The notion of the “world as a whole” is becoming increasingly prominent in the thinking and pronouncements of international prog-nosticators. Yet “globalism”, its functional expression, is a relatively new approach in the United Nations. In fact, it has hardly arrived. This statement is not paradoxical or even surprising. Globalism is not the same thing as internationalism as we have known it up to the present. There is more involved here than a matter of semantics. Traditional internationalism is derived from the dictates of political wisdom and a sense of human solidarity in a world of growing interdependence but of unlimited horizons opened up by tech nology. Globalism is associated today with the ambivalence of technology, its negative effects on the degradation of the environment, the destruction of ecological balances, the limited capacity of the biosphere, the possible depletion of natural resources, the population explosion, the finiteness of the planet, and perhaps even the finiteness of knowledge.

A hierarchical regional system may be defined as a regional international system composed of a single Great Power and a number of relatively small states. This article attempts to clarify the conditions under which member states of a hierarchical regional system, including both the great-power regional hegemon and the relatively small powers, seek to influence the salience that boundaries have for such a system. Scholars and policymakers alike may use several criteria in defining the boundaries of a regional system: 1) A system may be delimited geographically; 2) marked discontinuities in transactional interchanges (language, trade patterns, communication flows) may serve to set it off from the general international system as may common membership in formal international organizations; 3) boundaries may similarly be established by emphasizing behavioral criteria, i.e., by identifying norms especially pertaining to conflict management and resolution which are specific to a group of states. Unless otherwise specified, I employ the last definition throughout this article.

Since 1962 the United Nations, mainly through the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Special Committee of 24), has attempted to effect political change in dependent territories in accordance with the principle of self-determination of peoples. While the organization usually demands that the inhabitants be given a chance to determine their political future and to choose their government, its primary objective has been somewhat more specific. Spurred on by the influx of new members that occurred around the start of the decade, most of them former colonies, the UN has pressured for the complete displacement of alien rule in dependent territories and has tended to accept whatever type of government emerges as long as it is indigenous, that is, not controlled by a colonial power or European settlers.