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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair emphasized the role of justice and cooperation in solving global challenges, and advocated for a new system of global partnerships to replace outdated and ineffective assemblies such as the United Nations Security Council and the G8, at a speech to Seton Hall University Feb. 3.

We need a sense of shared values, Blair said, that include not just freedom and democracy, but justice as well.

"That is, in the end, the clarion call that brings people into public service -- it's a belief in the power of community," Blair said, adding that a new world is emerging as countries in all corners of the globe are becoming truly interdependent. "But that world can only work if we base it on justice."

Blair's address, in which he also promoted the paramountcy of Arab-Israeli peace, was part of the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations' World Leaders Forum. Two thousand tickets, free of charge, were distributed for the event.

Blair began by reflecting on the "inspiring, but also very thought-provoking" moment of a new U.S. president beginning his term. Blair said that in Britain the election season is four weeks long and there is no transition period -- the new government takes over immediately after the election.

He said there is a British tradition that when a new prime minister is elected, he walks down Downing Street, with spectators lining either side, usually to applaud the new leader. When Blair -- of the Labour Party -- won, however, the opposition Conservative Party had held the premiership for 18 consecutive years, since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. As Blair took his ceremonial stroll through Downing Street, he said, spectators were crying -- and not tears of joy. He joked that, by the time he finished his walk, he "felt rather guilty about the whole thing."

Blair outlined three major challenges the world currently faces: the economy, the environment, and security. He said usually heads of state will call in their expert advisers, and out of those meetings will come some form of consensus on how to address a particular challenge.

"The really tough thing about the economic crisis," Blair said, "is you call in the experts and they say 'I don't know'."

Blair said we live in a globally integrated economy, which means that problems in the economic system affect everyone, and so their solutions must include everyone as well. The fundamentals of our current system, he said, "are shaken," and we must come to terms with this crisis "in a way that is, to me, unprecedented."

And that, he said, means recognizing the absurdity of proposing solutions at a G8 forum -- at which the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia discuss synchronized approaches to various global issues -- without the input of emerging industrial nations like China, India, and Brazil. The reality of the economic crisis, he said, is that it has been pervasive.

"It's gone global," he said, and the solution "has to be coordinated."

That brought Blair to the subject of the environment. He said our approach to the economic crisis should include "green" innovation and technology so that economic solutions impact the environment in positive ways.

Blair seemed to indicate the wisdom of former President George W. Bush's decision to sign, but decline to ratify, the Kyoto Protocol, which exempts developing nations like China and India from the strict reduction of carbon emissions, despite the fact that China is the world's largest gross emitter of carbon dioxide.

"If we shut down the whole of the U.K. tomorrow... the growth in China in emissions would make up all we've done by shutting down the U.K. -- in 18 months," Blair said, noting that the developed nations cannot possibly solve the environmental problems alone.

Blair said he doesn't blame China for wanting to push industrialization -- the country has hundreds of millions of residents living in poverty. Similarly, most of India's poorest residents are subsistence farmers, and industrialization offers the promise of getting those farmers access to the global market and out of poverty.

The third and final major challenge, security, presents the modern world with a particular obstacle: it is rare to find agreement on which major threat should be addressed first, he said. Blair said that some will tell you the biggest challenge is Iraq; others will say Afghanistan; still others will insist it's Pakistan. The truth, Blair said, is "it's all of the above, plus" countries from Southeast Asia through northwest Africa.

"And truthfully, what is happening there is one struggle with many aspects," Blair said. "This is not a conventional battle that is being fought... and it cannot be solved by conventional politics."

Despite the array of security tests, Blair was adamant in placing a high priority on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"There is nothing more important... than to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine," Blair said.

But that conflict must address not only Muslim-Jewish tension. It must also confront the lack of pluralistic and Western education in the Muslim world, Blair said. He recalled that on a visit to a Pakistani madrassa, he asked what the curriculum included. The madrassa's headmaster responded: "the Quran." Blair asked: "Besides the Quran?" He was told: "There is no 'besides the Quran'."

So we need diplomacy, he said, but "that diplomacy has got to reach right down to the roots of the this problem." A sense of urgency is in order, he said, not because we want to rush to solutions, but because the pace of global change is so fast that "these problems force themselves onto our agenda."

Blair didn't shy away from the more controversial decisions he made as prime minister, such as removing Saddam Hussein from power in the effort to liberate the Iraqi people. He plainly told a questioner, who asked him about his top accomplishments, that he is an interventionist on foreign policy. In fact, he said, "Getting rid of dictators like Saddam Hussein... is something I'm proud of."

Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office, joining his wife and children, who were already members of the Roman Catholic Church. One student asked him if the timing of his conversion was politically motivated. He responded that it was not, but he told a short story to put European religious practice into perspective for the audience. He was once preparing to give a speech to Britain during a time of crisis, and he wanted to end his speech with "God bless the British people." This caused quite a stir among the senior civil servants, and finally a high-ranking government official said to him, "This isn't America here."

Blair closed his address by encouraging the future diplomats in the audience not to get discouraged.

"People can often give you a thousand reasons not to do something, but rarely give you one good reason to do something," he said.

Blair helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, a milestone in the peacemaking process between the British/Northern Irish and the Irish. Had he listened to the cynics, he said, he wouldn't have had the drive to work for such a breakthrough.

"What Ireland taught me is that things can change, and can change for the better," Blair said.

Additionally, he said, although there are always setbacks and crises, he has always noticed the "steady onward march of progress" throughout history.

"So it's a time of challenge," Blair said. "But it's also a time of hope and possibility."