INTRODUCTION

As the century of lights passed, faith in the social progress of humanity based on reason and knowledge was accentuated. The religious faith of former times, which promoted values of justice based on perpetual punishment, gave way to another type of faith. This faith was based on the human being's own capacity to educate himself in order to dissipate the obscurities of superstition, oppression and ignorance. About this new kind of faith, Kant made a brief dissertation in answering the question of what enlightenment is, about which he states that:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment (Kant, 1995, pp. 56-57).

As it can be seen, enlightenment is emancipation, since it proposes that man should make use of his intelligence without the guide of the other. Later, Kant explains that for this emancipation “All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters” (Kant, 1995, p. 56).

The "guide of the other" mentioned by Kant refers to the monarchy and the clergy, which, under the divine right of kings, subordinated the people. Therefore, those people lacked freedom and, as Kant expresses, did not possess the most innocent of all freedoms, that of making public use of reason; that is, freedom of conscience. Education was in the hands of the Church, which instead of educating, indoctrinated. Freedom of conscience, republic and universal peace were just some utopias that seemed impossible to conquer.

A characteristic feature of the Age of Enlightenment was universalistic thinking. In fact, the 18th century was prolific in planetary utopias (Mattelart, 1999). Nicholas de Condorcet proposed the Universal Republic of Sciences, according to which it is only possible to exercise planetary citizenship if the citizen is enlightened in science and art.

Adam Smith proposed the Universal Republic of Commerce, in which capital has a universal character. Louis Sébastien Mercier also proposed the utopia of the Universal Republic of the Gazette, which he developed in his work The Year 2440, in a futuristic Paris that has matured through its constant revolutions. All these utopias were "founded on eternal and universal peace, and on communication without frontiers” (Beaurepaire, 2017, p. 19).

The idea of perpetual peace in a united world is born of utopias, not so much evocative of an archetypal social order, but rather telling of the need to materialize profound social reforms based on humanist ideals. Perpetual and universal peace remains today a utopia that seems unattainable; however, utopias such as the republic, democracy, human rights and social rights were materialized by those who dared to challenge the status quo. Proudhon put it this way:

Not a principle, not a discovery, not a generous thought but has met, at its entrance into the world, with a formidable barrier of preconceived opinions, seeming like a conspiracy of all old prejudices. Prescriptions against reason, prescriptions against facts, prescriptions against every truth hitherto unknown, — that is the sum and substance of the statu quo philosophy, the watchword of conservatives throughout the centuries (Proudhon, 1876, p. 95).

The construction of a world citizenship exercised in perpetual peace should not be based on a process of market globalization or on the impact of transport, communications and information technologies and their most obvious consequences: The Internet and social networks, but on the history of humanity. A history builton a process of permanent secularization that has taken a little more than 2,500 years, which has implied a more rational humanity and less given to superstition.

The process of secularization could have its origins when Thales of Miletus dared to challenge the Greek religion and began the philosophical tradition that persists to this day. This process of secularization does not seem to have stopped despite the immense obstacles it has had to overcome throughout history. It has survived and caused most of the progressive changes that humanity has experienced. Human rights are a clear example of the secularizing process.

The very idea of human rights as rights that are consubstantial with human nature (i.e., rights that deprecate from the very nature of the human being according to rationalist iusnaturalism) intrinsically leads to a process of secularization that affected the dogmas that upheld the divine right of kings to rule, feudalism and slavery.

However, secularization has led to other foundations of human rights. For ethical constructivism, these rights are based on a human rationality capable of constructing rights and obligations, which implies the existence of arguments and sufficient reason to justify them. Thus, there is a constant commitment to reflection and rational argumentation that constantly impacts the moral discourse. In short, secularization entails elements of both what has been achieved and what remains to be achieved. Next, I develop the emergence of the idea of perpetual peace linked to the integration of peoples.

