DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997              TAG: 9703130002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 
SOURCE: BY STEVE YETIV 

                                            LENGTH:   69 lines

THE NEW TRANSNATIONAL AGENDA

The recent push by President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for a global ban on chemical weapons is on target. But this effort can be linked to a much larger agenda that raises global consciousness about transnational issues.

In the second half of the 20th century, problems in various regions of the world have become increasingly transnational. Transnational issues are global. They affect, influence and often concern many nations worldwide; and usually require multilateral cooperation to ameliorate or solve. If handled adroitly, these issues can be a bridge between nations and away from the bloodiest century ever; if bungled, they can generate significant conflict.

Three key, inescapable transnational issues are arms proliferation, international terrorism and the global environment. They are a good place to start in raising global consciousness on transnational problems.

International terrorism is becoming increasingly transnational. Terrorist networks are developing that now involve individuals, groups and states worldwide. Groups and individuals in Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and even in the United States are not separate in their operations. They sometimes work together directly or indirectly.

Technology has made it easier for terror ``networks'' to develop, communicate and coordinate. The Saudi royal family, for instance, is attacked daily on several World Wide Web sites, in a transnational act of dissension through the computer. Satellite dishes are a common sight in Riyadh and in other formerly undeveloped areas of the world. The First World no longer monopolizes basic technology.

Stopping terrorists from using technology and communication, and from organizing cross-border terror, requires new forms of multilateral cooperation. Terrorism is no longer just a local issue with a local solution. As peoples connect worldwide, so will terrorists with similar ideologies and goals.

Like international terrorism, nuclear, chemical and biological proliferation are clearly transnational problems. The ability to deliver chemical or biological weapons anywhere in the world - including to the United States - is increasing, thus leaving all states potentially hostage. That is one legacy of the technology-and-information revolution. Only an effective regime of carrots and sticks, imposed partly through transnational cooperation, can slow down or at least manage effectively such proliferation.

The global environment is the quintessential transnational problem. In 1880, the earth's population was 1 billion; it has increased by about 1 billion every 11 years since the 1950s. Approximately 1.7 billion people breathe unhealthy air. And the 1980s produced six of the 10 warmest years on record, which may or may not be coincidental.

While in the 19th century global warming, acid rain, environmental degradation, population explosion and resource depletion were a chimera, they now drive the slow, creeping revolution that is linking the interests, needs and fates of nations worldwide. An inexorable logic is at work: The evolution of world politics is at once forcing us together and threatening to drive us apart.

Dealing with transnational problems requires a raised global consciousness. The recognition of common interests historically has been a basis for enduring cooperation. If there is anything we all have in common, it is the evolving transnational agenda. From women's rights to biological proliferation, these issues cannot be handled or understood in isolation. Big nations and small, Asian and Latino, Muslims and Jews, black and white, women and men - we are all linked by them. And that is why they can represent a bridge between cultures and a bridge to a better world. Or, if we continue to be myopic, one more reason to fight. MEMO: Steve Yetiv is a political science professor at Old Dominion

University.

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