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.
