Fundamental changes are taking place in the international system at a rapid pace. As a matter of fact, more chang-es have taken place in the world in the past 20 years than in the previous 200 years.

This week, South Africa is hosting the tenth annual gathering of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). When the first BRIC summit was held in 2009 (South Africa was added in 2010), the world was in the throes of a financial crisis of the developed world's making, and the increasingly dynamic BRIC bloc represented the future.

China will give $80 million in funding for BRICS cooperation plans, Chinese President Xi Jinping says, while the bloc of five emerging countries pledge to oppose protectionism.

The first challenge to the Western hegemony that followed the collapse of Communism in Europe was the emergence of the so-called...