The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 63 We Are the World? The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States and the Quest for a Global Nation Strobe Talbott, Simon & Schuster, 2009, $18, paperback, 512 pages. R EVIEWED BY T ED W ILKINSON Strobe Talbott’s previous five books dealt largely with arms control and/or the USSR, and drew heavily on his 20 years with Time magazine. The Great Experiment is more ambitious, sounding a clarion call for putting tra- ditional concerns of national sover- eignty behind us and embarking on a great experiment of governance by global rules. As Talbott notes, throughout mod- ernWestern history the rewriting of in- ternational rules has been a reactive process. The Thirty Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia led to the mod- ern nation-state system. The Napoleo- nic Wars and the Congress of Vienna produced a century of great-power concert in Europe. World War I spawned the League of Nations and World War II, the United Nations. However, the catastrophes that threat- en us today — economic collapse, cli- mate change and nuclear proliferation — require us to be proactive . But is global governance even pos- sible? The first section of The Great Experiment examines relevant prece- dents in rich detail, among them the “ecumenical” empires from Ham- murabi through the Seljuk Ottomans that generally tolerated religious di- versity and local autonomy, as well as the more recent European and Amer- ican practice of federalism. While it may seem surprising today, Talbott recalls that the concept of world federalism was widely en- dorsed in the immediate aftermath of World War II, even by future presi- dents Richard Nixon and Ronald Rea- gan. He reminds us that the talented young Cord Meyer became the first president of the U.S.-based United World Federalists in 1947, only to leave the organization and join the CIA when it became evident to him that the world must be rid of the scourge of communism before world governance might be possible. Despite the many ways in which the United Nations has served Wash- ington’s interests in the past six decades, the organization’s limited ef- fectiveness in dealing with scofflaw regimes has only reinforced general American skepticism about world governance. When Barack Obama described himself as “a fellow citizen of the world” during a July 2008 visit to Berlin, columnist George Will at- tacked him for not putting America first. Other campaign adversaries seized on “Obama’s drive for U.N. global governance.” Talbott admits that his eight years at the State Department, seven as Deputy Secretary of State, gave him “a fresh perspective on the power of nationalism ... as well as the short- comings of internationalism.” He shared President Bill Clinton’s acute disappointment with the trend toward American exceptionalism that led to Senate rejection of the Comprehen- sive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court and the principles of the Kyoto Protocol — even before the 2000 elections. And his initial illusion that George W. Bush as president might emulate his father’s cautious, consultative style on international is- sues was soon dispelled. Talbott acknowledges that the path toward the goal of global governance will be incremental. But we must begin the journey. B OOKS