In 2011, people across the planet reached out to Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Millions watched as one nation after another rose in mass revolutions across the Arab world. The Occupy movement blossomed, as citizens in cities around the globe expressed rage over the excesses of capitalism and corporate power. And Time magazine named “The Protester” its annual Person of the Year.

The world has never been smaller. Citizen movements increasingly demonstrate their limitless promise. So, think it sounds too dreamy to imagine that someday people power might transform our small world into one world — a federal republic of the Earth?

Then read Lawrence Wittner’s 2009 book, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (excerpted at Foreign Policy in Focus). And think again.

Read Tad Daley’s piece in its entirety at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Tad Daley is the author of Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers University Press), just released in paperback. He is currently working on a new book about the history and future of the ancient dream that something like a world republic could serve as the solution to the problem of war.