Last week I returned from a journey to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzogovina where I had accepted an assignment on behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross to speak to the General Staffs of both countries on the subject of command responsibility and international humanitarian law. This was the second time that I had ventured into the region of the Balkans, having tried to enlighten the Serbian General Staff on the same subject in November 1998, just before the Serbian Army went down into Kosovo and committed crimes of such a magnitude that many of my interlocutors of that time are now indicted war criminals, together with their President.

Despite this apparent failure to communicate the humanitarian demands of a new world order, it is my intention to keep going back to deliver the messages as long as the ICRC wants me to do so One reason for my commitment is that I keep running into people who are very decent, and who constantly strive for a better life for their children against the odds of deep seated bitterness and revenge which dominate Balkan affairs. My sense is that the young people of all these countries have a more comprehensive view than their parents of the need for compromise and reconciliation as a means to a happier future on our ever more crowded planet. They crave the example and leadership which transcends visions of personal political power and market oriented economics.

One impediment to this enlightenment is the fear of cultural submersion. This is an ever-present danger for peoples who live on cultural faultlines like the Balkans, but is also now a growing threat because of the worldwide information revolution. If you live in the Balkans you are between The Devil and the deep blue sea on this issue. If you don't embrace the ethos of the western market economy with alacrity, you will have difficulty developing the domestic consensus and economic power to sustain internal cohesion. Your young people will desert you. And yet if you do commit your society fully to the Western embrace you might lose the vibrant identity that has allowed you to maintain your culture under duress for centuries. If you have survived occupation by the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Turks, the Serbs and/or the Germans, these issues are vivid in their relevance.

How fortunate we Australians are to be able to further our multi-cultural experiment relatively free from these deep-seated fears. And yet one is constantly reminded that this has not always been so, and that the spectre of racism is a constant presence beneath the surface of our social wellbeing, emerging on occasions as one expression of concern when the people from the more remote Australian regions feel themselves alienated from the decision making processes which are centred in the eastern capitals. Because these expressions of anxiety impact on the way our Asian neighbours see us, we are constantly drawn to an examination of their source and substance.

The closest our nation has come to the experience of conquest and subservience has been the Japanese invasion of Asia and our near north during the Second World War. While we were able to resist invasion in what could aptly be described as a fight to the death on the northern approaches, the closest experience any Australians had to living under a conqueror's yoke was that of our compatriots who became prisoners of war and suffered the hell holes of Changi, the Thailand-Burma Railway and the labour camps of Japan itself. This experience left a deep shadow on the Australian psyche. I was a child during this time, growing up in a family in which every male member and some female members volunteered for service. There was a constant movement of warriors from one theatre to another during my early childhood, punctuated by periods of deep anxiety for the safety of loved ones surrounding events which I later came to know as Tobruk, El Alamein, Kokoda, Timor, Wewak, Bougainville, Leyte Gulf and Borneo. My father's post war friends were all young men who had experienced these campaigns, and so I grew up amidst tales of war, some quietly told and ringing of truth by virtue of the modesty with which events were described, and some obviously embellished to match the atmosphere surrounding the backyard keg which was the focus of their telling. It was the experiences related by former prisoners of war that I recall as creating the greatest awe and leaving the most indelible impression. By this time there was a full realisation of what had happened in the camps, on the Railway and during the Sandakin death march. Knowing only the Japanese of the War, my father's friends had little respect for Asians.

I knew nothing of Weary Dunlop in those days. It wasn't until later life that I was to realise how important his quiet courage and dignity were to the sustainment of hope in the Prisoner of War camps. His War Diaries reveal the full horror of the environment and the immensely practical way in which he and others responded to the challenges of saving lives in the punishing conditions of disease and deprivation which characterised the enslavement of the Thailand- Burma Railway. Perhaps more important however, was the vital part played by his spirit of forgiveness in the healing process so necessary for the health of our nation's development in Asia in the post war environment. It is as though his physician's nature had been changed by the horror of war's grim experience to embrace not simply the healing of the body, but more holistically, the healing of a national spirit bruised by exposure to the darker side of Asian culture. Let me also begin by congratulating Asialink on the splendid work they do in furthering understanding of Asia, and in enhancing Australia's links with Asian nations. This is an important initiative in the sense that it recognises that Australia and Asia are locked in each others embrace forever.

