‘A Security Council without India cannot be legitimate’

There is universal agreement now that that the characteristic of the modern world is interdependence. But we haven’t yet had time to think through its consequences or understood that the international rule book has been ripped up.

Interdependence — the fact of a crisis somewhere becoming a crisis everywhere — makes a mockery of traditional views of national interest. Nations, even as large and powerful as the USA, are now affected profoundly and at breakneck speed by events beyond their borders.

Why is immigration now the top domestic policy issue in much of Europe and in the US? Because globalisation is making mass migration a reality — and only global development will make it a manageable reality.

Why has energy policy, too, rocketed up national agendas? Because of the need for countries like China and India to fuel their rapid development and the threat of climate change. The solution lies in an internationally agreed framework through which the developing nations can grow, the wealthy countries maintain their standard of living and the environment be protected from disaster.

So you can’t have a coherent view of national interest today without a coherent view of the international community. These challenges affect us all and can only be effectively tackled together. And we can’t wait around to see how these global challenges may develop as we could it the past. They require a pre-emptive, not simply a re-active response, on the basis of precaution not just certainty , often outside our own territory.

For the terrorism we are fighting in Britain, wasn’t born in Britain, though on 7th July last year it was British born terrorists that killed people. The solution lies in schools and training camps and indoctrination thousands of miles away, as well as in the towns and cities of modern Britain. The solution to mass migration lies at its source, not in the nations feeling its consequence.

But common action will not be agreed unless it is founded on common values — of liberty, democracy, tolerance, justice. These are the values universally accepted across all nations, faiths and races, though not by all people within them. These are values that can inspire and unify. We need an international community that both embodies and acts in pursuit of these global values.

The scale of the agenda in front of us is enormous. And, increasingly, there is a hopeless mismatch between the global challenges we face and the global institutions to confront them. After the Second World War, people realised that there needed to be a new international institutional architecture. In this new era, in the early 21st century, we need to renew it.

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