Tomorrow's world may be a bugger of a place which we can do little to avoid, but, if we try to make it better, it's unlikely to be worse than if we hadn't tried. For us, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are world war, pandemic disease, a global climate shift, and global economic collapse. All are plausible possibilities. The only insurance we can take out against such shock-driven futures is active membership of the world community. We have to make plans on the assumption that catastrophe will not strike, while simultaneously engaging in dialogue to forestall such catastrophes.
Many commentators see national governments being reduced to impotence as globalisation proceeds.
The alternative to the impotent-state view, the one I'm taking today, is that national governments will continue to be important agents of change and stability in a globalising world. The four widely-recognised obstacles I have in mind here are environmental degradation, a shortage of social justice in the form of life opportunities, deteriorating social relationships, and a rate of economic growth which, depending on your viewpoint, is either too high or too low. Just how successful we might be in tackling this obstacle course is an open question. We will be limited in what we can achieve by the constraints of our history and geography, by tradition and custom. And by the effort of adapting to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as some scribbler put it.