Jaishankar Tells UN 'We Are Well On Our Way Towards A Multi-Polar World' As The Post-1945 Order Gives Way
UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 9 Of 15
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| Image Source: @DrSJaishankar on X |
"We are now well on our way towards a multi-polar world. The post-1945 order is giving way to new realities," External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in India's national statement on Saturday, September 26. "This process of adjustment, accommodation and acceptance will not be easy. Much of the turbulence that we witness today emanates from those very difficulties."
The passage captured a long-held view in New Delhi that new centres of power are not in themselves the problem but institutions that have failed to adjust to them are. The inability of global institutions to keep the peace, Jaishankar said, was "not only weakening security, but is also threatening progress, slowing the pace of development in a globalized world", and countries far from the battlefield were paying for wars they had no part in.
He described a world in which "everything is being weaponized". From finance and market access to supply chains and technology, he said, a mindset of hyper-competition had taken hold, institutions were weakening and countries were turning to de-risking and diversification. For the Global South, the result was a crisis across food, fuel, fertiliser and finance.
He named no country as the source of that weaponisation, in keeping with India's diplomatic tradition but the context was plain to his audience. India was hit with steep US tariffs in August 2025, including a penalty linked to its purchases of Russian oil, and its economy remains exposed to disruption in the Gulf.
Jaishankar expressed deep concern at the continuing conflict in the Gulf and at the targeting of commercial vessels and maritime crews in international waterways, which he called unacceptable. He backed a two-State solution in the Middle East and, echoing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the focus on Ukraine, where the war has entered its fifth year, had to shift from "an endless war" to "ending the war".
He also replied to Pakistan. Referring to remarks made in the previous day's session, he accused "a serial practitioner of terrorism" of misrepresenting facts before the Assembly. "It is for the perpetrator of terrorism to mend its ways," he said.
Setting out what India brings to a changing order, he cited 600 development projects in 78 countries and India's digital public infrastructure. A diverse international community, he argued, could not move forward by excluding a large part of humanity, and civilised dialogue was essential to manage the transition.
India's call for reformed multilateralism and a permanent seat on the Security Council is long-standing. This year it drew explicit support from the same podium on the same day, when Russia's Sergey Lavrov said Moscow backed permanent seats for India and Brazil.
Jaishankar closed with the words inscribed on Mahatma Gandhi's statue at the UN: "There is no path to peace. Peace is the path."
The national statements delivered at this year's UN General Assembly left little doubt about how far the ground has shifted. Opening the debate, Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders that "we are clearly moving towards a multipolar world" and that the movement is irreversible, though he warned it could take the shape of fragmentation and transactionalism rather than a networked order rooted in international law. The backdrop was hard to miss: a US-Israeli war with Iran nearly seven months old, the US capture of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro in January, and a US President who used the same podium to say he was weighing a deal with Tehran against "annihilating" it. Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the World Trade Organization was on life support and condemned the use of tariffs as "a weapon of coercion and blackmail", while India's S. Jaishankar declared that the post-1945 order is giving way to new realities. Türkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Spain's Pedro Sánchez, from very different vantage points, both called for an end to the veto held by the Security Council's five permanent members. Russia's Sergey Lavrov went further, telling the Assembly that "the dictatorship of a single hegemon has run amok" and that a fairer, multipolar order was emerging. What remains unsettled is not whether power is spreading, but whether the institutions built in 1945 can adjust fast enough to hold it together.