> I have this tendency to come up with weird ideas. Some of them are useless, some of them are pointless, some of them are useful but inapplicable. Listening to my history teacher drone on about Vietnam, my mind began to wander... I came up with an idea for world peace.
>
> Here it is: Stop making weapons. No more nukes, bombers, tanks, whatever. Okay? Simple, huh. Besides, it helps the economy of practically every single country in the world. =) Hang on, what do we do with the remainder of the weapons? Give the United Nations direct control of all the armies. Then, every time some little country, say, Iran, starts acting up, the UN can say, "Hold on there, Iran, if you try and invade Pakistan, we'll nuke you to the next side of tomorrow." How do you argue with an ultimatum like that? Where is the logic in invading Pakistan anyway, if the UN is just gonna blast you? "Okay, all you Israelis and all you Palestinians, listen up. If you can't share the frigging country and just live together happily like good little people, we'll bomb you. Get it?" I'm sure this would reduce the terrorism.
>
> There'd be a problem, of course, if the UN was being run by corrupt, namby-pamby panty-waists who would take bribes and not follow through on the their threats. Otherwise, I don't see how this could fail.
>
> Sundragyn.

You hit on one of the problems in your last paragraph. The Founding Fathers of America showed great wisdom and insight in designing the decentralization of power into their fledgling government. When power becomes concentrated in a single individual or group, it is not a question of "if", but "how long until" that power is leveraged to victimize the powerless.

This is a sad reality; it would be wonderful if there *were* a governing body so honorable, fair and trustworthy that it could use ultimate military power to arbitrate and end armed conflict everywhere. But since there isn't a governing body anywhere that is immune to the tendency of power to corrupt, the next best solution is to disperse power as equally as possible. Lesser amounts of power in the hands of some governments will still be used to victimize people, but at least their ability to do so is limited.

Iss "not quite everybody wants to rule the world" achar