NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Sunday said the global landscape was being shaped by a “radical repositioning” of the United States and the rise of China, while asserting that India has the potential to move rapidly up the global power hierarchy in the coming years.Speaking at the Munich Leaders Meeting in New Delhi, Jaishankar said the US had “deliberately become a lonelier power” as part of a chosen change in its posture.“No one in the room would disagree with the fact that the landscape today is primarily marked by a radical repositioning of the United States. A repositioning which is a posture of choice and, in a way, it has deliberately become a lonelier power,” Jaishankar said.He identified the rise of China as the second major feature of the changing global order, pointing to the increasingly sharp competition between the two powers.“That competition today, not limited to these two countries, has led to a weaponization of any leverage that any country has. And that competition coexists with the complexity of interdependence,” he said.On India’s prospects, Jaishankar said the country had “decades of high growth” ahead and a demographic profile capable of supporting that growth. He also said India may not have to follow the traditional industrialisation path taken by earlier economies.“I would even argue, a world that is much more creative, where many new possibilities are there, so that we don’t necessarily have to tread the earlier path of industrialization,” he said.
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“The orthodox path will have to devise something much more contemporary for what awaits us,” he added.Jaishankar said countries currently classified as middle powers could follow different trajectories as the global order evolves.“Among the middle powers, some will peel off, some will stay put, some may drop down a bit,” he said.“That is the reality. That will be part of the evolution of the global order,” Jaishankar added.The Munich Leaders Meeting in New Delhi is being held on October 4 and 5, bringing together senior decision-makers and experts to discuss international security and foreign policy issues.
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