Nothing is more fundamental to strategy than geography, and yet it would be wrong for us to address this issue purely in terms of proximity. It is a constructive blending of the human spirit which will give us an enlightened future together. Such an outcome is not feasible without understanding. I am deeply honoured to be asked to give the 1999 Weary Dunlop lecture, and like all my predecessors, dedicate this presentation to the memory of this great Australian. In keeping with Weary's commitment to the development of Asia Australian relations, I have chosen as my theme what I will describe as a millennial shift in international norms and the impact of these on the way we relate to our Asian neighbours.

The Two Sovereignties 

In recent times the Secretary General of the United Nations has taken to referring to two concepts of sovereignty in a way designed to generate debate on the issues of the relative importance of individual rights and the rights of sovereign nations to deal with the people within their territorial boundaries as they see necessary. In a defining article in the Economist of the 18th September this year, his Excellency Kofi Annan had this to say:"State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined-not least by the forces of globalisation and international cooperation. States are now widely understood to be the instruments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa At the same time individual sovereignty which I mean the fundamental freedom of each individual, enshrined in the charter of the UN and subsequent international treaties~has been enhanced by a renewed and spreading consciousness of individual rights. When we read the charter today, we are more than ever conscious that its aim is to protect individual human beings, not to protect those who abuse them.ä

The remainder of this profound statement provides justification for intervention by the international community in the event of gross and systematic violations of human rights, and is an exhortation for nations to view this issue from the perspective of justice, rather than simply in terms of national interest. The statement offered the suggestion that coalitions of states could be justified in acting forcefully to prevent genocide for example, when the United Nations lacked the resolve to do so in a timely manner. To ensure that his intent was clear, the Secretary General included his views in his 1999 report to the General Assembly, sparking a debate in that body which was to provide early indications of a hemispheric divide on this and related matters. Not everyone reads the Charter the same way as the Secretary General. These questions of international intervention on human rights grounds are seen to propose a normative shift in the way nation states relate to each other, and are likely to contain the fundamental issues which will drive the development of a new philosophy of global relations for the 21st Century.

Why is this development in the views of the United Nation's Secretary General important to Australia, and what does it have to do with the subject of Australia's relations with Asia? The first and most obvious reason is because Australia, by its actions, sits squarely in the interventionist camp, and is, or has been engaged in peace operations of the most intrusive nature for most of the last decade of the 20th Century. After Namibia, the Gulf War, Cambodia, Western Sahara, Somalia, Rwanda and Bougainville, the Australian led and supported international enforcement operation in East Timor is but the most recent action of this type. It is also the most advanced form of humanitarian intervention yet attempted. More to the point, it is taking place close to home in the Asia Pacific Region where the issue of human rights versus economic rights and the so called Asian values have inhibited the development of Australia's engagement with her near neighbours for the past three decades. For this latter reason, the prospects for acceptance of the view on the part of Asian states that the collective interest lies in a more enlightened approach to individual rights is of vital importance to Australia's destiny in the region.

The Growth of Democracy in the Asia Pacific

It is salutary to realise that more than two thirds of the member nations of the UN did not exist as independent states when the Charter was first ratified in 1945. In Australia's region, most countries were colonies of European powers whose capacity to thwart the sovereign ambitions of these subservient peoples had been severely diminished by the Second World War. In Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, and East Timor were yet to gain their independence. Within two decades, with the exception of East Timor, all of these were nation states of varying forms which often reflected the struggle they had been through to gain their freedom. Some were democracies of a Westminster and a republican type, and others had adopted different forms of guided democracy with limited tolerance for any form of opposition. In most instances the experience of the essentially European idea of the sovereign nation state was new.

The United Nations itself was a catalyst for the independence of these emerging nations, demanding self-government for colonies and promoting the idea of the sovereign equality of peoples, and the rights and obligations of nation states. While inherent in the Charter's principles, the issue of individual human rights was of secondary importance to the issue of state sovereignty whereby the acceptance of cultural and social diversity was seen as a necessary part of a stable international order. In this regard, there were clear initial limits placed on the extent to which crimes against individuals would be tolerated, but these related to such things as genocide, and were addressed under conventions deliberately kept separate from the Charter. Reflecting the concerns of the times, the Charter is very specific about domestic jurisdiction over individuals. In paragraph 7 of Article 2 of Chapter 1 the Charter affirmsNothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter;And, presumably to point out that this did not apply if nations broke the rules and committed aggression against another member state, it goes on to say:but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VIIThe first three decades after the Second World War were troubled times for the fledgling nations of Asia. Caught up in the revolutionary movements which were an extension of the struggle for primacy between the capitalist and totalitarian forms of liberalism, the flowering of democratic governance was frustrated by various forms of authoritarian regime. These were often promoted by the West in a Jekyll and Hyde relationship which attempted to advance democracy in the long term, while accepting gross violations of democratic principles as an expedient to counter communism in the short term. A consequence of this has been the reluctance on the part of regimes created during this time to let go of the power structures by which they and their clients have prospered over the years. Many of these regimes have found common cause in explaining their need to retain power as both being in the national interest, and reflective of an Asian way of maintaining social stability.

