The multipolar world will be born when the geopolitical weight of Asia, Africa, and Latin America matches their rising economic weight.
The Allée des Nations in front of the Palace of Nations, United Nations HQ in Geneva. (Tom Page/Wikimedia Commons)
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Other News
Writing in his cell as political prisoner in fascist Italy after World War I, the philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously declared: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
A century later, we are in another interregnum, and the morbid symptoms are everywhere. The U.S.-led order has ended, but the multipolar world is not yet born. The urgent priority is to give birth to a new multilateral order that can keep the peace and the path to sustainable development.
We are at the end of a long wave of human history that commenced with the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama more than 500 years ago. Those voyages initiated more than four centuries of European imperialism that peaked with Britain’s global dominance from the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) to the outbreak of World War I (1914).
Following World War II, the U.S. claimed the mantle as the world’s new hegemon. Asia was pushed aside during this long period. According to widely used macroeconomic estimates, Asia produced 65 percent of world output in 1500, but by 1950, that share had declined to just 19 percent (compared with 55 percent of the world population).
In the 80 years since World War 2, Asia recovered its place in the global economy. Japan led the way with rapid growth in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the four “Asian tigers” (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea) beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, and then by China beginning around 1980, and India beginning around 1990.
As of today, Asia constitutes around 50 percent of the world economy, according to IMF estimates.
The multipolar world will be born when the geopolitical weight of Asia, Africa, and Latin America matches their rising economic weight. This needed shift in geopolitics has been delayed as the U.S. and Europe cling to outdated prerogatives built into international institutions and to their outdated mindsets.
Even today, the U.S. bullies Canada, Greenland, Panama and others in the Western Hemisphere and threatens the rest of the world with unilateral tariffs and sanctions that are blatantly in violation of international rules.
Asia, Africa and Latin America need to stick together to raise their collective voice and their U.N. votes to usher in a new and fair international system. A crucial institution in need of reform is the U.N. Security Council, given its unique responsibility under the U.N. Charter to keep the peace.
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the P5) – Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States – reflect the world of 1945, not of 2025. There are no permanent Latin American or African seats, and Asia holds only one permanent seat of the five, despite being home to almost 60% of the world population.
Over the years, many new potential U.N. Security Council permanent members have been proposed, but the existing P5 have held firmly to their privileged position.
The proper restructuring of the U.N. Security Council will be frustrated for years to come. Yet there is one crucial change that is within immediate reach and that would serve the entire world.
By any metric, India indisputably merits a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Given India’s outstanding track record in global diplomacy, its admission to the U.N. Security Council would also elevate a crucial voice for world peace and justice.
On all counts, India is a great power. India is the world’s most populous country, having overtaken China in 2024. India is the world’s third largest economy measured at international prices (purchasing-power parity), at $3.5 trillion, behind China ($40 trillion) and the United States ($30 trillion) and ahead of all the rest.
India is the fastest growing major economy in the world, with annual growth of around 6% per year. India’s GDP (PPP) is likely to overtake that of the U.S. by mid-century. India is a nuclear-armed nation, a digital technology innovator, and a country with a leading space program.
No other country mentioned as candidate for a permanent U.N. Security Council member comes close to India’s credentials for a seat.
The same can be said about India’s diplomatic heft. India’s skillful diplomacy was displayed by India’s superb leadership of the G20 in 2023. India deftly managed a hugely successful G20 despite the bitter divide in 2024 between Russia and the NATO countries.
Not only did India achieve a G20 consensus; it made history, by welcoming the African Union to a new permanent membership in the G20.
China has dragged its feet on supporting India’s permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, guarding its own unique position as the only Asian power in the P5. Yet China’s vital national interests would be well served and bolstered by India’s ascension to a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.
This is especially the case given that the U.S. is carrying out a last-ditch and vicious effort through tariffs and sanctions to block China’s hard-earned rise in economic prosperity and technological prowess.
By supporting India for the U.N. Security Council, China would establish decisively that geopolitics are being remade to reflect the true multipolar world. While China would create an Asian peer in the U.N. Security Council, it would also win a vital partner in overcoming the U.S. and European resistance to geopolitical change.
If China calls for India’s permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council, Russia would immediately concur, while the U.S., UK, and France would vote for India as well.
The U.S. geopolitical tantrums of recent weeks – abandoning the fight against climate change, attacking the Sustainable Development Goals, and imposing unilateral tariffs in contravention of core WTO rules – reflect the truly “morbid symptoms” of a dying old order. It’s time to make way for a truly multipolar and just international order.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations secretaries-general, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017) and The Age of Sustainable Development (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
This article is from Other News.
Another problem is the veto power of each permanent member of the Security Council. USA abuses.
Why not suggest a new role : A resolution is rejected if TWO permanent members reject it ?A minimum of one ally wille be needed to block a decision. This would be a first step toward democracy…
Maybe China fears the geopolitical stance of India which aligns with the predatory nations of Western imperialism. If India would align with the global south then China would perhaps support India’s seat on the UN security council.
I agree with Prof Sachs on this, and I’d suggest that a useful way to help enable the citizens of the US to free themselves from being under the thumb of a charade of a cruel oligarchy would be if every community in every nation were to create refuges for learning all about the 17 SDGs for 2030 and can access the technical knowledge required to become part of the action groups that are advancing @SDG2030. This is best achieved by taking part in the programming of @EDXOnline
China was a very prosperous ancient civilization, a global leader if you will, for many centuries before Western imperialism came in and exploited the Chinese people (read Braudel’s “A History of Civilizations”). What we’re witnessing today is a China that’s merely re-ascending to its prominent place in the world. This is irreversible, a multi-polar world is an inevitability.
Insofar as the tariffs go, a sweeping indictment of tariffs is misplaced. We’re seeing a false dichotomy emerging in which decoupling from China for our ruling class to sanction and wage a potentially insane hot war against Beijing is seen as a solution to the deindustrialization of the American heartland. This doesn’t need to be the case.
Tariffs are utilized by nations across the world, the U.S. never would have industrialized during the 19th century without them. Relatively recently Obama and Sanders were all for targeted tariffs, as well as many sectors of organized labor and a good chunk of the Dem Party. If one remembers the NAFTA debates c. 1992, one will recognize there were many well thought out arguments by prominent scholars against unfettered free trade.
It’s important to understand that we can indeed protect American workers and the American manufacturing sector (utilizing some targeted tariffs) without decoupling from China and entering into an extremely dangerous new Cold War with Beijing. A cordial and respectful relationship with the Chinese people will be crucial for U.S. workers and global peace.
A specific proposal; good, could well be a step in the right direction. My concern is that the most important issue was simply registered as ‘sustaining development’ when that in itself really isn’t, in that form, even the right issue. Retooling the international order, when it means changing some geopolitical and economic relationships while keeping the destruction of essential biophysical systems, is not enough. The time lost if several decades are required to rebalance international relations away from purely economic and military power could result in such environmental and social degradation that no rebalancing is even possible.
This is a moment, as Sach’s suggests, when uncommon change is possible, but a narrow approach to change is not enough in a world that is, by the judgment of many of the best informed, facing multiple existential dangers. “Fixing a new geopolitical world” to be run just like the “old geopolitical world” — the long human habit — will not work this time.
The old top down paradigm relied on delegating democratic authority to power cliques at the top. Would this old model have any validity if grassroots communities organized to take control of the @SDGaction process, and development solidarity with citizens coalitions in all nations.?
Insightful and humanistic as always; treating people as the ends and not just the means to an end (Kant).