Britain should reject the idea of being a 'bridge' between Europe and America and realise its potential as a 'global hub' in a world where a new 'civiilan surge' was transforming the balance of international power, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the Fabian new year conference 'Change the World'

Miliband argued that globalisation was bringing about three 'fundamental shifts in the distribution of power:

'Power is shifting from West to East. It is shifting from the national to the international level. But there is a third shift – in the balance of power between government and people'.

The Foreign Secretary argued that 'alongside the rising tide of human rights and democratic values, there is the reality of growing insecurity' - a 'unique mixture of empowerment and insecurity'.

These power shifts were creating 'a crisis of conservatism', which was 'fatally conflicted between yearning for order and the lure of free markets, between allegiance to the nation and the reality of international problems'.

Miliband argued that an effective response depends on a 'progressive fusion' of the social democratic and radical liberal traditions - to combine essential insights about equality and the fair distribution of resources, with a commitment to individual freedom and the plural distribution of power.

Miliband called for a renewed commitment to universal values of human rights and to the role of the international community in supporting faltering states or checking abuses by governments.

But he placed a strong emphasis on multilateral cooperation at both the regional and global level, arguing that it was necessary to 'learn the lessons' of recent interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq:

'democratic institutions need to be built from the bottom up not just the top down; and military victories are never a solution in themselves; they need the backing of economic and social reconstruction', he said.

 
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