PERPETUAL PEACE PROJECT IN EUROPE BY CHARLES IRÉNÉE CASTEL DE SAINT-PIERRE

The original idea that conceived the utopias of planetary republics and perpetual peace can be found in the proposal of Saint-Pierre in the dawn of the century of lights. In fact, Abbé Charles Irénée Castel de Saint- Pierre published in 1713 a text for which he gained great notoriety, entitled: Plan for Perpetual Peace in Europe¹. "The central idea of Saint-Pierre was the establishment of a kind of Christian Republic inspired largely by the European Middle Ages and the organization of German principalities within the framework of the Holy Empire” (Garón-Valdés, 1991, p. 16). Saint-Pierre expressed his idea as follows:

Examining the government of the German sovereigns, it seemed to me that there could be no more difficulty in forming the Union of Europe today than there was in forming [the Union of the Sovereign Peoples of Germany], to execute in a greater dimension what was executed before in a smaller dimension. On the contrary, it seemed to me that there would be fewer obstacles and more facilities to form the European Body (...) the same motives and the same means that were once sufficient to form a permanent society of all the sovereignties of Germany (...) may be sufficient to form a permanent society of all the Christian sovereignties of Europe (...). The approval given by most of the sovereigns of Europe to the project of the European Society proposed to them by Henry the Great proves that one can trust that a similar project will be approved by their successors (Garzón-Valdéz, 1991, p. 16).

Saint-Pierre also advocated an equitable and gradual tax system, whereby taxpayers' contributions should be proportional to their wealth. In addition, he considered the need for the establishment of a system of free public education for both women and men, on equal terms. In his Plan for Perpetual Peace in Europe, Saint-Pierre proposed the establishment of an international court of justice as an instrument for the preservation of peace. For this reason, Saint-Pierre can be considered one of the boldest forerunners of the Enlightenment and of the decentralization of State functions.

But Saint-Pierre is not usually valued as a philosopher representing philosophical trends of the century of lights, but rather as a utopian writer who saw the need of materializing deep political and social reforms, based on universalizing ideals, without losing the perspective of achieving everlasting peace. Saint-Pierre was persecuted for his ideas. After the publication of Discours sur la Polysynodie, in 1718, he was expelled from the French Academy, which shows the strength of his liberal convictions in front of the status quo.

...the Abbé de Saint-Pierre shows a deep concern about the problem of war and the ways of peace: "He constantly insisted - observes Voltaire - on the project of a perpetual peace, and of a kind of Parliament of Europe, which he called la diète europaine. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, faced with the desolate panorama of wars in Europe, he put forward a project of peace that he called "perpetual" (pérpetuelle) (Bello, 2010, p. 122).

Although Saint-Pierre's idea of perpetual peace is limited to the European continent, it turned out to be quite influential for the Universal Republic of Andrew Michael Ramsay, the first thinker who expounded the idea of a global village. Ramsay knew very closely Saint-Pierre and his work; both participated in the formation of the Club de l'Entresol² in Paris, which was frequented by the French intelligentsia. Enlightened people like Montesquieu and Claude-Adrien Helvétius were regular attendees of the club. Saint-Pierre, before publishing his book in 1713, exposed the central ideas of his perpetual peace to the members of the Club, who deliberated on the central idea of peace in the vision of a cosmopolitan world (Childs, 2000, pp. 115-116).

THE SPEECHES OF ANDREW MICHAEL RAMSAY AND THE REPUBLIC OF THE FREEMASONS

The utopian idea of the Universal Republic was born in Paris, where the Scottish Andrew Michael Ramsay, creator of the High Degrees of Freemasonry (Rebisse, 2011, p. 206), gave two speeches, in 1736 and 1737. Ramsay gave the first speech as a member of the Saint-Thomas Lodge No. 1³ founded in 1725 by exiled English and Irish Catholics and supporters of King James II dethroned by William III of Orange. The second speech, Ramsay presented him as Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of France, a Masonic institution that in 1773 would change its name to Grand Orient de France. In these speeches, he would propose as utopian principle of Masonry the construction of peace through a Universal Republic (Arrieta-López, 2016).

It should be noted that Ramsay's proposal was put forward in a dark age when the " ancient” regime, of a monarchical and religious nature, based on the divine right of kings to govern, was in force. For this regime, war was the expeditious political instrument for the solution of international conflicts and the tools of wealth were feudal exploitation and slavery. The first version of the speech is preserved in the library of Epernay, manuscript no. 124, dated December 26, 1736, in which Ramsay expresses the following:

The whole world is nothing but a great Republic, in which every nation is a family and every individual a child. Gentlemen, our society was established to revive and propagate the ancient maxims taken from human nature. We want to bring together all men of sublime taste and pleasant humor through the love of the fine arts, where ambition becomes a virtue and the feeling of benevolence for the brotherhood is the same as it is for the whole human race, where all nations can obtain sound knowledge and where the subjects of all kingdoms can cooperate without jealousy, live without discord, and love each other. Without renouncing to its principles, we banish from our laws all disputes that may alter the tranquility of the spirit, the delicacy of customs, affectionate feelings, legitimate joy, and that absolute harmony that is only found in the elimination of all undue excesses and of all discordant passions (Négrier, 1995, p. 397).

