New World Order Will Be More Unstable, Transactional, Says S Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said the emerging global order would be increasingly multipolar and transactional, with more countries making independent decisions. This, he warned, would make the world more complex, unpredictable and unstable, while intensifying competition among nations.

Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit during a conversation with HT Editor-in-Chief R Sukumar, Jaishankar said the world was navigating “very stormy seas” amid multiple conflicts, economic disruptions and volatility in food and fuel supplies.

“The general acceptance is that the new order would be more multipolar, that there'd be many more centres of autonomous decision-making. Countries overall would be much more national in their choices and in their decisions,” he said.

“The alliances will be less cohesive because of national interests and more transactional, because they feed into each other — less cohesive, more transactional; more transactional, less cohesive.” He said the emerging order would involve “more variables” and become “much more complex [and] less predictable” as the number of players increased and countries became more self-centred.

“That will be the culture or the ethos of the era that we are moving into. I don't want you to get a sort of picture of an anarchy, but definitely sharper competition, more national assertions, and in that sense inherently more unstable,” Jaishankar said.

Jaishankar acknowledged that the world was in a difficult phase, with global developments having direct consequences for India. He cited the wars in Ukraine and West Asia, the situation in Sudan and Central Africa, fluctuations in food and fuel prices, and the continuing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as factors adding to the uncertainty.

Referring to the Russia-Ukraine war, he said a major conflict of this scale would have been difficult to imagine five years ago, given the extent of globalisation and interdependence. “Five years ago, it would have been inconceivable in this day and age, when everything is so globalised and interdependent, that we could have a major war.

We've actually had that war now into its fifth year,” he said. He also pointed to the escalation of tensions in the Gulf, where countries have been firing missiles at one another and targeting military bases, cities, forces and leadership.

“What you see in the Gulf — the idea that countries would actually be firing missiles at each other, targeting bases, cities, forces, leaderships — would have been something which people would have rated its chances as pretty near zero,” he said.

Jaishankar added that the situation in West Asia had become “much more bitter and intractable” since the Hamas terror attacks in October 2023. He said disruptions to food exports from Ukraine and Russia through the Black Sea had affected global food prices, including in India, while interruptions to fuel supplies had also pushed up energy costs.

The External Affairs Minister said navigating the uncertain global environment would require strong, steady and experienced leadership, guided by India's national interest. Tackling the challenges would depend on leadership that “knows how to get the country through this, because the compass for navigating it is our national interest”, he said.

“When we look at all these challenges, when people ask us where do you stand on Ukraine or where do you stand on the Gulf or what is your view on a particular challenge, we will view it understandably through the lens of our national interest.

That's the compass which will guide us,” he said. Jaishankar added that the current phase of global turbulence was likely to manifest itself in different ways until the end of the decade. Jaishankar identified competition between the US and China as a major factor behind the current global uncertainty.

However, he said the disruption was also linked to Washington's changing approach towards the world, including its traditional partners.