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But we have failed to face up to the fundamental political problem—the creation of a free world structure of order and unity. The U.N. lacks the strength to master or control the forces that it confronts. I believe the historic answer to the problems the free world confronts can be found in the federal idea. I have long felt that the road toward the unity of free nations lay through regional confederations. But I have come to the conviction that events are driving us rapidly beyond even the limits of regional concepts—to the logic of applying the federal idea wherever possible. What our common danger—and our common aspirations—imperatively require, then, is a common commitment to some basic principles and purposes [leading] ultimately to the gradual devising of political forms of unity."