There, a geopolitical message can be observed that confronts monarchical absolutism. This was a liberal, peaceful and humanist proposal that presupposed an anti-model for the society of the time, in which the Third State supported the First and Second States; that is, the clergy and the monarchy⁴.

THE PERPETUAL PEACE OF INMANUEL KANT

In 1795, Immanuel Kant takes up again the ideas exposed by Saint-Pierre in his publication “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay”⁵, and proposes the institution of a new planetary order to facilitate, materialize and protect universal peace. In short, Kant considers that supranationality is key to guarantee world peace. This is seen in the mirror of the United States and its supranational and federative conformation of states, for which war was beyond its constitutional possibility.

Kant tries to answer the following question: How can the foundations for everlasting peace be laid? It should be noted that, according to Kant, peace is not natural for man, who is in a "state of nature”. What is natural is discord. However, Kant exposes that, through a social contract called "original contract", man is emancipated from his "state of nature”. Such a contract comes from reason and provides a material reality based on the consent of all parties to the social contract.

Kant pointed out that the best scenario for ensuring perpetual peace was through the establishment of a Universal Republic agreed upon by all human beings and based on a Permanent Congress, composed of a league of states. Nevertheless, its materialization is chimerical because Kant does not conceive of endowing his federal proposal with a power of coercion, through which the obstacles to the fulfillment of his mission can be removed.

The idea of the Universal Republic of a political and legally binding nature is, and will always be, the supreme political good, because only an entity based on critical law can guarantee the new historical dimension of perpetual peace. However, this model, given the problems of practical implementation presented by the critical universal community, can be complemented by a novum in Kantian practical philosophy, that is, through an intermediate scheme, the "permanenten Staatenkongress. This permanent congress is Kant's creative solution for not falling into a simple statutory "community". The Kantian solution of the "permanent congress of states" consists in emptying this concept of concrete political content, but maintaining the legal character of the entity. The congress constitutes a league of states that is not, as we know, politically binding, but will act as a critical legal power and use critical law to judge conflicts between states. These critical judgments will lack the power of coercion that all law must be able to wield and, therefore, such judgments will be neither obligatory nor binding, but Kant thinks that such a congress can become an important school so that, through the exercise of critical law, political linkage can one day be achieved (Piulats, 1997, p. 86).

For Kant, perpetual peace through a supranational union of nations is both a categorical imperative⁶ and a legal concept. According to this idea, every state, even the smallest, can expect its security and its right " not from its own power and by its own decrees, but only from this great league of nations (Foedus Amphictyonum), from a united power acting according to decisions reached under the laws of their united will” (Kant, 1963, p. 53).

AN IDEAL FOR HUMANITY BY KARL KRAUSE

The German philosopher Karl Krause was initiated into Freemasonry at the Archimedes Lodge of the Three Boards on April 4, 1805, in the city of Altenburg. Afterwards he joined the Lodge of the Three Swords and the True Friends, where he gave a speech that made a great impression, according to F. A. Peuckert: "(...) he showed the zeal with which he wanted to penetrate with his investigative and sharp spirit, into the depths of our Association and the history of Freemasonry" (Ureña, 1991, p. 107).

For Krause, Freemasonry is "...the only historical institution that has as its purpose and reason for beingthe cultivation of man in his pure and complete humanity", and he defined it as "...the art of educating man as man, and humanity as humanity, that is, the art of awakening, directing and fully forming his life; the art of reaching all that man is called to". Freemasonry "would give to Humanity what the State, the Church, the family and friendship cannot give: the multiform, balanced and harmonious perfection of the whole human nature, achieved in a definitive peace, in a beautiful and loving society" (De Yzaguirre, 2002, p. 33).

