In fact, looking from a broader historical perspective, Reves thought that war has occurred wherever and whenever political units of equal sovereignty have faced each other. The solution to the problem of war, then, would be “integrating the warring units into a higher sovereignty.” This higher sovereignty, or world government, would be provided with legislative, judicial, and executive powers, as the result being “a legal order within which all peoples may enjoy equal security, equal obligation and equal rights under law.” Reves believed that if such a higher authority proves impossible to be created by the consent of nation states, conquest would be permissible. “If we cannot attain to universalism and create union by common consent and democratic methods as a result of rational thinking,” he concluded, “then rather than retard the process, let us precipitate unification by conquest” (Reves, 1945: 122, 125, 269).
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