The Politics of World Federation (Session 2)

In 1945 the first use of atomic bombs forced governments to ask whether sovereign states alone could keep the peace. Session 2 of The Politics of World Federation read two chapters on that moment. One covers State Department planning for the postwar order, the other Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Discussion Highlights

Joseph Preston Baratta first reviewed four problems that any plan for a federal world order must solve. They are who the members are, how people are represented, what powers the government holds, and how to make the transition. He then described a State Department committee that weighed a cooperative organization against a federal one. It worked from late 1941 until the Moscow Conference of November 1943, which chose the cooperative model. The atomic bomb, he argued, made the question urgent again and gave rise to the world federalist movement.

Discussion centered on General Douglas MacArthur’s 1945 remark that the problem is theological. Some members read it as a call for spiritual change. Baratta answered that his book is about practical politics. Law, he said, lets people live together without having to love one another. Others asked what counted as a democracy in 1945, and how the Cold War defeated the movement. Members also asked how a coming United Nations reform conference might be used, and what an equity tribunal would add.

The World Citizen Book Club meets online on the second Saturday of each month and is open to anyone, whether you have read the book or not. See what the club is reading next.