STRONG MEN AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

SOME ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER, how perhaps might Kipling view his lines ? Europe and Asia, 'two strong men'- at least potentially - still stan d at 'the two ends of the earth'. But it is an earth that has surely s hrunk to a mere shadow through the growth of modern communication - th e jumbo jet, the satellite and the Internet. He would certainly not ha ve seen the United States as a third great 'pole', standing between Ea st and West and with a power head and shoulders above any other, as on ce had Britain and its Empire. Much has been written and said about th e tripolar nature of today's world; North America, Asia and Europe. Su ch tripolarism should not be seen as a return to 'balance of power' po litics, with its implications of military potential, but rather as a m eans of strengthening the linkages - political, economic, security, cu ltural and scientific - required for the common good between three imp ortant centres of economic activity. However, such tripolarity, by emb racing almost all of the world's richest countries and leaving out mos t of the poorest, leads almost inevitably to aggravating the prosperit y divide between Noah and South.