I think this is a good argument why a singular world power is actually a bad thing - because no matter how much it will promote itself as the "good guys" (and of course it will), at the end of the day, it will push through its own interests by that dominance - whereas if power is more evenly distributed, countries might be more willing to agree to common, formalized rules and a "neutral" body to evaluate them.

I think the emergence of nation states with democratic institutions and a strong system of law is actually a hopeful precedent here. Somehow we got from a world of fiefdoms and lords that literally stood above the law to states with checks and balances. (Yes, we're sliding back towards the "fiefdoms" situation right now, but we're still far better than things used to be)

So I'm gonna be a starry-eyed idealist and keep the hope up that we might archive the same on a global level at some point.

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mech998877 2 days ago | parent [-]

History has shown that having a multitude of roughly-equal competing powers results in more per-capita death from war than when there is 1 or two dominant nations. The 1800's and early 1900's were bloody. Post WWII has had less death from war.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Bilateral is stable. Multilateral is not. We have limited evidence nukes change that. Currently, with the implosion of Pax Americana, we’re hearing words a multi-lateral theatre in the Middle East and Asia. Hence the heightened risk of nuclear power in one of those settings. (Europe remains a bilateral theatre.)
	▲	xg15 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		True, though post-WWII was not a single power either until the 90s. We've had several decades of Cold War in which there were at least two great powers.
	▲	chistev 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Maybe because of nukes now.