New concert of nations

One of the most important factors in the emergence of new nations is the problem of holding a balance between national interest
and international responsibility. In this book C. M. Woodhouse examines the three phases in the cycle of development of a new nation; first, the phase of nationalism, the acquisition of sovereign independence; second, the phase of inter-dependence, which
comes with the realisation that patriotic self-interest is not enough, but without any surrender of sovereignty; third - and most
difficult - the phase in which, the author says, "peoples and governments come to recognise that the scope of human responsibility is not limited by national boundaries", even to the point that national sovereignty must be eroded.
Today different new countries are going through different phases, and at different paces, yet have to co-exist in the same world.
Mr Woodhouse examines how this "disequilibrium" can be adjusted and what part in the process both the big nation-states and
the new countries themselves have to play to produce a new "concert of nations". Mr Woodhouse is M P for Oxford, Under-
Secretary of State at the Home Office, and the biographer of Rhodes. He was formerly Director-General of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House.