It has been pointed out the coincidence of Masonry and Enlightenment in the defense and propagation of the great humanist ideals of the time. Krause is a philosopher who has perceived that the Masonic Brotherhood is the only historical institution whose purpose and reason for being is to cultivate in man his pure and complete humanity, unlike other very good and necessary institutions, whose head is the Church and the State, but whose purposes of human formation are only partial. Krause suspected that "in the Mysteries of the Ancients and in the Masonic Brotherhood one could find (historical) beginnings of that purely humanistic Association (Ureña, 1991, p. 593).

In 1811, Krause published a book entitled: Urbild der Menschheit (The Ideal of Humanity), an essay preferably for Masons. This would be his most popular work.

A reading of this work clearly shows how that idea of an association dedicated to pure and complete humanity has become the key idea for which he has coined the term Alliance of Humanity (Menschheitbund). The Krausian conception of the essence of Freemasonry coincides flatly with Fichte in the fundamental idea of the formation of the human being "as a pure human being", and also in many other points of Fichte's lessons. But Krause surpasses Fichte for two reasons. Firstly, Krause is not content, like Fichte, with philosophically "deducing" what the only purpose of Freemasonry can and should be, but tries to demonstrate through historical research that "our ancient written tradition recognizes [...] as the purpose of our art the expansion of a purely human general formation". Secondly, Krause systematically developed a whole philosophy of society and history within which he placed the Masonic institution in the position which, according to him (in agreement with Fichte), it was entitled to, while Fichte merely indicated, in a very general way, that no institution of the "great society" could be capable of realizing the end which Freemasonry should therefore pursue. Krause also gave life and a name to that vague fichtean idea of a "single great alliance". The name will be the Alliance of Humanity (UNED, 2018).

Krause, from Kantian perpetual peace, institutes the "Ideal of Humanity". For Krause, Humanity has maintained a constant evolution toward higher states of rationality and consciousness, but this evolution is both moral and material, and morality comes from institutions like family, human values, peoples and Freemasonry, which Krause considers as universal institutions (Arrieta-López, 2018).

For Krause, the essence of entities such as the State and the Church revolves around restricted or non- universal areas. The former, contrary to Hegel's proposal, operates in a limited way in the human social sphere, in private life and in the family. The second institution operates in an inner aspect of the human being, but could not be considered universal, due to the plurality of confessions of faith existing in the world. Krause, observing that the concept of the Nation-State has been overcome, proposes his Alliance of Humanity, just as Orden (1999) points out:

It consists of the union of all men and States forming an alliance of countries and associations in such a way that this alliance would not put an end to the cultural and individual differences of the nations and persons that would constitute it. More than metaphysics, the latter will be the field of Krausian philosophy that will arouse more enthusiasm, and for which philosophers and jurists will be welcomed to design and reform the social organization of their respective countries. And for this reason, the Krausists will also pay attention to education as the fundamental way to carry it out, preparing the new generations for dialogue and peace (p. 162).

The idea of the Universal Republic pointed out by Andrew Michael Ramsay in his speeches of 1736 and 1737, along with the proposal of Perpetual Peace by Saint-Pierre published in 1713 and later by Kant in 1795, led to the Ideal of Humanity by Krause, published in 1811. The latter gives a definitive form to a universalistic thought, through the proposal of building a supranational confederate institution that groups five regional federations: Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Australia. In this way, Karl Krause postulates the possibility of materializing the Alliance of Humanity, which would start a new era of progress and peace.

FROM THE NATION-STATE TO PEACE MATERIALIZED IN THE INTEGRATION OF PEOPLE

The concept of the nation state was born through the Westphalian peace treaties, signed in the cities of Osnabrück and Münster, on May 15 and October 24, 1648, respectively (Manzano, 2009, p. 163), which brought The Thirty Years' War7 to an end. Through these treaties the feudal regime was ended, and the territorial and population organizations determined to a government that recognizes its geographical limits and, consequently, of sovereign power, were originated. In other words, a nation-state is characterized by having a specific territory, a constant population and a government. The current international order is essentially composed of nation-states recognized by the United Nations with self-government and independence and is based on the formal principle of fundamental order from which the principle of the territorial state emanates.

However, the concept of the nation-state is constantly being overtaken by complex historical processes, resulting especially from geopolitical interests and globalization, which has allowed the exchange of goods, information, knowledge and culture. To this must be added the unprecedented advances in science, technology and communications. Consequently, as a geopolitical strategy, integration processes have emerged through which "nations put the desire and ability to conduct key foreign and domestic policies independently of each other, seeking instead to make joint decisions or delegate their decision-making process to new central bodies” (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1971, p. 46).

