by Dominique Lazanski
Introduction
On July 1, 2024, Russia assumed the presidency of the United Nations (UN) Security Council for one month. On July 9, 2024, Russia held a luncheon after a Security Council meeting which was convened to discuss the Russian bombing of a children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv the day before. On the menu, as posted by the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, was Chicken Kiev. The moral bankruptcy is twofold here. First, that Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and second, that it holds the rotating chair during a time where the country is attacking another, sovereign country in an act of aggression.
Whatever you think about the UN and globalism, Andrew A. Michta put it best, in a recent article. “The rules-based international order — if it ever truly existed — is dead.” It seems clear that from Haiti to the Central African Republic, corruption runs rife through a global system which should maintain order, prevent war, and support people in need as a result of global catastrophes. However, since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine in 2022 as well as the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel in 2023, the UN serves only as a talking shop which tolerates war crimes and gives a platform to war criminals. If the UN just serves as a platform for rent seeking and the legitimization of bad actors, what, if anything, should happen to it? Should it be replaced? In short, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
In order to seek an alternative mechanism or governance system, turning to Hayek’s idea of Federalism, but updating for the present day, provides a valid and thoughtful foundation for alternatives to the UN. The rest of the article will discuss some of Hayek’s ideas and build on his work to propose a future mechanism for international cooperation.
Before the United Nations
The world order that existed before the United Nations is well known to historians, but not to wider society today. The United Nations has existed since World War II and will have its 80th anniversary in 2025. The UN has existed for most living in the first quarter of the 21st century. Many were born and some have died after 1945, making life with the United Nations a given. But there was a time before the UN.
The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 established the concept that each nation-state has equal rights to sovereignty within its borders. Before the 17th century, the continent of Europe was largely made up of independent territories ruled by monarchies of some kind, city-states in what is now Italy, and a network of allied merchant cities and towns. This is, of course, a simplification of changes in only one part of the world, but following the mid-1600s, territories started to merge together.
The concept of state sovereignty is enshrined in the UN Charter and forms the basis of international law and the international rules-based order. The UN Charter explicitly states that no intervention will be made in domestic issues. Fast forward to 1920. The League of Nations was formed following the Paris Peace Conference after many years of discussion and proposals about an organisation that would promote world peace. In the lead up to World War II, the League of Nations failed in its stated mission to prevent another world war and though a number of issues plagued the organisation, including the fact that the United States never formally joined, the start of a second war was the main reason for its demise. Then the UN was formed in 1945.
Hayek’s Federalism
Many thinkers and writers have discussed what Hayek meant by his idea of federalism. Yoram Hazony posits that Hayek wanted a “world-wide federation” while Garreth Bloor argues against that and makes the case for Hayek seeing the nation-state as a core component among many components making up the world. Edwin van de Haar has written extensively on Hayek and international relations arguing, more broadly, that Hayek’s concept of spontaneous order goes beyond traditional ways that liberals think of the international order.
Hayek’s federalism is of its time, and there is no doubt about that. Hayek is in the tradition of Lionel Robbins and Wilhelm Roepke, in which they call for global free trade and the free movement of people, and are also against economic planning. Hayek saw war reparations and hyper-inflation ruin countries, and these ruined countries are the same ones where Soviet-style planning would eventually emerge in the mid-20th century. He also saw the complete failure of the League of Nations in the context of the rise of National Socialism. He lived, much like we do, in interesting and unstable times.
The Prospects of International Order is the last chapter in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. It discusses, on an international level, what might happen if the economy is planned and the policies tend towards centralisation rather than decentralisation. And this is key to understanding Hayek’s federalism. Today, we have no problem accepting the idea that there is a global institution like the United Nations which, effectively, centralises economic programmes, health programmes, connectivity programmes (the list goes on) in one location so that such programmes can be allocated by a central hierarchy of command sitting in a central office. This has been happening for some time within the United Nations, but also within our own nation-states. We are used to the concept of a centralised authority making decisions.
