Dhaka, June 25 -- In depressing clarity, the rules-based international order we have long known or spoken of has been crumbling around us. As the ferocity of the attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States (US) has so conclusively shown, the world is today a place imperilled, defined by danger it is not in our power to roll back.

The sovereignty of nations, an idea sacrosanct and therefore inviolable, has been given short shrift through the deadly strikes on places considered to be the centres of Iran's nuclear power. Iran is today a weakened nation. That it has yet refused to yield to the fury of Israeli-American power is much to be remarked on. Iran's has been a proud civilisation for centuries. It is now that pride which is in gra...