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The Politics of World Federation. By Joseph Preston Baratta. (Westport: Praeger, 2004. Vol. 1: The United Nations, U.N. Reform, Atomic Control, xiv, 298 pp. Vol. 2: From World Federalism to Global Governance, 527 pp. $150.00/set, ISBN 0-275-98066-9/set.)
Joseph Preston Baratta wears two hats, one as academic historian, one as peace activist. Under the first hat, he provides what comes close to being a definitive history of the world federalist movement. Under the other, he advocates world federalism even after many of the characters who populate his pages have passed from the scene or retreated from federalism. World federalism is an extension of Wilsonian idealism, and Baratta is as much an idealist as predecessors such as Harris Wofford, Cord Meyer, Louis Sohn, and Grenville Clark, whom he rescues from oblivion.
Paradoxically, however, Baratta is a realist, at least about the failures of his own cause. And yet he cannot quite believe what he has discovered. Nowhere is this more evident than in his final paragraph where, after noting the...