No one should ignore what has been happening in the UN and in Cuba in the past few days. The old order is changing. The shape of the new order to which it is yielding is as yet darkly visible in dim outline. Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez dominated the news in both the meeting of the 118 non-aligned nations in Cuba and the meeting of world leaders at the UN.

Geof Brown

The clearly staged alliance between the two leaders is more than just a public show of anti-Bush administration rhetoric. Behind the public posturing lie the seeds of an emerging shift in the long-standing hegemony of the US as the world's leading superpower.

The unspoken driving force behind the bold-faced challenges to the Bush administration by the two rather brash non-aligned world leaders is the power of oil. The US is heavily oil-dependent and both Iran and Venezuela are strong suppliers of the precious commodity. They are not beggars waiting on US aid for economic survival.

In fact, it is said that Venezuela alone supplies one-fifth of the oil needs of the US. The two leaders therefore speak from a position of strength. Let us not forget how the OPEC countries, of which they are members, have been able to hold the rest of the world and particularly the West to ransom. The oil weapon they possess is a potent one.

Thus, to the extent that Chavez and Ahmadinejad are able to command traction in the non-aligned countries, they make it impossible for the US to ignore them. Both are fiery speakers and are therefore able to command media attention as well. So follow their focus lines.

Chavez talks about the South becoming a countervailing force to the hegemony of the US. In this case, South is not just a geographical location, in the context of North-South classic division of the world into zones of influence. South, acting collectively as developing and Third World countries, will be increasingly able to ignore the wishes of the United States. And Chavez, in his UN speech this week, explicitly put that notion on the table.

Now follow the focus line of the Iranian president. All countries, he says, should be equally free to develop nuclear capability. He claims that there is no proof of his country being in the process of using that capability for anything but peaceful purposes. At the same time, he puts the moral argument on the table that some countries already have nuclear weapons and that if it is bad for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb, it is also wrong for countries like the US to have nuclear weapons.

He further makes the argument that the US has given its blessing to some countries to have nuclear weapons capability, while wanting to deny it to some, his country included. Now the Iranian president also takes some very repugnant positions such as his reported stance that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map and that the Holocaust never occurred.

But we need to look beyond the repugnances, as for instance in Chavez's personal hit at Bush in styling him the devil whose sulphur smell was still at the podium at the UN where they both spoke. Their focus lines contain the real message of their intention to invert the present world order.

We might well remember how Khruschev at the UN in what now seems ages ago, declared that his country would bury the West. The difference between that challenge and the current one to the US is that Khruschev had no weapon for survival such as the oil weapon possessed by Iran and Venezuela. Khruschev had no collective of 118 nations in majority support of his stance. Indeed, his own economy collapsed not long after his challenge and needed Western support.

To compound matters for the US hegemony, the present administration no longer has the undivided support of Europe. Britain's Blair is in trouble at home because of his support for the Bush administration; France and Russia as permanent members of the UN Security Council are lukewarm about sanctions against Iran.

And for a dramatic example of how the unpopularity of the Iraq war is not just a problem at home for President Bush, compare the kind of reception Bush received this week at the UN with the tumultuous standing ovation world leaders gave former president Clinton in the same forum.

The truth is that the US has very few really reliable friends, and Chavez and Ahmadinejad know that only too well. They add that to the advantage of the oil weapon, knowing that Iraq oil is not by any means assured to the US in spite of its thousands of troops there. Indeed, the apparently developing rapport between the Iraq constitutional prime minister and the Iran president underscores the point. So pay attention to the focus themes of the two challengers. They bespeak the emerging shift that is America's most potent threat to its long-standing hegemony.

browngeof@hotmail.com

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World