Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and Chile.
United Earth? New Horizons & Nationalism
- Thread starter Horizons96
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Don't forget Argentina.
Not seeing it. By the definitions of war crimes that is. At least going by what I know of those subjects and Kissinger's actions in those policy choices. They are questionable, but not war crimes by UN definitions (as I understand them). In pretty much all cases, if any of these are considered a war crime, the blame would rest on the President's head, traditionally. That would be Nixon or Ford.
That was mostly just an aside out of curiosity from seeing the signature.
The concept of old war crimes would come up for United Earth after the nations give up a piece of their sovereignty to the new world government. Who would enforce that? Would it be forced by the new government, or would they let it go in order to preserve the new world state?
Assuming we ever setup colonies on other planets, moons, or make them within the Solar System, what would their status be? It would likely take a long time for any to become truly self sufficient. Would they be subject to United Earth as a set of colonies? Member states (even if they are under one of the older county's banners as a state of a state)? Protectorate until they gain enough people or self sufficiency that they can stand by themselves? Would they be a separate world state? Would there need to be a System government over the planetary governments? Followed by the United Federation of Planets, or is that the next step over planetary world state status?
I mean, how many thousands of people do you have to help kill before you qualify as an unindicted war criminal?
I would imagine that if there were any surviving war criminals left after the establishment of United Earth, it would reasonably fall to the new U.E. law enforcement ministry to charge those suspects in a U.E. court. By making it a U.E. court, you can avoid or at least mitigate charges of nationalistic bias.
I imagine that this would depend upon who funds and initiates the colony.
In the context of Star Trek, it would, I think, make the most sense for United Earth to claim territorial jurisdiction over the entire solar system as far as the Oort cloud. (This idea is somewhat complicated in the Star Trek novels, which have traditionally depicted Mars as having become an independent world and separate Federation Member State from United Earth; the ENT novels indicate that it became independent in the 2110s, roughly twenty years before the establishment of United Earth as established in other books. In general U.E. is seen as holding territorial jurisdiction over the rest of the Sol system, however -- Mars only seems interested in holding jurisdiction over their own planet and satellites.) It seems the standard practice for civilizations in the Trekverse that do not span multiple star systems to claim their entire native star system, and that seems sensible from a foreign policy perspective -- you don't want potentially hostile aliens claiming that they have the right to annex a planet in your solar system, after all.
Given this presumption, I think there are two possibilities:
1. United Earth allows any of its member polities to establish their own extraterrestrial colonies within the Sol system, provided those colonies are given representation in the national legislatures and have their rights under the national and U.E. constitutions protected; or,
2. United Earth passes legislation placing any extraterrestrial colony in the Sol system directly under the authority of the U.E. government, granting them representation in the United Earth Parliament and protecting the colonists' rights under the United Earth Constitution -- effectively requiring all colonies to be U.E. colonies rather than national colonies, since all territories in the Sol system outside of Earth itself fall under the direct jurisdiction of the U.E. government.
However... it seems unlikely to me that in the era of United Earth, member polities would want to spend the cash on extraterrestrial colonies. U.E. may have an economic incentive for it, but the member polities could obtain the same benefits at lower cost by foisting responsibility for extraterrestrial colonies onto the U.E. government.
I would go with semi-autonomous colony of U.E. until or unless such time as the colonists democratically choose to become independent sovereign polities.
Well, in the novels, the Confederated Martian Colonies became an independent planetary state in the 2110s, and United Earth was founded in 2130. (Presumably, the CMC declared independence from whatever Earth-based polities and/or other organizations were running the Martian colonies before the establishment of United Earth.) However, it is United Earth that seems to run the other colonies in the Sol system and which assumes responsibility for defending the Sol system -- including Mars -- during the Earth-Romulus War.
So the implication seems to me to be that the Sol system is U.E. territory except for Mars. Presumably the Martians only want Mars and aren't interested in territorial expansion within the Sol system.
Both United Earth and the Confederated Martian Colonies later become separate Federation Member States after the establishment of the UFP. Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures establishes that Mars is the first world to join the UFP after it is established, less than four months after it is created.
