World Confederation

October 31, 1994

Q: What is the difference between federation and confederation? Will the world government be in the form of a federation or a confederation? Should multinational units be federations or confederations?

This is a very good question. You know, in a confederation there is the voluntary participation of many given states or units and, together, they form a whole. The whole is the sum of its parts. Now, in a federation, the whole becomes something of itself. Something more than its parts. In a confederation there are so many states, so many countries, so many local units. They conspire together to form a federation. But that federation is a confederation, meaning that it is only the sum of the parts. It is not a unit in itself. A federation is a form of government that consists of a united coalition of various local units.

I would propose that multinational efforts, multinational governments, be composed of the local nations - local cultural and economic units - and that these be brought together as a confederation, and that out of their confederation, a federation be built. But that federation will not be more than the sum of its parts. It will not be a second entity which will dominate all of the local areas. Instead, it will be a governing body which will represent all of the various parts and carry forth the collective decisions of the body from which it has sprung. It does not have a separate life from the participating bodies.

So a confederation of local territories, in which there is cultural and economic harmony and unity, should be maintained. This type of federation, with local autonomy, gives a needed treatment to the concerns and considerations of each of the local areas. But still, the collective of these local areas becomes a governing body in itself. But it has no separate authority from those local areas; it is the sum of those local areas. If one local unit decides it will make war on a second local unit, then the collective body may intervene. But it does so as a representative of the entire collective, not as an independent body and independent police force that has nothing to do with the local areas. Do you see? It must be a confederation of the local interests, local economic and cultural groupings, which have conspired to form the confederation.