...at any particular time, a given people is in a condition of savagery, civilization, or moral maturity. The Greeks and Romans, Kant says, bequeathed ever-improving political constitutions to Europe, and Europe "will probably legislate eventually for all other continents."[4] But in Kant's day there didn't seem to be any nation that had reached the level of moral maturity, and Kant predicted that the civilized nations would have to go through much more pain and suffering before they were ready to "renounce [their] brutish freedom" and submit to international government.[5] The rest of the world, remaining savage, had not yet taken even the first step of banding together in the form of solid nation-states. And they'd obviously have to do this before anyone could seriously entertain the thought of their rising higher.

I think that if you consider Kant's argument carefully, you'll find it generates exactly the New Paradigmers' position with respect to our own present-day international arena. On this view, there is exactly one place in the world where the nations have finally reached the level Kant calls "moral maturity": The European Union. Only there has it become clear to many that the order of nation-states must be transcended. Only there is the right to independent national action on its way to being disposed of. Only there (as New Paradigmers see it) are people morally mature, not just at the level of individuals, but of entire nations.

From this point of view, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, the Arabs and the Third World are at a much more primitive stage in their history. They're still trying to escape savagery, still trying to consolidate genuine nation-states under the domestic rule of law. Once they get there, possibly centuries from now, they too will begin to understand the desirability of outgrowing their nation-states and reaching "moral maturity" under an international government just as the Europeans are now doing. This explains the enthusiasm of New Paradigmers for the establishment of new nation-states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as their relative disinterest in the aggression and atrocities committed by (as they see it) the half-formed nation-states they find in these places. In the eyes of the new paradigm, all of this is just a necessary stage they have to go through: Like children, they aren't grown up yet, and just don't know better. And they won't for a while...