Presumably, when U.E. co-founded the UFP but before Mars joined, the entire Sol system except for the Mars system became UFP territory. So Martian territory was temporarily an enclave within UFP territory. Martian territory appears to remain an enclave within U.E. territory.
ETA: Of course, all that is speculation based upon the non-canonical novels. One could just as easily interpret the canon as indicating that Mars remains a United Earth colony and that the entire Sol system is U.E. territory within the UFP.
The same with "right wingers" (excepting (as you did) for people with extreme positions), in fact in American it's often been the right wing of politics that supported important improvements in democracy and civil rights, more so than the left. Ending slavery, voting rights for women, etc
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (among other things) equalized voter registration requirements, and expanded the number of people within the American population who could participate in the nation's democracy.
House of Representatives:
Democrats for: 152
Democrats against: 96
Republicans for: 138
Republicans against: 34
Senate:
Democrats for: 46
Democrats against: 21
Republicans for: 27
Republicans against: 6
So, Presidents Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt are "unindicted war criminals?" Of course not, and neither was Kissinger.
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Attached kind of proves my point, early in the episode Beverly says "Well, think about Earth," which continue the series practice of calling Earth just "Earth, and not United Earth. I stand by my previous statement that the term United Earth isn't in common use in the 24th century.
Since you brought up Attached, let take a look.
Picard: Every member of the Federation entered as a unified world, and that unity said something about them. That they had resolved certain social and political differences ...
Nothing about Earth (or any Federation Member world) possessing just a single government. Picard definition of a "unified world" would seem to be one where their social and political differences had been resolved. Which wouldn't require a world to have one government, sound more like a social movement.
Beverly: What if one of the old nation states, say Australia, had decided not to join the world government in twenty one fifty?
First yes this is likely a hypothetical, I used the term vague before and that applies to Beverly use of "world government," is this the same organization as "United Earth?" Or is it something else, something completely different? This is unclear. Nor is it clear what role is played by the "world government" on the international stage.
Attached never uses the term "United Earth" in it's dialog, and never refers to a United Earth government. A future international management organization most likely would have some form of governing body. Hopefully with a limited mandate and limited powers only in certain areas.
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I will assume there is still a measure of the old nationalism spirits alive in whatever sports are still around in the 23rd and 24th centuries. We know there is still a little bit left if the likes of Mr. Chekov, Mr. Scott, and Dr. McCoy. And at least somewhat in Captain Picard...though it be hard to tell if he was French or British (possibly both if his line was Norman).
Sisko and I suppose Uhura have cultural African in their background, though with Sisko it is of the African-American variety while Uhura is just African as she's seen to have relearned Swahili before English when she gets he mind wiped.
Paris seems to have his background in mid-20th century Americana, while Chakotay is a mishmash of Native America cultures.
The cultures didn't go away when the planet became United Earth, nor when they became part of the Federation.
Sisko and I suppose Uhura have cultural African in their background, though with Sisko it is of the African-American variety while Uhura is just African as she's seen to have relearned Swahili before English when she gets he mind wiped.
Paris seems to have his background in mid-20th century Americana, while Chakotay is a mishmash of Native America cultures.
The cultures didn't go away when the planet became United Earth, nor when they became part of the Federation.
Edmune Burke, one of the intellectual fathers of modern conservatism, was antidemocratic and Kissinger would have been during the Nuremberg trials (not condoning death penalty, I just wanna point out what the great standards for interntional law which we established after WWII would have implied for criminals which some consider to be great elder statesmen).
Utter nonsense. It was the Republican Party of the 1860s that led the movement in the political class to end slavery -- and the Republican Party of the 1860s was the party of the left (it was in fact co-founded by socialists!), while the Democratic Party of the 1860s was the party of the right. It was Republican liberals who wanted to end slavery, and Democratic conservatives who wanted to preserve it. And of course, it was the Radical Republicans who not only sought to end slavery, but to redistribute the wealth which slavery had created in order to give the freedmen an economic leg up in a South that had prospered on their backs.
Indeed, how could this not be the case? Conservatism is all about preserving the existing social order, not changing it. And no change had been so fundamental to the social order of the South as the abolition of slavery.
