The goal is to construct a stable balance of power for the late twentieth century. Critics point out that no balance of power has ever assured justice, or even peace. War and the threat of war have been the central instruments of balance-of-power operations. A system based on a multiplicity of sovereign states is a poor vehicle for managing the crucial problems of our time. I consider those problems to be universalized ideologies in conflict; nuclear weaponry—and perhaps technology in tending to slip out of control; population explosion; maldistribution and looming insufficiency in energy and other natural resources; environmental deterioration; growth of multinational corporate power; the fragility of national and international economies; and on and on.