CENTURIES of European colonialism followed by the Cold War have left a distorted power balance in certain parts of the world. Rectifying it will inevitably carry dangers for global peace.
If we leave to one side threats to peace arising from the capacity of regional powers - or terrorist groups - to acquire and threaten to use nuclear weapons, then the most striking example of such a dangerous distortion of the power balance is China.
Before Europe's technological rise, culminating in the Industrial Revolution, China was a much more advanced and wealthy country than Britain. But after humiliation and exploitation by the west in the last century, it remained economically weak and largely detached until recently.
But now this most populous of world states has discovered a path to economic growth which, if sustained, could within the next 50 years challenge the United States as the world's only superpower.
Despite its recent rapid economic growth China's living standards today remain low, perhaps one-ninth those of the US and one-fifth those of the EU.
But because of its huge population, its economic output is already half that of each of these two world leaders. And if recent Chinese growth rates are sustained during the decade ahead, its output could come to exceed that of either the US or the EU.
Indeed, Chinese living standards could by mid-century equal those of Europe and the US on the admittedly optimistic hypothesis of the current disparity between Chinese and western growth rates persisting throughout the first half of the next century.
And even if Chinese economic performance falls well short of this, a radical adjustment of the global power balance seems an inevitable consequence of China's recovery from its unnatural weakness in the 19th and 20th centuries. This clearly carries risks for global stability in the first half of the next century.
Several factors could mitigate the risks inherent in this scenario. China has traditionally been cautious and reactive in its foreign policy. And its military budget absorbs a small proportion of Chinese output, no more than about 1 per cent.
BUT China's relations with some of its many neighbours have been contentious. The Chinese-Vietnamese relationship has been tense. China's long border with Russia has been the scene of many incidents, and some Chinese still resent the loss to Russia of Chinese territory in the north-east between the 17th and 19th centuries, and in Central Asia to what is now Kazakhstan.
Again, China was at war with India several decades ago and is still in dispute with that country over border territories. Finally, relations with Japan have never recovered from Japanese invasion and occupation in the 1930s and 1940s.
At another level there are dangers in China's grievance over treatment by Europe and Japan which seems even better-founded than Germany's post-Versailles grievance against its first World War conquerors. And we know how that contributed to the outbreak of the second World War.
China's history and sense of its past could make it less willing than other states to accept the sharing of sovereignty which in today's world is becoming increasingly necessary for global security. And even by the west's dubious standards on armament sales some of China's arms deals with unstable regimes have been disturbing.
Furthermore, within China there is a potentially explosive disharmony between the current practice of uninhibited capitalism and the Marxist theories to which the regime still pays lip service.
And the rapidly growing disparity between the wealth of the entrepreneurial minority and the poverty of the rest of the population could create explosive domestic tensions.
There are also more short-term dangers to peace arising from the growing pressure within Taiwan for a formal declaration of independence from China (the one event likely to provoke armed conflict between Taiwan and mainland China); and from the territorial dispute between China and states bordering the South China Sea over some uninhabited islands. For the waters surrounding some of these islands may contain oil or gas that could relieve East Asia's heavy dependence upon Middle East imports.
Finally, China also has a close interest in the potentially explosive situation in the Korean peninsula, where North Korea nears total collapse and might be tempted to initiate a desperate, strike against its southern neighbour. But beyond all these more immediate dangers lies the inherent long-term tension between China and the US, which, has a major security involvement in East Asia greatly valued by many, states in the region.
MUCH depends on how the two handle this volatile relationship in the long term, with a particular onus falling upon the US as the incumbent superpower.
Unhappily this relationship has been subject to distorting pressures in the US where, since the last war, a right-wing lobby, strongly supportive of Taiwan against mainland China, has introduced an element of instability into the Chinese policy of the United States. This conservative lobby has sometimes skilfully exploited the genuine and justified concerns of liberal opinion about human rights in China.
The fundamental interests of the world community, including of course those of the US, lie in a constructive engagement between China and the outside world. This involves a gradual integration of China into the global economic and political order, e.g. through participation in the World Trade Organisation.
As I was able to judge for myself this week, listening to the debate on China at the Tokyo meeting of the Trilateral Commission, this reality is fully appreciated by Washington's foreign policy establishment. And it has shown considerable skill and determination in fending off right-wing pressures for an adventurist approach.
US foreign policy has recently been directed constructively towards damping down tensions between Taiwan and China. This week's successful visit by Vice- President Al Gore to Beijing, culminating in the invitation to the Chinese leader to visit Washington, makes its clear that official US policy is now committed to detente with China.
Unlike the US, Europe has no security role in East Asia. But it has a shared interest in global peace, as well as an important economic interest in commercial relations with China which is at least equal to that of the US.
In its developing relationship with post-communist Russia the European Union must recognise that Russia's primary strategic fears relate to China rather than Europe. On the one hand Europe has an interest in offering Russia security guarantees in Europe to offset the extension of NATO to the former borders of the Soviet Union.
But at the same time the EU to avoid seeming by such actions to "release" Russia from security concerns on its western borders in such a way as to encourage it to "square up" to a perceived, but in the short term at least imaginary threat from China in the East.
The end of the Cold War has relieved the world of a threat to global peace that had hung over it for almost half a century. But the post Cold War world has its own tensions and dangers, many of which, by virtue simply of the size, population and new economic dynamism of China, inevitably centre on that country.
As a member of the EU, jointly responsible with our partners for the development of common European foreign policy positions, and concerned for the maintenance of world peace, these are matters with which Irish governments have to engage.