For much of the period the significant growth in Asian economies appeared to justify this guided approach. Acceptance of the need for stable government and a disciplined work force rested on the attraction of investment into a seemingly profitable and low labour cost environment, and the growth in Asian markets, particularly for Australian commodities. During this period the authoritarian nature and human rights performance of many Asian governments could be overlooked in the belief that prosperity allowed the participation of a new and expanding middle class in the domestic politics of these nations. Indeed, as most of these nations came to aspire to enhanced international standing there was the realisation of the need to expand their educational base, entailing greater exposure of their youth to international values and norms. The consequent demand for a more distributed and participatory form of policy making has confronted these regimes with the need to address new power sharing arrangements. It is in this climate that the issue of Asian values has taken on its most strident form.

Asian Values

The contention that Asian values provided a superior model for dealing with economic development rested on the very high levels of growth which preceded the Asian economic crises of 1997. The emerging Asian economies of that time could point to the sustained ascent of the Japan and Korea in support of the view that western style, human rights based democracy did not suit the needs of Asian people. Their economic rights came first, the argument went, and excessive adherence to western norms of freedom and participation would somehow deny Asians the opportunity to bring their living standards up to those of the First World. It was further suggested that Western demand for liberal democratic standards of government were motivated by a desire to retain economic advantage. Very low levels of economic growth and the difficulty of social adjustment in the more mature economies contributed to this contention. In Australia's case, a succession of regional leaders, including Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, began to offer advice on what we were doing wrong.

The Asian Values proponents contend that these values are culturally specific and common to the peoples of Asia, thereby suggesting a uniformity of society which bears further analysis. These values are said to emphasise consensus building over adversarial approaches, respect for authority and order, strong family relationships, and the interests of the group over the interest of the individual. Inherent in the suggestion that these values are distinctly different to those of the west is the contention that individualism excludes these other values, or is somehow a threat to them.Ê One contention is that western individualism encourages people to a lack of modesty and mutual respect.

There have been many debates about the efficacy of Asian Values and whether those governments that espouse them are in fact democracies at all. This debate has been sharpened by examination of the role Asian Values might have played in the apparent disorder which lay behind the economic downturn of recent years. There seems little doubt that corruption and nepotism had much to do with the inability to respond to the warning signs of those nations which suffered the most from the collapse of the property bubble and the withdrawal of finance. There is also much evidence to suggest that reduced levels of accountability and visibility induced a climate of collusion between responsible areas of government and business to minimise private losses at the expense of the populace as a whole. How much was owed to the fact that Asian values simply prevented nations and individuals from confronting uncomfortable financial issues until it was too late, or until they were forced to do so by outside agencies is an important issue.

The facts that the effect of the downturn was not uniform, and that very little support for those nations which suffered the most came from their fellow Asian neighbours, suggests that, while some of these nations may share a common view, they do not share a common cause.Ê This is understandable given the vast diversity of Asia. The nations are among the richest and the poorest on Earth, and embrace all the religions known to mankind.Ê Their political systems range from communism through socialism, to capitalist authoritarianism to liberal democracy This diversity makes it hard to accept that there could be one set of Asian Values, and points to differences in Asia which are at least as wide as those in the West. Some Asian nations are in fact, probably closer to western nations in philosophy than they are to those who would include them in this Asian embrace.

