Your Majesty, I was so looking forward to seeing you at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting but unfortunately owing to a diary clash I am unable to come?.?.?.? Yours apologetically

The offices of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa must have faced quite the drafting challenge when their leaders chose to skip last week’s Commonwealth summit to attend instead a meeting hosted by Vladimir Putin.

Few though would dispute the strategic sense of their sidestep. It is an unambiguous reminder of the waning influence of western-led multilateral organisations in the global south. It is also another sign of the broader decline of what became hubristically known in the post-cold war decades as the international community.