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Helping to Secure the New World Order
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19621 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1991 |
2,362 Words |
| Author
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Terry McNeill
Terry McNeill is chairman of the Department of Political
Science at the University of Hull in Great Britain. |
The winds of change continue to sweep across Europe, driven most recently by the attempted coup in the Soviet Union. Whatever the Soviet Union's future, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the demise of the Warsaw Pact have initiated a "new world order." The completed new world order, however, will take time to build. It will require the cooperation of the major states and an institutional framework, an agreed-upon agenda, and agencies of enforcement.
It is arguable that this can be carried out by existing institutions and arrangements. Can NATO be expanded to provide the cutting edge of security? Or is it too tied to the Cold War to be adapted to new purposes? Can the UN build on its role in the Gulf crisis to become the forum for international problem resolution? Is so large an agency suited to swift action, or will it have to delegate authority to some other body or individual members? Will the Security Council have to be reshaped to give greater say to the new economic giants of the Far East? Should the chief role in conflict resolution pass to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), assuming it can be adapted to purposes beyond Europe? And above all, where does the European Community fit in? Should it acquire a defense role with its own military forces, or should it act merely as the strengthened European arm of the Western alliance?
Additionally there is the issue of what is meant by security in this new world order. To say that it is about national defense and protecting common interests begs the question. In a world with nuclear proliferation, environmental pollution, terrorism, drug trafficking, interregional conflict, and ethnic strife, an agency such as NATO--designed for nuclear war and the repulsion of a mass attack from the Soviet Union--seems strangely anachronistic. Also, at a time when the main threats of aggression lie outside of Europe, an organization that defines most of the non-European world as "out of area" seems poorly adapted to meet the challenges of the day. Furthermore, a NATO that is narrowly concerned with defense (and has strategic forces of primarily American origin) fits badly with the outlook of a continent increasingly preoccupied with the economic and other concerns of deepened integration at a time when security in the broadened sense of the term is deemed a rightful part of its mandate.
Because the concept of security is now altered and because excessive dependence on the United States is unacceptable, leading European statesmen are looking for ways to strengthen the European role in defining and defending Europe's own security interests. Should
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