After decades of trying, we must admit that the international institutions that we need to tackle mounting global challenges can never emerge via the statutory institutional change mechanisms of the UN or the EU. They cannot be the outcome of a unanimous agreement of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, nor of the 27 member states of the EU. They can only arise when a few nations will take the lead in new treaty conventions or constituent assemblies. We did it before. It’s the main way we built multi-national organizations so far. Only 11 EU nations initially built and joined the Eurozone in 1999. Only 50 countries convened for 3 months with 850 delegates in San Francisco in 1945 to revise and approve the UN Charter. Only 2 and then 7, out of 13  US states joined the US constitutional convention of 1787. Sure, unprecedented extreme safeguards and checks and balances need to be designed in those processes, and other nations should be able to join on an equal basis, but we cannot afford to wait any longer. 

During the last two decades, accelerating technological progress has overall significantly alleviated human suffering, and made plausible unparalleled increases in prosperity, health, and education. Yet, that same progress has produced rapidly-growing interdependent challenges that have radically raised the risk of lasting catastrophic outcomes. 

Climate change, nuclear war, and technological disruption are the main threats, while the digital revolution makes plausible for the first time in history to achieve unimagined abundance, security and well-being for all. 

These challenges and their solutions are highly interlinked. Given the accelerated pace of key dynamics, the next years and decade will be decisive, with slight chances for intermediate outcomes. The stakes have never been higher.

Since those challenges are all profoundly global in nature, countering them will inevitably require much deeper and structural global coordination among nations, to counter the free rider problem, the tragedy of the commons, and other well-known mechanisms that prevent rational cooperation among nations in the absence of a true multi-national social contract. Its absence prevents coordinated, sustainable and predictable national policies to fight climate change, but also unfair labor and fiscal practices, or digital oligopolies. 

Their global nature will also regrettably and inescapably require ever stronger and more pervasive global oversight to mitigate the abuse of bio and cyber weapons and advanced AI that - unlike nuclear weapons - gets ever easier to abuse by ever smaller groups or nations.

Ideally, the UN should enact such global coordination. But it would need to be very strongly democratized and empowered, which has proven to be impossible to achieve since the five permanent security council members can block any statutory change.

In the absence of a reformed UN, or a single nation, alliance or all-powerful AI safely achieving global predominance in the near or medium future - which is highly unlikely, dangerous and undesirable - the only way we can achieve that is via open multinational conventions or constituent assemblies, involving at least a critical mass of nations, conceived to lead to much stronger treaties, that will constitute open multinational federal institutions that we need. 

In fact, it is the prevalent way we built confederations or federations of separate nations in the past. 

Reform, replace, or supplement existing multinational institutions?

How should we go about it to create such institutions while maximally and sustainably reducing risks of unintended consequences? Would it be safer to reform current institutions, replace them with new ones, or build new ones among a coalition of the willing and then welcome others? 

Sure, reform would be the most natural way. Changes to the EU treaties require the approval of each of its 27 members, so it will be impossible to do because any nations could make unreasonal request out of its own or via external pressures.

Amendment of the UN Charter, instead, requires the approval of each of the permanent members of the security council. After decades, and innumerable attempts, it is certain these create an insurmountable gridlock, ensuring that any meaningful change will be undemocratic or blocked, and condemning the EU and UN to their irrelevance today, when they are most needed.

A replacement would prove impossible and highly dangerous. It is not conceivable that some member of a multinational institution force others to dissolve it because they have decided to replace it with a new one.

Historically, multi-national organizations have been created after a major multi-national wars, whereby pioneering nations go ahead building new institutions, while remaining open to joining by other nations, and remaining in cooperative, peaceful and sometime functional relationship with previous institutions. 

At times, they have gradually replaced the older ones as they proved obsolete, and as new ones prove to be good and safe over time, and more nations join in.  New institutions can be created that complement and fill the void of the existing ones, but are conceived to expand over time organically based on consent.

The EU has an enhanced cooperation mechanism, detailed in recent EU treaties that may allow just that. It allows nine member states to press ahead, to further their integration within certain constraints which have been eased over time. In recent months, Romano Prodi, former President of the EU Commission has been tirelessly proposing that the EU four largest nations, agree on a treaty strongly federating defense and foreign policy, and then attract at least five more EU member states to reach the nine required.

