The planetary sociology called “World Systems Theory” was developed during the 1980s by scholars who saw that there was a world system in place that transcended the collection of some 193 “sovereign” nation-states. The diagram above represents this system in which there are three levels of nations with the “Imperial Core” on top, then “Semi-periphery” nations, and finally the “Periphery.” In the “Westphalian” world system (now embodied in the United Nations Charter), all these nations are supposed to enjoy equal rights. This is, and has always been, an illusion.

World Systems Theory provides the data showing that the Periphery contributed raw materials and cheap labor to the system in an economic system in which the wealth gravitated to the top, to the super-wealthy classes embedded within the Imperial Core. The periphery was low-tech and militarily weak, making it vulnerable to attacks from the imperial center to keep this “world order” in line. Semi-Periphery nations had some power to exploit the Periphery and often also aligned themselves with the Imperial Center or, conversely, saw themselves as rivals to the imperial center.

As Naomi Klein, for example, points out in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), the African National Congress (ANC) had struggled for decades against apartheid and promised a more equitable and just society after apartheid. They discovered, soon after liberation occurred, that a more equitable and just society was not possible, since the entire economy of South Africa was part of a global system from which it could not separate without economic disaster.

image host From Martin, Earth Constitution Solution, p. 76.

The stupidity of Donald Trump and his lackeys in the United States government illustrates this truth once again in its attack on Iran, which is having global economic consequences that were predicted by numerous commentators who are aware of the interdependent world system. Nitrogen fertilizer is rapidly becoming scarce and extremely expensive, along with natural gas and oil, certainly leading to a global recession that may result in massive starvation in those nations that cannot substitute for these shortages or cannot afford the skyrocketing fossil fuel prices.

Since the above world-system distinctions were developed in the 1980s, the global system has evolved somewhat. BRICS has emerged as a coalition of semi-peripheral states that, rather than challenging the Imperial Center militarily, are undercutting its global economic hegemony through developing systems of trade that do not require exchange in US dollars.

In world systems theory, semi-peripheral nations will challenge the Imperial Center for that position. Historically, Spain was an imperial center that was challenged and replaced by Great Britain, which was then replaced by the USA. Today, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), and affiliated nations are moving to displace the center not through military conquest but through economic measures, breaking the economic hold of the center. The center is, of course, fighting back. It is not simply that its imperial outpost in Israel has forced it into this horrific war. Rather, the empire wanted to demonstrate to the world its supreme military dominance in order to intimidate all rivals. Trump announced the US re-domination over Latin America and boasted repeatedly that the US military is the most powerful in all of history, thereby intending to intimidate all challenges to his ‘big cheese’ nation.

However, the gambit in Iran has backfired. Iran watched the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the “Shock and Awe” devastation of Iraq in 2003 and learned from this. The empire sends in stealth bombers to take out radar and infrastructure, thereby blinding and paralyzing the victim nation. It “decapitates” the leadership and its military, making way for a ground invasion.

Iran has seen this model repeatedly and has prepared for it. It has gone underground and divided governing into multiple sectors designed to thwart this scenario of the Empire. And it has designed missiles capable of circumventing the aggressor’s defensive systems, such as the so-called “Iron Dome,” “David’s Sling,” and “Arrow” systems in Israel. Instead of sending a message of dominance to the rest of the world, the invasion of Iran has revealed severe weaknesses of the Empire, as well as the absurd fragmentation of the current world disorder.

Whether or not Iran manages to survive the ever more lethal escalations of the Israeli and US aggressors, the world is being thrown into an economic chaos from which it will not soon recover. If the world becomes multipolar with the emergence of Russia, China, and India (along with a diminished US) into the global economic center, there will still be fragmentation, there will still be military arms races, and there will still be levels of nations in the semi-periphery and the periphery. If there is no holistic principle premised on justice, then there will continue to be absolute winners and losers. The world system will continue to violate the principle of holism, of unity in diversity, that has been revealed by contemporary science to be the basis of the planetary ecosystem as well as the universe as a whole.

Scientist and cosmologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes that “the universe has no complete reality except in the movement which causes all its elements to converge upon several higher centers of cohesion (in other words, which spiritualizes them); nothing holds together absolutely except through the Whole; and the Whole itself holds together evolutionarily only through its future fulfillment.”1

Humanity, as numerous thinkers have pointed out, is a whole—we all share a common humanity and dignity. And our holism implies a goal of self-actualization, a future that calls to us to become ever more whole. Our planetary ecosystem is a whole, as numerous climate scientists have pointed out—yet we all share a planetary economic and political system which is destroying that holism. As geopolitical historian Alfred W. McCoy expresses this: “If Washington’s current world order indeed fades around 2030, Beijing’s hypernationalist hegemony will have just a few decades of dominance before it too begins to suffer from the consequences of unchecked global warming.”2

A “system” of some 193 militarized nation-state fragments is in no way a whole of any sort. To call it a “world system” is, in fact, a misnomer, for systems thinkers universally define a system as a progression of differences all sharing a common principle to the point where the basic relation between the parts is an “internal” one. The parts are integrated in multiple ways in which changes in any of them necessitate changes in the others. To treat some nations as enemies, or rivals, or as “peripheral” is to treat nations as a mere collection, not as part of a holistic system. It is also to trash both our common humanity and our planetary ecosystem.

