ABSTRACT
For the great political thrusts in the last four centuries were all attempts to transcend the nation-state and to replace it with a transnational political system, whether a colonial empire or a European super state. All modern empires and all super states have foundered because of their inability to transcend the nation-state, let alone to become its successor. The national state was designed to protect both the citizen's life and liberty and the citizen's property against arbitrary acts of the sovereign. The Megastate, even in its least extreme, Anglo-American form, considers a citizen's property to be held only at the discretion of the tax collector. The Megastate has been somewhat more successful in the social sphere than in the economic one. If the aim of the national policy in the age of the absolute weapons can be said to be the avoidance of World War III, then it must be considered a success—the only success of the Megastate.
