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We should, I think, look upon modern despotisms as hostage crises. Kim Jong Il has 30 million hostages. Saddam Hussein has twenty-five million. The clerics in Iran have seventy million or more. It does not matter that many hostages have been so brainwashed that they will fight their would-be liberators to the death. They are held prisoner twice over – by tyranny and by their own ignorance. The developed world must, somehow, come to their rescue. Jonathon Glover seems right to suggest that we need “something along the lines of a strong and properly funded permanent UN force, together with clear criteria for intervention and an international court to authorize it.” We can say it even more simply: we need a world government. How else will a war between the United States and China ever become as unlikely as a war between Texas and Vermont? We are a very long way from even thinking about the possibility of a world government, to say nothing of creating one. It would require a degree of economic, cultural, and moral integration that we may never achieve. The diversity of our religious beliefs constitutes a primary obstacle here. Given what most of us believe about God, it is at present unthinkable that human beings will ever identify themselves merely as human beings, disavowing all lesser affiliations, World government does seem a long way off – so long that we may not survive the trip.
