Written by Manjeet Kripalani and Rajiv Bhatia

Multipolarity is gaining salience around the world. It has been on the agenda of developing countries since 1955, when the Asian-African Conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia (April 18–24). Seven decades on, the relevance of its equal-power-distribution concept is being acknowledged even by proponents of unipolarity, reflecting an understanding of a world in profound transition. In the early days of his administration, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called unipolarity “an anomaly” and “a product of the end of the Cold War.” He also signalled that the world was “going to reach back to a point where you had multiple great powers in different parts of the planet.”

These words found some resonance in India, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar highlighting that the move to multipolarity “is something that suits India” and “requires greater collaboration”. However, the Europeans have not found much meaning in it, with the Munich Security Conference Report 2025 deliberately misinterpreting the term and replacing multipolar with “multipolarised” — a divided world.

Whichever way it’s viewed, there is clearly a dramatic shift from how the world organised itself over the past 80 years (1945–2025), when managing interstate relations among great powers, middle powers, and the........

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