THERE are three competing interests in international relations to balance in my book - national, regional and international. Global citizenship over time might smooth out the competing interests. For now, we deal with the reality.

Ben Anderson is compelling in his argument on group affinity - ultimately expressed in nationalism - in his Imagined Communities (1983, 1991).

Regional and international objectives to serve the national interest are intrinsic to people - and thus critical to political legitimacy.

Australia is unique in that its historical past and its geographic location present an additional challenge or opportunity to the Anderson impulse.

Challenge or opportunity? Depends on one's point of view. For Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the Australian Trade Commission, Asia's ascendancy has turned Australia's Tyranny of Distance (1966) as argued by the conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey to "the power of proximity".
Blainey maintains, though, in a 2001 edition of his influential text, that geographical remoteness remains an impediment to Australia's economic development.

From these two perspectives, it's clear that distance frames Australia's place in the world, and how it relates to that world.

But you can have your cake and eat it, too, as one proposition floated at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 Summit suggests - so long as people are open to the idea that things have changed; for nation, region, and the world.

IT consultant Gregory Nelson thinks so. He was one among 1,000 Australians at the summit in Canberra over the April 19-20 weekend.

Old can be made new, the 27-year-old president of the International Young Professionals Foundation suggested, in calling for a Colombo Plan for Africa.

Nelson had picked up a copy of Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan (2004) by historian Daniel Oakman.

Prominent Colombo Plan alumni Datuk Lee Yee Cheong and Professor Toh Swee Hin are as much thrilled as they are surprised that the programme of the 1950s that changed their lives - and that of Malaysia - came up for mention.

"I had not heard mention of the Colombo Plan for many years," La Trobe University graduate Toh said.

The former Penang Old Frees boy is now professor and director of the Multi-Faith Centre at Griffith University in Queensland.

In that capacity, and as 2000 laureate of the UNESCO prize for peace education, Toh was with Nelson in Canberra, tossing ideas on "Australia's future in the world - security and prosperity".

"It was so unexpected," Lee said of the airing of the Colombo Plan. "I was happy and excited."

Indeed, Lee had been championing the cause, as collaborator of development economist Jeffrey Sachs in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The Adelaide University electrical engineer had long been convicted to "give back".

Having built an illustrious career back in Malaysia, the former president of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations is convinced Australia has a unique role to revive a development strategy for which it had been a leading advocate. And the possibilities have increased in partnership with former beneficiary countries such as Malaysia, now in a position to contribute.

Lee had taken his cause to every network he had as a founding director of the Malaysia-Australia Foundation. Now he sees resonance in the internationalist tradition of Labor, and before the summit had sent a paper on a "Spender plan for Africa" to Rudd's office.

Lee's idea is named for Sir Percy Spender, Minister for External Affairs in the foundation years of the Colombo Plan.

It was a different time and different place then, but the underlying circumstances remain today.

Then, the inspiration was to extend the altruism of development aid into the realms of security in building a bulwark against communism.

Over the week, Rudd, in response to questions about Australia's obligations in Afghanistan after a fifth Australian soldier died under enemy fire, reiterated his position to Nato heads of state in Bucharest during his world tour last month.

Military intervention in Afghanistan has to be prosecuted in concert with civic capacity building. It's a view consistent with Labor's position on Iraq.

For Lee and Toh, the Rudd thrust is reminiscent of the Colombo Plan. Lee, the former Yuk Choy junior middle school student in Ipoh before he transferred to St Michael's Institution, "would have joined (his) Yuk Choy classmates to go back to China" were it not for his ardent anti-Communist father.

"My education and time in Adelaide (1956-61) transformed me from a dye-in-the-wool Chinese into a Malaysian with deep international tendencies," says Lee, 70.

The international milieu in which Toh found himself, studying with, and interacting with, not only Australian students but also students from other countries, "was most beneficial to raising awareness of the wider world".

More significant is what Lee and Toh maintain the Colombo Plan has done for Malaysia.

"The transition from colonial rule and subsequent transformation from primary produce to manufacturing economy in Malaysia has been due to a solid foundation of skilled human capital in civil administration, rule of law and professional and managerial services," says Lee, who is now deeply involved in UN efforts in Africa.

"The Colombo Plan ... contributed significantly to this human capital capacity building."

The benefits are not just one way, as Nelson suggests in his summit presentation.

Not least of the prospects for Australia in Africa is the cultivation of the resource-rich continent as an investment opportunity for Australia's resource industry.

"And, of course, we can return to being a true and outstanding global citizen," Nelson said of a country aspiring to membership on the UN Security Council.

An international programme in partnership with regional neighbours can serve the national interest.

Toh, 60, would add one caveat to a similar initiative today.

It needs to be more "horizontal" rather than "vertical", "so that Australians also feel that they can learn ideas and insights from recipients of Australian aid programmes".