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a New World Order? 363

and Mexico have formed a North American Free-Trade Association (NAFTA). Ten Asian
countries with a combined population of a half billion people have formed a regional
trading partnership called ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations). Struggling
for dominance is an even more encompassing group called the World Trade Organization.
These coalitions of trading partners are making national borders increasingly insignificant.
The European Union (EU) may indicate the future. Transcending their national
boundaries, twenty-seven European countries (with a combined population of 450 mil-
lion) formed this economic-political unit. These nations adopted a single, cross-national
currency, the Euro, which replaced their marks, francs, liras, pesetas, and lats. The EU
also established a military staff in Brussels, Belgium.
Could this process continue until there is just one state (or empire) that envelops the
earth? It is possible. The United Nations is striving to become the legislative body of the
world, wanting its decisions to supersede those of any individual nation. The UN oper-
ates a World Court (formally titled the International Court of Justice). It also has a small
multinational army and has sent “peacekeeping” troops to several nations. And there is
now a World Bank.
Strains in the Global System

Although the globalization of capitalism and its encompassing trade organizations could
lead to a single world government, the developing global system is experiencing strains
that threaten to rip the system apart. Unresolved items constantly rear up, demand-
ing realignments of the current arrangements of power. Although these pressures are
resolved on a short-term basis, over time their cumulative weight leads to a gradual shift
in global stratification.
The economic crisis that exposed a debt-ridden global financial system teetering on
the edge of global disaster also laid bare some of the interconnections that unite its ele-
ments. In 2012, when the crisis threatened to tear the European Union apart, sending
its individual members sulking back into their solitary units, the United States stepped
in. By pouring billions of dollars into the European Central Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, the United States helped European banks to keep credit flowing and
hold the economic-political union together. No longer are economic-political problems
limited to local areas, to regions, or even to continents. Larger and larger Band-Aids are
needed to prop the tattered union together.
If we take a broad historical view, we see that a particular group or culture can domi-
nate only so long. Its dominance always comes to an end, to be replaced by another Listen on MySocLab
Audio: NPR: Analysts: By 2025,
group or culture. The process of decline is usually slow and can last hundreds of years U.S. Won’t Be Top Power
(Toynbee 1946). Life today, though, is so speeded-up that the future looms into the
present at a furious pace. The decline of U.S. dominance—like that of Great Britain—
could come fairly quickly, although certainly not without resistance and bloodshed. The
shape of the new political arrangements of world power is anyone’s guess, but it cer-
tainly will include an ascendant China (Kissinger 2011).
As the economic and political arrangements of the present give way, future genera-
tions will face a new world. Whatever the particular shape of future stratification, it is
likely that a super-dominant group of more-or-less integrated economic-political elites
will be directing it. This super-group will not belong to any single nation, and the alli-
ances that forge its dominance in the new global scheme of things will pay little atten-
tion to international borders. This process may well lead to a one-world government,
perhaps to a dictatorship or an oligarchy that controls the world’s resources and people.
If so, we could end up with living under a government like that of Winston and Julia in
our opening vignette.
Only time will tell.