To secure mankind’s common stake in peace and security, as well as our shared interest in the continued habitability of the Earth, the world needs a supranational federation of nations. The United States can no longer dominate world politics and impose its economic systems upon the world, as it has since the immediate post-World War II period. In the absence of international reciprocity based on a universal recognition of world community and the right of all countries to develop economically, the conflicting interests of the great powers will devolve further into warring coalitions, each engaged in the zero-sum game of dominating opponents’ economies for momentary advantage. All-out economic wars will then quickly evolve into hot wars with no limits and no shared concern for the global commons.
In the United States, international trade has become a plaything of power politics. The United States has instituted a wide range of tariffs, tributary agreements, and favoritism among supplicants regulating access to the U. S. market in a desperate and misguided attempt to regain industrial productive capacity. While the durability of the American flim-flam tariff negotiations is doubtful, the negotiation process has revealed some of the monetary underpinnings of American domination of trade, commerce, and finance in the world. The U.S. has used the SWIFT international payment system established by Western governments after World War II to further its foreign policy goals frequently at the expense of other countries.