In Hayek’s time, this was a newer concept in that his generation did not have that experience to the same magnitude and did not have the same experiences. The 19th century was a different time and, in many ways, an age of exploration, innovation, and evolution. The 20th century, it could be argued, was one of consolidation and in Hayek’s mind that consolidation was going in the wrong direction (the communist direction).
With this context, it can be easily seen why Hayek argued that:
“What we need and can hope to achieve is not more power in the hands for irresponsible international economic authorities, but, on the contrary, a superior political power which can hold the economic interests in check…” He goes on to say that this international authority should not direct people in telling them what to do, but to “restrain them from action which will damage others.”
Hayek’s federation was in fact an idea which seemed logical in the early 1940s. Some type of authority as described would ensure peace through the limitation of state power over the individual. His argument would promote individualism, as Rose Wilder Lane calls it, rather than collectivist mentality. Or so he thought. With the rise of National Socialism came what Carl Jung called the Collective Unconscious and what Eric Hoffer described when he described the nature of mass movements in The True Believer. Either way, the idea of collectivism was alive and well and not seen in a great magnitude because communism and the USSR had yet to be fully formed. It is given that Hayek would argue for individualism in the face of the yet unknown mass scale of collectivism.
The UN and its Future
I have long argued that the only way to get rid of the UN is to form loosely coupled groups of like-minded nation states. Hayek had the same idea, “Neither an omnipotent super-state, nor a loose association of “free nations,” but a community of nations of free men must be our goal.”
Though organisations like the G7, G20, and regional cooperation groups already exists, the idea would be to allow those organisations to take precedence over any formal institution like the UN and to completely get rid of the formal real estate and mechanisms that are enshrined in the current UN, including the Security Council and the Human Rights Council. In effect, the like-minded groups would negotiate and manage situations, as needed, and without the financial gravy train or rent-seeking opportunities that the current UN offers. Thus Hayek has this exactly right:
“My point is that the need for some such other organisation should not form an obstacle to a closer association of those countries which are more similar in their civilisation, outlook, and standards.”
Like-minded individuals and countries need to align themselves while not taking part in a wider organisation. There is no need for regional UN offices or main headquarters or negotiation rooms. All of that is of the past when there was no digital means to meet online or offsite from the UN in Geneva or New York. Like minded groups could meet on their own, online mostly, discuss, and then in turn meeting to discuss if there were regional issues or needs that would need to be discussed, bilateral or multilateral meetings could take place, as they do now, without the need for a formal, global organisation.
Of course, like minded groups also have another framework in which to base themselves. In her book, Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom established eight design principles for sharing common pool resources in an organisation or institution. This framework evolved to be one of self-governance among people or interested parties who have the same concerns and want similar outcomes. Application of Ostrom’s ideas is best known in the areas of fisheries, water systems, forests, grazing lands, oil, and also mobile spectrum. However, the framework could be used in order for people and countries to align themselves together in the interests of ending war, providing aid, or agreeing on a foreign policy.
The next iteration of Hayek’s idea of federalism is a fusion of it with Ostrom’s bottom-up, self-governance approach in order to create groups or associations of like-minded countries and people who, through bilateral or multilateral discussions can ensure that there are talks and discussions globally, but without a formal, antiquated, outdated, and much abused organisation like the UN. Suffice it to say, there are many details to manage if this were to happen in practice from terminating treaties to selling property, but the purpose here is to propose an alternative idea by looking at Hayek’s idea and adapting it for current use.
Conclusion
It appears that the very fears that Hayek expresses with respect to the international order did, indeed, come true. The present-day UN is very centralised and it is involved in not just preventing war, but in creating more problems. Dismantling it and moving to what I call a new form of like-minded federalism would free up so much capital that individuals, groups, communities, and organisations could use those resources to solve issues rather than rely on a 20th century centralised organisation. But that is a discussion for another time. The first step would be to rethink what arrangements are needed in this century and beyond and to move towards eliminating rent seekers and war criminals alike.
Dominique Lazanski is a post doctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh and is the director of her own consulting company, Last Press Label. Send her mail.
Isonomia Quarterly 