ABSTRACT
Understanding global security necessitates ridding oneself of the preconception rooted in the traditional and still-dominant political culture that the security under consideration must be that of states, as determined by states. Strokes of fate from outside of the traditional political world resulting from global technological, social or climatic change determine, to a far greater extent, whether people live or die in today’s world. Recognition of the inadequacy of state and state-to-state politics in assuring the security of the world’s people came early in the era of total war. The folly and horror of the First World War prompted a number of polemical works advocating world government in place of the sovereign system of states. Collective goods problems have begun to be addressed in the governance of global trade and environmental change and progressive normative change is evident in all issue areas to different extents.
