The US-led west has created new forms and methods of exercising its hegemony over the rest of the world. The colonial history of the past two centuries is already filled with atrocities committed against the colonised in the name of a ‘civilising’ mission. In later times, and particularly since the decolonisation process following World War II, the US-led west has developed an extensive theoretical and ideological narrative to justify its so-called ‘rules-based order’.

The unanswered questions this gives rise to are 1) What rules? 2) Whose rules? 3) How, after delineating these ‘rules’, does the US-led west see fit to violate them in letter and spirit wherever its interests are involved, including, first and foremost, global hegemony?

While the guns have fallen silent in the recent wars between Pakistan and India and Iran and Israel, with the US in tow to the latter, these conflagrations have given new life to the questions posed above. In the case of Pakistan and India, yes, we managed to get the better of India after it launched attacks across the international border, but our subsequent emphasis on dialogue between the two contending sides appears to be a fond hope at best, given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s embarrassment.

The likelihood is that new forms of action will........

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