On the other hand, the world order based on the concept of the nation state is also continually overtaken by international conflicts, many of which have warlike consequences that threaten world peace. Problems related to peace and the integration of nations have preoccupied various thinkers throughout the modern age and the contemporary era, as we have seen. The first of these visionaries to consider the above problems on a global scale was the Scottish man Andrew Michael Ramsay, when in 1736, within a continental Masonic lodge, he formulated the utopian idea of a Universal Republic as an entity capable of achieving the progress of humanity and world peace.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, considered one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century, states in its preamble that world peace is based on the recognition of human rights. Later, in article 26, it states that education is a universal value that promotes the development of United Nations activities for the maintenance of peace, and in article 28, we observe peace as a social order, by stipulating that: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized”. I will now describe the materialization of the utopian idea of peace in the global village in the contemporary cases of the United States of America and the European Union.

PEACE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Kant, as a political thinker, considered that the preponderance of both supranationality and the integration of peoples was necessary for perpetual peace. However, the above argument did not arise from his mere political-philosophical speculation, but from his observations on the American experience, since the federal and supranational conformation instituted in the United States through its Political Constitution of 1787 denied the possibility of war as the traditional form of conflict resolution between states. For this reason, Kant considered that, through a superstructure capable of integrating independent states, organized through a deliberative body in which all states were represented, perpetual peace could be guaranteed. The supranational union of the United States of America would be put to the test sixty-six years after the Kantian perpetual peace by the outbreak of the American civil war between 1861 and 1865, as a result of a historical conflict over slavery.

The southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas proclaimed the birth of a new supranational state they called the Confederate States of America, which defended the institution of slavery based on the dogma of white supremacy (Stephens, 1862, p. 44). However, the States of the Union, loyal to the Political Constitution of 1787 under the government of Abraham Lincoln, achieved victory after the surrender of the Confederate army on April 9, 1865 (Mcpherson, 1988).

The federalist model of the United States of America, with the admission of the State of Alaska on January 3, 1959 and the State of Hawaii on August 21, 1959, has been consolidated by completing 50 states and a federal district. In addition, it remains the largest geopolitical and economic force on the planet. According to data published by the World Bank, by 2018 the United States had a Gross Domestic Product of US$ 20,544,343.46 (World Bank, n. d.), followed by China, with a Gross Domestic Product of US$ 13,608,151.86. Thus, it can be stated that the union of peoples and supranationality have as their own characteristic to propitiate, besides peace, the economic progress of the nations, participating in the integration processes.

Theodor Niemeyer (1930) also could not envision an organized world without perpetual peace:

It is undeniable that the idea of public international law aimed at guaranteeing peaceful order (peace through law) actually exists, grows and acts. The movement known as pacifism that in the second decade of the nineteenth century has developed, first in England and the United States and then throughout the civilized world, in a thousand different forms, with little apparent success at first, but internally propagating its seed, partly in political parties, partly with the elemental passion of the abused creature, partly acting as a sacred religion: this phenomenon that characterizes international evolution over the past hundred years is the most convincing proof that in the heart of humanity there is this sacred fire that is called the idea of perpetual peace (p. 33).

Niemeyer, however, did not have time to observe how public international law within the framework of the League of Nations (League of Nations) failed to maintain peace in an increasingly troubled world as the geopolitical interests of the most powerful nations clashed. A few days before his death, World War II broke out which, despite its horrors, would give way to another world order with a new promise of peace.

UNITED NATIONS AND ITS PEACE PROMISE

Between 1939 and 1945, an unprecedented war took place in the history of humanity called the Second World War, in which more than fifty million people died. One of the consequences of the Second World War was the creation of the United Nations (UN) through an international treaty called the United Nations Charter, whose preamble reads as follows:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, andto reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in theequal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, andto establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, andto promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, AND

FOR THESE ENDS

to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, andto ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, andto employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of allpeoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations (United Nations, 1945).

As can be seen, the United Nations Charter establishes the maintenance of international peace and security as a priority; however, since 1945, new armed conflicts have emerged, some on a large scale, constantly threatening the idea of world peace. The Security Council is an organ of the United Nations whose mission is the maintenance of international peace and security. The states that are part of the UN are forced to obey the decisions of the Council, while the other organs are only empowered to make mere recommendations.

