The great revolution which began about 1750 and has increased in breadth
and depth throughout the past two centuries had led to vital changes in
structure and functioning, particularly of the West but generally in the
entirety of human society. So far-reaching are these changes, and so
deep running, that human society, particularly in the West, has outgrown
or is outgrowing the life pattern evolved by civilizations during the
past four or five millenia. As a consequence, geographical expansion by
the time-honored method of grab-and-keep has become more difficult, far
more expensive in manpower and material wealth and is in growing
disrepute among a sizeable minority of individuals and social groups,
even in the centers of western civilization. It is in notable disfavor
among the former colonies and dependencies of the European empires.
At the same time, war as a means of achieving social ends has fallen
into greater and greater disrepute. War costs, measured in terms of
human well-being and welfare had soared to fantastic heights before
1945. The devastation, during that year, of two moderate sized cities,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a foretaste of the increasingly bleak
chances of human survival with the stockpiling of nuclear weapons far
more destructive than the fission bombs used on the two Japanese cities.
Under the conditions prevailing before the great revolution, competitive
struggle between nations and empires, expanding as a result of victory
in war, had ceased to be a practicable means of gaining, holding and
increasing wealth and power.
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