World Government
Today we present an extract from Major-General Richard Hilton's The Thirteenth Power [URL: https://wylfings.com/the-thirteenth-power]. The painting featured above is Belshazzar's Feast, by John Martin, painted 1820.
The United Nations’ ideas of justice are simply not good enough for World Government. It is hard to see how this can be remedied without destroying the United Nations entirely and rebuilding something which is not financially dependent on America, and not afraid of Russia or of starting a nuclear war. Finally the revised organization must be something which is not so constituted that the older civilizations of Europe can be outvoted by the Afro-Asian bloc, the dollar bloc, and the Soviet bloc. It is a tall order, but there is no other way of ensuring international justice.
If the United Nations has to rely upon the two 'giants', Russia and America, to act as its policemen and enforce its decrees, then it will become merely a figurehead. The reality of power will rest with the 'giants' and they will rule the world. The undesirability of that has already been discussed. To render the United Nations effective as a World Government (quite apart from the problem of rendering it a fountain of true justice) it will have to be endowed with sufficient armed might to keep even the two 'giants' subservient to its decrees. If anyone imagines that either Russia or America is likely to agree to this he is rather optimistic. Russia will not submit herself, disarmed, to any World Government unless it is Communist-dominated. America will not consent to any change in the constitution of the United Nations which will make that organization immune from dollar pressure.
In any case nobody yet has squarely faced the problem of so reconstituting the United Nations as to render it fairly representative of all the nations in proportion to their standing in the world. Let us suppose, for example, that some scheme could be devised whereby Salvador (or any other miniature country) could be rendered sufficiently free of dollar pressure to be truly as important in voting power as any other member. This might perhaps be achieved by introducing secrecy of ballot in the General Assembly and by abolishing the privileged position of the great powers in the Security Council.
The effect of any such measures would be to put the United States on an exact equality with Monaco, Liberia, Albania, and other miniature states. She would (we have assumed) already have surrendered her nuclear power into the hands of the super-state (World Government). If she followed this by surrendering the power of 'veto' also, and abrogating her financial power over other states, she would have no greater say in world affairs than the tiny states just mentioned. It is absurd even to imagine such a surrender of power by America or Russia.
Certain schools of thought, such as the World Federalists, have already foreseen the impossibility of building any World Government (other than a concert of the great powers) upon voting by nations. The World Federalists therefore advocate a World Government founded upon universal adult suffrage by individuals not by nations. A moment’s thought shows the absurdity of this proposition also.
It is estimated that about one third of the human race is under Communist rule. The most elementary knowledge of Communist electoral methods tells us that one third of mankind will vote exactly as their Communist rulers wish them to vote. If we add to this huge block of regimented votes the Communist parties of the free world and their dupes and fellow-travellers, it can be seen that Communism will not have far to go before obtaining a majority of individual votes throughout the world. Apart from this danger the Federalist idea would endow a Central African savage with an equal say in world affairs to the wisest men that civilization can produce. This would surely be democracy run mad.
Many Federalists appear already to have realized this. A large number of schemes have been considered for tempering the absurdity of universal suffrage by one form or another of selective qualifications for voting power. All of these beg the vital question 'What authority will decide upon this differential scale of electors?' It is hard to imagine even the most primitive of the newly independent Afro-Asian nations willingly admitting that its citizens are inferior, man for man, to those of any of the hated Western ex-imperialist states. The scale of electoral qualifications would have to be arbitrarily fixed by some sort of committee and then it must be imposed by force. Who will be represented on the committee and who will wield the force?
In short nobody yet has been able to propound a scheme for the creation of a World Government which will stand the test of practical examination. World Government must either be one thing or the other. It will be either a talking shop for demagogues from the over-populated primitive countries with a sprinkling of 'stooges' from the Communist lands or else a shadow government with no real power, directed and controlled by arbitrary power behind the scenes. The former alternative means anarchy and chaos. The latter, far the more probable, will mean world dictatorship by the oligarchy that pulls the strings of money power.
