Confronting global challenges in a more interconnected world
“A wise man’s country is the world,” Aristippus, an ancient Greek philosopher, once said. Many others have since echoed his sentiment that individuals ought to identify with broader humanity rather than with nations. In more recent decades, astronauts have joined this chorus, suggesting that a world without borders is not an aspiration so much as a fact: viewed from outer space, Earth shows no boundaries. As Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalyonok said, “After an orange cloud — formed as a result of a dust storm over the Sahara and caught up by air currents — reached the Philippines and settled there with rain, I understood that we are all sailing in the same boat.” An American counterpart concurred: “I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents,” said astronaut John-David Bartoe. “Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence.”
Yet as modern societies transition to a more global definition of community, they do so not out of respect for their sages or their heroes but out of necessity. Problems that imperil human existence confound nation-based solutions. Nuclear materials are so plentiful and scattered that only a worldwide effort can keep non-state actors from harnessing their deadly potential. Human contributions to climate change threaten to unleash forces we cannot control, on polluters and non-polluters alike. And only close public health coordination among countries can prevent an infectious disease outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.
Some issues must be approached globally for the sake of mutual prosperity. Water shortages, which can cripple a society, can be mitigated only by good international stewardship. The international financial system has few built-in checks to prevent risky decisions in one nation from triggering worldwide economic ruin, and nationalistic trade restrictions can impoverish the global community.
Other questions defy the age-old concept of states as the basic unit of international relations. How can the world address crises in areas like the Congo, where a nominal state is a lawless deathtrap, or in the Kurdish regions of the Middle East, where an alternative “national” identity subverts political boundaries? How can Israel fight Hamas and still reconcile with the civilians Hamas purports to represent? If threats to member state security now exist beyond Europe, does NATO’s mandate extend to Afghanistan?
These questions have no easy answers, and in many cases international cooperation is insufficient to meet their challenges. But countries and their citizens are increasingly compelled to consider global consequences of their decisions. Furthermore, as the world community grows tighter, it imposes the moral claims that come with every community. A country’s responsibility to end the persisting evil of slavery, for example, is no longer satisfied by eradication within its borders but only by ending the scourge on a global level. A complete awareness of such moral duties is perhaps the most distant phase of global interdependence, yet it becomes inevitable as we contemplate a world beyond borders.