The Security Council has been instrumental in ending several international conflicts through fact-finding and mediation processes. For its part, the General Assembly, in addition to its power to make recommendations, can call for action if, by a vote against a permanent member, the Security Council fails to do so, even though a threat to peace exists. This possibility, however, becomes rare, since a permanent member of the Security Council can politically veto action by the General Assembly.

Today, there are new strategies for conflict prevention and the preservation of peace within the framework of preventive diplomacy, preventive disarmament, peaceful means of dispute resolution, the prevention ofgenocide and the responsibility to protect. Likewise, there are UN peacekeeping operations and since 2005 a Peacebuilding Fund and a Peacebuilding Support Office have been created.

Despite the above, and as will be seen below, the permanent members of the Security Council, in conjunction with other developed States, have obstructed any deliberate action to realize peace as a human right when geopolitical interests are undermined. The current war scenario has far outpaced the United Nations in its promise of world peace. Nevertheless, the idea of Kantian perpetual peace, as well as Krause's ideal of humanity with its characteristic features of supranationality and the integration of peoples, can open up new avenues in the contemporary world. The European experience is, in this regard, an example to follow.

The current international system is essentially composed of 193 states attached to the UN, with self- government and independence, and is based on a formal principle of fundamental order, from which the principle of the territorial state is deprecated. The classic concept of the Nation-State privileges the political notion of the State as a unit of decision with ascendancy over the nation and with a breadth and supremacy from which the action is executed through its own ideological and repressive apparatus of expression (Hernández et al., 2018 y Córdova et al., 2019).

Schmitz in his text “Integration in the supranational Union”, explains the following:

In the decades following World War II, the world order of nation states experienced a breakdown. New dangers and tasks arose that could not be tackled by an exclusively national route. The demands have gradually increased. Today, the image of globalization and geo-regionalization of the basic problems, as well as a national state that is increasingly overwhelmed in a greater number of areas, is becoming increasingly clear. First, the idea that the answer to these demands lies in the creation of a large federal state in Western Europe, the "United States of Europe," following the American example, spread. Finally, the national states of Western Europe sought other ways. They strengthened cooperation through treaties and international organizations. They founded supranational institutions, that is, institutions of international public law to which sovereign rights were conferred [Hoheitsrechte]. These institutions were characterized by the direct exercise of their powers over the citizens and public authorities of the member states. This development was hardly compatible with the traditional conception of the nation-state. Three joint supranational organizations (the European Communities) were also to serve the general integration of their member states. These were reformed many times and finally transformed into the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty (Schmitz, 2001, p. 25).

According to Schmitz, the challenges posed by globalization constantly exceed the capacities of nation states. Consequently, the regionalization of the underlying problems has emerged as a geopolitical strategy, so that the States can face the difficulties posed by the globalizing processes in solidarity, and the European Union is a successful example of this.

PEACE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The European Union (EU) in its political, social, cultural and economic dimensions can be seen as a successful organization in terms of peace and social advancement. The EU is defined as a unique economic and political association of 28 European countries that together cover a large part of the continent. It is based on the rule of law: all its activities are based on treaties, voluntarily and democratically agreed by the member countries. Furthermore, the EU is governed by the principle of representative democracy: citizens are directly represented in the European Parliament, while Member States are represented in the European Council and the Council of the European Union (n. d.).

In spite of the above, it is necessary to emphasize that there is no continent that has been as warlike as the European one. Since the dissolution of the Roman Empire, Europe has known little more than half a consecutive century of peace, the same time in which the construction of the European Union was achieved. The European Union is an artificial institution. It is a multiethnic and multilingual legal fiction that sought to build a united Europe in peace under the consideration of common European values. At heart, it seeks to achieve a common destiny: the progress of all in an increasingly complex and hostile world in geopolitical terms.

The seed of the European Union was planted long before the Second World War by true visionaries who understood that building peace went hand in hand with uniting people. The most famous of these visionaries was Aristide Briand, Prime Minister of France. Briand was the first to defend the idea of "The United States of Europe", which he explained in a speech on September 5, 1929 at the X Assembly of the League of Nations, for which Briand could be considered the ideological architect of the current European Union.

