Networking Governments

A good deal of attention is being given recently to the notion of creating networks among sovereign governments.  This basically involves linking government functions of a number of governments to make the performance of each of them more effective.

For example, effectively every government on earth is threatened by viruses such as swine flu.  Most developed and developing nations have a public health service of one kind or another.  No single public health service, including that of the United States, can adequately prevent threats to its citizens without international cooperation.  Thus, an international network of public health services could prepare to isolate viral outbreaks, quarantine victims, stockpile immunizations in strategic locations, develop a common data base and instant communication system, and train medical swat teams to quickly contain threats.

We already share important intelligence with selected allies, a form of networking.  We have an international nuclear inspection regime, IAEA, but it needs to be strengthened and empowered.  Space exploration is becoming internationalized with potential savings to the American taxpayer.  Human disaster relief increasingly involves international networking.  NATO is fighting in Afghanistan.

More can be done not only in preventing and controlling pandemics but also in linking national research laboratories to cooperate on expensive research, networking financial regulatory regimes to prevent banking collapse, linking universities using remote learning technologies, networking environmental protection efforts to implement climate control treaties, and the list goes on.

We created a range of new international institutions between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, basically 1945-49, and they helped stabilize a turbulent world and prevent World War III.  Those institutions are now 60 to 65 years old and not designed to address the new realities of the 21st century.  We need the leadership of Truman, Marshall, Acheson, Kennan, and others to renew that spirit of international cooperation.

Most nations, including the U.S., resist surrender of national sovereignty to international institutions.  That is why the idea of networking, that does not require any erosion of national sovereignty, seems to hold such promise in this new age and century.

Posted from Senator Hart's new blog at Matters of Principle.

 

 

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