Nelson A. Rockefeller urged last night that the U.S. help to develop a confederation of free world nations. In the last of the Godkin lectures, the New York Governor suggested that the American concept of the "federal " could create a "secure structure of international order."

His effort Tuesday was, in effect, to show that the experience of New York might serve as a model for states that wished to preserve the vitality of federal- through the exercise of strong state leadership. Yesterday he indicated that America's success with the system illustrated its relevance to a now unstable international scene.

Rockefeller's idea of a free world confederation evolves from a proposal that he attempted in 1960 to inject into the Republican Party platform. The plank was to assess approval of the growth of "regional confederation of nations."

Since then, as he stated last night, he has come to believe that "some problems more us"--like Latin American trade ties with Europe, Arab-Israeli disputes, and "political chaos in Africa"-- "may well be capable of solution only within a critical framework larger than simple regionalism."

The collapse of old European empires, said the Governor, has left a "most political vacuum," to fill which communism "offers a cruel design for world order." Some grand design is needed for the individual nation-state is no longer able to "defend its freedom, to fulfill the aspirations of its own people from within its own borders or through its own resources."

Military defense, economic growth, living standards," Rockefeller went on, "require the joint and cooperative action of many sovereignties"--that is, a federal system. The present lesss dramatic mechanisms for international order, the Governor pointed out, have not met with striking success.

Rockefeiler acknowledged the usefulness of the European Common Market. Latin American Free Trade Association, and the Geneva Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, but insisted that they should not "unleash the creative possibilities of free enterprise."

He applied the same criticism to government-to-government foreign aid programs. Since a large amount of productive activity in underdeveloped nations in private hands, he said, the "relatively small fraction" of government-controlled enterprise can contribute only slightly to economic growth.

Federalism for Military Problems

The Governor made clear his feelings that something like federalism had to solve military problems as well as social and economic ones. Members of NATO, for instance, "cannot be expected to live indefinitely in a state of essential dependence on U.S. decision to use, or not to use, its nuclear deterrent."

Contrary to expectations, Rockefeller opened the floor to questions after his lecture. For the most part, his replies seemed to show that the federal idea was scarcely inflexibly conceived. His confederation would trade with neutral countries reluctant to join it; "I don't believe in isolationism in any form." It could encourage welfare government in countries that needed it.