In the mentioned speech, Aristide Briand would conclude the following:

I think that among the peoples who are geographically grouped together like the peoples of Europe, there must be a sort of federal link. These peoples must at all times have the possibility to come into contact, to discuss their interests, to adopt common resolutions, to establish a bond of solidarity among themselves, which will allow them, at the times they deem appropriate, to deal with serious circumstances, if they arise (...). Obviously, the association will have an effect above all in the economic domain: this is the issue that puts most pressure (Aparicio-Pérez, 2016, p. 42).

Winston Churchill, considered one of the founding fathers of the European Union, also defended the idea of the "United States of Europe" in the face of the horror of World War II. Churchill was convinced that only a united Europe could guarantee peace among the nations of the world. In 1946 Winston Churchill gave a speech at the University of Zurich in which he concluded:

There is a remedy which ... would in a few years make all Europe ... free and ... happy. It is to re- create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe (European Comission, n. d.).

Thus, from the European Coal and Steel Community (Treaty of Paris 1951), through the European Economic Community (Treaty of Rome 1957), the construction of the European Union (Treaty on European Union 1993) was finally achieved, a lesson in integration for the whole world. The European Union is a symbol of many things. Perhaps the most important of all these symbols is that of peace; a peace manifested for more than half a century in a region vital to humanity. Europe has historically cultivated its own ancestral enemies on its own soil, which on at least two occasions put the whole of humanity at risk with its two world wars. On the other hand, since 1951 the process of integration consolidated in the European Union accustomed humanity to the materialized idea of peace and brotherhood of its peoples. The European Union is a supranational institution of a political nature, multiethnic and multilingual, built with the consensus of all member states. It is not an empire imposed by violence and maintained by force.

It can be concluded that the European Union differs ostensibly from the model proposed by Aristide Briand and Winston Churchill, since the above-mentioned characters proposed the construction of a federal state under law, while the EU was built as an economic and then political association. This outcome can be explained by the fact that the six initial member states chose to preserve their sovereignty. Consequently, they preferred the model of indirect integration proposed by Jean Monnet, which privileged economic integration, based on common economic interests, to later achieve political unity, which today is materialized in the EU.

However, after Brexit, it is necessary to consider the possibility of deepening the European Union in the models proposed by Aristide Briand and Winston Churchill. On this, Astola Madariaga (2002) explains the following:

Until now, the legal bond between the European Union and the State, taking the Spanish one as an example, has been based on the consent given by the Spanish people, in whom sovereignty resides (as stated in Article 1.2 of the Constitution), so that the powers derived from the Constitution are developed, instead of by the Spanish authorities (of the central State, the Autonomous Communities or the local entities), by the international bodies (specifically, by those of the European Union) (Article 93 of the constitutional text). Until now, "formally", sovereignty has not been shared, it resides exclusively in the people of each Member State, who continue to have the last word. The only thing that has been shared with the other Member States has been the development of the competences derived from the Constitution". "...in the event that the European Union were to become a Federation, sovereignty would reside not with each people of the States but with the people of the European Union itself (the people of the peoples) and in order to leave the Federation it would be necessary to obtain the consent of that same people, in which case the decision could be taken not by the Governments of the Member States but by the peoples (p. 191).

Following Astola Madariaga, it is considered that to preserve peace and stability of the peoples it would be advisable to deepen the European Union in the institution of a Federal State, as Briand had proposed in 1929 and Churchill in 1946. In this way, popular sovereignty would reside in the people of the entire Federation, which would prevent circumstances such as that of Brexit which could put at risk the peace and political, economic and social stability of the European Union.

THE MATERIALIZATION OF PERPETUAL PEACE IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PLANETARY REPUBLIC

In accordance with the options provided by public international law, it will be explained how the establishment of a federal or autonomous Planetary Republic could be achieved, moving from regional models, in the case of the United States of America, and continental ones, in the case of the European Union, to a worldwide model. This idea finds its foundation in the sociological concept of "universal nation", in the understanding that all human beings share common values and interests. However, it must be pointed out that the construction of a universal federation of states today is a real chimera since geopolitical, economic and power interests based on strategic competition and the constant search for a dominant position produce constant confrontations between states. Likewise, there are cultural differences (Noli et al., 2018 y Hernández et al.,2019) that lead to processes of continuous tension.

