Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke about the changes the world faces at a packed Laurie Auditorium at Trinity University Thursday night. Blair was a featured speaker of the university’s Flora Cameron Lecture on Politics and Public Affairs. Photo by Marvin Pfeiffer

In front of a packed house at Trinity University’s Laurie Auditorium this past Thursday night, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, spoke about the challenges faced in a rapidly changing world and the steps needed to take to deal with them.

Blair, who served as Prime Minister from May 1997 to June 2007, was a guest speaker in the University’s Flora Cameron Lecture on Politics and Public Affairs series. He now serves as the representative for the Middle East Quartet – America, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

He started by saying that this is a moment in time when we have to step back and look at the big picture of what’s happening in the world.

“The chief characteristic of our modern world is the scale and pace and scope of the intensity of change,” Blair said.

He said that globalization of our world has been aided by great leaps in technology and communication.

“People today can do things that a few years ago weren’t even invented or thought of yet,” Blair said. “What’s really happening is that, because of the Internet and mass communication, people can interact with each other to a far more intense and profoundly different degree than ever before.”

“The state of economic change is happening faster and at a greater rate than anything we’ve ever seen before in the history of humanity,” he added.

The other major change that Blair sees taking place in today’s world is the shift of power from the west, mainly America and Europe, to the Middle East and China. Part of that shift in power comes not only from a sheer population difference, but to one of wealth.

“A few years ago we all made speeches about ‘Well, and then there’s China’, Blair said. “Well now there IS China and it is a massive change in the whole geopolitics of the world. I don’t think we’ve yet fully understood its consequences.”

The other major change that Blair sees in the world today is the abrupt and dangerous threat brought by terrorism.

“This is a new phenomenon,” Blair said. “Terrorism without limits and based on religious identity.”

All of this rapid change has consequences, Blair explained.

“First, governments and people have to adapt and adjust at the same pace,” he said. “Secondly, we all need to realize that we, America and Europe, are not necessarily going to be dominant in the world arena the way we have been for over a hundred years. We’re now interdependent on others the like of which we’ve never seen before.”

What can nations do to adapt to these changes and consequences?

“The first thing we need to do is to go global in everything we do,” the former prime minister said. “Next, what we need to do is quit thinking that foreign policy is a choice between hard and soft power – it has to be both. And finally, we need to forge strong alliances with the rest of the world.”

He ended the speech saying, “These challenges are great, but so is our capacity to overcome them. And overcome them we should.”