World Federalism

     Unfortunately, the first two decades of the current century have been discouraging, to say the least. The events of September 11, 2001 proved that the liberal “End of History” predicted by Francis Fukuyama faced more than just a few dead-enders. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, in direct defiance of the UN, indicated that a new global hegemon was less interested in cooperation than in subjugation. The Arab Spring blazed quickly then burned out. A backlash against the center-left policies of the EU (and later, of the U.S. under Barack Obama) led to the first secession from the European Union — of one of its founding states, no less — as right populism emerged as a force not just in Europe and North America but in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and elsewhere. […]