Yet, such a mechanism may turn out to be unfit. The use of such a mechanism is fraught with legal complexities that pose the risk of even a single member state obstructing, constraining or unduly influencing the process. So leading member states should be ready to pursue their goal outside such a mechanism

Multi-national organizations have often been founded by a few pioneers.

Key milestones in the creation of the UN and the EU were arrived at via open multinational constituent processes led by a core of founding nations. At times, these were in alternative to existing institutions or plans for their reform. They were always open from the start and eventually attracted many more or nearly all.

Only 2 and then 7 of the 13 United States states participated in the 1787 US Constitutional Convention, whose main goal was to break off from the limitation of the Articles of Confederation that required unanimity to increase the US powers to move from a democratic confederation to a democratic federation. Nations were welcome to join along the way, and also to join later on an equal basis.

Only 11 EU nations designed and joined the Eurozone in 1999, then joined by 19 other EU nations. Europe instead developed in a layer of treaties among a varying set of nations, mostly after WW2, to become the confederation that it is today. It was a great success in many regards but previous treaties constrained the intention of even a majority of its nations to achieve a true federal structure, as it was envisioned by its funders and how it is needed today more than ever.

Only 50 nations convene in San Francisco in 1945 over 3 months with 850 delegates and 400 meetings to revise and finalize a draft of the UN Charter prepared by the four winners of WW2 It was “agreed that the Charter would come into effect when ratified by the governments of China, France, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and a majority of the other signatory countries and when they had notified the US Department of State of their ratifications, which happened on 24 October 1945”. Over time it was joined by 147 nations, nearly all. Once done it replaced the League of Nations, which had proven de-facto its obsolescence.

The way forward

A few willing nations can and should join together in an intensive in-person democratic deliberative process over several months with hundreds or thousands of representatives and translators to agree upon the Rules for the Election of an Open multinational Constituent Assembly for the creation of a Core EU and a Core UN. 

The same EU nations that joined to create the Core EU could become, together with a larger number of diverse nations from around the world, part of the foundation of the Core UN.

To mitigate the many risks, those Rules need to be designed with very careful safeguards, checks and balances, as well as an adequate supportive digital communications and media infrastructure to ensure that the preparatory processes, assembly, and functioning of the resulting institutions will be fair and secure, with freedom of speech and freedom private assembly, and tools conducive to the emergence of shared truth and fair and effective dialogue.

Risks of loss of national identity and sovereignty, and centralization.

Three-fourths of nearly 85,000 adult respondents from 60 countries surveyed by the World Values Survey between 2010 and 2014 identified as global citizens. So cultural and identity demand may well be there.

Yet, the creation of such institutions and strengthening of wide multinational, and eventually global, organizations, is fraught with actual and perceived risks for the well-being of both joining nations and non-joining nations, and citizens individually. 

The permanent integration in a federal supra-national body structure of nations that speak different languages and cultures - even if friendly and close nations - would inevitably engender actual and perceived fears of one’s language or culture being diluted or even squashed, exploited by domestic and foreign politicians, as we’ve seen done for Russian minorities in former Soviet republics, including eastern Ukraine.

Especially for small and medium countries, a proper federal body could instead substantially protect national identity, culture, and language against unchecked global cultural and hegemonies from world powers and their dominant corporations exert through their control of oligopolistic digital platforms. 

A replacement of the UN, especially one with much more power, would rightly raise fears of an entrenching of a “durable form of inhumane global governance”, as Richard Falk aptly put it.

The prospect of the creation of an EU Core raises fears in EU member states of being sidelined, and fears in many citizens in such core group nations that their national sovereignty is being given away. 

Delegation of national powers to a flawed federal multi-national body can surely result in substantial further curtailing of national identity, culture, and language, even stronger that those suffered currently through cultural and digital neo-colonialism by foreign powers.

Many nations and citizens agree we need a much stronger and more democratic EU and UN, while just as many rightly worry these could create an excessive centralization of unaccountable power, that could threaten the wellbeing and sovereignty of citizens and their national governments, cultures, and identities. Also, it may increase security and military tensions, when nations not joining initially, feel threatened by such new powerful institutions.

