Three major international trends have deeply affected world affairs over the last year and are bound to affect the shape of the century to come. The first concerns a gradual but unmistakable transition from sovereignty to universality in the conduct and norms of inter-state political and economic relations - globalisation in short. It was exemplified this year by the war in Kosovo and the collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) inaugural negotiations in Seattle.
The second trend has to do with the shifting balances of power within this international system, as seen in tensions between the United States and the European Union over trade and security issues and Asian demands for a greater say. And the third trend concerns growing inequality between the most and least developed parts of the world. This was starkly revealed in the United Nations's Human Development Report 1999 which showed that while the richest fifth of the world's people have 86 per cent of world gross domestic product, 82 per cent of world export markets, 68 per cent of foreign direct investment and 74 per cent of telephone lines, the poorest fifth has only about one per cent in each category.
Globalisation was defined in that UN report as a growing interdependence of the world's people through "shrinking space, shrinking time and disappearing borders". Communications revolutions and mobile economic resources accomplish much of this and the erosion of national sovereignties and the growth of regional co-operation most of the rest. These offer great opportunities to enrich people's lives and create a global community based on shared values. But none of the three trends can be seen in isolation and they often contradict one another. Thus if unregulated markets dominate the process, inequality is reinforced.
The transition from sovereignty to universality is deeply affected by continuing state interests of the strongest powers. They can all too readily block it or impose grotesque selectivity on the way the emerging universal principles operate. We saw this clearly in the contrast between Kosovo and Chechnya within the European region. There was also a stark contrast between East Timor, where UN intervention was successfully accomplished to enable the population to vote on independence from Indonesia, and several of the running conflicts in Africa, notably in the Congo and Angola, which attracted minimal attention.
At the Seattle WTO meeting, a combination of US-EU disagreements, a much more assertive presence by the less developed states and highly effective lobbying by non-governmental organisations forced some of these inequalities on to the international agenda in quite a new way. Many believed the US chairing of the meeting to be ill-prepared and self-serving, exemplifying its own difficulty in coming to terms with a more interdependent world. The US remains the one superpower, but is reluctant either to assert its strength or to share it. That cannot last. This year saw a groundswell of change between the European Union and the US, as the euro was successfully launched, and a new European security and defence identity forged. It is no longer only the French government which insists on the need for greater equality, multi-polarity and cultural diversity in the transatlantic relationship. The forthcoming US elections will partly hinge on whether the US will accept that perspective or reassert its unilateral sovereignty by opting for a Star Wars defence system and further resistance to UN intrusion in its security affairs and foreign policy.
The United Nations was created after the last world war as the organisation embodying the two conflicting principles of state sovereignty and collective security. The formula reached in the UN Charter for reconciling them remained largely untested through the Cold War but has become more and more in need of re-examination ten years after it is over. The Kosovo war was conducted by NATO with EU support, without express Security Council sanction but in the name of the right to intervene to prevent gross violation of human rights in an internal conflict - a pattern of civilian suffering that is becoming all too typical in contemporary wars. An urgent but complex and difficult task faces the international community in coming years to bring the UN formula up to date and more in keeping with these new realities. What criteria should be applied in deciding whether humanitarian intervention is justified? How should it be implemented? How can the Security Council vetoes that block action be tackled, given that they are increasingly used in the national interests of the five permanent members rather than in collective security?
The developed western countries have to be very careful about how they use these principles and conduct this debate. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, writes in today's World Review supplement, leaders of the developing countries frequently complain to her about the lack of attention to their economic and social rights. "They say economic lessons have been learned and they would like to participate in the technological revolution but they lack the means to do so and their economies are crippled by debt". Despite the association of democratic values, market economies and universal norms in the rhetoric of developed Western states, their positions can look self-righteous and self-serving when seen from less developed perspectives, especially when aid budgets are being cut simultaneously. State sovereignty often seems the most effective means of protecting vulnerable industries and sectors from unfair competition - or enabling Western values to be imposed under the cloak of universality. Dialogue, solidarity and sympathetic engagement will be required to ensure that universal human rights are recognised and respected.
In his survey of Irish foreign policy concerns in today's pages, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, says Ireland has a reputation for commitment to international co-operation, human rights, disarmament, development and humanitarian concern. It is a pressing task to maintain those values as this State participates in each of the three trends identified here. Ireland is one of the most open societies in the world and becoming one of the most prosperous, largely because of its success in going beyond traditional sovereignty. The State has many interests in seeing a harmonious resolution of transatlantic tensions. And as a First World state with the Third World memory, as the President, Mrs McAleese puts it, there is a special onus on the Irish to do what we can to distribute the world's goods more equally.