What is America's responsibility at this moment of its dominance? I believe it is to build a world that moves beyond interdependence to an integrated global community of shared responsibilities, shared benefits and shared values.

America must support the institutions of global community, beginning with the United Nations. The United Nations is an organization still becoming, still imperfect. We Americans have not always done our part in it, but it is all we have, and now that we live in an interdependent world, it must have our full support in building an integrated global community. [...]

From the dawn of human society up to the present time, we have been bedeviled by a persistent curse: the compulsion people feel to define the meaning of their lives in positive terms with reference to those who are like them racially, tribally, culturally, religiously, politically, and by negative reference to those who are different. People then feel compelled to oppress those who are different when they are small and powerless enough not to prevent it.

Increasingly wider circles of interdependence, however, have taught people to accept the humanity of those they once degraded. Indeed, the whole course of human history can be seen as a constant struggle to expand the definition of who is "us" and shrink the definition of who is "them."