New Delhi, March 7 The future will be much more multipolar, and the era in which major countries established spheres of influence and reached vast, sweeping agreements has effectively come to an end, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said.
During an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue on Friday, Jaishankar argued that multipolarity is here to stay.
"My sense is that you will have a future that is much more multipolar, because no country today has hegemony over so many domains that it is an overall hegemon," he said.
"It is not just about the distribution of GDP and capabilities, and various regions of the world will be 'more contributory' in different domains," he noted.
The external affairs minister made these remarks during a discussion on Finnish President Alexander Stubb's book, "The Triangle of Power".
"Multipolarity is here to stay. What we will have... is to some extent, some of the bigger countries will make temporary compacts on limited issues," he said.
"Structurally, there is not going to be some big deal between powers and the rest of the world has to put up with it. That era is over," he noted.
Jaishankar said multipolarity is not against multilateralism.
"You can have multipolarity with multilateralism and multipolarity without multilateralism," he said.
"The success of multilateralism should not depend on the weakening of multipolarity because the weakening of multipolarity is not going to happen," he added.
Jaishankar said India has hosted the Voice of Global South meetings for the past three years, as there is a new basis for a Global South platform.
"The era in which major countries established spheres of influence and reached vast, sweeping agreements has effectively come to an end," he said.
