[Systemz]

If you think that states are always looking out for number one, then there's no point in forming these international organizations. Because we don't have an international government, we're floating around in this anarchic structure that makes realism so in vogue. As long as we continue to look at politics from a power-based standpoint we're looking at a situation where we're going to keep having the same problems popping up over and over again. Ever since the birth of modernity, we've been scrambling to get to the top and then acting all shocked when genocide and ethnic cleansing pops up. It happens all over the world. The fact is people like Hitler and Pol Pot and Saddam are the natural result of the realist argument - and we'll continue to get them as long as we keep trying to carve up the pieces of the pie to our instantaneous gratification. If men really are "an endless drive for power after power, ceasing only unto death" (there's a little Leviathan for you kids in the back row) then we don't stand a chance. If there's more to being human then that, I think we've got a real shot.