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Practice of Non-Violence
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the shortcomings of the United Nation Organization lead us to conclude that it is impossible to build up a super-national authority on the basis of separate national states. If the men who form the authority are persons nominated by national governments, they will never be anything but delegates of those governments; they will always be bound to give priority to the particular interests of their national state and not the general interest of world order. "Powers-large and small ---carry their difficulties and their conflicts of interest to the United Nations. The conflicts do not shrink; they expand. The Great Powers in conflict with one another seek for allies among the lesser powers and form hostile groups which complicate and aggravate the situation; the small states count the sport of the Great Powers, who, in order to maintain their diplomatic combinations, at once take sides. No important dispute is ever settled otherwise than by agreement between Great Powers. A few States that remain outside of fixed diplomatic combinations and are, therefore, able to maintain an independent attitude, have from time to time exercised a conciliatory influence but this only happens in the case of secondary disputes and moreover, these lesser powers not having at their disposal the forces that might become necessary to back their action, are themselves compelled to have recourse to the Great Powers. Each representative in the United Nations is in the last resort, the delegate of his own state, controlled by it and responsible to it. Every important problem tends, therefore, to be considered as conflict of national points of view.”?!
A much more effective organization of sovereign political units can be a federation which includes at least three levels of government: local, state and federal. The act of federation involves a rearrangement of the existing distribution of authority, a sovereignty held by the largest existing political units. In most federations, the three levels of government are parallel, each operating within a specified and limited sphere.
The essential difference between confederations and federations is in this precise division of authority among the several layers of government and in the right of the highest or federal level to by-pass all its member political units and reach
1 Davis J. (1952): Peace, War and You.
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