At 05:01 PM 3/11/2003 +0000 Robert J. Chassell wrote:
Anyhow, this makes the rest of your propositions irrelevant..... but....
here are my answers just for yucks.
>What should be the criteria of membership? Should a new government
>include everyone as the UN now does?
No.
It should be limited to true democracies.
>The United States constitution excludes monarchies and the like:
>
> The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a
> republican form of government ...
>
> United States Constitution Article IV, Section 4
>
>A similar rule would exclude Saudi Arabia from a new UN or other
>international government, but include Iraq and China.
Under what possible definition are the government of Iraq and China
"republican"?
BTW - Jeroen - a constitutional monarchy is a form of republican
government.... ya tool!
>Should a new organization include states that more or less follow the
>conventions on human rights that almost all states have signed? Such
>a rule would exclude Iraq and China and some say it should exclude the
>United States.
It would clearly exclude the United States, since we have not, and God
willing, never will, sign bad treaties like CEDAW and the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. Moreover, the US simply has different perspectives
from our much-divided European cousins on the nature of the death penalty,
abortion, and the relative importance of "economic rights" to "political
rights." It is only a fluke of history that the United States is one
vote, instead of 50 votes, and that likewise Europe is 25 votes, instead of
one vote.
Any just form of supranational governance cannot be based solely on the
principle of "one state, one vote" for precisely this reason.
>Should international legislation be based on the current UN two-fold
>system in which, on the one hand, individual states, no matter how
>small, have one vote when they become temporary members of the UN
>Security Council; but which other states are permanent members and
>have a "states' right" of veto?
Absolutely not. One of the ironies of today's clearly flawed system is
that the fate of this crisis is resting in the hands of nations like
Guinea, where a majority of the population does not even know whom Saddam
Hussein is.
Moreover, as noted above, it is patently unjust for the US and Europe, each
with similar populations and GDP to have such disparate voting power and
disparate rights to representation.
>Or should decision making be based on population, so that China and
>India, gain power, and smaller states, like France or the US, have
>less? The `one adult, one vote' method enjoys widespread legitimacy.
Absolutely not. Indeed, any suprnational system that is basically
controlled by China and India would enjoy very little legitimacy in places
of the world that are thousands of miles away.
If you were a Mexican, and 99% of your country opposed something, but the
policy was enacted anyways on the strength of Chinese and Indian voters,
how would you feel about your governance?
>Or should decision making be based on the amount of taxes paid, so
>that wealthier countries receive overt power in proportion, more or
>less, to their actual power?
This leads to the problem of vote buying. For example, the US, being a
wealthy country, could afford to pay a far larger percentage of its GDP in
taxes, and thus gain disproportionate influence.
In the current UN, this would also lead to the perverse effect of Japan
having power roughly equal to, if not greater than, the United States -
despite the fact that it has no power to project military might whatsoever.
Lastly, it again doesn't account for differences in population. Once
China and India begin to develop, they would account for a very
disproportionate share of world GDP - and a government dominated by India
and China could easily have very little legitimacy elsewhere.
>Under a population-based power distribution, France would receive less
>than 1% of the total, the US would receive about 5% and China about
>20%.
Under a population-based system, China's population should be measured as
being approximately 5,000. This is the number of people who are actually
represented by the Chinese government, and this body should reflect that.
>Or should another criterion be used to allocate power? If so what?
Personally..... the only acceptable solution I see for the medium-term is a
somewhat reformed UN, that nevertheless is mostly consultative in nature,
and that does not prevent the US from doing what needs to be done.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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