Women's suffrage was also not a movement of the right wing per se, though the movement encompassed activists on both the left and the right. But its intellectual origins lie in the left -- the modern origins of the women's suffrage movement are found in the French Revolution, and one of the earliest polities to grant women the right to vote was the Paris Commune before it fell. The seeds for the American manifestation of that movement are found in the denial of seats to female U.S. delegates at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, leading to the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls -- and as I have already explained, the abolitionist movement was a movement of the left.
It is certainly true that there were progressive Republicans as late as the 1960s. After that, of course, came the "Southern Strategy," which finalized the two parties' long and pre-existing process of ideological switching (the Republican Party moving firmly to the right while the Democratic Party moved to the left), ending the era of the conservative "Dixiecrats" and giving birth to the modern Reaganite conservative movement.
Wilson certainly is, given all the coups d'etat and unprovoked invasions of sovereign Latin American nations he engaged in.
As for Lincoln and FDR -- I'm not aware of their supporting military dictatorships that literally rounded civilians up in urban concentration camps and murdered them for their political beliefs by the thousands, the way Kissinger did for regimes in Chile and Argentina.
And people usually just call it "Virginia." This does not change the fact that its legal name is "the Commonwealth of Virginia."
You can stand by it all you want, because that wasn't the issue. The issue was the idea that Earth had not united under a world government, as you asserted.
You cannot be a unified world without a single world government.
You are literally just making shit up now. You're not a unified world without a world government, and the entire point of the episode was that the aliens had not created a world government the way Picard thought they ought to have.
Are you seriously going to assert that the world government Beverly refers to in "Attached" is something other than the United Earth government we saw operating embassies, conducting foreign relations, and in possession of its own military, in ENT? I mean, there was literally a big ol' sign in "The Forge" that said "UNITED EARTH EMBASSY." Really hard to miss, that.
No, that part is very clear: It plays the role of a single planetary government, unifying Earth's nations under a single common sovereignty. That's how you know it's a government and not a planetary Rotary Club. To argue otherwise is to deny the plain meaning of the word "government."
No, it just uses the term "world government." Are you going to assert that this is different from the "United Earth government?"
Those are interesting points that you made.
Speaking of Woodrow Wilson and FDR: Wilson, who is revered by progressives, was a racist and a segregationist. He ordered the federal bureaucracy to segregate the federal workplace. He segregated whites and blacks, and in addition many blacks were fired.
FDR ordered the internment of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent during WWII.
Wilson and FDR, two icons of the so called progressive left, used the powers of the federal government to take away the civil rights and liberties of American citizens, or certain Americans.
The left does not have a monopoly on virtue as it may think or claim it has. And centralized government is not necessarily good. So much power in the hands of a few can easily be abused.
Yes.
Absurd, one hardly requires the other. A Humanity who have basically put the majority of international differences behind them could be social unified without a single world state being in existence.
Many nations get along just fine Sci without their possessing a single government. You put your old contentions in the past and recognize that your differences are matters of diversity.
The US and the UK don't currently seem to need a single government.
Nor the Scandinavian countries. In fact Swedish and Danish governments built the Øresund bridge as a joint project between their two separate governments, connecting the two peninsulas after millions of years of geological separation.
The few bits of dialouge we have about Earth does seem to at least infer that it has a World Government, however what shape or form that actually takes we don't know. You don't have to have a single unified world state, the EU for example isn't a single state rather a collection of states.
Nope. International cooperation doesn't happen in a political vacuum, it requires political institutions. In the real world we have the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and so on.
You can also take it down one level and consider the history of your own country, a highly federal nation but nonetheless a nation and not an unformal association of states.
The world depicted in Trek would not work if the old nation states were still the most dominant political entities, not to mention that the shows explicitly mentioned that there is a United Earth. You just have to watch one episodes of TOS look into the faces and hear the (fake) accents of the main characters to get that, not to mention that an entire movie was devoted to depicting how a fractured, waring humankind was about to emerge UNITED out of a near-fatal nuclear holocaust because it made first contact with the Vulcans.
Some things about Trek are ambiguous (e.g. the economics) so viewers can read things into it. But United Earth and United Federation of Planets are anything but vague, they are the very fundamentals of Trek. If you wanna disavow them that says more about your own preferences for nationalism than the franchise itself.
