Progressives’ support for a multilateral world often ignores how much the emerging new world is similar to the old one, a point also missed by Jeffrey Sachs in speaking of a “new international order,” writes Asoka Bandarage.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump and others in the White House on Feb. 13. (White House/Flickr)
By Asoka Bandarage
in Colombo, Sri Lanka
Other News
Will a peaceful and sustainable multipolar world be born when the rising economic weight of emerging economies is matched with rising geopolitical weight, as argued by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs in his recent Other News article?, [republished by Consortium News].
There is no question that, as the U.S.-led world order collapses, a new multipolar world that can foster peace and sustainable development is urgently needed.
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) was established to promote the interests of emerging economies by challenging the economic institutions dominated by the West and the supremacy of the U.S. dollar in international trade. Asia alone constitutes around 50 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, or GDP, today. China is expected to become the world’s leading economy and India, the world’s third-largest economy by 2030.
But does economic growth alone reflect improvement in the quality of life of the vast majority of people? And should it continue to be the central criteria for a “new international order”?
Unfortunately, BRICS appears to be replicating the same patterns of domination and subordination in its relations with smaller nations that characterize traditional imperial powers.
Whether the world is unipolar or multipolar, the continuation of a dominant global economic and financial system based on competitive technological and capitalist growth and environmental, social and cultural destruction will fundamentally not change the world and the disastrous trajectory we are on.
Despite many progressives investing hope in the emerging multipolarity, there is a deep systemic bias that fails to recognize that the emerging economies are pursuing the same economic model as the West.
This means we will continue to live in a world that prioritizes unregulated transnational corporate growth and profit over environmental sustainability and social justice. China Communications Construction Company and the Adani Group are just two examples of controversial Chinese and Indian conglomerates reflecting this destructive continuity.
“Despite many progressives investing hope in the emerging multipolarity, there is a deep systemic bias that fails to recognize that the emerging economies are pursuing the same economic model as the West.”
Is India, as Professor Sachs says, providing “skillful diplomacy” and “superb leadership” in international affairs? Look, for example, at India’s advancing vision of a “Greater India,” Akhand Bharat, and behavior towards its neighboring countries. Are these not strikingly similar to U.S. strategies of hegemonic interference?
While India promotes its trade and infrastructure projects as enhancing regional security and welfare, experiences in Nepal demonstrate how Indian trade blockades and electricity grid integration with India have made Nepal dependent on and subordinate to India in meeting its basic energy and consumer needs. Similarly, Bangladesh’s electricity agreement with the Adani Group has created a situation allowing Adani to cut power supply to Bangladeshi consumers.
Since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime in Bangladesh, there have been widespread demands to cancel the deal with Adani, which is seen as unequal and harmful to Bangladesh. Similarly, recent agreements made with Sri Lanka would expand India’s “energy colonialism” and overall political, economic and cultural dominance threatening Sri Lanka’s national security, sovereignty and identity.
Dragging Sri Lanka Into the ‘Quad’
Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake with India’s President Droupadi Murmu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Dec. 16, 2024. (Prime Minister’s Office/Wikimedia Commons/GODL-India)
During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka from April 4-6, according to reports in the Indian media, some seven to 10 agreements were signed to strengthen ties in defense, electricity grid interconnection, multi-product petroleum pipeline, digital transformation and pharmacopoeial practices between the two countries.
The agreements have been signed using Sri Lankan presidential power without debate or approval of the Sri Lankan Parliament. The secrecy surrounding the agreements is such that both the Sri Lankan public and media still do not know how many pacts were made, their full contents and whether the documents signed are legally binding agreements or simply “Memoranda of Understanding” (MOUs), which can be revoked.
The new five-year Indo-Lanka Defense Cooperation Agreement is meant to ensure that Sri Lankan territory will not be used in any manner that could threaten India’s national security interests and it formally guarantees that Sri Lanka does not allow any third power to use its soil against India.
