Reply #5: There's a choice to be made.... [View All]

[Davis_X_Machina]

...in this fallen world, until the millennium comes and we all live in peace and brotherhood.

You could be content to have the individual nation-state be the top of the violence-and-coercion totem pole, with no entity or entities over and above it, or beside it. What happens next is what we have today: everything that takes place within a state is unreachable by more than gestures -- sanctions, freezing assets, e.g. -- from the outside world. Stand back, and let people power do the rest, and hope for the best. Manage the refugee flow if it doesn't. The consequences are potentially quite grim, but there are a lot of people who are happy with this regime.

You could try to put something besides individual nation-states at the top of the violence-and-coercion totem pole. The various somethings haven't had a chance to make themselves very clear yet -- the UN, NATO, EU, OAU, OAS, etc regime is only 65 years old, or less, not long in historical terms. As they stand, they are clearly not the optimal solution. The consequences from this aren't automatically less grim than the alternative, but they aren't inherently grimmer either.