Future will be much more multipolar, says External Affairs Minister Jaishankar

The future will be much more multipolar and the era of big countries creating spheres of influence and reaching huge compacts of a sweeping nature has effectively ended, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said.

In an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue on Friday (March 6, 2026), Mr. Jaishankar argued that multipolarity is here to stay.

“My sense is you’re going to have a future which will be much more multipolar because no country today has hegemony over so many domains that it is an overall hegemon,” he said.

It is not just about the distribution of GDP and capabilities, and various regions of the world will be “more contributive” in different domains, he noted.

The External Affairs Minister made the remarks during a discussion on Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s book, “The Triangle of Power”.

“Multipolarity is here to stay. What we will have… is to some extent, some of the bigger countries will make temporary compacts on limited issues,” he said.

“Structurally, there is not going to be some big deal between powers and the rest of the world has to put up with it. That era is over,” he noted.

Mr. Jaishankar said multipolarity is not against multilateralism.

“You can have multipolarity with multilateralism and multipolarity without multilateralism,” he said.

“The success of multilateralism should not depend on the weakening of multipolarity because the weakening of multipolarity is not going to happen,” he added.

Mr. Jaishankar said India has hosted the Voice of Global South meetings for the past three years, as there is a new basis for a Global South platform.

The era of big countries creating spheres of influence and reaching huge compacts of a sweeping nature has effectively ended, he said.