I'm John Batchler. I welcome my friend and colleague Gregory Cople, who's going to guide me through a look at the last

400 years. Maybe more, but I'll stay from 1648 in the Treaty of Westphalia, which I learned most

recently in an art history book, was about stopping the slaughter that had been going on between

Catholics and non-Catholics,

Protestants and lesser and people who did not have one particular belief that was going on in

what we call Holland, the low countries. The slaughter was overwhelming. The city of Antwerp was besieged, and when it surrendered, everybody in it.

All the dogs, all the cats, all the children, all the women were massacred by the Spanish

troops that had marched in to challenge the Protestants of the lowlands. The battle went on

for a century. It wasn't a 30-year war. It was an 80-year war,

maybe a hundred-year war. The massacres that happened in 1572 were repeated all the way through

the 17th century. I learn all this, and it gives purpose to the whole idea that the Treaty of Westphalia

was a breakthrough. It was an ambition.

It was an aspiration. And the signature of it led to what we now understand to be the sovereign

states, the nations of the world, who work together or not, who come together in transnational

organizations or not. And therein lies my understanding,

Gregory, of your looking to the future, the 21st century, beyond the Treaty of Westphalia,

8 billion people, 200 states approximately, and what comes next? Thank you, Gregory.

Well, you could argue that we're working towards, if you look at the trends without question,

the trend is that we are looking to the reduction in the number of differentiations between peoples,

what the Soviets called nations, or the Chinese called nations, which

are basically natural nations of people of similar ethnic identity, linguistic identity,

they all live and are identified and relate locally.

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