By Harsh V Pant
If there ever was any doubt, the year 2023 marked the final nail in the coffin for what had remained of the global order. The disarray in the world continued unabated as multiple conflicts shaped the global environment, faultlines sharpened further among major powers, and international institutions continued their debilitating streak. Fragmentation of the global economic order accelerated as emerging technologies became the most important determinant of the international balance of power. A leadership void at the global level has also contributed to the inability of the extant international system to effectively make provisions for global public goods.
These conflicts are happening at a time when the great power contestation between the US and China is also beginning to sharpen. In more ways than one, the cockpit of this struggle is the Indo-Pacific where tensions continue to be at an all-time high. This global disorder demands a collective leadership that is nowhere to be seen. And this means that the world would be welcoming 2024 with a distinct feeling for foreboding where the assumptions of the past may no longer be enough to ascertain the trends of the future.
The brooding shadow of violence has always defined the parameters for interstate interactions. But the ferocity with which hard power is making its presence felt is also a reflection of the complacency with which certain actors were engaging with global affairs. As China was accumulating hard power, Europe was busy dismantling its military structures. The struggle for the EU to emerge as a relevant actor in global geopolitics today is a reflection of its desire to give up on hard power. And as American adversaries are joining hands, the formidable US military machine is also finding it hard to balance them in multiple theatres.
Not surprisingly, most nations are today trying to fend for their own security by relying on their own capabilities and the Indo-Pacific is the critical theatre where the centre of gravity of global politics and economics has shifted. It is here that military expenditures are booming and defence forces are trying to adapt to new strategic realities. It is in the Indo-Pacific where the EU has been forced to come to terms with its own inadequacies in shaping the regional and global balance of power. Even Germany and Japan have started reassessing their strategic choices with a single-minded focus on their hard power capabilities, standing as a testament to out changing times.
It is at this crisis-ridden time that India had to showcase its leadership via the G20 Presidency. This allowed India to be at the helm of a troubled global order and advocate for New Delhi’s brand of multilateralism. India’s aim was to steer the diverging great powers back to the negotiating table at the G20 and in so doing, to bolster its credentials as a leading power on the global stage.
India’s G20 Presidency was aimed at moving the world away from polarisation towards a greater sense of solidarity. Its own reality of being a multicultural democracy prepared it well in bringing together highly diverse stakeholders to cogitate, and act, on global challenges. The theme of G20 India 2023—Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: One Earth, One Family, One Future—encapsulated India’s conceptualisation of the global order and its own role in it. And New Delhi has shown that it does not dwell merely on rhetoric. In 2020, as Covid-19 first surged, it insisted on the need for the international community to work together and help those struggling with the least resources even as developed nations focused inwards, some of them hoarding enough vaccines to inoculate each adult five times over.
At a time of grave worldwide crisis, New Delhi has effectively used all the instruments and platforms available to India to make a case that instead of nations becoming more and more inward looking, global engagement should be the norm. This is also an attempt to fill the leadership vacuum in the global order when both China and the US have exposed their vulnerabilities. India has shown that a nation with limited capabilities can also emerge as a leader by outlining the concerns of like-minded countries and working with them to build capacities in smaller states. The contrast between a world struggling to generate a sense of order and an India ready to shape global outcomes in a positive manner couldn’t have been starker this year.
Harsh V Pant,Vice president (studies and foreign policy), Observer Research Foundation. Views are personal.