A new conflict.

Professor Maier's article ("Dark Power: Globalization, Inequality, and Conflict," Spring 2007) argues that other forces in the international system--what Maier labels "dark power"--will increasingly restrict the power of the state, leaving it relevant to only a narrow set of circumstances. The one issue that almost completely repudiates the traditional conception of world politics is, as Maier points out, the phenomenon of globalization. Globalization views the world as a single entity. Territorial demarcations are impediments to its full realization.

By the end of the 20th century, it became apparent that the unequal effects of globalization were not restricted to relations among nations, but also within nations. The concern is the likely dispute between rich and poor individuals who can plausibly argue that their best interests are not served by the state. The state has made itself increasingly irrelevant to the daily lives and livelihoods of citizens.

The interests of the rich are clear. Their perceived interests are served by the universal harmonization of regulations and policies governing trade, investment, environmental protection, worker protection, and tax policies, all at levels consistent with their desire to maximize profits. In this strategy, states are nothing more than useful bargaining chips to extract concessions from other states. In a fully globalized world, there is absolutely no reason at all for private interests to have any primary loyalty whatsoever to any state.

The interests of the poor are also clear: they need decent incomes, medical care, education for their children, and economic assistance for retirement. In the United States, many individuals are losing their health insurance, their pensions, and their jobs. In the past, private corporations provided such essentials, but that contract is now shattered. The poor now look to the state for protection, but they are often disappointed. If the state refuses to step in, or, as in the case of several European states, begins to pull back, there is no reason for individuals to retain their loyalty to the state.

The poor starkly show the dark side of Maier's dark power, as well as the looming threat to international stability. The power of the forces supporting the process of globalization is not "dark." It is deliberately disguised. The veritable explosion of global wealth between 1992 and 2006 is often cited to demonstrate the "success" of globalization. In a similar time period (1990 and 2003), the number of people living on less than $2 a day rose from 2,654 million to 2,672 million. These statistics do not describe a stable system.

We should, however, avoid thinking about likely alternatives only in terms of Smith and Marx. The treatment of the poor in today's world violates every aspect of Smith's moral universe, and he would recoil in disgust at the way greed has been elevated to the supreme engine of all activity on the planet. Similarly, Marx represents just one dimension of resistance to unfettered capitalism. There has always been what Karl Polanyi labeled the "countermovement" against capitalism: the Levellers, the Chartists, and the anarchists at Genoa and Seattle. One need not be an ideologue to argue that fairness and compassion should temper the selfish interests of the few.

The future of legitimate authority in the 21st century requires that these problems be resolved without regard to rigid ideological preconceptions. Nation-states could adopt a less competitive, more mutually cooperative perspective to solve these problems if they were to replace their narrow definition of national interest with a more expansive definition of mutually shared interests.

VINCENT FERRARO is the Ruth Lawson Professor of International Politics at Mount Holyoke College