Chapter 5 - Commonwealth Cross Sections: Prenegotiation to Minimize Conflict and to Develop Cooperation

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Commonwealth of Nations, which has proved to be a remarkably useful instrument for developing understanding and for working out practical multilateral understandings in a wide range of fields-among its member nations. The value of the Commonwealth as a practical agency for international consultation, multilateral negotiations, occasional mediation, and for functional cooperation in various fields, derives from the unique nature of its membership and the relative informality and intimacy of its procedures. Heterogeneity is one of the significant features of the Commonwealth of Nations. Members of the Commonwealth of Nations are of virtually every racial group and represent the world's major religions. There are no super-powers and no totalitarian regimes. The Commonwealth is a fairly representative cross section of mankind and of the traditions, interests, and problems of mankind. However, the remarkable heterogeneity is balanced by a number of shared facilities, habits, working methods, and traditions that, while they do not make understanding or agreement among nations easy, unquestionably makes them less difficult to achieve. The countries, which joined the Commonwealth upon obtaining independence, did so because their leaders decided that there would be value in membership in the association, both in what they could get out of it in the way of trade, aid, and other opportunities for cooperation and contacts, and in what they could put into it, using it as one of the instruments to influence the thinking and actions of others and thus help shape the future of our planet.