3.
We have here today, I understand visiting representatives
of 12 member countries of the Commonwealth, and from three
territories not yet responsible for their external affairs and
defence. Of the 15 countries represented 5 are in Africa, 4 in
North America and the Caribbean, 3 in Asia, 2 in Australasia and
1 in Europe.
I can therefore understand why I have been asked
not to confine myself to those world security problems of most
immediate concern to us here in these off-shore European islands
but to touch, even if only briefly, on problems arising in other
parts of the world.
4. Many of us have perhaps been too slow to recognise quickly
or fully enough how in this century the traditional foundations
of Britain's world military role was changing. The rise of
the extra-European Great Powers, Japan and the USA, brought to
an end the era where European Great Powers could dominate the
world. More recently the rise of the USA and the USSR to the
status of super-powers, able to afford forces far larger and
more formidable than any of the smaller Great Powers could
possibly afford, also inevitably changed profoundly the role
which these could henceforth play in world affairs. These and
other developments, not least the arrival of air and nuclear
power, made the traditional British balance of power policy,
relying chiefly on sea power (so effective in the days when our
competitors were all European land powers) no longer so
practicable or influential.
5.
The departure from the British Empire of several states
and its conversion into a Commonwealth of 28 sovereign and
independent states, each free to pursue whatever defence and
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