In Part I we have provided a sketch of the emergence of the liberal project in Europe from the seventeenth century as both a body of ideas about the bases of legitimate political association, domestically and internationally, and as a set of corresponding practices. At the international level, liberalism evolved in two conflicting forms: on the one hand, the initially dominant liberal pluralism, which emphasizes the autonomy and liberty rights of sovereign states and, on the other hand, the growing concern for what we have called liberal universalism, which seeks to curb state sovereignty through protecting the liberties and rights of states' subjects.

At the same time, the development of liberalism was accompanied by the rise and spread of nationalism. While a nationalist spirit is needed by the liberal polity in a sense to be explained in the next chapter on the right of peoples to self-determination, the forces of nationalism have no inherent respect for liberal rights. In their most extreme form, in the fascist states of the first half of the twentieth century, they all but overwhelmed the liberal constraints of European civilization. They thereby helped to produce, together with the supposed excesses of liberal pluralist sovereignty in the two devastating world wars, the reaction contained in the UN Charter's commitment to restrict state sovereignty both in regard to states' war-making rights and in regard to the rights of their subjects. The UN regime is a striking expression of liberal universalism.