From The Times
June 15, 2009

World Agenda: Looking to the future without the West

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, right, shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao before a closed meeting of SCO leaders in Yekaterinburg

Tony Halpin in Yekaterinburg

In the place where Europe slides into Asia, the world without the West is gathering to flex its political and economic muscles.

The Bric nations — Brazil, Russia, India and China — and the members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) are attending simultaneous summits for the first time. The meetings, in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, give a glimpse of the globe tilting east and south in coming decades, away from the traditional dominance of the United States and Europe.

For advocates of the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy, this is a depressing prospect. Brazil and India are thriving democracies but the prime characteristic of most of the governments gathered here in the Urals is authoritarian, often of the ugliest variety. Apart from China and Russia, the SCO comprises the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. President Ahmadinejad of Iran, busy crushing protest over his “landslideâ€