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A truly Formidable Union, even if it weren't a federal union

A different opinion doesn't hurt, and adds to the variety of ideas.

In the United Commonwealth Society (UCS), every model for "Commonwealth Potential Countries" was driven mainly on CANZUK, and only a London-based, monarchical, and federal union seemed possible. The idea of federal union is not only antiquated because people and nations prefer sovereignty, or as much sovereignty as possible, but also because international law is dated.

To show how dated international law is, let's give a few examples. We have states like Sudan (SD), human rights basket cases besides being dirt poor, which possess a top-level domain (TLD), while states like South Dakota (also SD), which are not human rights basket cases, and where people are much wealthier and self-sufficient, don't possess a TLD. Fair, isn't it?

You have states like California, an economic powerhouse besides a media powerhouse, which don't have a foreign policy (as if the folks in Washington, DC knew better, or even truly represented California worldwide with their militaristic and imperialistic ideology...), and states like North Korea, which doesn't even register on the radar screen in any way economically or media-wise, which does have a foreign policy, and it isn't very enlightened or wise either.

A model based on current international law will be about as relevant — or shall we say scientific, fair, legitimate — as the countries or nations it represents, and it will inherit the same limitations.

Country 2007 GDP (Millions of $US)
United Kingdom 2,398,946
Canada 1,275,273
Australia 755,659
New Zealand 104,607
India 873,659
Malaysia 148,945
Singapore 132,155
South Africa 255,272
Norway 335,856
Japan 4,366,459
Argentina 212,595
Thailand 206,338
United Arab Emirates 168,296
Kuwait 95,924
Qatar 52,722
Oman 35,990
Bahrain 15,354
Brunei Darussalam 11,561
Commonwealth Mark Two Total 11,445,611
European Union (incl. UK) 14,609,836
European Union (excl. UK) 12,210,890
United States 13,194,700
People's Republic of China 2,644,642
Gross world product 48,245,198

The model that was presented above is more enlightened than the UCS model, definitely more inclusive, and it even takes into account facts of British immigration or history, and the fact that oil is such an important resource to have. Is it a little arbitrary, however?

While Japan is definitely an economic powerhouse, are we entirely sure about its growth prospects for the future, and will it add to the Commonwealth? Is it possible that Japan may have neither the economic, nor the linguistic incentive to join the Commonwealth, at least at this stage?

India definitely has greater potential for future growth, but does the Commonwealth risk the problem the US now has, a loss of jobs to places like India, with dirt cheap labor, and a surplus of engineers and scientists, and falling living standards as a consequence? Sure, the guys running the big multinationals won't mind, of course, but what about the rest of us, those that still rely on a job for most of their household income?

All those oil-producing countries suggest a Commonwealth Mark II would be full of underground resources, and CANZUK countries add to the list:
Does the Commonwealth really need all those extra Middle East countries to cause future social and religious problems? Should we act like the EU, and let Islam — and primitive Islamic law — take over, at least little by little? Is oil the energetic wave of the future, or a dying and death-causing resource, which will eventually run out? Isn't it already causing enormous pollution besides terrorism and social injustice, and our planet may be entirely dead soon if we continue down the oil path?

Country English Speakers Total Population % English Speakers GDP GDP/capita
Jamaica 2650000 2651000 100 11,690,000,000 $4,410
United Kingdom 59600000 60587300 98 2,270,000,000,000 $37,467
Liberia 3100000 3195935 97 3,292,000,000 $1,030
Ireland 3850000 4339000 89 177,200,000,000 $40,839
New Zealand 3673623 4252000 86 103,873,000,000 $24,429
Sierra Leone 4900000 5866000 84 4,921,000,000 $839
USA 251388301 303369000 83 13,543,000,000,000 $44,642
Australia 17357833 21200000 82 718,400,000,000 $33,887
Canada 25246220 33182400 76 1,165,000,000,000 $35,109
Netherlands 12000000 16402835 73 670,929,000,000 $40,903
Sweden 6600000 9166827 72 336,000,000,000 $36,654
Denmark 3800000 5475791 69 198,500,000,000 $36,250
Nigeria 79000000 133530000 59 191,400,000,000 $1,433
Papua New Guinea 3150000 5887000 54 14,363,000,000 $2,440
Philippines 45900000 88701000 52 466,632,000,000 $5,261
Finland 2700000 5303652 51 163,000,000,000 $30,734
Belgium 5100000 10584534 48 316,200,000,000 $29,874
Austria 3900000 8316487 47 279,500,000,000 $33,608
Germany 36000000 82210000 44 2,585,000,000,000 $31,444
Cameroon 7700000 17795000 43 43,196,000,000 $2,427
Zimbabwe 5550000 13010000 43 30,581,000,000 $2,351
TOTALS 583,165,977 835,025,761 70 23,292,677,000,000 $27,895

The chart above is a little less arbitrary, and puts together countries that share a lot in common.