The US and Israel, run by brainless and avaricious people, only epitomize what is there in the entire sovereign nation-state framework. They think attacking Iran will give them some dominance advantage, but ultimately, the devastation is not only internal to Iran—it will impact the entire world, including the aggressors.

Just as Iran watched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and learned from this, so Russia, China, and other nations are watching the devastation of the Iran war and learning from this. They are learning how to impede or defeat the global hegemon. They are learning how to prepare for the next war when the USA attacks them. They are investing vast sums in developing missiles that can defeat the defense shields of the aggressors. They are wasting the resources of our degraded planet in preparation for degrading it even more in the next war. Nations cannot repudiate war as long as there is no binding law above them—as long as there is no true world system into which they are integrated.

The principle of a genuine world system should be called a “global justice” system. Global justice has two dimensions: (1) reasonable equality (not extremes of wealth and poverty) and (2) reasonable freedom in which the freedom of each (person or nation) is limited only by the right of a similar freedom for all the others. These two features of a genuine world system require a Constitution for the Federation of Earth3 in which both of these dimensions are legislated and enforced over all the parts equally. Such an authentic world system would make any military unnecessary, since civilian world police would be entirely adequate.

Today, many nations think that being sovereign is their route to “self-determination.” However, when one is dependent on the vagaries of a global economic system, and when one worries about defending oneself against unpredictable attacks, and when one has a lower rank in the global pecking order of nations, then self-determination becomes an illusion. Real self-determination occurs when one is an integral part of a genuine whole within which all the parts are empowered and afforded reasonable equality. Reasonable equality means equality before enforceable law. Justice means both reasonable economic and political equality, enabling their corresponding freedoms.

This would mean that a world peace system was established that superseded the world “war system” that now exists in the fragmented nation-state disorder. Only such a genuine system could give us a “world freedom system” and a “world justice system” as integral to its peace system. In the current world fragmentation, even if there were no wars, the wholeness of humanity would continue to disintegrate, and the planetary environment would continue to collapse. The recession and possible global depression caused by the aggression against Iran will look like child’s play compared to the collapse of the global ecosystem that the fragmentation of sovereign nations is now making inevitable.4

As philosopher Errol E. Harris expresses this: “The problems of maintaining world peace and of conserving the global ecological system are interlinked and are both rendered insoluble as long as the nations remain and claim to be sovereign and independent.” Only a united humanity can give us a credible future. Harris continues: “A democratically constituted World Government…is the indispensable precondition of any effectual remedy to global crises, if only because sovereign nations are bound by their very nature and definition to generate the conditions that exacerbate current crises.”5

The aforementioned Earth Constitution is designed to address multiple global problems simultaneously because it introduces a genuine world system into human affairs, one that abolishes the three levels of “world systems theory” in favor of an integrated nexus of World Parliament, World Courts, World Executive, World Enforcement, and World Ombudsmen. As Buckminster Fuller pointed out long ago, the wealth of a united planet would far exceed the combined wealth of the fragmented parts now competing with one another. A genuine world system would mirror the planetary ecosystem as well as the cosmic macrocosm.

As we saw Teilhard point out, the wholeness of the evolving world system is held together “only through its future fulfillment.” An Earth Federation under the Earth Constitution establishes an evolving system that is “held together by its future fulfillment.” That is, the only credible future that holds us together today embraces a humanity united to eliminate weapons of war, provide a decent life for all persons, and restore and protect the planetary ecosystem. A humanity that forms a systemic unity in diversity is immensely more powerful than a mere collection of fragments precisely to the extent that it overcomes fragmentation and the disintegration that flows from that collection of “sovereign” parts. The world unites to establish a credible future for all persons and nations.

Christian thinker David Ray Griffin wrote in 2021: “At the very time when the two major threats to human civilization are 1) fighting wars and 2) burning oil and natural gas, our leaders are devoted to planning wars for oil and gas” The reason for this is not only the sheer stupidity of the people governing the US, Israel, and many other nations. The reason is that they have buckled down on fragmentation, to “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” is to emphasize separation from our common humanity and the rest of the world. They are accelerating the disintegration of human civilization. Yet the fact remains, Griffin declares: “Global democracy is necessary if human civilization is not to be destroyed by excessive use of fossil fuels.”6

It is high time that the nations began thinking in terms of a world system designed to benefit the whole of humanity, not just “my sovereign portion.” The Earth Constitution provides that system with a real holism embracing not only all nations but all peoples on Earth. This is the lesson we need to learn from the current aggression against Iran, not how other nations can defend themselves or build better missiles, for this will only exacerbate the problem. We must learn to unite by embracing our diversity under a holistic Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

References

1 Christianity and Evolution (1971), p. 71.
2 To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change, Haymarket Books, 2021, p. 303.
3 A Constitution for the Federation of Earth, Introduction by Glen T. Martin, Institute for Economic Democracy Press, 2014.
4 See my essay “The UN Sustainable Development Goals as Omnicidal Duplicity” in Glen T. Martin, Our Human Quest for Unity and Freedom, Cambridge Scholars, 2026.
5 Twenty-first Century Democratic Renaissance (2008), pp. 130 and 138.
6 Reinhold Niebuhr & the Question of Global Democracy, pp. 119 and 117.