Multilateralism is pushed to the wall as world order looks fluid

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has been a busy man in the last few months, more so, last week when he managed marathon meetings at the United Nations General Assembly. The meeting participants suggest India’s new foreign policy stance of finding allies and strategic partners around the globe. India met with its QUAD (US, Australia, and Japan) partners, also Libya, Syria, Cuba, renewed its commitment to France, India, Australia trilateral and France, India UAE strategic partnership.

France, Australia, UAE trilaterals with India are relatively new, born out of the need to find allies post pandemic and keep a check on China in the Indo Pacific region. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on a short visit to Japan this week to attend the funeral of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The focus was Indo pacific, shared interests and building on the India Japan bilateral.

Clearly, the world order has undergone a significant shift since 2020 with two course altering events, the Covid pandemic and Russia’s military attack in Ukraine, thereby shattering the myth of no war in the Eurozone.

If the Covid pandemic and the subsequent disruption in global supply chains (mostly concentrated in China) hadn’t dented the existing order, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent push to annex territories has created a shock in energy and food prices around the globe. There are multiple streams of evolving partnerships which will forever shape the way planet earth emerges in the 21st century.

First, faced by a clear danger of nuclear-powered Russia in the backyard, the larger European countries are rethinking their nuclear strategies. Most of them except for France had given up the nuclear shield to be under US-led NATO providing them umbrella cover. Meanwhile in the eastern hemisphere, Japan faced by a belligerent neighbour, China, is also rethinking its nuclear celibacy strategy.

The US and the UK have already come together to provide Australia with nuclear capabilities in the Indian Ocean region to prevent China from being adventurous. The headwinds are a clear indication of a world again looking at nuclear weapons as a go to deterrent/safety net in case of full-fledged war.

Second, global energy prices, threatening to put almost all of Europe through a very cold and dark winter of 2022, will shape the way the hastily glued western alliance against Russia will behave in 2023.

A clear and present danger in Russia is forcing ideological shifts in Europe. Meanwhile, the energy and food prices have pushed a couple of nations (including two in India’s neighbourhood) in Asia and Africa on the verge of economic breakdown and are looking at institutions such as the IMF for bailouts.

Third, there is a huge drop in acceptance for multilateral institutions as platforms for sorting global common problems. China has been persistently denying India and a couple of other large economies from taking their rightful positions as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

There is a huge lack of consensus globally on ways to reap the dividends of a digital economy and therefore effectively tax the technology companies.

This leads to India’s presidency of the G20 beginning towards the end of the year. The current Indonesia presidency ends in November and depending on the outcome the baton will be passed on to New Delhi to shape the global narrative. This will be at a time when India would be the most populous democracy, besides being the fifth largest economy in the world. It must find innovative ways of negotiating a consensus on most pressing world issues.

(The author is a foreign affairs commentator)