Habitual overemphasis on national self-determination

Unlimited national sovereignty has spread like a plague across the world since the drafting of the UN Charter in 1945. It was quite natural, but it did not help when the new states emerging from the yoke of colonialism lusted for the same total sovereignty their former masters had. There is no system of decision-making powerful enough to surpass this national drive for supremacy. The result is that international political decisions, even within the United Nations, depend at basis on power manipulation among those nations most able to threaten the others.

1. Nations, accustomed over the years to being the form in which the world was understood, continue to serve as the primary social unit even when, as today, the primary obligation as human beings is to the entire globe. Thus, refusal by the people of a nation to restrain their right to self-determination blocks the prospect of global unity.

1. Socially unaccountable global governance
2. Parochial national interests
3. Inadequate structures for achieving global unity
4. Inadequacy of prevailing learning systems
5. Governmental barriers to a global ethic
6. Global parochialism

1. Unwillingness to sacrifice political power
2. Subjective cultural ranking
3. Self-interested government foreign policies
4. Lack of intersocietal resource channels

1. Unilateral interpretations of multilateral principles
2. Territorial fragmentation
3. Non-global priorities for use of world resources
4. Misuse of non-interference principle
5. Lack of international cooperation
6. Inadequate international law enforcement
7. Inadequacy of economic accounting systems

1. Pursuit of affluence
2. Inadequate global policy-making
3. Contradictory solutions to national economic goals
4. Collapse in providing ethical value screens

1. Over-centralization of global decision-making

1. Reinforced parochialism of internal values and images
2. Lack of human unity
3. Continentalism

1. Relating self-determination to global obligations
2. Providing sufficient global political decision-making
3. Encouraging national self-determination
4. Developing global ethic
5. Abstaining from global political decision-making

1. Unrelated
2. Barrier
3. Overemphasis
4. Lack