Overcoming Planetary Ungovernability Now: An Invitation to a UN 2.0

By Georgios Zervas and Claudio Weiss

The authors of this book describe the necessary steps to a substantially new quality of peace, security, and sustainable well-being for humanity in a simple yet convincing way. The action steps they propose are highly visionary and yet extremely realistic in a sense that they can actually create and secure planetary peace, security and sustainable fairness, justice and welfare for all.
The United Nations with the Security Council and other global organizations such as the World Trade Organization were once set up to achieve these goals. Although these organizations represented very valuable progress compared to the previous world situation, they are now in urgent need of appropriate adaptation. They need to be freed from veto rights and generally from too strong an orientation towards national interests - towards the preservation of peace, security and well-being for humanity as a whole.
The Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang put it in a nutshell: "World order can only be the order of world sovereignty, guided by the common good of the world." Albert Einstein remarked as early as 1932: "The way to international security is that states unconditionally give up some of their freedom of action or sovereignty, and is should be unquestionable that there is no other way to achieve security."
Do we really need another World War to finally overcome planetary ungovernability at its root in clearly vital matters such as world peace and the preservation of ecosystems? How long do we wait to rethink the concept of national interest politics applied to issues that undeniably have a global, a human dimension, and which can only be managed with concepts to planetary sovereignty and the ability to act in a respectful way to the world?
The authors of this book propose two new UN ministries on the basis of the new principle of global effectiveness through global validity: The "World Peace Ministry" and "The World Trade Ministry".
Today's Security Council should be transformed into a world peace ministry with clear rules for preventive conflict avoidance and a highly effective enforcement capability for effectively ending hot conflicts quickly.
The WTO is to be transformed into a strong world trade ministry, which is to lay down globally binding trade rules and ensure compliance with them with the corresponding sanctions.
The authors explain what both UN 2.0 facilities could look like in detail so that a global public discussion can be held on this basis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WeQ Institute Horizonte Verlag
• Release date: Jan 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9783894831240

Georgios Zervas

Georgios Zervas, Dipl.-Ing., is a self-employed management consultant with decades of experience in international trade. He has been involved in several community and welfare projects. In 2007, he was awarded the Vision Award for his Global Fair Trade concept, which Muhammad Yunus also received in the same year. In 2008, he published the book "Global Fair Trade: Transparenz im Welthandel" (Transparency in World Trade) and, together with Peter Spiegel, in 2016 "Die 1-Dollar- Revolution: Globaler Mindestlohn gegen Ausbeutung und Armut" (The 1-Dollar-Revolution: Global Minimum Wage against Exploitation and Poverty) and in 2023 "Planet We: Wirtschaft und Weltpolitik wettbewerbsneutral gestalten" (Planet We: Shaping Economy and World Politics in a Competition-Neutral Way). He is the project manager for WeQ Politics at the WeQ Institute, a member of the Senate of Economy Europe and Honorary Member of the Club of Budapest Germany.

Book preview

Chapter 1

How do we rule the world?

Let us finally make the UN powerful and financially strong!

What kind of image do you have of the UN? What is your opinion about it? How do you feel about the UN? Does the UN give you hope, or does it scare you? Or do you feel rather indifferent? Especially when it comes to securing world peace, billions of people are probably disillusioned, if not bitterly disappointed, by the UN. In this chapter, we look at the strength and weaknesses of the current bodies of the UN. Here, the UN Security Council is criticized. However, we do see great potential in a UN 2.0 that is powerful, financially strong, and represents all of us. If the UN improves as such, we can resolve the current planetary ungovernability.

Is the UN a toothless tiger?

This is a statement that we disagree strongly with! The UN has a great track record looking at some of its sub-organizations operating worldwide. The achievements of UNESCO and UNICEF, to mention two examples, are impressive. The work of other special organizations associated with the UN (United Nations Special Organizations) is often controversial, such as the WHO (World Health Organization), the WTO (World Trade Organization) as well as the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Questions that are commonly asked are: Who owns these suborganizations? Who finances them? Whose interests do they represent? Who is running the show here?

This is where we already see the systemic weaknesses of the UN today. These become particularly glaring when we take a closer look at global existential issues that are crucial for our future, such as the climatic and ecological development of our planet, the enormous disparity between rich and poor, armed conflicts and the threatening possibility of a world war that would destroy all life. Here, the UN has proven to be rather toothless. However, we do not want the UN to be a wild, snarling tiger! We want to mutate it into a good-natured yet time effective and efficient organization, which respects the holistic welfare of the current and future citizens of the world as well as all other living beings on this planet. In doing so, we want to ensure that the UN 2.0, as we call it, would stand above all parties and powerful organizations, beyond (national) egoisms, in order to act effectively on a global