This first series of articles has focused on regionalism—the natural coalescing of nations in relative proximity for mutual benefit. We reviewed evidence from economics, demographics, and politics to see how regionalism is indeed occurring. We reviewed its implications on some of today’s worldwide issues. We also examined its implications for US policy. But is there anything else by which we could conclude that regionalism is taking place? There is: theoretically it makes sense.
In World Leadership, I reviewed human history to identify how mankind has progressed through five societal levels: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, fiefdoms, and nation-states. Every form of government humans have ever had fits into one of these five levels. The levels overlap; there were false starts; there were fallbacks; but fundamentally, there were only these five levels. The sixth level, which hasn’t happened yet, is the nation-union. Regionalism is the early sign of a shift to nation-union. While it won’t be complete for generations, we can see its beginning. These articles highlighted evidence occurring within the last two years of a continuing transition.
I predict that more innovation is needed before a real push to nation-union can begin and make them sustainable. I believe those innovations will come from the energy and computing fields. The former will drive it and the latter will make it sustainable. However, technologies in these fields have not matured to the level where they are capable of doing this yet. (We’ll discuss this more in future articles.)
While no nation can drive this shift to nation-union—it’s simply too seismic for that—nations can position themselves to benefit from it, or not. The nation that swims in the middle of the stream will move faster than those along the edges, and future leadership depends on getting downstream first. Hence this understanding forms a context that anyone interested in politics, or the future, should understand.
References:
Neil Hamblin, World Leadership: How Societies Become Leaders and What Future Leading Societies Will Look Like, 2017.
No responses yet