Image courtesy: CPA UK Branch.
THE CONNECTED COMMONWEALTH: A PATCHWORK OF PEACE
“Within this revolutionary new context it so happens, without any master plan or ideological impulse, that the Commonwealth network emerges as the ideal platform – the self-associating and nonhierarchical type structure which is utterly suited to the digital age.”
standards (especially in relation to gender and racial equality), and friendship to an unprecedented degree of trust, intimacy and connectivity. The English language, in particular, has now become the protocol of the cyber-entwined planet – a binding force par excellence with its own internal DNA. Within this revolutionary new context it so happens, without any master plan or ideological impulse, that the Commonwealth network emerges as the ideal platform – the self-associating and non-hierarchical type structure which is utterly suited to the digital age. We are entering here into a world which even the most assiduously compiled statistics cannot cope with or reflect. No figures of past Commonwealth trade – in the British case modest in recent years – can pick up these
powerful trends which are building the future. This new trade and commerce milieu, depends for its success even more than traditional forms of trade on certain fundamental and essential requirements. It relies more than ever on secure political conditions and relations, on minimised instability and maximised friendliness, on open and unhindered connectivity and on shared values. In turn all this demands closer co-operation than ever before on security, national defence, collaboration against international crime and drug operations and the safeguarding of trade routes by land and sea. Those who argue that shared values may be fine but don’t put food on the table or promote economic growth are wrong in every respect. It is precisely these likeminded commonalities and the trust which they
Above: Lord Howell of Guildford joins the SecretaryGeneral of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Mr Akbar Khan on the panel to speak about the Commonwealth, Peace and Security at the International Parliamentary Conference (IPC) on National Security and Cybersecurity in London, United Kingdom held at Church House in March 2017.
engender which make business easier and project co-operation freer from misunderstandings and lost-in-translation mix-ups. Before our eyes the modern Commonwealth is evolving to meet these conditions and to create a zone of highly professional co-operation and trust which stands in sharp contrast to the volatile and dangerously unstable world outside the network. This is about as far as you can get from
The Parliamentarian | 2017: Issue Two | 131