The Asian Value of consensus building as opposed to the adversarial approach has also come under scrutiny as major, and often violent, street protest has become the norm in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, where the Suharto and Habibie governments were the most recent casualties of massive public dissent. Such demonstrations were becoming a constant in places like Korea, the Philippines and Thailand until those countries embraced a more consensual form of democratic government.Ê In Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and China there is evidence to suggest that it is not consent which keeps people off the streets, but the certainty of a ruthless response which has been demonstrated on many previous occasions by those governments. Here lies the complete contradiction in the assertion that Asian style consensus building is somehow at odds with liberal democratic values. Consensus building is not feasible unless it is based on justice, and this is the same foundation as the human rights ethos of enlightened western democracy. The international experience with Cambodia is a case in point. While the UN mission in Cambodia is regarded as a success, the fact that it did not leave in place an effective justice system means that Cambodia could slip back into civil strife at any time, and often does. Even though Asia may have a different philosophical tradition to the West as President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea observed in his days as a human rights activist, ãAsia has a heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions. The biggest obstacle is not its cultural heritage but the resistance of authoritarian rulers and their apologists."

These arguments are not to suggest that there are no aspects of Asian culture that could moderate some of the excesses apparent in western responses to market oriented economics. Indeed, western liberalism itself is beginning to question the role of government in protecting its constituents from the excesses of individualism and could do worse than take stock of Asian modesty and mutual respect in this regard. That aside, it is a combination of a vigilant population and the enlightened principles of free and fair elections, guaranteed human rights and the separation of powers that are the only insurance against self serving despots, East or West.

The New World Order

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is widely regarded as an event of great global significance. More than anything else, it portrayed the collapse of totalitarianism and the entry into what was seemingly a uni-polar world. After 200 years of global competition between the two forms of liberalism, it seemed that the capitalist, market oriented and democratic form had triumphed, and all that remained to be done was to tidy up the left over business from the Cold War and bring those who had been left out into the global economy. Three things which characterised the immediate post-Cold War environment were firstly an enhanced capacity and willingness to intervene in the world's trouble spots, secondly, a global embrace by the western media of all the world's problems, and thirdly, a realisation of just how far the global ecology had eroded and how critical environmental issues had become to world peace.Ê Clearly, there were great expectations of the United Nations in all of these issues, a challenge which was taken up with much enthusiasm, but one which has resulted in much soul searching and recrimination as the magnitude of the problems have tested an international construct designed for another era.

On the first issue of intervention, three very important questions have emerged from the experiences of the international community over the past decade to shape the debate. They are;1.ÊÊÊ Who decides who is right and who is wrong? At present, the Charter of the UN says it is the Security Council which makes these decisions, but is it a trusted and representative body, and do its members fail on the question of vested interest?2.ÊÊ Should whole peoples be punished for the crimes of their criminal leadership? This is a justice question which has particular relevance to the application of sanctions against people like the Iraqis and the Serbs, and the targeting of civil infrastructure. If you believe that international intervention is a necessary part of the new world order then the answer is probably no, but if you think that state sovereignty is sacrosanct then the answer should probably be yes!3.ÊÊÊ How can you intervene without committing crimes against that international law which is the basis of your intervention?What has made these questions more complex is the fact that very few contemporary conflicts have the simplicity of the interstate disputes and warfare which preceded the Charter, and prevention of which is the fundamental focus of the arrangements for managing conflict described therein. With the exception of the Gulf War and the questionable Serbo-Croat conflict over parts of the former Yugoslavia, all conflicts of recent history have been intrastate with civilian casualties outnumbering military dead and wounded by more than four to one. There appears to be little chance of these trends changing, and so the international community is confronted with the challenge of resolving conflicts of a tribal, racial and religious nature if its interventions are to be objective and justified. This is the difficulty of resolving such conflicts and is the main reason why Europe adopted the construct of state sovereignty as the basis of the international order in the first place.Ê This constitutes the main reason for the rejection of the Secretary General's Two Sovereignties proposal by some nations who contend that theirs and others cultural and racial problems are too complex to reconcile within a liberal democratic framework, at least for the immediate future. It also is the reason for the uncertainty which delays most international humanitarian response until the casualties reach such significant proportions that a domestic groundswell builds to propel nations into action. Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor all fill this description of uncertainty and delayed response.

As a further example of this complexity, there are those inside and outside NATO who, at this very moment, are questioning the decision to intervene in Serbian territory in the case of Kosovo. These people contend that there is no honourable way out of this problem, which becomes worse every day by virtue of the fact that the Serbs are now being ethnically cleansed from what was accepted as Serbian sovereign territory. They believe that this problem should have been left to the Serbs to resolve as they have always done, by force of arms.

