The global agenda is in a flux. The much talked about ‘liberal international order’ is unravelling. The world is experiencing what most scholars of world politics would call hegemonic succession or heightened peer competition, with the arrival in town of a new great power – China.
China is not just a great power, it is a non-Western great power, the first time in modern history that such would happen. And it is a non – Judea-Christian civilisation and a great power from the South. So, there are too many things coming on board the global agenda.
There are a few countries that will sit on the table of global powers to sort out how the world that will no longer be exclusively determined by the West will be organised: what will be the new protocols, the trading system and so on.
India is one of those countries. Although it has a powerful neighbour in China with which it has to manage relations, it is still a player in its own right. It has certain unique features, you can call it advantages which its mighty neighbour – China – doesn’t have.
What the foregone means is that any Indian foreign affairs minister must have interesting things to say about resetting the global agenda and its role in it. Those who might have been eager to listen to such an intervention now have one in the impending appearance of Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the incumbent Minister of External Affairs of India at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA).
The lecture and interactive session has been fixed for January 24th, 2024th . The assumption is that the NIIA will be sending out more details about how the event would go.