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s the international community is struggling to reorder international systems and institutions to adjust to the rapidly changing geopolitical reality, Indonesia should take an active part, if not the main initiative, in creating a new world order that ensures true justice for all nations.

A new world order has been a long standing demand from what was once referred to as '€œThird World'€ countries going as far back as the 1960s. The urgency has become greater today as the existing systems and institutions are clearly failing to deliver what they are expected to bring.

Change is more likely today because the chief impetus is coming from the West, which for decades had opposed any change to the world order they helped to create and manage after World War II. A prestigious conference in London recently chose the creation of a new world order as its main theme to reflect the growing consensus worldwide of the need for change.

Speakers and participants at the June 1 to 2 London Conference, organized by the Chatham House/Royal Institute for Foreign Affairs, agreed that the current systems are failing, evidenced among other ways by the violent conflicts in Syria and in the Middle East and North Africa, the rise of terrorism, the mass migration of people avoiding wars, new territorial conflicts in Asia involving China and the difficulties in securing international agreements over issues like global trade and climate change.

The current international order and its supporting institutions, like the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were established after World War II. The West, led by the US, had almost a free hand in writing the rules the rest of the world had to obey.

The systems may have been unjust, something that developing countries have been echoing for decades, but they had functioned well, at least in preventing great wars and in allowing many countries to develop their economies and bring prosperity to their people.

The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s vindicated the Western-controlled systems and paved the way for the US to become the lone superpower. The unipolar world did not last long as new powers, particularly China, started emerging at the turn of the millennium just as the US became weaker economically and politically, if not militarily.

Whether the world is moving towards a bipolar or a multipolar order is a topic at many international conferences today that are seeking to understand the new geopolitical reality. Countries are adjusting their own positions and roles to this emerging world order.

One thing missing in the current international order is strong leadership that until recently had been provided by the United States. While it is wrong to write off the US, it is equally wrong to assume that it still commands the power and influence it once enjoyed.

Speakers from China and India said their countries have no intention of overturning the systems that had worked well in letting both develop their economies to become the powers they are today. Instead, they made it clear they want a greater say in the running of the world systems. In other words, they just want a seat at the table, alongside the other world elites.

For India, this means restating its demand for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which is justifiable for the country with the second largest population in the world. For China, already a member of the UN elite club, this means a greater say in running financial institutions.

China'€™s initiative to launch the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was largely seen as its response to being excluded from having a greater say at the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The fact that Washington lost its campaign for Asian countries not to join the China-led bank was evidence of it losing power and influence.

Where is Indonesia in all this discussion about the new world order?

If China and India would settle for joining the elite club and for a share of global power, it is left to Indonesia, as the fourth most populous nation and third largest democracy in the world, to take up the torch and demand a major overhaul of the international order, one that ensures justice for all nations.

Indonesia should capitalize on the Asia-Africa Conference it hosted in Jakarta in April to rally support from countries on these two continents, as well as from Latin America, to demand a thorough reform of the United Nations as well as of other global institutions.

Just because the systems have worked for some, like China, India and even Indonesia, it doesn'€™t mean that they are just. Many countries are still being excluded from the systems that were created primarily to serve the interests of the West.

Now that there is an international consensus to change the systems, Indonesia should use this opportunity to ensure that the new world order is one that guarantees justice for all nations. As the preamble to the 1945 Constitution states, Indonesia must contribute to the establishment of an international order founded upon liberty, peace and social justice.
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The writer is senior editor of The Jakarta Post. He took part in the London Conference organized by the Chatham House/Royal Institute for International Affairs on June 1 and 2.