently it may being, is doomed to become utterly tyrranical. With no outside threats such a state would have absolute power. There would be no room for any kind of meaningful dissent.

Frankly I believe we are already too far down the road to Owellian perpetual war or the single tyrranical state. Nations are already too large and too powerful for the common good. The influnce of the super-states already impinges on the autonomy of every smaller state there is, and with the exception of what are now considered "tiny" states like Andorra, Iceland, and a handful of others, even the "small" states are too large to allow for regional cultures to develop in freely. But there is no going back to city-states so mine is a pointless gripe in the real world.