NWO or Decentralization?

As often, a thoughtful piece in the Times by David Brooks. (For those of you who might be wondering, no, the Times is not the only thing I read online, I just happen to be getting out from under a huge backlog from my Chinese test, and since I do read the Times everyday, I often find things in it to write about.)

He's talking about centralization vs. decentralization of power in globalism with the swine flu as background. As I said, it's a good piece, though I have a couple of issues with it.

Firstly,
'we don’t face a single concentrated threat. We face a series of decentralized, transnational threats: jihadi terrorism, a global financial crisis, global warming, energy scarcity, nuclear proliferation and, as we’re reminded today, possible health pandemics like swine flu.'

This I disagree with fairly wholeheartedly. With the exception of the swine flu, each of these problems could be argued as one multi-headed problem. The very problem is that the current global power structure doesn't work. But that's minor.

The major issue I have with the article is that it opposes these two arrangements of power, decentralization and centralization, as if we have to choose one of them. Brooks, to his credit, chooses decentralization. I agree with him on this as strongly as I disagree about the multifarious nature of the world's problem. Power must be localized, as local as possible, that is to say, the individual and his or her person-to-person connections must be in charge. If not, as Brooks says, '...If the response [to the swine flue] were coordinated by a global agency, those local officials would not be so empowered. Power would be wielded by officials from nations that are far away and emotionally aloof from ground zero. The institution would have to poll its members, negotiate internal differences and proceed, as all multinationals do, at the pace of the most recalcitrant stragglers.'

These person-to-person connections must of course operate under the rule of law, or you'd get rampant corruption. But Brooks' example of a photo of New York City Health Department officials is a reminder at the opposite side of the spectrum of why localism works, or why the U.S. won out over the highly-centralized U.S.S.R. 'The photo is the very image of a focused, local response. People are wearing polo shirts and casual wear — intensely concentrating on the concrete incidents in their own backyard.'

What's to argue with?

There's got to be somewhere the buck stops. You need a Constitution and a Bill of Rights guaranteed by a Federal Government with power for there to be a civil rights movement, for example. Without one overarching power, there will never be perfect peace. This power must be aggressively limited to allow an open society to develop, but it also must exist to settle differences and set directives for the world's countries.

In fact, for local power to be as powerful as it can be, there needs to be some centralization of power. If, say, Europe does hold back on its vaccines, the U.S. would need some more. But there's a reason we don't have as many, and for the U.S. to put resources towards something it wouldn't need without the artificiality of national borders, and that's a waste.

Brooks writes about centralization as if it means soviet-style planning. But without centralization we'll end up a loose confederacy unable to tackle any of our increasingly global issues.