Monday, March 14, 2022

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Global Reapportionment And Redisricting

 


Unlike the U.S process of reapportionment and redistricting of

congressional seats that follows a formal national census

every ten years, and is limited to population patterns, a global

reapportionment and redistricting takes place with an 

irregular timetable, and is based primarily on economics and 

military power.


This global reordering has occurred constantly throughout

history, and often takes decades or longer to settle. This 

appears to be happening now as the U.S., Europe, Russia,

India and China attempt to assert their various roles and 

claims to territory, power and influence in the post-pandemic

world now forming.


The current crisis in Ukraine is only one of several episodes

of the international challenge to the latest state of global

order already traumatized by an historic pandemic experience.


There are now more than 200 sovereign states in the world.

Some are tiny in area, others are very large; some have only

a few thousand residents, while two nations have populations

of more than a billion each. Some are islands; others have no

access to the sea. Most were once kingdoms, or were colonies

of kingdoms; today most of those with monarchs give their

royals little or no power. Many today are representative

democracies, but others have various forms of dictatorship.

Many nations are capitalist, others have a socialist structure.


This variety in size, number, and form is accommodated by 

global trade, transportation, communications, and tourism.

Very few nation states today are as isolated as often

occurred in the past, including relatively recently the examples

of Albania, Cuba, Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, various African

countries, and Pacific Ocean island nations.


As long as history has been recorded, the “reapportionment

and redistricting” of global borders, sovereignty and power

has occurred primarily by armed force, violence and war,

climaxing in the 20th century with two horrific world wars.

This was then followed by localized conflicts, “cold” wars,

and international religious jihads, but the consequences of

weapons of mass destruction have restrained the scope of

these confrontations, especially between the major 

national nuclear weapon powers.


Technology has always played role in the dynamic of global

power. The internet, as well as new military weaponry, is 

very much is part of the new strategies of warfare. 


The expansionists seem always with us. Putin is only the

latest version of geopolitical avarice. Russia’s very brief

attempt at democracy following the collapse and

dissolution of the Soviet Union has been followed by an

increasing dictatorship guided by old dreams of its

previous empires.


As former U.S. Senator and U.S. Ambassador to the

United Nations Human Rights Commission Rudy

Boschwitz likes to point out, no two true democratic states

ever went to war with each other. Representative 

democracies try to settle their differences by economic, 

political and diplomatic means.


After Putin, there wiil be, and already are, others who

want to reset the boundaries and forces of global power. 

Violent disruptions, like earthquakes and volcanos, occur 

in irregular intervals.


Those who now direct and oversee global power must be

prepared to defend it, and nourish the democratic spirit,

or they will lose it.


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Copyright (c) 2022 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.