We have been living inside a remarkably persistent dream.
For decades, we have comforted ourselves with the belief that every human problem can be solved by constructing a larger institution. Whenever an existing organisation failed, the answer was rarely to question its purpose or its scale. Instead, we built another layer above it. A larger committee. A broader mandate. A grander bureaucracy. We became convinced that distance from the problem somehow conferred wisdom about the problem.
History has been considerably less enthusiastic.
The International Court of Justice was conceived as an admirable idea. Justice, liberated from national interests and applied equally to all nations, is a noble aspiration. In theory, such institutions promise impartiality, consistency, and protection against arbitrary power.
In practice, they have evolved rather differently.
Predictably so.
Like almost every procedural instrument ever created, they have gradually become tools that can be exploited by those least constrained by principle against those still attempting to play by the rules. The ruthless quickly discover how to manipulate institutions designed for cooperation. The conscientious remain bound by procedures their opponents regard merely as obstacles to be navigated.
It is an old pattern.
Power learns the rules faster than virtue does.
This is not merely a flaw of one particular court or one particular organisation. It is the recurring weakness of every sufficiently large procedural system. The larger and more distant the institution becomes, the less accountable it tends to be, and the easier it becomes for incentives to drift away from the people it was originally created to serve.
Fortunately, the underlying principle is far simpler than the institutional architecture suggests.
Problems are almost always easier to solve within the smallest practical frame of reference.
The closer authority resides to the people directly affected by its decisions, the greater the likelihood that competence, accountability, and consequences remain connected. Decisions become tangible. Mistakes become visible. Responsibility acquires a name and an address instead of disappearing into an anonymous bureaucracy.
For that to happen, however, the larger frame of reference must contract.
In some cases, it may need to disappear altogether.
And there exists no larger frame of reference than an institution claiming to speak on behalf of the entire planet.
The United Nations.
Its agencies.
The countless international organisations that present themselves as guardians of global interests.
These institutions are paradoxical creatures. They are among the most difficult organisations to reform because their complexity shields them from meaningful accountability. Yet they are also among the easiest to abolish in practical terms because their disappearance would primarily disrupt the machinery itself rather than the daily lives of ordinary citizens.
Machines mourn their own dismantling.
Citizens usually notice only whether essential services continue to function.
Responsibilities that have gradually migrated upward over decades should begin the journey back downward. Nation states must reclaim those responsibilities that properly belong within their own democratic institutions. Governments should first concern themselves with the condition of their own patch of the planet before assuming responsibility for managing everyone else’s.
Competence and responsibility should not continuously flow upward into ever larger abstractions.
They should trickle downward.
As far downward as practical.
Power belongs closest to those who must live with its consequences. Only when authority, accountability, and responsibility occupy the same place can political systems begin repairing the damage accumulated over decades of institutional expansion.
Every nation has enough problems of its own without outsourcing both sovereignty and responsibility to distant bureaucracies that answer to almost nobody.
The temptation, of course, is always to respond to institutional failure by constructing an even larger institution.
That has become the default reflex of our age.
It is also the very habit that produced the problem.
Adding another layer of global governance to repair the failures of existing global governance resembles trying to cure an alcoholic by throwing him into a brewery.
The quantity changes.
The addiction remains.