I agree with Paul Warren that Dr Mahathir Mohamad's anti-war rants are indeed hypocritical. He has ruled Malaysia almost like a tyrant, using legal and extra-legal tools of coercion and co-optation to persecute dissidents.

And I'm not sure Abdullah Badawi won't do the same. He is now o­n record voicing similar threats, recently to DAP's Lim Kit Siang over the government's 'attempted' cover-up of the Sars contagion in Malaysia. Malaysia's still very big o­n denial.

But I disagree with Warren over the rest of what he says, in particular his claim that Mahathir is afraid of the coming "new world order". Warren over-exaggerates.

When George Bush Sr called a "new world order" at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Mahathir was still premier and Malaysian politics in the 1990s was the same as in the 1980s as in the 1970s. If Bush Jr does the same any time soon, Mahathir will still be in office. And what does it matter, in domestic political terms?

When Bush Sr signalled the new world order, we got an 'order' that culminated in Sept 11, 2001 and Oct 12, 2002, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the man who runs North Korea long bedded by China and to a lesser extent Russia. So what?

The history of international orders is complex. World orders are constantly changing, not so much from outside but mostly from within, in the alternation between hegemonic and non-hegemonic structures.

The outside of world orders is the expression of the inside of world orders. That's why non-realists call it the inside/outside of international relations. In this sense, world order is much more than a simple throw-away label.

Since 1648, the international system has seen four world orders: state-making and war-making, c.1648-1789; the coming of the liberal international economy, c.1789-1873; rival imperialisms, c.1873-1945; and the neo-liberal world order, c.1945-present.

Nothing has changed since 1991. Nothing will change from 2003. There's continuity of Cold War international politics that embodies Cold War-type stresses and fissures.

But that's not to say - and I'll grant Warren this much - that even if Bush Jr were to hail a new world order, while nothing much will change in terms of international relations, the renewed pervasiveness of the neo-liberal world order will now even more strongly influence domestic political economies, including Malaysia.

Mahathir knows this - and probably better than people think. Which explains Mahathir's neo-Islamist and neo-nationalist rants. They'll come to nought because they carry no credibility whatsoever. Mahathir is a reactionary, not a visionary. He makes Malaysia's foreign policy, which is amateurish farce because it's almost entirely reactionary.

Regardless, don't expect Malaysian politics to turn towards democratic practices. The rhetoric will stay the same but the practice of coercion, co-optation and human rights violations will harden.

This will give rise to a neo-authoritarian racialist/racist Umno state - the kind you find in China and Singapore today. It'll be hard and merciless o­n granting basic political freedoms and rights, and even harder o­n true citizenship.