In the past few days, news has come to us that Iraq, itself a battered country in light of what was done to it by George W. Bush and Tony Blair twenty years ago, has decided to unfreeze $2.7bn of the $11bn Iranian money it has held owing to American sanctions against Tehran. South Korea has $7bn of Iranian money.
The Biden administration is not doing Iran any favours, for the sanctions Washington imposed on Tehran, like the sanctions it has happily employed against other countries, run contrary to the spirit of international law.
The fact at this point is that Iran is an emerging power in Asia. That it has withstood pressure and has remained defiant of all attempts to bring it to heel is remarkable. One will surely take issue with the ayatollahs' intolerance of dissent at home, but that they have held on to their policies and their principles is admirable.
In recent weeks, the move by Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations is again part of the change which has been happening in the region. One must acknowledge China's contribution in making the Tehran-Riyadh rapprochement possible. That is again a reassertion of the increasingly bigger role Beijing is now playing on the global stage.
Xi Jinping is clearly upstaging the West here. The traditional dominance which Washington has exercised in world politics has diminished. That is Xi's message to the world. China is going places.
The re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as Turkey's President may not have made many people happy. The authoritarian nature of Erdogan's politics in the last twenty years raises quite a good number of questions about affairs within Turkey, but it cannot quite be gainsaid that under Erdogan Turkey has successfully transformed itself into a regional power.
Turkey's foreign policy remains principled, as Ankara's position on Sweden's entry into NATO has demonstrated. Jens Stoltenberg, in Ankara to attend Erdogan's inauguration, was at pains to convince the Turkish leader that Stockholm's entry into NATO would be in line with all the requirements of organisational rules. Erdogan is yet to be convinced, though, given that he has never been happy about Turkish dissidents being harboured by and in Sweden.
Away in Brazil, President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva has been making some major moves toward bringing his part of the world together. In a broad way, Lula's efforts have remained focused on bringing Brazil back to respectability after all the damage done to it by his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. The former President, in Trumpian fashion, denied the reality of Covid-19 even though tens of thousands of Brazilians were claimed by the virus on his watch.
Bolsonaro, again taking a leaf out of Trump's book, refused to concede defeat at the election and did away with the etiquette of presiding over the political transition to Lula. He did nothing to prevent his followers, post-election, from storming Brazil's presidential palace and parliament.
The Lula government has properly taken steps to prosecute Bolsonaro. A trial and judgment in line with the law will reassure Brazilians and others, especially Trump's MAGA followers in the US, that elections are sacrosanct and that those who play truant with them deserve to be given the full treatment of the law.
Another major move by President Lula has been to convene a summit of Unasur leaders --- and Unasur is a regional bloc --- which was attended by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. It was a breakthrough for Maduro, who had long been boycotted in the region. More importantly, it was Lula's message to the world that Latin America was fully equipped to handle its own problems. Thrown into the deliberations was the idea of a common regional currency that could replace the dollar.
In South Asia, India's rise as a political and economic power has added to its clout. It would be misleading to suggest that India is a regional power. It has gone beyond that stage and today has its sights set on exercising its authority as a global giant.
The G20, now under Delhi's leadership, is a case in point. Besides, the recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hosted by Delhi, was a message to the world that India had come of age. Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar was keen about delivering that message and he did.
Everything which has been happening around the globe could properly be seen as the beginning of a new world order. The fury with which Israelis in their tens of thousands have been rallying against Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts to undermine the powers of the judiciary underscores the need for governments to desist from indulging in acts which run contrary to constitutional rule.
The resistance that Tunisia's opposition has been putting up against President Kais Saied's assumption of dictatorial powers sends out the message that authoritarian rulers, even as they damage institutions, must sooner rather than later cave in to public wrath. The Rajapaksas of Srilanka are a poignant instance of the fallibility of seemingly entrenched rulers in our times.
One of the more painful stories over the past two decades relates to Syria, where President Bashar Assad has gone ruthlessly after anti-regime rebels and has survived. His presence at the summit of Arab League leaders the other day signified his coming in from the cold.
And that is a story he shares with Maduro. Where the Venezuelan has been welcomed back to Unasur, Assad has had his seat around the Arab League table restored.
Centres of diplomacy are shifting across regions. With the West tying itself in knots over Ukraine and therefore losing its authority, politically as well as morally, to have its diplomatic clout work around the world in the way it used to, it is for governments in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and even Africa to branch out on missions to reshape countries and continents and therefore global politics.
Russia's decision to have its nuclear missiles stationed in Belarus has not really made the West panic. The weaponisation of Ukraine --- observe the tanks, the guns, the anti-aircraft guns, the fighter jets gifted to President Zelensky --- has led to circumstances where NATO and its friends cannot in truth be morally outraged by those Moscow missiles in Lukashenko's country.
The truth holds that every few decades, change happens in the realm of geopolitics. Power equations are revised to allow for a restructuring of world order. Such a moment is here and now.
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