ABSTRACT
Compared with most tribes described in anthropological literature, the global tribe of moderns is peculiar in the sense that it does not have a chief. As I discussed in the previous chapter, this means that chiefs of the different clans—or nations as they are called—are in constant competition and strife over leadership of the entire tribe, even to the extent that many scholars deny outright the assumption that moderns are a single tribe. On the other hand there are those who claim that despite the formal acknowledgement of all nations being independent and equal—that is, lacking a chief—the world is run by a few powerful states or by a single country, the United States. But even if we must recognize the massive influence of the US or some other powerful players, the tribe of moderns does not have a chief in a formal, institutional sense. That is, the nations have never elected a chief for themselves, and no nation or other actor has a formal position from which they could give orders to the whole world.