Amid the persistent and frequently vociferous propaganda in favour of World Government there is a strange silence about these practical difficulties in the vaunted scheme. Not so strange perhaps if we understand that this propaganda is inspired and financed and directed by people who know perfectly well in whose hands this immense power will lie when once mankind has been fooled into the trap. They have got their plans neatly worked out—these 'small groups of dominant men'. It is not even so very strange that mankind is swallowing the idea of World Government without bothering to enquire how it is going to be 'made safe for democracy'. The two-shot ambush has worked only too well. Mankind has had its nerves so lacerated by the bogey of Communism and the bogey of nuclear war that it is prepared to ignore the tyranny which lies hidden behind those apparently blessed words 'World Government'.
On June 10th, 1958, Mr. Sandys, the Minister of Defence,1 in a debate on disarmament, propounded some illuminating ideas on what he called 'disarmament in a single step'. After dwelling on the practical difficulties of disarmament by stages, due to Soviet antagonism toward any effective system of inspection, Mr. Sandys envisaged the possibility of establishing a World Security Authority, which would be armed with two instruments, namely an international arms inspectorate and an international police force.
Though he emphasized that these ideas were in no sense formal proposals, the mere fact of their utterance by a statesman of his standing may presumably be taken as an indication of a train of thought which is favoured in British governmental circles, particularly as it tends to corroborate something said by a less prominent member of the Government in November 1957.
Mr. Sandys envisaged for his proposed inspectorate a right of completely unrestricted access to any premises, in any country. The proposed police force would have to possess unquestioned military superiority over the disarmed nations. There would be every advantage, Mr. Sandys claimed, in basing such a plan upon the principles embodied in the United Nations Charter.
When suggestions of this nature are publicly made by a Minister of State, no matter how informally, the British nation should realize that World Government may be much more imminent than is generally supposed, and that it will involve surrender of our national independence in subjection to an alien authority, backed by irresistible military power.
In the debate which fallowed the Minister’s speech members of all three parties made it clear that the implication behind Mr. Sandys’ words was indeed no less than this. Mr. Clement Davies, the former Liberal leader,2 said, for example, that the day had been made memorable by Mr. Sandys’ speech. It was the first time, said Mr. Clement Davies, that a Government had made a declaration to the world that they were prepared in the interests of universal peace to surrender their sovereignty.3
Is British public opinion equally awake to the tremendous significance of the plans for abolition of our national freedom, which are passing through the minds of our political leaders? Is British public opinion so satisfied with the 'bona fides' and the impeccable justice of the United Nations that it will happily hand over to that authority a control of our national liberties which former British generations have defended with their lives against would-be rulers of the world? Nuclear neurosis must indeed have numbed the senses of the British people if they are fully awake to the import of the Sandys speech, and yet are ready to swallow its consequences without a qualm.
No insuperable obstacle exists against the establishment of a common policy between the oligarchies of the Kremlin and of Wall Street. Those, who imagine that one stands for the abolition of capitalism and the other for its retention, are out of date. At one time the Russian Communist Party may have consisted of idealists, who believed in theoretical Marxism. But that has long ceased to be true. High-souled idealists of Marxism were among the first to fall victims to the purges of 1937 and later. The present rulers of Russia are hard-boiled realists, who believe in nothing but the State Capitalism which they helped to build, and which is based on police tyranny. The manipulators of money power likewise believe in a State Capitalism, based in their case upon a dollar tyranny. The methods may be different but the final result will be the same.
World Government, no matter on what basis it is erected, can be nothing but world tyranny. The only feasible road to it at present is through some form of 'dyarchy' by the United States and the Soviet Union, all other nations having surrendered their powers of independent life. The idea that these two could never collaborate to tyrannize mankind is a dangerous optimism. For, at the back of both these super-states stands the 'thirteenth power', the international money power.
1. Duncan Sandys (1908–1987), British Conservative politician and Minister of Defence from 1957 to 1959, among other roles in a long political career.
2. Leader of the Liberal party from 1945 to 1956.
3. As of 2025 this entire parliamentary debate can be found online on the
UK Parliament’s Hansard website, under the title Disarmament, Volume 589:
debated on Tuesday 10 June 1958
For further information on the oil painting, please see: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:924