Stitching a Community of Nations

Much of this is not new; human beings have interacted across the planet for centuries. Yet today's "globalization" is driven by new engines, such as the Internet. And it is governed by different rules or by no rules at all. Globalization is bringing us more choices and new opportunities for prosperity. It is making us more familiar with global diversity. However, millions of people around the world experience globalization not as an agent of progress but as a disruptive force, almost hurricane-like in its ability to destroy lives, jobs and traditions. For many, there is an urge to resist the process and take refuge in the illusory comforts of nationalism, fundamentalism or other "isms."

Faced with the potential good of globalization as well as its risks, faced with the persistence of deadly conflicts in which civilians are the primary targets, faced with the pervasiveness of poverty and injustice, we must be able to identify the areas where collective action is needed to safeguard global interests. Local communities have their fire departments, municipal services and town councils. Nations have their legislatures and judicial bodies. But in today's globalized world, the institutions and mechanisms available for global action, not to mention our general sense of a shared global fate, are hardly more than embryonic. So we must give more concrete meaning to the idea of the "international community."

What makes a community? What binds it together? For some it is faith. For others it is the defense of an idea, such as democracy. Some communities are homogeneous, others multicultural. Some are as small as schools and villages; others as large as continents. Today, of course, more and more communities are "virtual," discovering and promoting their shared values through the latest communications and information technologies.

What binds us into an international community? In the broadest sense there is a shared vision of a better world for all people. There is our sense of common vulnerability in the face of global warming and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. There is the framework of international law, treaties and human rights conventions. There is equally our sense of shared opportunity, which is why we build common markets and joint institutions such as the United Nations. Together, we are stronger.

Some people say the international community is only a fiction. Others say it is too elastic a concept to have any real meaning. Still others say it is a mere vehicle of convenience, to be trotted out only in emergencies or when a scapegoat for inaction is needed. Editorial pages refer routinely to the "so-called" international community. And news reports often put the term in quotation marks, as if it does not yet have the solidity of fact.

I believe these skeptics are wrong. The international community does exist.

When governments, urged along by civil society, come together to adopt a statute for the creation of an international criminal court, that is the international community at work for the rule of law. When we see an outpouring of international aid to the victims of earthquakes in Turkey and Greece from countries having no apparent link with Turkey and Greece except for a sense of common humanity, that is the international community following its humanitarian impulse. When people come together to press governments to relieve the world's poorest countries from crushing debt burdens, that is the international community throwing its weight behind the cause of development. When the popular conscience, outraged at the carnage caused by land mines, obliges governments to ban these deadly weapons, that is the international community at work for collective security.