Those risks cannot be eliminated, but they can be radically mitigated. Properly federated nations could better contrast the predominance of the US and Chinese digital platforms, for social networks, smartphones, and movies, so ensuring that both EU and cultural and democratic sovereignty are better protected, affirming the digital, media, and communication sphere EU's unique social democratic liberal model.

The creation of the federations of Germany and the US was resilient enough to have maintained an overall healthy balance between geographical levels of power over decades and centuries . And we can learn from what did not work and try to make it better.

Which nations could or should lead the way?

The US, China, and Russia, as superpowers, would ideally lead the way, or be part of the initial core. Yet, they seem increasingly locked in excessive and unsubstantiated accusations, media and cyber warfare, proxy wars, and even threats of nuclear retaliation. 

The EU and EU nations are in general in favor of stronger fair global institutions, and increasingly realize the need, benefits, potential, and responsibility of becoming geopolitical actors that are proportional to their economic, moral, and political standing. 

The EU is an economic powerhouse placed geographically and politically between those blocks. The EU could become an important actor on the World stage to protect its security, economy, and values, while also promoting dialogue, peace, and a new architecture of fair global coordination. But it cannot due to its extremely weak confederation structure.

Many dozens of nations supported a strong democratization and empowerment of global organizations and are eager to play a more active role on the World stage, from “third nations”, like Turkey and India, to micro-nations, like Qatar and Liechtenstein. In a new multipolar world, many smaller nations are acquiring unprecedented levels of strategic autonomy.

From participant nations’ self-selection to global representativity

A set of diverse nations, that can be as small as 3 initially, could launch the initiative and, as soon as one or two dozens join,  launch such open constituent processes in such a way as to achieve  - from the very start, possibly also through weighted voting - a substantial global representativity in terms of ideology, religion, and geography. 

It will apply the subsidiarity principle, at the heart of federal democratic political models like Germany or the US, whereby decisions are taken at the lowest possible level, but not lower. Yet, it will retain more cultural, educational and social customs autonomy than those, while  mandating the learning of Esperanto, as an easy to learn shared language for the World. 

In recent years and months, EU leaders have accelerated their calls for the need for further integration, yet no plausibly workable path has been proposed. Such integration calls have centered on foreign policy and defense, following the war in Ukraine and the instability of the US. Of course, integration of defense requires integrated foreign policy to decide how and when to use such defense capabilities.

The all-important rules of the constituent process

The most fundamental milestone will be the agreement and ratification - by the simple majority of the legislatures of the participating nations - of the Rules for the Campaign and Election of the Open Global Constituent Assembly, and  - just for the EU ones - a Rules for the Campaign and Election of the Open European Constituent Assembly. 

These will be a detailed binding document that will contain both time-tested and novel but battle-tested safeguards, checks and balances that as much as possible mitigate unintended outcomes, and enable future mechanisms for self-correction, like mandatory future re-constituent assemblies. 

Given the conditioning of our media systems towards nationalistic propaganda - and the substantial influence that moneid interests, a few powerful foreign nations and digital corporations have on them - a wide digital infrastructure to enable democratic communications, deliberation and social networking will need to be set in place and widely adopted at least 12-18 months before the holding of such elections. 

Given the above conditions and degenerations of the political systems, the minority of the Assembly will be composed of random-sampled individuals self-educated via citizens' assembly mechanisms, and each voter will be mandated to select half of his chosen candidates from participating nations that are not his own. 

Other nations will be allowed to join the initiatives even after the Rules have been finalized, but before they are ratified, by the last of the participating nations. After the constitutions of the Core EU adn Core UN are ratified, by as many of the participant nations as it will be, other nations will be able to apply to join and will have a right to be accepted according to preset principles and a vote of the majority of the Core nations.

Our contribution

Should constituent process like the one described above or similar be proomted by a few nations, our Trustless Computing Certification Body and Seevik Net may constitute a large part of the mentioned needed digital infrastructure, as it pertains to the communications, information and negotiation needs of participationg governmental representatives, diplomats, journalists, activists and leaders, as well as for ordinary citizens.