Issue 17: June 2002

Clinton favours interdependence over
globalization in speech at UNU 

Creating an integrated world community in which nations can discuss global issues such as security and aid for developing countries together with the United Nations is one of the biggest challenges for the 21st Century, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in a May 22 speech at UN University Centre in Tokyo, the Japan Times reported.

Clinton takes questions from the audience after his UNU lecture.

"We have made for ourselves in the 21st Century a world that most people characterize with the term globalization," Clinton said. "But I prefer the word interdependence, because it clearly conveys that there is more than economics at work."

Delivering the third U Thant Distinguished Lecture in the university's U Thant International Conference Hall, Clinton said that examples of the benefits of interdependence between nations included the unprecedented global political cooperation seen since the end of the Cold War and the building of the European Union. However, events like the September 11 terror attacks in the U.S. and the continuing agony in the Middle East remind us that the world is still far from achieving the status of an integrated global community.

"The great challenge of the first decade of the 21st century, therefore, is to move from interdependence to integration with a real global consciousness," he said.

Clinton said this could be brought about by the creation of a global security strategy and increased international cooperation, such as aid contributions. The United Nations will serve an indispensable role in this endeavor.

The most pressing issues in a global security strategy include the eradication of the al-Qaeda network, persuading North Korea to abandon its missile program and doing more to eradicate weapons of mass destruction, he added.

The global economy may have lifted many people out of poverty in the last 20 years, but half of the world's people live on less than $2 dollars a day and 130 million children still don't attend school, he said. "For a few billion dollars, you can get all children to go to school," he said. "We have built the world without walls. We have opened each other's possibilities, if we wanted the world our children deserve, we will have to make it an integrated world community."

The U Thant Distinguished Lecture series, co-organized by the UNU Centre and the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU/IAS), is a forum through which leading thinkers speak on the role of the United Nations in addressing the challenges facing the world in the 21st Century. Previous speakers were Malaysian Prime Minister  Mahathir Bin Mohamad and South African President Thabo Mbeki.

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