By JIM STARK

At the height of the Cold War, in 1977, I founded "Operation Dismantle" in Canada. The organization spent years and a busload of money trying unsuccessfully to launch a global referendum on balanced and verifiable nuclear disarmament. On reflection, that goal was far too limited (disarmament in itself will not bring peace), plus there was a showstopper, in that the only practical way of having any global referendum was for the governments of nations to conduct the world vote in segments by adding the referendum question on to the ballot in their next national elections. Most UN ambassadors—and I met with almost all of them in 1979—said they would vote for this initiative if it was to be introduced into the General Assembly, and several governments were willing to co-sponsor it. However, no government would agree to be the primary sponsor of such a resolution, and without a primary sponsor, nothing could happen. Now, a quarter century later, there is a new route around that showstopper, and there is no doubt what the question on the ballot must really be. That "new route" is the Internet, and the objective must be world democracy. 

If we want to outlaw war, which we have to do if we are to survive "WMD" (biological, chemical and nuclear "weapons of mass destruction"), the goal must be not disarmament per se, but democratic world government, or DWG, a House of Commons or parliament for the entire world, making and applying world law. (Nations under a DWG would still have military forces, just as provinces and cities would continue to need police forces, but no government will be allowed to possess weapons that threaten all life on Earth.) 

National governments do not seem to realize that with WMD in the mix (and increasingly available to unstable nations and terrorists), it is impossible to provide "actual" security to their citizens, nor do they see that for the rest of human history, actual security will be possible only collectively, through a directly-elected and democratic world government, through the resolution of international conflicts in the same way that the police and courts provide actual security to you and me, where we live. As a result of this unfortunate bit of ignorance, I’m sure that most national governments still won’t want to conduct a segment of any world referendum. But we have the Internet now, which we did not have in 1979, and that dramatically changes all the equations and calculations! 

After a year of planning, the Internet-based global referendum on DWG has begun. It is hoped and expected that in a decade, we will collect "yes" votes from a strong majority of adult humans on the planet. (Clearly, 50% + 1 of those who do vote is not enough. To be "compelling," we would have to prove "yes" results from perhaps 60% of those who voted and prove that perhaps 60% of living adults had cast votes, or some such formula.) It is difficult to imagine any person or government or group of countries telling the entire human race that a democratically-taken decision can’t be implemented. Even in law, such a referendum result must trump all other law.¹ At some point, the consent of the people is more than consent; it is authorization, it is instruction, it is law … in this case, world law. After a successful global referendum, any person can speak for the human race and say: "We can live lawfully on the global level just as easily as we now do within our nations, provinces and cities, and since this is what it will take for human life to survive and thrive for the next million years, we are now creating a democratic world government." 

The United Nations is an institution where national governments are represented, not the people. The DWG can associate itself with the UN, or not (I suspect it will, and I think it should), but whatever the case, the DWG must be a directly-elected body, responsible to the people of Earth. It can and must stop terrorism, it can and must prevent abuse to the environment, it can and must send AIDS to the same graveyard of diseases where the UN sent smallpox and do many other things that are in the interests of the human race and the planet. 

The site where you can vote is www.voteworldgovernment.org. The number of ballots at the time of writing is only about 200. We need at least 3 billion! 

We’re just getting started. It is very hard to prove that a political strategy will work until or unless we can make it work and then say, "See, we told you so." The "catch" is that we need the first thousand votes so that people will realize we will soon have ten thousand, and we need the first 100,000 votes to show we will soon have millions, and we need the first million votes to prove that soon we will have a hundred million votes, or a billion? It is our plan to let votes trickle in until we have a powerful Board of Directors set up, and a few influential institutions ready to stand behind this global referendum initiative (such as municipal councils, companies, service clubs, churches and unions, etc.). Then, before all these institutions call upon their constituencies to vote, and hopefully to vote "yes" to the proposition, we will get the essential elements of the site translated into at least all major languages (eventually, to all languages). When all the preparations are done, we will plan and execute an official "launch" to kick-start the process in earnest. 

So please, vote! And get all your friends and family to vote—and get them to get all their friends to vote too, so we can get up a head of steam. If you do your part and others do theirs, these (below) are the milestones that we think are realistic. 

A few donations and loans to the sponsoring organization (Vote World Government) will get us off to a shaky start. 

In 2005, our concept will come into public view and we will acquire momentum. We will translate the ballot into all languages and the website into many languages, and we’ll get a worldwide coalition of NGOs, churches, unions, companies and universities assembled to act as the engine of this historic movement, and do the official launch. 

By 2006, the writing will be on the wall. We hope and expect that many thousands of organizations will be collecting ballots, and people will assume that we are going to reach our goal of three billion "YES" votes on schedule (our target year is 2014). 

By 2007, the first national government will decide to run the DWG referendum ballot in tandem with its next national election, relieving us of the cost and labor of doing that and freeing up people to concentrate on nations where the cooperation of the government may never be achieved. 

By 2008, work will be under way to prepare for DWG elections. Boundaries of perhaps 700 global constituencies will have been defined, and methods of "corruption-proofing" a DWG will have to be settled, because humanity can’t afford to have a Hitler in power at the world level—ever. (This prospect is really the only serious argument against a DWG, but such a nightmare scenario is easily preventable with the common sense application of existing modern technology.) 

By 2010, a "provisional" DWG can be in place, preparing for the election of real DWG representatives. 

By 2013, the first actual "representatives" can be elected to the DWG. 

By 2014, we expect to see the inaugural session of a duly-elected DWG. Our efforts to lawfully resolve human conflicts can begin, and negotiations should begin as to how the DWG will coordinate with or associate with the United Nations. 

You needn’t "believe" what is said here, but you should see that all this is possible, and if the Earth is to have a future of any kind, we, the people, must finally civilize ourselves on the global level. We’ve known this since the mid-19^th century, but no one seems to know how to get there. You now know of a strategy, and it can work. With your help, we think it will turn out the way it is described above. If you want to do more than just vote in the referendum, click on the "volunteer" or "donate" links on our website. 

footnote:
1. Canada had to deal with these issues in relation to a referendum held by one province to seek a mandate from its provincial population to become a separate nation-state. And even though there is "no right, under international law or under the Constitution of Canada, for … Quebec to effect … secession … from Canada unilaterally," there would be an obligation for Canada to negotiate the terms of such a secession if the vote for the secession option was strong, the question in the referendum was clear and if the turnout at the polls was sufficient. For a copy of the Clarity Act, write voteworldgovernment@yahoo.ca and request it.