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Some internationalists seek the establishment of a world government as a way of establishing freedom and a benign rule of law over the world. Some (including internationalists) have concerns that a world government would need to respect the diversity of the nations or peoples it includes. Others regard a global government as a nightmarish possibility, with a malevolent World Government creating an endless totalitarian state without the prospect of escape or revolution. The alternative term global political monoculture emphasizes the latter fears and the parallels to global economic monoculture perceived by some to be developing via such institutions as McDonald's, the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank.
Internationalists present the argument that current shortcomings in the international order may be redressed not by merely opposing globalization, which they see as an inevitable and even welcome process, but by counterbalancing the ills brought by overcentralization or domination by corporations and vested interests (such as violation of human rights (including labor rights) and sociocultural and environmental integrity) with genuinely representative democratic institutions with supranational authority.
The idea of world government is often explored in science fiction, either as a central theme or as part of the "furniture" of a vision of the future.
Effective governance of multiple nations has been accomplished in the past either by empire or by federationA federation is a state comprised of a number of self-governing regions (often themselves referred to as states or provinces) united by a central federal government. In a federation the self-governing status of the component states is constitutionally ent.
The Roman Empire60 and 400 with major cities. During this time only Dacia and Mesopotamia were added to the Empire but were lost before 300. The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman state in the centuries following its reorganization under t (1st century BC to 12th century AD) ruled most of the Mediterranean rim, as well as parts of the Celtic regions of Northern Europe.
The Mongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206. At its height, it was arguably the largest contiguous empire in human history, stretching from Southeast Asia to Europe, covering 13. 8 million square miles or more than 35 million square kilometers. of the 13th century was probably the largest empire of all time, ruling about half of the world population.
The Ottoman EmpireOsmanlı İmparatorluğu Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye The Ottoman Coat of Arms Imperial motto: unknown The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power Official language Ottoman Turkish Capital İstanbul ( Constantinople) Sovereigns Sultans which ended in 1922, covered all of the Arab world, to include the Middle EastThe Middle East is a geographical and cultural area comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The Middle East is a subregion of Afr, North AfricaNorth Africa is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert, comprising the Maghreb, including Libya and Egypt, and also by some definitions the Sudan. North Africa is vastly more uniform ethnically than anywhere in Africa south of th and parts of EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se and AsiaThe continent of Asia is defined by subtracting Europe and Africa from the great land mass of Africa-Eurasia. The boundaries are vague, especially between Asia and Europe: Asia and Africa meet somewhere near the Suez Canal. The boundary between Asia and E.
The British Empire reached its peak in early 20th century, ruling over about a quarter of Earth's population.
The Soviet Union ("Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" - USSR) stretched over large parts of the northern Eurasian continent from 1922 to 1991. It was a highly centralized federation of communist states; its constituent Soviet Republics had a degree of self rule, but less than is commonly expected in a federal country. During World War II, the Soviet Union joined the alliance against Nazi Germany. As a result, in the post-war era it became one of the two nuclear superpowers of the Cold War, and took part in the huge buildup of nuclear arms and weapons systems to achieve parity with the United States in the so-called Balance of terror. Partially due to that arms race, the Soviet Union achieved the first breakthrough in human space exploration, with the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth ( Sputnik in 1957), and the first manned space mission ( Yuri Gagarin in 1961 on the Vostok 1 space ship). Also during the Cold War, the Soviet sphere of influence covered a large portion of the Earth's surface and population.
The United States' current global presence and influence is frequently termed the American Empire. The U.S. maintains approximately 700 military bases in 130 countries (of 190 total countries in the world), as well as 13 floating naval task forces, giving it the capacity to project force far from its borders. The U.S. military expenditures in 2003, at about $400 billion, approach the total of all other countries' military expenditures combined (compared to $13 billion in non-military foreign aid, of which $5 billion are to Israel and Egypt). Further influence over the affairs of other countries is employed by leveraging the U.S.'s dominant economic power, especially as the world's largest importer.
Countries like Switzerland, Belgium and Canada demonstrate the possibility of bringing nations together to peacefully form a stable and effective shared federal government lasting for centuries, without erasing internal linguistic and ethnic diversity. India, the world's largest democracy, is a federation of dozens of peoples, each with its own culture and language.
More recently, the evolving and expanding European Union has attempted the uniting a large group of widely diverse, formerly hostile, nations spread over a large geographical area. The EU's lead is being followed by the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and MERCOSUR. These multinational associations are at different stages of development, but they are all growing, both in coverage and in extent of economic and political integration.
The total population currently aggregated under mutli-national political governance organizations, either a full federation or an evolving regional integration process, is approximately 3 billion, about a half of humanity.