While India has framed the pact as part of its broader “Neighborhood First” policy and “Vision MAHASAGAR (Great Ocean)” to check the growing influence of China in the Indian Ocean region, it has raised much concern and debate in Sri Lanka.
As a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) — a strategic alliance against Chinese expansion that includes the United States, Australia and Japan — India participates in extensive Quad military exercises like the Malabar exercises in the Indian Ocean.
Naval vessels from the U.S., Australia, Japan and India take part in a Malabar exercise in the Arabian Sea, Nov. 17, 2020. (U.S. Navy/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0)
In 2016, the United States designated India as a major defense partner and in 2024, then Sen. Marco Rubio, the current U.S. secretary of state, introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress to grant India a status similar to NATO countries. In February, during a visit to the U.S. by Modi, India and the U.S. entered into a 10-year defense partnership to transfer technology, expand co-production of arms, and strengthen military interoperability.
Does this sound like the start of a new model of geopolitics and economics?
“What we see today is not the emergence of a truly multipolar and just international order but continued imperialist expansion with local collaboration.”
Sri Lankan analysts are also pointing out that with the signing of the defense agreement with India, “there is a very real danger of Sri Lanka being dragged into the Quad through the back door as a subordinate of India.”
They point out that Sri Lanka could be made a victim in the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Strategy compromising its long-held non-aligned status and close relationship with China, a major investor, trade partner and supporter of Sri Lanka in international forums.
The U.S. and its Quad partner India, as well as China and other powerful countries, want control over Sri Lanka, due to its strategic location in the maritime trade routes of the Indian Ocean.
But Sri Lanka, which is not currently engaged in any conflict with an external actor, has no need to sign any defense agreements. The defense MOU with India represents further militarization of the Indian Ocean as well as a violation of the 1971 U.N. Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace and the principles of non-alignment — which both India and Sri Lanka have supported in the past.
Professor Sachs — who attended the Rising Bharat Conference on April 8-9 in New Delhi — has called for India to be given a seat as a permanent member in the U.N. Security Council gushing that “no other country mentioned as a candidate …comes close to India’s credentials for a seat.”
But would this truly represent a move towards a “new international order,” or would it simply be a mutation of the existing paradigm of domination and subordination and geopolitical weight being equated with economic weight, i.e., “might is right”?
Instead, the birth of a multipolar world requires the right of countries — especially small countries like India’s neighbors — to remain non-aligned amidst the worsening geopolitical polarization of the new Cold War.
What we see today is not the emergence of a truly multipolar and just international order but continued imperialist expansion with local collaboration prioritizing short-term profit and self-interest over collective welfare, leading to environmental and social destruction.
Breaking free from this exploitative world order requires fundamentally reimagining global economic and social systems to uphold harmony and equality. It calls on people everywhere to stand up for their rights, speak up and uplift each other.
In this global transformation, India, China and the newly emergent economies have significant roles to play. As nations that have endured centuries of Western imperial domination, their mission should be to lead the global struggle for demilitarization and the creation of an ecological and equitable human civilization rather than dragging smaller countries into a new Cold War.
Asoka Bandarage has served on the faculties of Brandeis, Mount Holyoke and Georgetown and is the author of books including Colonialism in Sri Lanka, The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka and Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World and numerous other publications on global political economy and related subjects.
This article is from Other News.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Judging the economic and political instincts of the leading actors of the emerging new world order (China, Russia and India), the author might have a point. Aside from their overemphasis on economic growth without a strong welfare, their relative indifference to anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements is concerning (e.g. killing fields of Palestine).
However, a closer examination of China as the leader of the new world order reveals some critically important positive aspects. It was China’s shift from neoliberal policies towards a more government managed economy that made it the leading industrial giant. China’s rise combined with an understanding in the global south (that the international organizations of the old order are no longer serving their interests) paved the way for the birth of the new world order.
Given the complexities of the leading actors of the new world order, it is clear now that they will not save the global south. However the new multipolar world has provided an opportunity for the global south to develop their own economies in an environment which is more conducive to cooperation and support.
