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"For us, energy is a matter of life and death. Let us find our own solutions.”
The world is becoming less Western, more diverse, more global, and increasingly Asian. That’s what India’s Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, says in a major interview with Politiken. He expresses enthusiasm for Denmark but firmly pushes back when criticized for India’s close relationship with Russia.
"The world is in a messy phase,” observes India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, as we speak with him on the top floor of a Copenhagen hotel.
Wars of annihilation are raging in Gaza and Ukraine. The U.S. has declared a trade world war. China is threatening Taiwan, while India and Pakistan are catching their breath after a brief but intense military conflict. At the same time - and more fundamentally - the world, according to the foreign minister, is undergoing a rebalancing.
The order that emerged after World War II is perceived by the majority of the world’s population as unfair. That’s Jaishankar’s view, and in foreign policy terms, he represents every sixth person on the planet.
He also no longer wants to hear criticism from Europe regarding India’s trade with Russia. But at the same time, he insists to Politiken that Europe and India can work closely together on the technology that will define the 21st century.
How would you describe the new world order that is emerging?
"To call it a new world order is probably a bit premature, because things are still in flux. But the outlines are beginning to take clearer shape,” says S. Jaishankar and continues:
"There are still strong imprints from the previous, or old, order. So it’s not that a new world order has completely displaced the old one. But we are seeing a gradual rebalancing. It began with the economy, and it continues culturally and through new partnerships between countries. This is an evolution we are witnessing. What should global norms be? Who gets to decide?”
S. Jaishankar is a seasoned geopolitical thinker who has written several books about global change. For the past six years, he has served as India’s foreign minister, and before that, he was a diplomat in the Indian foreign service for four decades. During this time, India has become the world’s most populous nation and the fourth-largest economy. As such, he represents one of the planet’s giants - 1.4 billion people - sharing his worldview with Politiken.
But Jaishankar is also interested in Denmark, which currently holds a seat on the UN Security Council and will soon take over the EU presidency. Through Greenland, we are also an Arctic power and has a strategic green partnership with India. Finally, the Indian minister makes no secret of his good relationship with his Danish counterpart, Lars Løkke Rasmussen. The same, he asserts, applies to the heads of state Narendra Modi and Mette Frederiksen.
All of these are Danish strengths that India can use to further accelerate its economic and political rise. Modi calls it India’s "golden era.” But the visit to Denmark is also one of a thousand meetings, which for Jaishankar are about reducing the uncertainty and instability the world is going through, because the geopolitical tectonic plates are now shifting.
"Countries, just like societies, need norms, rules, and platforms where they can meet and cooperate. If you ask me what I do on a daily basis, it’s about finding common ground between countries,” says the Foreign Minister.
The UN is in decline
The emerging new world order, according to Jaishankar, is defined by five phenomena: globalization, rebalancing, multipolarity, new technology, and the usual rivalries and taunts that have always existed between countries.
"If you look at the 20-30 largest economies in the world, they have overall become less Western, more diverse, more global, and significantly more Asian,” he says, pointing to a pivotal year:
"The global financial crisis in 2008 was a turning point because it showed that the West couldn’t handle it alone. So the former G7 and G8 countries became the G20 during that period.”
But in fact, the world is not at all equipped for the rebalancing that is currently taking place, Jaishankar believes.
"Our institutions are lagging behind global realities. When they were founded, the UN had 50 members. How can the same institutions function now with nearly 200 members? Large parts of the world feel they are not part of the decision-making process in the central international organizations,” he says.
"The UN doesn’t really work, because it’s anachronistic - because a few countries block the majority’s desire for change. But then countries will simply find other ways to cooperate.”
Is the UN in decline?
"It’s becoming less and less relevant. But politics is like water. It finds a new balance.”
Old and new alliances
This development also puts pressure on old alliances, such as NATO, which was founded after World War II, the Foreign Minister believes:
"As I see the emerging world order, we’re heading towards a much more multipolar world. And a world where the importance of the alliances that were part of the previous world order is diminishing. I’m not saying the alliances will disappear, because I don’t believe that. But in Asia, it’s more about cooperation on shared interests rather than entering treaties or writing down rules.”
He highlights the Quad cooperation between India, the USA, Japan, and Australia as an example of how future alliances will be more flexible and interest-based. No one is obligated to help each other militarily, as is the case with NATO.
