The debate between the United States and its coalition of the willing and the United Nations and, in particular, France about the war in Iraq is, at the end of the day, a much larger argument about the very legitimacy of the nation-state, the alternative status of international organizations, and the future of both. The war in Iraq is not the first, and will not be the last, time this question arises. Thus, it behooves us to think through, as Abraham Lincoln once said of another perplexing question, "where we are and whither we are tending."