Hypothetically, is it possible for a very intelligent mouse, or anybody for that matter, to turn the Earth into one big, global nation and to successfully rule it?
Mind you, I’m not asking for mys’elf. Oh no! That’s way too much work. I just read too many comical books. 
(This response may be more approprate of General Debates or the Pit)
Can you say UN?
If you have to ask, you can’t do it.
However, any potential world conquerors should stop by Villain Supply for their one stop world-domination shopping…
No, you can’t.
I’m taking over this world, you go find your own world!
Hey! I’m still using that!
Okay, you two!
Go to your rooms!
::snatches world away, puts it on top shelf in closet::
What methods would be used, and what degree of control do you wish to exert? Attempts to do so militarily have historically met with a 100% failure rate.
I would suggest some sort of ecomomic takeover, but even Bill Gates ran into Antitrust issues. It might be a good idea to have some sort of super secret shadow organization beyond the pale of the law, like they tell me the WTO is.
But that wouldn’t work for you, since you want a world government with you in charge. The Nazi party’s plan to take over Germany worked out pretty nicely for them, once they got over that silly “putsch” crap. Maybe you could do something similar, but without the antisemitism, hatred, and blind seething rage that eventually got him a nasty place in the history books. In fact, just the opposite: you’ll need to meld the entire world community behind your nefarious scheme.
Start a multi-cultural political party advocating a world government, with quasi-mystical overtones; you’ll have to make it pretty cultish to get past religious barriers. Urge a federal world government on the model that made the United States a superpower. Infiltrate youth culture of every nation on every level with hip slang, catchy music, and teen idol types that subtly conveys a message of how cool world government under your leadership will be. Be relentless. Think of Manson as an amatuer in the cult business. When the time comes, world powers will be forced to hand you over the reins, or at least share power to save their own skins. Then declare that you must be handed over emergency powers of world domination for the good of Planet Barking Dog because of some external threat (global supervirus, killer asteroid, alien fleet…be creative)… It will take a massive, massive logistical effort and a whole lotta megalomania to basically sell the whole planet on your cult of personality, but hey, we’re talking taking over the world here.
I warn you though: when you do, you’ll weep because you have no more worlds left to conquer.
Hmm…Barking Dog, are you more interested in METHODS for taking over the world, or practical logistical/economic/etc. problems with having one government suddenly being in charge of the whole planet?
Oh, you poor old intellectual type. Thinking this has to do with the social satire of Leonard Wibberly (The Mouse that Roared, THe Mouse on the Moon, The Mouse on Wall Street), when it’s really a reference to the WB cartoon Pinky and the Brain. Although I think Wibberly might have liked P&tB.
Well, as for logistics and such, once on a rather slow day myself and a few of my friends tried to figure out how to go about conquering a country. We went through an atlas, trying to find a country that offered maximum economic gain with minimum military resistance or world intervention. We decided on the Seychelles, and I can assure you that even for a country that small, the logistics of mounting a practical coup are mind boggling, and the work behind getting public opinion behind you is even worse. I think pravnik is on the right track here, at least his way you don’t have to worry about exactly how you’ll get a chartered jet full of weapons and mercenaries into the country of your choice. Any attempt to take over the world militarily, even if it succeeds in conquering every country, will probably not last more than a few years.
Also, I thought that in The Mouse that Roared the duchy only wanted to start a war with the US and then lose, based on the belief that every country that was ever defeated by the US got lots of aid for reconstruction efforts. Have I been misinformed, or did pretending to have the bomb come into the plot later?
Sure you can.
But why not start with something smaller, like my car payment?
Jack, you remember right. The castle needed new plumbing, so we of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick decided to declare war.
Unfortunately, we accidentally won, and captured the Q-bomb and its inventor Professor Kokintz, thus dominaeing the world.
(I played Kokintz in our high school production, to rave reviews. Or at least pretty good ones for a small town. 
)
To take over the world, that is to have undisputed political power over the entire globe, you have to get everyone to do what you say (or die quickly if they refuse). The following methods have been proposed:
Mass Mind Control: If you either founded the most successful cult in history, drugged the world’s beer supply or invented a thought-wave broadcasting machine, you could take over the world. This might be only the beginning of your problems however. I remember a Marvel comic in which Dr. Doom perfected a mind-control machine and instantly became god-emperor of the planet. He discovered however that he still didn’t control the world. Everyone would do whatever he said, but the problems of sorting out all the world’s messes (as well as having to personally micromanage everything) convinced him he’d be better off taking over the world with method number two:
Invincible Super Weapon: All sovereign nation-states and their laws are ultimately founded on armed force. In theory then an invincible super-weapon could allow you to conquer the world and establish a world empire. But not all weapons are created equal: a “doomsday” weapon (“Do as I say, or I’ll destroy all life on Earth!” is an all-or-nothing dare which is difficult to translate into actual day to day control. More useful would be some sort of ace card- some weapon which would give your army of minions guaranteed victory against any opponent not so equipped (a copious supply of tactical nukes for example.) But even if you are invincible on the battlefield, you still have the problem of enforcing your decrees against guerillas, resistance cells, etc. Therefore some feel the best way to conquer the world is:
Economic Control: If you in essence own the world, or at least are in postion to direct the flow of wealth to the extent that anyone who opposes you finds themselves quickly ruined and marginalized. However this is very hard to do: even the richest and most influential people in the world today cannot claim the same level of power and control of even the poorest third-world dictator. You would have to have a monopoly on some indispensable resource, and people are pretty ingenious at finding ways to steal or divert wealth.
In short, to rule the world you need some sort of edge (military, economic or idealogical) that no one else has and can’t take away from you.
…Supposing you DID go the “Doomsday Device” route (i.e. “Make me Earth’s ruler, or the focused disintegration of Wisconsin will only be the BEGINNING of your woes!”), and if it actually WORKED, I imagine you’d want to have some sort of government system waiting in the wings (Friends, lackeys, trusted lieutenants, that would form the core of your new regime) that could go into place as a provisional government as you built your permanent government.
You might want to start by placing your lieutenants in proper places of power in the developed “first world” (Lie the U.S., U.K., Canada, Japan, etc.) countries, and just run everything basically as “Business as usual” for a while, keeping the basic machinery of the “local” governments intact, and at your disposal, until a permanent global government of your own design can be put in place. That way you wouldn’t have to just dump the existing governmental infrastructure, but you would still have enough control to issue whatever decrees or edicts you want, as to shape the world into a more pleasing form.
I’m guessing for the pathetic “third world” countries, ones with overly corrupt or nonexistent governments, you’d just want to declare martial law. Even if you don’t have enough stormtroops of your own to enforce it, you can just order the U.N. to organize a force to do it for you.
For all of this to work, I’d imagine your doomsday device would have to be capable of at least a demonstration use (A smaller prototype device, at least), to show that it really works, or could be used frequently without destroying the entire world (Like an orbiting array of death-ray satellites).
Failing that, you’d have to able to convince everyone that you really ARE crazy enough to destroy the world if you don’t get your way. Even if you aren’t really that evil, if you can make everyone THINK you are, it’ll be good enough.
And always remember Machiavelli’s advice; “A leader should be feared, but not hated”
Ranchoth
So in other words, no.
“A leader should be feared, but not hated”
Many people tend to hate the thing that they fear . . .
To become a truly successful leader, you must have the love of the people, the respect of the people, the admiration of the people and have them fearing what the world would be like without your leadership more than anything else and not you . . .
Of course, that is just my opinion and I like it better than Machiavelli’s . . .
No, and don’t ask again young man