Here the basis for union is not economic, or even resource-driven, but linguistic. The language we speak determines how related we are more than anything else, and these are all countries where English, according to the most reliable statistics, is spoken by at least 43% of the population. The mean for all countries turns out to be 70%, which is slightly above the number for Denmark, and slightly below the number for Sweden, and both countries are extremely anglophone.

The facts that emerge here are more interesting. Not only all CANZUK countries naturally fall into the chart, but also a few Commonwealth countries as well: Jamaica, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon. While the figures for the GDP for Commonwealth Mark II, the EU, and the US seem accurate enough in the top-most table, the "Gross World Product" seems entirely off, or not a very useful piece of information.

According to International Monetary Fund figures, which seem better than either World Bank or CIA economic figures, the World's GDP, adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), is 72,337,649,000,000 — not all these digits are significant. The sum of the GDPs adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in the table immediately above is 32% of the World's GDP, or about one-third!

I think that the list above is far more natural, and a far more scientific representation of what both the Commonwealth and the World needs. You have countries that are rich and poor; countries that have underground resources, and countries that don't; and in all these countries a significant portion of the people speak English. This is only likely to improve in the future, given the already good numbers in the present. These countries also share similar religious and cultural values to those of the Commonwealth as well. Only Zimbabwe and Nigeria seem to need some reforms.

The US also needs reforms, but if either Hillary or Obama comes to power in November 2008, the significant change in Washington, DC with either the first woman or first Black President, will also bode well for other changes, such as the US actually becoming a part of the Commonwealth. I think "parts of the US" might make this happen sooner than Washington, or the rest of the country, however, so we need to be as open-minded as possible.

Many people today could look at the table immediately above and say, "Why not stay in the EU, as many of the English-speaking countries are part of the EU anyway?" This is a fair criticism, and here is why the Union I propose, and the EU, are not quite the same thing:
  1. The Union is not a federation, unlike the EU, but a way to improve the Commonwealth by opening it up to a few "unlikely" partners. This can start mainly as cultural and economic exchanges, and perhaps evolve even into a closer economic relationship, but in effect it preserves the sovereignty of all states, while the EU destroys or attempts to destroy that sovereignty in order to achieve a federal superstate.
  2. The Union includes CANZUK, while the EU excludes most of those countries.
  3. The Union includes the US and Canada, a major portion of NAFTA, which has nothing to do with the EU, and yet the US and CANZUK may share more in common than either the US and Canada share with their other NAFTA partner, Mexico (the Union, i.e., could actually be more successful than NAFTA, and NAFTA is already a reality).
  4. The Union embraces countries from all inhabited continents (Asia, Africa, North America, Europe and Australia) except South America, and could still include both Chile and Argentina, and many island nations of the Pacific Ocean, and thus all inhabited continents and areas of the World; the EU, on the other hand, is largely a Western and Eastern European thing, and does not even welcome Turkey.
  5. Winters are cold in the EU, even in Italy; people who are part of the Union, however, could go to relatively balmy Jamaica for the winter, or even to Australia and New Zealand.
  6. Before the 2007 inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria, in the EU 49% of the people spoke English; not only is this figure destined to decrease, not increase, but in the Union 70% speak English already, and this number is going up, not down.
  7. In the EU there are 23 official languages, and ignoring any major language is bound to cause resentment; in the Union you could live with English as lingua franca, and allow the liberty of learning and speaking in other languages for non-Union purposes without a problem. In fact, with the cultural-economic Union foreign languages would continue to be spoken anyway, and English would just become more important, not the only language spoken or used. It is like the words freedom and liberty at the same time, and yet the word freedom comes from the Middle English fredom, while liberty comes from the Latin word libertas. Here "freedom" means inclusion, while in the EU it means linguistic, if not economic exclusion.
I conclude this article with a fine table made by James Alcock below. The table of Proposed Commonwealth Mark II Alternative Groupings below shows all kinds of different Commonwealth scenarios, from the most basic and exclusivistic CANZUK; to Lord David Howell's proposed new Commonwealth and variations; to my basic and expanded proposal in Alternatives 3 and 4 respectively; to the Anglosphere's version; and finally the two versions with the Commonwealth's major economies.

I think the CNRS has quite a few models to work with, and even some inclusive model with the strengths of all of these can perhaps still be created, while the United Commonwealth Society (UCS) is just stuck in the past, and with only one possible Commonwealth for the future.

Most Rev Dr Cesidio Tallini
CNRS Committee


Commonwealth II Alternatives