Abstract

The classic argument against anarchy, and in favor of government, is presented by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan, published in 1651. Hobbes contends that a sovereign with sufficient power to make and enforce laws is necessary if individuals are to be both secure from one another’s potential aggressions and prosperous as a result of beneficial cooperation with others. Recently, a number of writers have suggested that, in a nuclearly armed world, an international analogue of Hobbes’s argument demonstrates the necessity of establishing a world government. For convenience, I shall henceforth refer to the general argument underlying this claim as the Nuclear World Government Argument.