(This is a lightly edited version of former Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s address at the 4th World Peace Forum at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, Friday morning in that country)

I am pleased to join my fellow participants for the 14th World Peace Forum under the theme “Global Governance and International Security Cooperation: Integrity, Innovation, and Inclusiveness.” The forum is being held at a pivotal time in history.

International relations underwent major transformation in the second half of the 20th century. Isolationism and the pursuit of dominance which produced two devastating world wars and other armed conflicts gave way to broad alliances underpinned by a multifaceted global institutional framework.

In the last 35 years relations between countries have no longer been defined primarily by ideology but by shared objectives even within a competitive paradigm.

Decolonisation and the break-up of the Soviet Union led to the emergence of more than 60 independent countries in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, central and eastern Europe and the Americas, further reconfiguring the global landscape. Also, technological advancement fuelled the essentiality of an interconnected world.

Much of the global matrix that we came to take for granted arose from the experience of World War II which claimed the lives of some 80 million people. In a “never again reaction”, world leaders came together and agreed on an architecture built on some core principles that would guide relations among countries to prevent another such conflagration.

Those principles have not always triumphed. There have been numerous armed conflicts between countries since World War II, as we are witnessing at this very time, but they have been regarded as deviations from the rules, not the norm. Indeed, the essential value of that framework of understanding was validated by the fact that the Cold War that lasted for 45 years did not result in any armed confrontation.

Importantly, that architecture led to a number of initiatives that went beyond just the deterrent of war. It gave birth to a rules-based multilateral framework that governed other facets of relations among countries in areas such as trade, the international financial system, maritime, aviation and communications coordination, public health management, dispute settlements, human rights, labour standards, climate change and disaster mitigation.

Have those arrangements provided a perfect fix to secure a perfect world? Absolutely not! Peace is indispensable for prosperity but peace without prosperity compromises the value of that peace.

Between the Global North and Global South there is still a great gulf fixed. Many countries continue to be disadvantaged by the evolving international order. The playing field has never been level. Poor countries with weak capabilities are required to compete with the rich and powerful as if they were equals. There is a fundamental difference between equality and equity that is yet to be fully appreciated.

So, there can be no question that the international order needs to be drastically overhauled to make it more equitable and beneficial to all the people of the world. What we don’t need is to take a wrecking ball to it, to dismantle multilateralism and to retreat each to our own corner. Flawed as it is, it provides established rules and predictability and, tedious as they are, it provides avenues through which meaningful reform can be pursued. Its basic principles – shared economic and social development, the elimination of poverty and disease and respect for sovereign integrity and human rights cannot be contested. What is needed is for those principles to be effectively translated into global policies and actions to produce a more inclusive international order.

If I might digress, there is a concept of international development that the developed countries have refused to embrace. These countries produce far more than they can consume or absorb themselves. Their economic success is derived from the vast volume of goods and services that they sell to other countries. Other developed countries that produce their own surpluses cannot provide adequate markets for them. Their success depends significantly on what poor and developing countries are obliged to buy from them. The value of that trade amounts to almost US$6 trillion annually – equivalent to 20 per cent of the gross domestic product of the developed countries.

There is an inherent mutuality in the relationship between the developed countries and those struggling for development but the fruits of that mutuality are not proportionately enjoyed.

If the international system not just allowed but enabled poor and not-so-poor countries to develop themselves – educating and training their people, improving their health services, building the infrastructure so vital to achieving efficiency and productivity, attracting investment, increasing their value-added coefficient and vastly expanding their standard of living and purchasing power – they would end up purchasing so much more from the developed countries and boosting the economies of the developed countries in the process.

But the global architecture is now under serious threat. We are witnessing a resurgence of isolationism under the guise of nationalism. Putting our own country first has never been incompatible with multilateralism. It simply meant identifying ways in which our national goals and aspirations can more successfully be pursued through collaboration with other countries.

The erosion of the fabric of peaceful international relations and negotiated settlement of disputes is exemplified in the unprovoked Russian assault on Ukraine, the reckless bombing of vessels alleged but not proven to be transporting illegal drugs in the Caribbean Sea, the US incursion in Venezuela, the war on Iran and the strangulation of the Cuban people by denying them access to oil shipments. The Geneva convention is being shredded and war crimes have been placed in abeyance. Might has been reaffirmed as right, the law of the jungle in which only the strong survive and the weak become nutrition for the powerful has been reasserted.

International programmes and institutions to deal with issues like trade (World Trade Organization), public health (World Health Organization) and climate change (Paris Accord) have been hobbled. We are each being called on to paddle our own canoe.

The recent outbreak of the Ebola virus in parts of Africa may well be connected to the massive scaling back of disease surveillance aid to the poorest countries of the world. But the virus does not recognize national boundaries. It is a nomad that migrates with alarming rapidity underscoring our inescapable interconnectedness that places us all at risk.

There is a compelling call on leaders all over the world to take stock of what is happening. More than 80 years of progress achieved through the sacrifice including their very lives of millions of people are being steadily rolled back with daunting prospects for what the future holds for human civilization. The inertia of current world leaders at a time in history – but not the first time – when extraordinary leadership is required is worrisome. The current leadership in the United States which is a principal driver of this new blueprint will soon pass. Whether the seeds of discord that it has sowed will persist and become the new norm is a question that it is impossible at this time to determine.

What is clear, however, is that the trust among countries and leaders on which a stable international order so heavily rests has been severely damaged. Trust, with its accepted norms, takes a long time to build and an even longer time, perhaps more than a generation, to rebuild.

The world is now facing the most severe test since the Cuban missile crisis more than 60 years ago which brought us to the brink of a nuclear war. God forbid that it will take another world war to bring us back to our senses. Modern day weapons of war are today far more sophisticated and lethal than those employed in World War II. We are on the wrong side of history if we fail to recognize that peaceful co-existence is the only alternative to the annihilation of vast swathes of the human race and the disruption of human progress elsewhere.

We urgently need a conversation and targeted advocacy across all countries to build a consensus that we need to change course, that we need to steady the ship, that all we have achieved over the last 80 years will not be allowed to fall to the bottom of the ocean.

As Marvin Gaye immortalised in song more than 50 years ago, “War is not the answer” and that is exactly where our current trajectory will lead us. Countries with the economic and military power will not allow themselves to be trampled on upon the altar of some other country’s nationalistic pursuit. Small countries like mine with paltry economic power and little to no military capability will be ruined in that conflagration.

The 14th World Peace Forum, building on its stellar achievements over more than a decade, is an important instrument in this endeavour. It is important that it is more than an occasion but a vibrant movement to appeal to and, in fact, provoke the consciousness and enlightenment of our leaders to the realization that they are positioned on the bridge, that they are called by history and circumstance for a time like this and that history will be unkind to them if they fail to heed that call.

Leaders cannot do it alone. The political price they may have to pay is intimidating and self-defeating and, indeed, the price that we all would have to bear is unthinkable. We have a duty to ourselves to undergird them. The 14th World Peace Forum is of necessity talk. That is what shares ideas and, hopefully, builds consensus. But it must go further; it must strive to stimulate action and that is what I urge of all my fellow participants.