"It's not because of the American led order that we have progressed' - Samir Saran

Samir, how does India read what what is happening now? Look, um thank you for having me and congratulations and uh I blah wish that the Cairo Forum becomes the definitive forum where the world can have conversations and you become the hub like you were in earlier times of wisdom and and progress. Uh and let me start with that uh particular ethic and uh just remind everyone that it's not that uh uh it's because of the WTO that the Chinese are the largest GDP in the world. Long before the Chinese were the largest GDP even before the Americans and Europeans got their act together uh for 16 of the last 20 years, India and China have been the largest GDPs in world affairs. So, thank you, but no thank you. It's not because of the American-led order that uh all of us have progressed. We were progressing uh well and good before you discovered us. So, uh I think we have to be a little humble and we have to agree that there were system systemic flaws in the last 75-80 years of our existence. There were biases and perversions and there were hypocrisies and double standards like you rightly mentioned and that is leading to the unraveling of the design, the template that we saw. And certainly, it would be rich to suggest that those rules and those frameworks and designs were made for the benefit of either China or India or the rest of the world. They were made for the purpose of Pax Americana and for a uh a Western Atlantic and uh uh you know, Western European and uh American order that served you well. And in many ways, what is really happening is the unraveling of that Atlantic order and the birth of a new order which will require negotiations, which will require a new design, which will require new voices and perhaps even new templates. So, I think there are four things that are happening at this time and Abla, you heard the short take yesterday from me when we were having dinner, but I think these are the four things that are happening. Number one, America, rightly or wrongly, and I say wrongly, but uh Americans have reached a different conclusion, believes that the last 80 years were unfair to America. And I think it's laughable, but that is the American um uh assessment of the world today that it was unfair to them and they are renegotiating their place in the world and they are doing it like they like any big huge power does, picking everyone out individually and alone. They don't care about the blocks and the regional architectures and the larger arrangements. They deal individually with the countries they want to deal with and ignore all the others. So, they will deal with Indonesia, not with ASEAN. They will deal with the countries that matter to them across the world and they will, using their size, their military and economic asymmetry, negotiate favorable deals for them. America is on a mission to establish and repair dominance that they believed had been eroded in the last 80 years of the rules-based order. That's the first thing that is happening. Number two, China, like any aspiring uh global superpower uh should do, is seeing opportunity and is now behaving like the elder in the room. It's behaving like the mature adult that sees benefits in multilateralism, that sees benefits in rules-based order. There are more rules-based order invocations from Beijing in the last 6 months than there have ever been. And in many ways, China is doing what it has already started to do 15 years ago, but with a a new sense of opportunity to actually put together a new arrangement that will see China being the elder in the room. So, that's the second thing that is happening. The third thing that is happening is a conversation between China and America and uh Anna, um you're right. Uh they are negotiating, but uh perhaps it may be a little uh naive to assume that China agrees on a G2. In China, there is no two. There is only one, G1. And China is negotiating with America the terms of American retreat and Chinese ascendancy and I think that is the third thing that is happening that [snorts] through a longer conversation, you will see China set the terms of engagement with the Americans, which if the Americans reject, could lead to um the fragmentation and a bipolar and a and a and a new cold war of some sorts. Um and and um I think that conversation is far from over. Don't believe the optics coming out of uh you know, uh Southeast Asia. I think that is a long conversation that is still uh has many chapters left in it. But the final and most consequential conversation as far as I'm concerned is happening amongst many other countries in the rest of the world. So, they are not idle. The world is not um waiting for decisions from Beijing or Washington, D.C. Others are responding, maybe not not vocally, maybe not in a media in a mediated sense, but there are conversations happening between the EU and India, between India and Mexico, between Mexico and Brazil and between Brazil and India. You see a large number of countries from from the Middle East, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and others to the South Asian continent subcontinent to Latin America having significant conversations that are building new linkages, new resilience, new um off-ramps and new opportunities uh for their own units. And that fourth conversation, in my view, is actually going to, in many ways, create the undergirding of the new order. It is what the rest of the world is doing with with each other is going to moderate and temper what the final G1 can will have to deal with, whether it's the American-led order or whether it's the Chinese-led order. That's still to be decided, but whatever uh may be the outcome of that conversation, the real order is going to be carved by the rest of the world engaging with each other and I think in that sense, the Middle East, Europe and India have a natural role to play. Um Paulo is a honorary member of the global South and uh uh Paulo has a role to play in actually, in many ways, going back to the first format and template of globalization, which was largely Europe, Middle East and South Asia. I think in some sense, um we are going to see the a revertal to the first principles and we are going to see the rebuilding of a new arrangement. The old order is not disappeared. It's being instrumentalized. >> this is the second round, my dear. You're going to give more details on what you expect is going to happen. You said that the UN is failing, China is grabbing the opportunity. Let's see. >> [music]