However, in the last three centuries ideals that were once seen as utopian have materialized: religious freedom, freedom of conscience, contemporary constitutionalism, the republic, democracy, human rights, and the European Union itself are examples of chimeras of yesteryear (Arrieta-López, 2019). A Universal Federal Republic could be organized as an institutionalized grouping of all existing social and territorial entities, invested with partial autonomy. These would be composed of territorial divisions with a geographic base and geopolitical foundation to which the name of member states would be attributed.

Each state of the Planetary Republic would have its own division of public powers (executive, legislative and judicial), which would provide sufficient autonomy for the consolidation of state identity. On the other hand, the division of public powers would also be present in the federal administration. That is, the one that encompasses the entire universal nation.

The Planetary Republic, by virtue of its constitution as a universal federation, would avoid the concentration of power. There are two models through which the Planetary Republic could be implemented. The first would be based on the principle of constitutionality, which would imply the convening of a Universal Constituent Assembly, from which a document with universal constituent power would emanate as the supreme norm of the world legal order. In this, the rights and obligations of the planetary citizens would be established, as well as the structure and organization of the Planetary Republic.

The second model would be that of the international treaty, through which states as subjects of international law could agree to federate in the Planetary Republic. For this purpose, the international treaty should define the purposes of the Universal Republic, the fundamental rights of universal citizens, the provisions on the institutions and competences of the Planetary Republic. In addition, it should contain the procedural, technical and institutional issues proper to the original law as well as to the secondary law. The above is important because, even considering the principle of constitutionality (Political Constitution as a norm of norms), the rights in ratified international treaties would prevail over the internal law of the States, as long as the theories of monism or moderate monism are observed, both in original law (treaties) and in derived law (produced by institutions competent to do so).

As for the possibility of both models, and by virtue of the current state of world order, the Planetary Republic could hardly be constituted automatically. That is to say, by means of a single legal act of right that falls upon the 193 Nation-States currently recognized by the UN. The most plausible way for the formation of the Universal Republic would be, after its formation by some States, the gradual accession (in the case of the Treaty), or the gradual admission (in the case of the Universal Political Constitution) of new member States.

CONCLUSIONS

Peace has always been present as a driving utopia of human existence. In ancient times, it was materialized by the Pax Romana, characterized by the stability and tranquility experienced by the Roman Empire, which allowed it to reach its maximum splendor in terms of economic development and territorial expansion. In the Middle Ages, the ideal was materialized with the Pax Ecclesiae, regarding the feudal order ruled by the Pope-Emperor. In modern times, the ideal took the form of the Pax Perpetua in Europe, initiated by the Abbot of Saint Pierre, who glimpsed the possibility of a united and peaceful Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, and continued by the planetary utopias of Ramsay, Kant and Krause, who understood that to achieve peace, both the union of peoples and supranationality are two fundamental factors.

Utopias of Saint Pierre, Ramsay, Kant and Krause do not imply in an absolute way the evocation of an archetypal social order or a kind of reference to a naive and childish earthly paradise. Rather, they say that deep political and social reforms based on humanistic ideals are necessary. It is noteworthy that for these authors, the main political reform consisted of a change of paradigm with respect to the concept of sovereignty, so entrenched during the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, without a doubt, the successful process in terms of peace and social progress that ensued with the European Union proves these great visionaries right.

Globalization, driven by information and communication technologies and within the framework of deepening human rights, feeds the utopian idea of a global, peaceful and open village. What is certain is that in the planetary utopias of the 18th and 19th centuries the foundations of harmonious and peaceful coexistence among human beings were found. The consolidated experiences showed above expose that the harmonious integration of nations entails the foundations of perpetual peace.

BIODATA

Milton ARRIETA-LÓPEZ: Master in Human Rights, Democracy and Globalization. Master in Business Administration. Specialist in Economic Law. Lawyer. Researcher and Professor of Department of Law and Political Science at Universidad de la Costa CUC. Editorial Coordinator of the indexed journal Jurídicas CUC. Director of the Research Center of the Department of Law and Political Science at Universidad de la Costa CUC. Researcher categorized at associate level recognized by Colciencias. Peer reviewer recognized by the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Colombia. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000- 0002-3437-5025 E-mail: miltonarrieta@yahoo.com CvLAC:http://scienti.colciencias.gov.co:8081/cvlac/visualizador/generarCurriculoCv.do?cod_rh=0001649897

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Notes