ABSTRACT
The original, brighter dream of global justice may have died when terrorists brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. Or it may have died when the UN Security Council refused to enforce its own rulings against Saddam Hussein in 2003 and an American-led coalition proceeded to overthrow that monstrous tyrant without UN approval. If global justice were something real, the victims of mass atrocities throughout the world would have powerful claims against it. In the real world, there is no global authority to be held accountable for the world’s enduring miseries. The chapter explains why the dream of global justice deserves to be forgotten, starting with a brief demonstration of the fact that this dream only came upon the world in the soft, warm international environment of the mid-1990s, when governments could see only endless peace and accumulating prosperity on the horizon.
