Mindanao, located in the southern Philippines, is the home of the Moros, a fiercely Muslim people feared far and wide as ruthless pirates and depraved slavers. By 1900, anyone with a lick of sense understood them to be the terror of the Philippines—and kept his distance. The Moros stopped the Spaniards, who were quite successful in colonizing most of the archipelago, dead in their tracks. In the early 1900s, they gave the American military nothing but trouble.

Glorying in death, Moro warriors developed the tactic of wrapping their heads with a turban, taking sword in hand, and hacking away at a civilian or soldier until stopped by a bullet. The Army's "general issue" bullet in those days was the .38, and it usually took several of them to fell a rampaging Moro—and not before he had slain a number of people. Several hundred American soldiers died at the hands of these "suicide hackers."

In 1905, the U.S. Army responded to this ongoing threat by requesting a bullet with more stopping power. John Moses Browning, who worked for Colt Firearms Company at the time, invented the .45. Larger and less aerodynamic than the .38, this bullet did the job quickly and efficiently. Colt's .45 ACP M1911 Government Model was put into service in 1911.

America's response to early-twentieth-century Muslim terrorism in the Philippine Islands was a bigger bullet. Not surprisingly, that is precisely how America responded to worldwide Islamist terrorism a hundred years later: Make a bigger bullet. And what a bullet it is: the GSA.

While there is, of course, no organization so-named, the Global Safety Authority nonetheless plays a major role in our world. In fact, it is probably the most salient manifestation of worldwide government in action today. It did not develop, writes Amitai Etzioni in "Enforcing Nuclear Disarmament" (The National Interest, Winter 2004/2005, p. 81), as a result of the utopian dreams of "starry-eyed idealists." Nor was it the product of years of shrewd maneuvering by do-gooder, non-governmental agencies; pie-in-the-sky academicians; avaricious industrialists; or power-hungry internationalists. Rather, today's one-world government, under the guise of the GSA, is the result of cut-and-dried realism; it is the spawn of international terrorism.

Most governments have come to view terrorist acts as the work of large-scale gangsters and thugs around whom no one feels secure. Even a "crude" nuclear weapon detonated in Manhattan could kill hundreds of thousands of people and cost the nation a trillion dollars. Once leaders from Bali to Spain to Washington recognized that none was safe, all (or almost all) came to perceive terrorism as a clear and present danger to world peace, stability, and prosperity. Their solution: Band together into something more solid than an amorphous and temporary "coalition of the willing" by forming a mutual security organization, the GSA. Nations have accepted this organization as the only practical solution—the most realistic approach—to a major threat.

So great is that threat that building the GSA required little cajoling or threatening on the part of the U.S., few summits and "high level" missions, and no new treaties, conventions, accords, or plebiscites. Within a few months after 9/11, no less than 55 nations "changed their domestic laws to accommodate the global pursuit of terrorists."

While surely not official, Etzioni's GSA is as real as a .45 bullet:

Global: The GSA is global in that national borders mean virtually nothing to its day-to-day functioning. It was invented by the United States, which maintains it by footing most of the bills. America also sets its agenda. Importantly, however, the GSA "is comprised of most nations of the world, including other major powers such as China, India and Russia." The GSA is truly transnational in scope and jurisdiction.

Safety: The GSA's agenda revolves almost exclusively around security. One of its main departments, the Antiterrorism Department, is made up of 170 intelligence and police agencies worldwide, all gathering—and sharing—information. Its second major department, if you will, is the Nonproliferation Department, which is charged with "the removal, forcibly if necessary, of nuclear arms, material and components from those states deemed by the international community to be insufficiently stable or reliable." Security is the GSA's raison d'etre.

Authority: There is nothing ad hoc, temporary, or transitional about the GSA. It is an institution backed up by international law and the muscle of American military. Unlike the largely toothless United Nations—recognized by every honest pundit as a nest of corruption—the GSA is powerful and often effective. It does not get the press, but it often gets the thug—or at least foils his plot.

America's .45 has been one of the most successful bullets of all time. Will America's big, new 9/11 bullet in the struggle against Islamist terrorism be as successful as her 1911 bullet? Time will tell.