The unstoppable march of globalisation that started with the first industrial revolution is currently facing tough challenges in the  form of Brexit, Trumpism, and the scattered populist movements.

Politics acts much like waves on the seashore, it ebbs and it flows, but when the sea rises such motions will be nothing but small footnotes in the larger human political history. 

The champions of globalisation such as Macron, Obama, Merkel stand head over shoulders next to narrow-minded leaders such as Farag, Trump, and Le Pen including their historical  predecessors such as Bismark and Napoleon whose only claim to fame was starting wars and killing “others”. “Others” is a key word in the  globalist’s dictionary. It does not exist !. We are all one human family united to evolve through science, commerce and art and not through  the cowardice and thuggishness of franticide. A human family that will criminalise hate speech and look down upon political violence as a low life criminal activity.

As with the three Industrial revolutions that created the steam engines, electricity and nuclear energy the fourth Industrial revolution has accelerated interactions between nations on a vast and unprecedented scale with the widespread use of the Internet. This leviathan tool has effectively shrunk the world into one borderless state. It will usher in a new era in human history where the motivation and urge to ditch the Westphalian model becomes stronger and stronger, especially with the rise in the standard of living of many nations and the emergence of a burgeoning middle class, especially in Africa and Asia.

This evolution is in fact  a slow advancing revolution that will elevate human rights and democracy to the pinnacle of all governance regardless of the current setbacks. It will also use the same tools that contributed to its inevitability. The internet can make direct democracy a real possibility. We can have a political system where party politics will be a historical past. Instead technocrats will advise the voting citizenry on the pros and cons of every decision. Voters will vote directly without the need for professional elected politicians and all the ills that  surround their behavior especially their overarching tribalism.  Direct democracy without elected agents in the form of parliamentarians and congressmen is the ideal form of democracy. Add to this the creation of a universal bill of rights similar to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948.

The populist leaders can squeal and cry foul from the pain of change, appealing to older generations and economically disadvantaged classes. People who suffer the most from the economic restructuring brought about by free trade and the ever expanding world markets. Their fears of the “others” and their attempt to dehumanise them is a desperate effort as history will surely tell. Their self aggrandising is narcissistic mimicking that of their leaders. Their paranoid obsession with  immigration is nothing but a solid proof of the wrongful path they are trodding.

The fault lines are more recognisable by the day between globalists and populists. The populist wants borders, cut foreign aid, refuses to participate in multilateral efforts to combat the causes of climate change, or institute international justice systems and do everything to run away from their commitments under the 1951 Refugee Convention. They indulge in hate speech and  thus abuse freedom of speech. Add to this their effort to degrade diplomacy as a state tool both within the state and beyond in the International arena such as with the EU and the UN. In this process their adherence to the truth and empirical data becomes more and more slippery. 

The Globalist is the absolute opposite of all of the above. While the Populist parades under parochial nationalism ( read as tribalism and nativism) , the Globalist goes under the banner of patriotism that stands ready to oppose nationalism if the latter is unfair and  unjust instead of blind loyalty to the tribe we (nation). The true Globalist also believes that multilateral actions and institutions are a step towards a final solution to this conflicted world order debate. The saviour ultimately is the creation of a world state that adopts the rule of law between member nations in the same manner as sovereign states adopt such rule of law between its citizens. This will be a utopian dream for sure and hard to believe in its feasibility given the fractured state we are in. However, if we believe  that the march of globalisation is inevitable and unstoppable this super state will be a logical end game. The present world order has failed to face the challenge of climate change and that daily we witness its dire consequences add to this the ease with which our leaders brag about the size of their nuclear button and nuking each other with fire and fury, the debate tilts  clearly in favour of a supreme monopolist of lethal power outside the borders of the sovereign state.

How long that will take, and in what form it will be are questions of lesser importance than that of its logical inevitability.

The populist crowd do use the internet, they take vacations overseas. They publish YouTube videos against Globalization , they give speeches and write books. The movement has spawned pseudo-philosophers such as Steve Banon and chest thumping champions such as Alex Jones. 

They tout sovereignty and abhor all multilateral institutions. Sovereignty or the Westphalian model is a failing institution in this technologically led environment. In fact it has not been adhered to one of its principal requirements that states not interfere in the affairs of one another. This has been flouted all the time from outright invasions to cyber and proxy wars.

But there has not been a clear cut debate and a rational well intentioned give-and-take argument based on rationality between the populists and the globalists. The debate is often shrouded in issues like, immigration, trade, and the need for cultural preservation and defence against outsiders (islamophobia).

 The reason being is that the political community has not eleverted this political debate to the forefront as that the world witnessed between Communism and Capitalism which ended in the demise of the Communist creed. In this article I have endeavoured to take the step in stripping the subject from all the irrelevancies and shadows and get to the heart of the debate, looking at it with stark eyes as being a major philosophical dilemma in modern political thought. Once we realise this conflict for what it is as a search for a new world order only then we will get serious about it. I like to see  head to head debates going to the root of the issues in a serious and rational manner while  discarding emotional thinking.

For myself I am a firm believer in the equality of all human beings above all that divide us. If we are truly civilised we must overcome the division in the form of bordered states, and abandon all politically and  religiously divisive creeds. Human life is precious and needs to be respected. Divisions need not not end in violence and to be sure of that we need a representative arbiter, a third impartial rule-based party. Lord Alfred Tynsson in his epic poem “Locksley Hall “ wrote:

When I dipt into the future far as the human eye could see

Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be 

Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d | 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. | 
  | 
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, | 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. | 

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