If only it were as simple as this, but the Serbs have always involved others in their internal conflicts, and because of the global ethnic and religious impact of such a conflict it requires little imagination to see the circumstances which could draw other powers, including those with weapons of mass destruction, into the Balkans once again. The emerging truth is that the World needs a new philosophy and a new mechanism to manage these problems into the next millennium. Invoking the examples of Kosovo, East Timor and Rwanda, the Secretary General had this to say in his Two Sovereignties statement:Neither of these precedents is satisfactory as a model for the new millennium. Just as we have learnt that the world cannot stand aside when gross and systematic violations of human rights are taking place, we have also learnt that, if it is to enjoy the sustained support of the world's people, intervention must be based on legitimate and universal principles We need to adapt our international system better to a world with new actors, new responsibilities, and new possibilities for peace and progress.

Compounding the problems of matching the Secretary General's concern to define a new international system, is the growth of international law and the beginnings of an independent international judiciary to administer it. The advent of the international criminal tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, both of which are in the process of precedent building through the indictment and trial of war criminals, has sparked the revolutionary proposal of an Internal Criminal Court (ICC).Ê Such a development was inevitable once international humanitarian and human rights law were ratified. There can be no law without enforcement, and no enforcement without an enforcer.Ê It is both the growing independence of the international judiciary, and the indication on the part of the United States of America that it will not ratify the ICC which are the most problematical issues in this response to an improved international capacity to deter and pre-empt crimes against humanity. If America is to be the primary enforcer and, at the same, time, place itself outside the law, then all interventions must come to be seen by some party to the conflict as war. The 'might is right' dimension of this Superpower response creates severe dilemmas for nations like Australia that are allies of the United States and who are seeking a regional consensus on the resolution of regional problems.

The New World order is therefore both necessary and elusive. One common demand, which emerges from all case studies on future possibilities, is that of patience. It is clear that NATO and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are going to have to stay in the former Yugoslavia for at least a generation. Sustaining such an enduring presence in a time of rapid political, social and technological change is perhaps the most difficult of modern challenges. Much as it appears as an anathema, patience may also be the need most characteristic of Australia's new role in Asia.

Australia's New Role in Asia

As I speak to you, Australian soldiers are conducting land operations along a border with a neighbouring state. For most nations this would be nothing unusual, but for Australia, which has based its long-term strategy on the avoidance of such a reality, it is traumatic. There are those who are not prepared to accept this reality as reflective of our future, and who are prepared to close their eyes in the hope that it will all go away. Despite the Australian Government's assertion that they were prepared for this eventuality, the nature of their method of funding this operation, and their unwillingness to drive solutions that are in the interests of both Australia and the East Timorese, indicates their desire to regard the strategic surprise of East Timor as merely an aberration on the path towards a stable relationship with Indonesia.

The atmosphere of mutual recrimination, violent propaganda and the potential pursuit of war criminals in a neighbouring state could not have been part of Australia's strategic planning scenarios 12 months ago, and yet it is a vivid prospect this day. One question which requires constant searching is, "After so much contact between governments and with the Australian Defence Force how could the Indonesian military have been induced to believe that it could possibly conduct such deep crimes against humanity in East Timor and get away with it?" This question is very important to Australia because it begs two further questions:I.ÊÊÊ Did they think Australia would turn a blind eye to their activities in the belief that we desired the same outcome as they did, namely an integrated East Timor?2.ÊÊÊ Did they think that a lack of protest over their activities elsewhere in the Archipelago indicated a real politik desire to accept that significant breaches of human rights were acceptable in the maintenance of sovereign power and stability in a neighbouring state?

Whatever the answer to these questions might be, Australia now stands engaged in the Archipelago on the grounds of humanitarian intervention, an outcome which owes more to the outrage of the Australian people than to the moral stance of the Government itself. Significantly, although reluctantly accepted by the Indonesian Government, the intervention is the first Chapter VII enforcement operation outside the African continent that has been led by a nation other than the United States. The idea that Australia might be deputising for the United States in this regard was clearly embarrassing for both America and Australia, and was refuted by our Government, but only after it had taken root in the surrounding region. Despite this, Australia has managed to put together a coalition with strong regional representation for both the enforcement activity of INTERFET and the peacekeeping mission (UNTAET) which follows.

What are we to conclude from these questions and the contradictory outcomes?