The dreadful situation in Zimbabwe (see this for today's developments) is a reminder that our world is still dominated by the British Empire, despite the fact that the Empire was consigned to history almost half a century ago.
Zim is just one example of the legacy of empire shaping our world. Almost all the major foreign policy issues that dominate news bulletins (Zimbabwe, Iraq, the Arab/Israeli conflict, conflict in India/Pakistan, Sudan) can be traced back to the effects of the various European empires and how they were wound up. There is even a reasonable case to be made that European imperialism is in part responsible for the current terrorism problem.
None of this is to say that all the effects of empire were exclusively negative - they clearly weren't. The British Empire, for example, exported the ideal of the rule of law around the globe, and the world would be an infinitely poorer place without that. Also the European empires played an important historic role by creating the infrastructure of a proper international system which has made global trade and the management of conflict possible.
But despite that, the mistakes made by white men sitting in London or Paris or the other European capitals a couple of hundred years ago continue to echo through time to today. And the biggest mistake was the creation of artificial borders which failed to reflect the cultural/tribal/political reality on the ground. Many of the problems listed above are a direct result of these borders, and our attempts to manage these conflicts will be the dominant foreign policy challenge for the foreseeable future.
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