Finding our way in a transformed world: Terence O'Brien discusses New Zealand's place in the international system in a time of rapid globalisation.

• Author: O'Brien, Terence
• Position: Essay

Globalisation is transforming the world. The causes are varied, but they include destabilising repercussions of globalisation alongside regional, ethnic and religious hostility. The changes have placed an even higher premium on accepted rules to govern predictable international behaviour. New Zealand must adjust its external policies to this threshold moment. It must urge a greater role for the growing powers like China in the management of the world economy and reaffirm the primacy of the rule of international law, especially as it seeks to tighten ties with the United States. New Zealand's efforts to be a good international citizen will be tested later in the year when its bid for a Security Council seat is resolved.

Our world is transformed by a spellbinding revolution in communications technology, by incessant flows of people, ideas, capital and commerce across borders, by striking progress in science, medicine and space/undersea exploration. We call it globalisation. While there are some distant corners of the globe as yet largely untouched by convulsive change, others are embroiled with cruel internal conflict. The causes are varied, but they include destabilising repercussions of globalisation alongside regional, ethnic and religious hostility. The Middle East today provides an example of such multiple pressures. In the world at large, however, while inequality and distribution of income remain to imperil growth and stability, more people have been lifted out of absolute poverty over the last 40 years than at any other time in history. China is chiefly responsible for that dramatic change.

Instantaneous exposure to cataclysmic events in real time through the media is what distinguishes modern human experience--Syrian victims of chemical weapon attack, the gruesome power of the Fukushima tsunami, hideous brutality of airborne suicide bombing in New York, the repeated agonies of tens of thousands of malnourished refugees in Ethiopia, Somalia and other places; and so it goes on and on and on. In a real sense the modern international relations agenda is shaped, or at least strongly influenced, by the power of communications technology. Our senses are overwhelmed by constant tragedy. What does it all mean? Where in the world are we headed? Is the international system up to the task of mediating the challenges?

There is a profound need for confidence, for reassurance, for predictability about safety and well-being--both individually and collectively--because this present globalisation of our world offers both great opportunity and heightened risk almost in the same breathe. For governments, which are our collective agents, the need to co-operate constructively for the good of humankind and the planet itself has never been more acute. Globalisation has, moreover, extensively empowered non-government forces and influences, so that political authorities are not in charge in quite the same way as before. Powerful governments, notably the United States, have responded (in the name of counter-terrorism and cyber security) by significantly enhancing intrusive powers of worldwide surveillance, scrutiny and clandestine disruption. This has provoked extensive popular concern, including inside New Zealand, about consequential threats to civil liberties, personal privacy and freedoms on the internet.

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Vital necessity

The need to nourish trust between nations points, above all, to the vital necessity for accepted rules to govern predictable international behaviour. It was the cruelty and widespread desolation of prolonged 20th century conflict that first inspired efforts, led by the United States, to invent a system intended to create rules-based foundations for the collective pursuit of peace, prosperity, justice and respect for the rights and dignity of the human individual. The resultant United Nations and related systems were, and remain, an unprecedented global experiment. After some 70 years, however, the original architect, along with other governments, has grown progressively disenchanted with the experiment that is now severely tested by the forces of globalisation.

The United Nations contains, moreover, within itself the inevitable seeds of severe disappointment given the fateful link between its lofty ideals and the stark reality of niggardly government behaviour driven by narrow self-interest. The multilateral system does not exist...