Balancing diplomacy and realism, India's premiere geopolitical forum, Raisina Dialogue, reveals the contours of a new global conversation

At a time when global governance is fraying and multilateralism teeters on the edge, the 2024 Raisina Dialogue, India's flagship geopolitical platform, offered a rare window into the world's evolving geopolitical imagination - connecting North and South, West and East, somewhat unimaginable these days.

Speaking to a packed hall, Samir Saran, President of the Observer Research Foundation which annually hosts the Raisina Dialogue, set the tone with a sharp observation: "The creators of multilateralism have given up on multilateralism." 

Co-hosted by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, the Dialogue showcased India's balancing act - between East and West, power and principle - while reflecting deep anxieties over global disorder. The invitees to the conference represent a good litmus test of the health of India's bilateral engagements with the world.  

Americans were represented by a large delegation of foreign policy pundits and business leaders, with Tulsi Gabbard, US director of National Intelligence, providing a keynote address. 

A separate QUAD panel was hosted too, signifying Indian appetite towards the multilateral concept in the face of disruptive Indo-Pacific geopolitics. There were no representatives from the Mohammad Yunis-led Bangladesh, interestingly, while a Chinese professor from Fudan University was invited, signifying the thawing of Indo-Chinese relations for the time being.

The invitation to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga was artfully balanced by an invitation to Vyacheslav Nikonov, a prominent member of Russia's State Duma and the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov, among other Russian experts.

Other prominent mentions include Slovenia, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Latvia, Moldova, Georgia, Sweden, Slovak Republic, Bhutan, Maldives, Norway, Thailand, Antigua and Barbuda, Peru, Ghana, Hungary, Mauritius and Philippines. The sessions represented a marked diversity, with due considerations given to the Global South throughout.

It wasn't unusual to witness panelists hailing from three or more different continents in each session, replicating the multilateral cross-cultural deliberations even as the latter disappear from fracturing global institutional frameworks.

During the course of the forum, the United Kingdom wielded a noticeably softer stance on the Ukraine conflict, with National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell obliquely referencing it without explicitly naming Russia. Contrastingly, the 2024 edition of the Raisina Dialogue saw the former European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson give a strongly worded speech criticizing Russia and its 'colonial war' against Ukraine.

Whether the change in stance is due to Europe's new-found crisis of security or a realisation of the limits of Western power is far from certain. 

The UK NSA mentioned with satisfaction that Britian has been invited back into European security discussions almost a decade after Brexit, symbolising the return of "British relevance" to European geopolitics. Other commentators may argue that increasing British relevance at a time of growing European irrelevance and crisis of confidence doesn't make a robust case for Britain's rise. In fact, as the Slovenian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Tanja Fajon opined, even smaller states like Slovenia are pivoting towards strengthening relations with Eastern and South East Asian states since the contemporary disorder is governed by "not power of the rules but the rules of the power." 

Pre-pandemic notions of reducing supplier base through outsourcing have being replaced by a diversification of supplier chains, if not by indigenisation. Such a move has placed increased stress on the robustness of multilateral cooperative mechanisms such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, which has, despite some exceptions, successfully prevented global nuclear proliferation.

Consequently, some scholars like Dr. Happymon Jacob argue that a facade of rules-based order is better than no order. Despite rampant hypocrisy amongst rule-makers, it provides relative benchmarks and course-corrective measurements, which are absent when the world is adrift on an unordered international system. 

As Fajon commented, there is a need to develop trust within an increasingly sceptical and suspicious international system. A similar concern was raised by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a plenary session hosted by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs where he remarked that trust is difficult to foster in an environment of contradictions and violations to the rules-based order.

The accelerating drift towards regional orders amidst a global power vacuum complicates concerted state efforts to predict shifting global trends. Disparate and contradictory mega-trends are increasingly shaped by pivotal spaces where geopolitics converge. 

The point was driven home by an Arab state facilitating peace negotiations between two European powers, an event unimaginable three decades ago. Ashok Malik summed up the global drift by stating, "In 2023 Europeans were berating the Global South for not upholding European values in Ukraine. In 2024 the Global South was berating Europe for not upholding European values in Gaza. In 2025 the US Vice President was berating Europe for not upholding European values in Europe."

Today we witness a recalcitrant America courting transactionalism, a recessionist Europe feigning to be a great power, a resurgent Russia balancing unchecked Western expansionism, a revisionist China vying for its 'place in the sun' and a rising India which comprehends "all three sides of a bipolar debate."

The "weaponisation of everything" as pointed out by Jaishankar, is a trend which will not subside in the near future. Pierroberto Folgiero, CEO of Italian shipbuilding giant Fincantieri subsequently argued how the geopolitics of shipbuilding is emerging as a key strategic pillar of the maritime economy.

Today, shipbuilding in terms of tonnage is largely concentrated between South Korea and China, since the West abandoned it two decades ago. Beijing crystallizes shipbuilding expertise, logistics handling and owning port infrastructure as key focal points within its long-term strategic maritime economy. Despite current trends, an Emirati panellist sensibly argued that pursuing sovereignty should be outright viewed as declaring isolationism, threading a fine line within a saturated global dichotomous discourse of globalisation versus nationalism. 

Moving Forward, inter- and intra-state conflicts are likely to increase in face of global institutional paralysis and American recessionary motives. In this context, diplomacy takes on a renewed urgency - even as it risks becoming a rarity in conflict-ridden international arenas.

As states find themselves in a post-truth and post-rules world, governments are facing the dangerous triad of AI weaponisation, nuclear proliferation and ultranationalism. In such a volatile environment, it is imperative to establish guardrails that can prevent unnecessary escalations. Without them, we risk repeating the mistakes of a previous generation - one that too hastily declared 'peace for our time.'"