Perhaps what the global south needs is a mechanism to maintain its interests and a collective support system not only to help to carry out its development plans but to protect itself from a new emerging world that might go rogue, much like the non-aligned movement that was established in the 1950s.
Not very astute commentary. Sachs life mission is to FIRST have the 3 major nuclear powers move away from proxy wars, imperialism, military confrontation, pointless escalation and needless zero-sum economic and trade opposition. That’s obviously a pre-requisite for existential survival (of war/climate chaos) and would be the necessary starting point for the slightest chance of humanity to survive and evolve into a more cooperative, less paranoid, much less wasteful international society.
I think that the World Constitution & Parliament Association’s EARTH CONSTITUTION provides the needed “reimagining” that TP Graf asks for. In an article I wrote for DWF NEWS, I argue that BRICS needs to join forces with WCPA and its EARTH CONSTITUTION. This move to a world patriot authority (world federal government) with a Provisional World Parliament is designed to replace the obsolete UN Charter model of global governance which hasn’t been able to do its job(s).
Imagine a “new UN” or democratic Earth Federation government under the EARTH CONSTITUTION. That’s the future if we are serious about ending wars, eliminating nukes, bringing human and environmental rights to reality, and making us all proud world citizens. By adding the EARTH CONSTITUTION, BRICS could be the antidote to the US/EU/Israel Empire’s lust for world dominance and lawlessness. For this new global system to work correctly however, it would require China, Russia and India to support the EC’s governing structure which includes grass roots citizens and small nation decision-making along with the bigger powers.
I would agree with Bandarage that Sachs’ push for “multipolarism” is somewhat naive in the sense that it’s not a promised utopia. But at least I would think there’s agreement that the rise of multipolar “nodes” constitutes improvement over the earlier exercise of “unipolar” dominance by the U.S. (with Israel and NATO partners) which resorted to rather lawless aggressive use of hard military force after its “soft” economic power wained.
But the “World Federalism–One World” governance model has its own problems and challenges. One potential problem is that increasing centralization of power typically adds more avenues for corruption and despotism: hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2015/10/10/how-do-gooders-can-do-bad/
I think Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were victims of sovereign bad choices rather than Indian diktat. With Nepal, India was indeed boorish and may regret it in the future, but it has little to do with “uni-” or “multi-” polarity.
Socialism will never work in the context of a competitive global economy where the best and brightest are free to pursue opportunities wherever the potential rewards are greatest.
When countries no longer have “borders” that mean anything, there can no longer be such a thing as a “competitive global economy.” Monopolies don’t compete, they simply dominate. So there’s really no need to mention “Socialism” in the context of the reality we now live in, especially since we never granted our permission for its ascendancy in the first place.
D’accord.
Does [Jeff Sachs’] hxxps://other-news.info/giving-birth-to-the-new-international-order/… sound like the start of a new model of geopolitics & economics? “What we see today is not [that] but continued imperialist expansion with local collaboration.”
Analsis? “Sri Lankan analysts point out…the defense agreement with India [means] “a very real danger of being dragged into the Quad through the back door as subordinate of India – a victim in the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Strategy compromising its long-held non-aligned status and close relationship with China.”
Generalization ‘backed’ by – possible! – example. Not exactly a counterexample to Sachs’ model.
I totally understand other countries desire to break away from dollar dominance, and I prefer Chas Freeman’s “multi-nodal” term for what is emerging. But herein lies the problem. Ms. Bandarage sees the problems of capitalist/militaristic/materialistic structures, offers only this in response: “Breaking free from this exploitative world order requires fundamentally reimagining global economic and social systems to uphold harmony and equality. It calls on people everywhere to stand up for their rights, speak up and uplift each other.”
What is this “reimagining?” She and others can’t seem to point to any model on which to build.
I would imagine it might be based on “reimagining global economic and social systems to uphold harmony and equality.” There is no model on which to build that idea because it’s never been tried before. The only “model” is the old model that has failed. But there’s lots of money to be made from that model’s continued failure, so blindness is now sight, second-sight even, as long as the money keeps rolling in along the same trails it has already built.