Why in News

• After the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, global diplomacy is increasingly focused on the US, China and Russia. While India promotes a multipolar world where several powers share influence, current global trends suggest growing competition between the US and China, with Russia potentially playing an additional major role — a challenge for India’s foreign policy and its goal of maintaining strategic autonomy.

Key Terms

• Polarity: the distribution of power in the international system — unipolar (one dominant power), bipolar (two), multipolar (several).
• Multipolarity: a system where several powers have comparable influence, giving middle powers more room to manoeuvre.
• G2: an informal idea that the US and China together set the terms of the global economic and technological order.
• G3: a possible arrangement where Russia joins the US and China in shaping the strategic order.
• Condominium: joint rule or co-management of the system by two powers — argued to be unlikely, given deep US-China disputes.
• Strategic Autonomy: India’s ability to take independent decisions without being locked into any bloc.
• Multi-alignment: India’s practice of engaging several competing power centres simultaneously (Quad, BRICS, SCO, G20, I2U2, IMEC).
• Interdependence: mutual dependence — here, the US and China cannot fully escape each other’s markets, technology, capital and industrial capacity.
• Plurilateralism / Minilateralism: cooperation in small, issue-based groupings rather than large universal bodies.

1. China Now Dominates BRICS Economically

• When the original four-member grouping was formed in 2006, China accounted for less than half of the combined GDP. Despite enlargement to eleven members, China now accounts for roughly three-fifths — Beijing is, in effect, outgrowing the grouping it belongs to.

2. The United States Now Dominates the G7 Similarly

• America accounts for close to three-fifths of the G7’s nominal output, compared with less than two-fifths three decades ago — driven by Japan’s stagnation, Europe’s weaker growth and demographic pressure, and American advantages in energy, capital markets and AI.

3. Preponderance Changes Behaviour

• This widening economic gap partly explains Washington’s willingness to press even close partners and allies — in the Anglosphere, in NATO and in the EU — on trade and burden-sharing.

Dimension 1: Is the World Becoming a G2?

• Economically, largely yes — Washington and Beijing are the only two states with the scale to shape the global economic order, technology standards and supply chains, and they are deeply interdependent. But a full G2 partnership is unlikely — disputes over trade, technology and Taiwan are too deep for joint management of the world. What summitry actually reflects is rivalry management, not partnership — sustained high-level contact to avoid accidents and escalation.

Dimension 2: The Strategic Picture Is More Complex — Enter Russia

• Economically diminished, Russia still retains military power, geographic reach across Eurasia and diplomatic weight. Moscow has drawn closer to Beijing than ever before, while Washington has made an overture to Russia — progress on a Ukraine peace initiative could open the door to a US-Russia rapprochement and make a G3 configuration plausible.
• Why this matters for India: India’s long-standing calculation has relied on a degree of Russian independence from China. A deeper Russia-China axis narrows India’s Eurasian options; a US-Russia thaw could reopen them.

Dimension 3: What Happens to Multilateral Institutions

• Summits have become venues, not engines: BRICS, APEC and the G20 are routine annual affairs where collective progress is rare — their real value lies in bilateral meetings on their margins, such as the attempted India-China reset at the Delhi summit.
• The G20’s unique composition, and its paralysis: unlike the G7, the G20 includes China and Russia; unlike BRICS, it includes the US, Europe and Japan — the most representative economic forum, yet US-China disagreement (including over trade-surplus language) has repeatedly blocked joint statements.
• Risk of being bargained over: bilateral deal-making between Washington and Beijing could come at the expense of other G20 members — decisions on trade, technology and supply chains taken between two capitals, with others absorbing the consequences.
• Key structural insight: organisations like APEC, BRICS, the EU, the G7 and NATO do not shape the world order — they operate within the parameters set by great-power politics.

Dimension 4A: Challenges for India

Dimension 4B: Opportunities for India

• Swing-state value: in a tight two-power contest, a large, growing, democratic India becomes more courted, not less — economically and strategically.
• Supply-chain diversification: “China plus one” and friend-shoring create openings in electronics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and capital goods.
• Agenda-setting for the Global South: India can carry issues neither giant prioritises — development finance, climate adaptation, digital public infrastructure, food and energy security.
• Coalition-building among middle powers: deeper ties with Japan, France, Germany, the EU, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and South Korea to preserve plural space.
• Technology bridge: India can position itself as an interoperable, trusted node rather than a captive of either stack.

• Multipolarity is an aspiration, not a description: legitimate as a goal, but mistaking it for reality is a policy error — foreign policy must be built on the world as it is, while working toward the world one wants.
• Power concentration is happening inside “plural” forums: enlarging a grouping does not democratise it — BRICS became bigger but more China-weighted; the G7 stayed the same size but became more America-weighted.
• Rivalry management is not rivalry resolution: frequent summits between rivals signal guardrails, not friendship — for third countries, the danger is a US-China understanding reached over their heads, not a US-China war alone.
• Economic bipolarity, strategic multipolarity: the economic order shows a clear two-power structure, but the strategic order remains messier due to Russia, regional theatres and nuclear deterrence — India lives in both worlds at once.
• Institutions follow power; power does not follow institutions: the classic realist correction to institutionalist optimism — a useful frame for any GS-II answer on global governance.
• Strategic autonomy must be capability-backed: autonomy is a function of economic size, technological depth, energy security and military capability — without growth and capability, “autonomy” becomes irrelevance with dignity.