For at least six thousand years one civilization after another has sought to achieve centralization and universality.  In every instance of which history provides a legible record, centralized, universalized institutions and practices have fragmented into diversity and stubborn localism.

Western civilization is part and parcel of this generalization.  Generation by generation and century by century it has professed and proclaimed the advantages of universality while it yielded to the persistent demands of nationalism, regionalism and localism.  Throughout the latter years of the nineteenth century the will to unify gained much ground.  The tide turned with the turn of the century.  For the first half of the present century the forces of unity and of diversity seemed stalemated.  War’s end in 1945 saw the shadow of a universal state flicker across the screen of history.  With the adjournment of the Bandung Conference in 1955 the shadow dissolved and was replaced by the strident nationalisms that have become an outstanding feature of planetary politics, economics and social organization.

Despite the insistence of reason and experience that strength and stability are the result of unity,—­tradition, custom and habit have held human society at the level of political, economic and ideological diversity.  Nowhere in history is this generalization more emphatic than in the failure of the European standard-bearers of western civilization to replace a millennium of diversity, discord and conflict by a unified, coordinated, co-existing, cooperating European community.

At its best a civilization is insecure and even unstable, disturbed and upset by an increasing domestic struggle for preferment and power that includes rivalry, competition, revolt, rebellion, civil war and wars of self-determination carried on by unassimilated regional, provincial and colonial elements.  From beyond their frontiers civilizations have been assailed by rival aspirants for power, by armed bands in search of plunder or by migrating peoples seeking greener pastures.  All of these forces have held the ground for diversity and barred the way to universality.

Another factor of great consequence leading to the instability of civilizations has been the concentration of wealth, power, privilege, comfort and security in the hands of a minority, in sharp contrast with poverty and insecurity among the less well-placed majority.  Generally, the privileged minority has been relatively small and the exploited majority overwhelmingly large.

Still another disturbing factor in each civilization is the transformation of its military arm from a means of defense against external enemies into a major factor in the direction of domestic affairs.  The professional military build-up has frequently usurped the state power and became king-maker by virtue of its monopoly of weapons, organization, and its highly trained personnel of professional destroyers and killers.