"It’s based on voluntariness - a desire to pool our strengths and cooperate. It’s flexible and effective,” he says.
Clashes
The borders of the old order still push back, however. In April, terrorists murdered 26 tourists in a disputed Kashmir region, which the Foreign Minister asserts is an integral part of India – a claim Pakistan, however, disputes. This led to several days of military clashes in May between India and a Pakistan that, according to Indian experts, received support from a third nuclear power, China.
Is the clash in Kashmir an example of us approaching a more unstable, multipolar world, where a great power like China also indirectly intervenes? Or is the ceasefire instead an example that the world still manages to contain such conflicts?
"It wasn’t a conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. It was a terrorist attack,” the Indian Foreign Minister replies firmly.
"Of the major collective challenges today, I would place terrorism at the top - alongside climate change, growing poverty, and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South.”
The world as I see it
The question remains, however, whether the world’s countries can find common solutions when they - in Europe’s view at least - increasingly share fewer common values.
In Europe, many struggle to understand how democratic India supports authoritarian Russia through increasingly large oil purchases, while Russia wages a war of conquest in Ukraine and does not respect internationally recognized borders. What values does India bring to the table in the new world order you describe?
"Let me split the answer in two. One is about borders, and the other about energy,” Jaishankar begins.
"Our borders have been violated by Pakistan in Kashmir ever since our independence in 1947. And what have we seen in the eight decades since then? That large, democratic Europe, to use your own term, has stood side by side with military dictatorships in the region. No one has supported the military regime - and undermined democracy in Pakistan in so many ways - as much as the West.”
He emphasizes that India supports countries’ sovereignty and internationally recognized borders:
"But my worldview and my view of Europe are shaped by my own experiences. You talk about the inviolability of borders - well, why don’t we start with the inviolability of my borders? That’s where my world begins. But we’ve always been told that we had to solve that ourselves.”
Russian oil
Regarding Russian energy, Jaishankar first points out that Europe - despite its outrage and sanctions - still imports energy from Russia. At the same time, Europe is driving up energy prices for all developing countries, including India. "Wealthy Europe turned to the Middle East because it had a problem with Russia and offered inflated prices to get oil redirected to Europe. So what happened was that many countries - not just us - could no longer afford it. The major oil companies didn’t even respond to purchase offers because they were too busy selling to Europe,” Jaishankar says.
"What was the rest of the world supposed to do? Say ‘okay’, we’ll just do without energy because Europeans need it more than us?” the minister continues.
He adds that matters aren’t made easier by the fact that major oil-producing countries like Iran and Venezuela are also subject to Western sanctions.
"We are societies where income levels are 1/120 of Europe’s. For us, energy is a matter of life and death. Just as Europe has every right to make its own choices, you should respect our right to do the same. Let us find our own solutions,” he continues.
Our biggest challenge
Let’s return to the topic of borders: How can you say that India fundamentally supports internationally recognized borders - and at the same time use the West’s lack of support in the Kashmir conflict to justify that India won’t help Ukraine by isolating Russia? Where is the principle?
"Stop reducing such complex questions to simple yes-or-no answers,” says S.Jaishankar:
"That’s not how the real world works.”
When the Indian foreign minister is asked to name the one thing that keeps him awake at night, it’s not borders. It’s new technology. Where leaders used to think in terms of decades, they now increasingly must think in "tech-tiers,” because inventions like artificial intelligence are changing the playing field at lightning speed.
"We thought the atomic bomb was the most dramatic expression of technological development, because it could shape the world order - as it did in 1945 and afterward,” he says:
"But the truth is, we’re now seeing something far more radical and with far greater consequences than anything we’ve seen before. Artificial intelligence, the digital age, the data-based existence we are all sliding into - it won’t just occupy people like me and you. It will affect every single person in the smallest detail,” says Jaishankar and continues.
"These are also areas where I believe India and Europe have a particular strong interest in coming together.”
Technology holds the power to shape the new world order that is emerging in the 21st century. How we harness it will be crucial, says S. Jaishankar:
"We are now touching the very foundation of what a world order can be. How will we measure it? What are the new tools of power and influence? The very fundamentals are changing. I’ve been Foreign Minister for six years and a diplomat for many years before that. When I measure which question, month after month, year after year, occupies me more and more, I would say that technology today occupies me more than it ever has. We have only seen the beginning.”
