ABSTRACT
Far from leading to a community of mankind, the economic and technological unification of the world has in fact aggravated, and made far more dangerous, the animosities of national communities that continue to value their separate sovereignty over their common humanity and even their security. When a group of territorial communities perceives an outside military challenge as a clear, present, and future danger for each of them separately as well as collectively, the response since time immemorial, has taken the form of bilateral or multilateral alliance. The international agreement on Antarctica prohibited the use of Antarctica for other than peaceful purposes and guaranteed “freedom of scientific investigation” to all nations. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is solely directed against an external threat and contains no provision for the maintenance of intra-Atlantic peace and order. David Mitrany explicitly linked the pragmatic development of special-purpose functional organizations to the promotion of peace and prevention of wars.
