(c) Copyright 1998: Graham Strachan
On December 1, 1997, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer addressed journalists at the Canberra Press Club, confirming that the Howard government was committed to ‘globalising’ Australia. The hidden message to the new-style journalists was to go out and ‘sell’ the idea to the public. So just what is ‘globalism’, now that the sentence has been pronounced on the Australian people?
The answer is that ‘globalism’ can mean a couple of things, one of them innocuous, the other definitely a cause for alarm. The lack of clarity has been made possible by the undemocratic manner in which globalism is being implemented. Since there never was a question of the people of the world being asked whether or not they wanted it, a clear definition of what globalism means was unnecessary. Those ‘in the know’ knew anyway, and nobody else matters nowadays. That’s ‘rationalism’. Shades of things to come.
The ‘g’ word was subtly slipped into the language by the media, whose policy is to tell the public as little as possible about globalism until it is too late for them to stop it. The globalist elites maintain a pretence that it has all been agreed to, while their strategy is ‘just do it’. If anybody challenges what you’re doing, ‘deny you’re doing it’. If that doesn’t work, ‘tell ‘em anything’. So what does ‘globalism’ mean?
At one level it can mean increased cooperation between independent self-governing nations for a more peaceful and ecologically sustainable world. This is the view clung to by naive academics, school children, and other idealists. It is also the view peddled by journalists, who don’t believe a word of it. On the other hand it can mean the political, legal, economic and social integration of all the nations of the world into a global order of ‘interdependent member states’ under one world government: an expanded United Nations.
Central to the meaning of globalism is the concept of ‘global governance’. This is no conspiracy theory. There has been a Commission on Global Governance since 1992, and a United Nations-sponsored conference on Global Governance is scheduled for this year. So what is ‘global governance’?
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘governance’ as the ‘act of governing’ . What is the difference between ‘governance’ and ‘government’? There is none. The same dictionary defines ‘government’ as the more modern word for ‘governance’. ‘Global’ is defined as ‘world-wide, embracing all countries’. Global governance means ‘world government’: nothing more, nothing less. So how can globalists deny that’s what it means? The answer lies in the now-prevalent use of a kind of self-contradictory waffle, which lends itself to any interpretation that furthers the agenda. It was this kind of waffle which was resorted to by the Commission on Global Governance.
The Commission on Global Governance (COGG) was an initiative of ex-Chancellor Willy Brandt of Germany, who prepared a document called ‘Common Responsibility in the 1990s: The Stockholm Initiative on Global Security and Governance’, and presented it to a UN conference in Stockholm. Out of it the Commission on Global Governance (COGG) was formed in 1992, with the endorsement of then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. It was co-chaired by a Swede and a Guyanian, and included 26 other men and women from various countries. Australia was not represented. The Commission published its report in 1995 in a book entitled ‘Our Global Neighbourhood: the Report of the Commission on Global Governance’.
The COGG hastened to reassure people that ‘global governance’ did not mean ‘global government’, though it acknowledged that ‘the similarity of the terms could lead to misunderstanding’. No doubt. A world government might be one which was “less democratic than the world we have, one more accommodating to power, more hospitable to hegemonic ambition, and more reinforcing of the roles of states and governments rather than the rights of people.” On the other hand, the challenge was “to strike the balance in such a way that the management of global affairs is responsive to the interests of all people in a sustainable future, that it is guided by basic human values, and that it makes global organisation conform to the reality of global diversity.”(1)
To the COGG ‘global governance’ meant “better management of survival, better ways of sharing diversity, better ways of living together in the global neighbourhood that is our human homeland.”(2) It meant “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs....a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and co-operative action may be taken. It includes formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrangements that people or institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest.”(3) In other words, it’s bullshit.
US Council on Foreign Relations member James Warburg had no illusions about what it meant when he said to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950, "We shall have world government whether or not you like it by conquest or consent." Committed globalist William Jefferson Clinton has no illusions about what ‘globalism’ and ‘global governence’ mean. In Buenos Aires on October 17, 1997, he declared, “isolationist voices must be ignored as efforts proceed to fully integrate the political and economic future of the Americas....Globalization is irreversible....Protectionism will only make things worse.”
To these people globalisation means ‘political and economic integration’, not only of the Americas but of all the countries of the world into a new global order under one world government. ‘Isolationism’ is the new term for a country wanting to mind its own business, go its own way and not be ‘globalised’. ‘Protectionism’ is the word for a country protecting its industries, economic assets, and the well-being of its people from exploitation by outsiders. Those things, with are vital components of national independence and sovereignty, are now forbidden. The globalistas have decided,. What’s more, globalization is ‘unstoppable’, and ‘irreversible’. Those who resist, will ‘make things worse’ for themselves. Nice future.
Strobe Talbot, Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, has no illusions. He was quoted in Time Magazine, July 20th, l992, as saying, "In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority." Ex-Un Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has no illusions. Addressing the 3046th meeting of the UN on January 31, 1992, he said “....narrow nationalism can disrupt a peaceful global existence. Nations are too interdependent, national frontiers are too porous and transnational realities....too dangerous to permit egocentric isolationism....”(4) Nationalism is now ‘egocentric isolationism’, a distorted mental state which has to be readjusted.
The COGG did hint that there might be a bit of ‘collectivisation’ mixed in with the ‘cooperation’. “Countries are having to accept that in certain fields sovereignty has to be exercised collectively.”(5) But while academics might like to think this can be done without any loss of national sovereignty, former High Court Judge and Governor General (now sitting on the International Court of Justice) Sir Ninian Stephen has no such illusions. In his Earl Page lecture in 1994 he made it clear that in place of sovereignty national governments are to be left with a thing called ‘subsidiarity’, which Sir Ninian defines as “leaving to local, regional and national institutions those matters which are best dealt with at those levels”. (6) In other words, the World Government will make the big decisions, and the Australian government will carry them out.
Sir Ninian was man enough to admit there will be a loss of democracy. He even had a nice-sounding name for it: a ‘democratic deficit’. What do the people get instead? “[A]n environment of concern regarding the democratic nature of the decision-making process [which] may....have a healthy effect upon the conduct of the entity [ie. the world government].” What will protect the people from the inevitable abuse of power by the new world government? Well nothing, other than the naive trust that the power won’t be abused. What about Lord Acton’s famous warning that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’? Forgotten.
According to the COGG, “Sovereignty....the principle that a state has supreme authority over all matters that fall within its territorial domain....ultimately derives from the people. It is a power to be exercised by, for, and on behalf of the people of a state....” Really? Well the man from the World Government Treasury Department (the IMF), Michael Camdessus, stated clearly at the Australia Unlimited Conference last week that ‘democracy’ in the new world order would not necessarily be ‘Western-style democracy’, but rather ‘participatory democracy’.(7) What’s the difference?
Participatory democracy was the type of democracy practiced in Ancient Greece, where the wealthy elites went daily to the Acropolis to participate in the government. Mr. Camdessus’ ‘participatory democracy’ will involve the ‘participation’ of the same unelected elites who are presently engineering the globalisation process, who sit in conferences all day while the rest of us work. It’s the democracy you have when you don’t have democracy.