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An almost inescapable premise one is likely to accept in this day and age is that ideas, even deeply theoretical ones, have causal power. Another is that people’s ideas differ, often to a considerable extent, and in some instances quite diametrically. These two simple postulates entail a simple conclusion, to wit that certain actual events or actions (i.e. those directly or indirectly brought about by particular ideas) shall be approved by some and reproached by others, inadvertently breeding conflict. This is by no means a phenomenon restricted to our times; for drastic examples it suffices to recall all religious or revolutionary wars fought out in past centuries, though human history abounds in countless less graphic illustrations of the purported thesis. In fact, it is very much a historical truism. What is perhaps less blatant is the evolution in the forms these divergences of opinion assume. The great achievement of the second half of the twentieth century is that in many cases conflicts never left the Popperian world 31 – in a manner of speaking, they were never physically consummated. This is perhaps nothing new as regards academic disputes (which constitute a subset of conflicts in the broad sense), which have very much been conducted in a similar fashion for quite some time, yet as far as worldviews and international relations are concerned, such solutions, or specifically their relative frequency, may seem a novelty. One evident and at the same time very convincing reason for these developments may be that having witnessed the excesses of the two world wars, the global community, at least the part of it that was directly affected by some