New Delhi, Oct. 20 -- Writing in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War, the flu pandemic and the outbreak of the Irish war of independence, William Butler Yeats observed.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." He could well have been describing the world in 2024.

The niceties of international relations, the guard-rails of international norms and restraints placed by the United Nations system, have dissolved into a reality where might is right. This will not change for the better anytime soon.

The kind of leadership requi...