S Jaishankar said the world trusts India and respects its democratic values (File)
New Delhi:
The coming together of India, Japan, the United States and Australia under the “Quad” or Quadrilateral coalition was very much in keeping with the changing times and reflected the changing landscape of a multipolar world, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday.
Asked at an online conference what would be India’s message to the world as it approaches the 75th anniversary of its independence in 2022, Mr Jaishankar said the broader essence should be that its rise is good for the world and move forward with a cooperative approach.
“We must also send a message that India will never have an ‘us against the world‘ mentality and that the rise of India is good for the world,” he said.
Referring to global geopolitical changes, Jaishankar said that each landscape and phase of the balance of power produces its own thinking and strategy, and an independent India will speak differently in different situations while maintaining consistency in the comprehensive approach.
“It is quite in tune with the times, and we will find more and more in a multipolar world, and a more fractured world I would say, these ad hoc combinations of countries that will work together”, he said. stated while answering questions about ‘Quad’. online conference organized by the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI).
Referring to India’s growing global stature, Jaishankar said the world trusts India and respects its democratic values.
“We are well regarded today as a democracy built under the most difficult conditions. I think people trust us. In a post-COVID world, trust, resilience and reliability will be very important. I think a strong democracy at home is definitely going to be an asset for foreign policy, ”he said.
Speaking of the changing dynamics of the global power equation over the past decades, including the Cold War period as well as the phase of Western domination, Jaishankar called the rise of China a great geopolitical event.
“The world is moving towards a more multipolar world. This means that there are many more countries that have the capacity to influence and shape the results and this is partly due to the relative change in the position and power of states- United The rise of China is the great geopolitical event of our life, ”he said.
The Minister of External Affairs said that a multipolar world would create its own logic.
“The underlying idea is a cohesive India. Independent India will express itself very differently and today is in an example like Quad. Quad is not the only example where four countries have found it useful to consult on issues that are in the common interest, “Jaishankar said.
In November 2017, India, Japan, the United States and Australia gave shape to the long-standing proposal to create the “Quad” to develop a new strategy to maintain critical sea routes of the Indo-Pacific free from all influence.
Amid growing global concern over China’s expansionary behavior, the foreign ministers of Quad member countries met in Tokyo on October 6 and reaffirmed their collective vision for a free, open and open Indo-Pacific. inclusive.
The foreign ministers of the four countries held his first meeting as part of the “ Quad ” in New York in September 2019.
Developments in the Indo-Pacific region following the increasing flexing of China’s military muscles has become a major topic of discussion among major world powers. The United States preferred to make Quad a security architecture to verify China’s growing assertion.
In his remarks, Jaishankar also suggested that as India grows, it might have similar agreements with other countries.
“Since we have so many programs as we get bigger, we will have areas in which we will work with other countries. If you look at 20 years ago, that was a time when the West was very, very dominant, ”he said.
“You had three countries that thought they had a common interest in working together to strengthen their hand in the face of the West. The three countries were Russia, India and China. So before there was a quad, it there was a triangle, “he said referring to the Russia-India-China (RIC) consortium.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
