After the ravages of the First World War there was a widespread desire for 'sustainable security’. Contemporaries were preoccupied with hungry children and their impoverished environment, and worked on a wave of institution building intended to promote ‘positive security’. The 1920s search for human security and the 1930s road to war pointed to Europe’s common challenges, and global problems. This history was transformed after 1945 when European ideas and practices were globalized, and implanted in new regional institutions.