About your notion that the right-wing is pro-democratic, Sci has alreay pointed out at length how nonsensical this is and I consider it to be pointless to counter "Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia" kind of arguments.
Nope. Progressives are not Reaganites who idolize and virtually deify political persons. They do not have icons as they are all about criticizing people who wield power and themselves (left-wing infighting is infamous; I personally had more heated political discussions with fellow lefties than with reactionary folks). Wilson and Roosevelt were overall good presidents but they were not perfect. The policies they implemented were more due to the Progressive Era, the Zeitgeist, the political pressure from ordinary people which cumulated in progressive policies.
The goal, at least for progressives, is not to get good people into office. People who yearn for power are rarely extraordinary human beings and more likely to be medicore or outright nasty. The goal is to make the people who wield power respond to democratic pressures and this is what e.g. Roosevelt did when he implemented the New Deal.
Same nowadays with politicians like Sanders. Such a campaign is really less about the man seeking office than about the political movements from the last years coalescing and being the wind in his sails.
I am not a big fan of Chomsky but he was totally right when he said that Nixon was the last liberal POTUS. Of course Nixon was a conservative and he loathed liberals ... but he implemented liberal policies precisely because there was so much democratic pressure.
There is evidence to suggest earth has a united world government.
And Attached suggested it is considered unusual for a planet to be admitted into the Federation unless it has one.
But has anyone notice we never see an earth president? At least I've never see
one before. It was only the Federation president, and I've only saw two at that.
The problem is the US has had to repeatedly go to the unified federal branch to overturn unconstitutional laws or restrictions set by "state's rights". Civil rights for African Americans, interracial marriage, and just recently, gay marriage.
State's rights had often been used to practice local customs, some which in reality were human rights abuses.
It would make sense for an organization like the Federation to require a planet to have a unified governemnt that has a clear agreement on human rights, freedoms, unity, etc.
One look at our governments, and a Federation of Planets would quickly pass us by.
From various references I would agree that there is "something."
I do think that the term "United Earth" was selected during the production of TOS because it's reminiscent to United Nations. United Earth no more has to be the "government of Earth" than the current United Nations would be described as such.
Is the United Earth and the World Government the same organization/body? UE already existed in some form in the mid 21st century, Beverly's hypothetical had nations joining the "WG" in the mid 22nd century. Now this could have been a case of the UE being slow to attract participants, but it isn't clear that they are the same. UESPA exists in the mid 23rd century, and (as previously pointed out) the term UE isn't mentioned in the 24th.
How much capability would a United Earth organization (if not sovereign itself) need to have? Likely it would lack overt authority over Earth's nations. If it conducted business through agreements and brokered treaties it certainly wouldn't require a legislature.
Once Humanity started to have contact with multiple alien species, the UE could function as a single point of contact, and instead of each nation sending a separate delegation to each alien world, the UE could send to an alien world a single mission to represent Humanity, like the embassy we saw on Vulcan. Agents to act as good will ambassadors, promoting trade and social discourse (this of course would not prohibit individual nations from sending their own missions).
There's nothing in TOS to suggest that everyone except Spock came from a single worldwide country.
The idea that one side of the American political system is pro-democratic, while the other side isn't, is a fantasy.
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A global democratic council could conceivably emerge from a federated alliance of geographic and economic unions i.e. the EU, Africa Union, North American Union, etc) in a post-nation state/post-capitalist world.
This is the problem, you are used to much to think in terms of nations and you are focusing too much on the very nation you are living in.
United Earth is not a country, it is Earth. And like United Earth my statement about reactionaries being, big surprise, reactionary is a universal one.
But Attached never mentions the planet lacking a "united world government," as being a problem, but rather that one quarter of the planet has a adversarial relationship with the rest of the planet, and that only three quarters of the planet's population (the Kes) wishes to join the Federation.
According to Crusher, the Kes themselves "are a very unified ... people."
Meaning that in order to be considered a "unified people" a world government isn't a requirement, because again that planet didn't possess one. Yet Beverly still uses the term unified people to describe three quarters of the planet. Nor is it spelled out that all the Kes have the same government.
Unified doesn't mean "world government." And so possessing a world government isn't a entry requirement to join the Federation.
Unified people ≠ world government.
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