Jaishankar Co-Chairs First P4M Summit, Warns of ‘4F’ Crisis as Tajikistan Contests India’s UNSC Bid

The news

United Nations, New York. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Monday, September 21, co-chaired the first-ever ‘Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace & Prosperity’ (P4M) Summit, held on the margins of the high-level week of the 81st UN General Assembly. The Hindu reports that India joined the grouping, a ‘non-superpower’ initiative originally launched by the European Union, Brazil, Canada and Kenya, and became an additional co-sponsor along with Australia and Barbados; the Indian Express lists the co-sponsors as Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, the EU and Kenya, and says European Council President António Costa, Kenyan President William Ruto, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley joined Mr. Jaishankar. Multilateralism means countries solving shared problems through common rules and institutions such as the UN, rather than by power alone. Mr. Jaishankar said the global order is “under stress”: a long-expected rebalancing has been given “an entirely different character” by “extreme competition, geopolitical tensions and actual conflicts”. He named a “‘4F’ crisis of fuel, food, fertilizer and finance” that “cannot be left to itself”, called for “frameworks and guardrails” and said that “where there is a threat of chokepoint dominance and disruption, de-risking and diversifying must be encouraged”. “Reformed multilateralism is thus essential,” he said, with “more participative deliberations and more transparent decision-making”. The Indian Express notes the remarks came days after Mr. Trump signed the Russia sanctions law allowing tariffs of up to 100% on countries, including India and China, that buy Russian oil and gas. Top of his agenda, The Hindu reports, is support for India’s bid for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat for 2028-2029, to be decided in next year’s election; Tajikistan has also launched its candidature for the Asia-Pacific seat, so a meeting with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin is being watched. He met the Foreign Ministers of France, Ecuador, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova and Switzerland and the President of Nauru, and on Tuesday the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). At the first India-Visegrad meeting, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia backed India as a permanent UNSC member, Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar saying India “must be at the table”. Ukraine’s Andrii Sybiha said restoring freedom of navigation in the Black Sea is “critical for global food security”. Mr. Jaishankar addresses the General Debate on Saturday, September 26. In the Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that this summit calendar puts a floor under crises but may not be making the world safer. Syllabus: GS2, international institutions and India’s interests.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Article 23 fixes the Security Council at 15 members, and only ten seats are ever contested. Article 23 of the UN Charter provides for five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and ten non-permanent members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, with retiring members not eligible for immediate re-election. The Council was enlarged from 11 to 15 members by a Charter amendment that came into force in 1965. Five non-permanent members are elected every year, and each needs a two-thirds majority of Assembly members present and voting, so a contested seat can go to several rounds. Seats are distributed among regional groups, and India contests from the Asia-Pacific Group. India has served eight terms, most recently in 2021-22.
2. Article 27 gives the veto, and Article 108 lets the veto-holders block their own reform. Under Article 27, procedural decisions need nine votes, while all other decisions need nine votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members, which is the veto; by practice, an abstention by a permanent member is not treated as a veto. Any change to the Council’s composition requires a Charter amendment under Article 108: adoption by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members. This is why every reform campaign, however popular in the Assembly, eventually meets the consent of the countries whose privilege it would dilute.
3. Reform is stuck between three camps. The G4 — Brazil, Germany, India and Japan — support one another’s claims to permanent seats. The Uniting for Consensus group, which includes Italy, Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea and Turkey, opposes new permanent seats and prefers more elected ones. The African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus (2005) demands two permanent seats for Africa, with the veto as long as it exists, and five non-permanent seats. Negotiations run in the General Assembly’s Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) process, which began in 2009 and still has no agreed negotiating text.
4. Mehta’s argument rests on two classic theories of international order. Hegemonic stability theory, associated with Charles Kindleberger and Robert Gilpin, holds that an open world order needs a dominant power willing to bear the cost of providing public goods such as stable money and open sea lanes. The collective action problem, set out by Mancur Olson in 1965, explains why actors who all gain from a common good still fail to provide it, since each prefers others to bear the cost. Liberal institutionalists such as Robert Keohane argue that institutions can sustain cooperation even after hegemony declines, by lowering the cost of trust. Mehta’s claim that there are ‘no hegemons’ and that states ‘can constrain each other’ but ‘cannot produce collective action’ sits squarely in this debate.

Why UPSC loves this

1. The GS2 syllabus names international institutions, their structure and mandate. UPSC asked in 2015 about the impediments India faces in its pursuit of a permanent seat in the Security Council, and the theme returns in questions on India’s multilateral diplomacy. The P4M summit, the Visegrad endorsement and the Tajik challenge give a fresh answer frame: the reform India wants, the coalitions it builds, and the elections it still has to win meanwhile.
2. Prelims tests Charter articles and the membership of groupings. Questions have covered the composition of the Security Council, the length of non-permanent terms, and the membership of groupings such as the G4, BRICS and SCO. The Visegrad Group and CELAC are natural candidates for the next such question, as is the Article 108 amendment procedure.
3. Essay and GS2 reward a view on multilateralism itself. Essay topics on global governance and the relevance of the UN are common. Mehta’s argument that summits keep a floor under crises without solving them, set against Mr. Jaishankar’s call for issue-based coalitions of the like-minded, gives a student a genuine debate rather than a list of institutions.

Analysis

1. The ‘4F’ formula is India writing the Global South’s agenda into a Western-leaning club. Half of P4M’s sponsors — the EU, Canada and Australia — are close American allies, while Brazil, Kenya and Barbados speak for the developing world. Fuel, food, fertiliser and finance are exactly the costs that wars in Ukraine and West Asia impose on poorer countries, and ‘chokepoint dominance’ is a phrase that fits Hormuz and the Black Sea alike. By naming them, Mr. Jaishankar positions India as the bridge between the two halves of the grouping. The risk is that such formulas become slogans; the test is whether P4M produces anything concrete on fertiliser supply or debt relief.
2. Joining a ‘non-superpower’ group is a hedge, not a choice of camp. India joined P4M days after the U.S. gave itself power to impose tariffs of up to 100% on buyers of Russian oil, and while it remains in BRICS, the SCO and the Quad. Membership of a middle-power forum signals that India will not be forced into either American or Chinese preferences. It also costs little, since P4M has no treaty obligations. The counter-view, which Mehta presses, is that middle-power groups can talk but cannot enforce, so the hedge buys diplomatic space without buying security.
3. Tajikistan’s candidature turns a formality into a campaign India must not take for granted. India’s 2021-22 candidature was endorsed unanimously by the Asia-Pacific Group and ran unopposed, but an open contest needs two-thirds of the Assembly and can go to repeated rounds. India has lost before, to Japan in 1996, and a split Assembly once forced Italy and the Netherlands to divide the 2017-18 term. Small states vote as a bloc on solidarity, which is why Mr. Jaishankar is meeting CELAC and the President of Nauru. The best argument for India remains its record: eight terms and a large contribution to UN peacekeeping.
4. Endorsements of India’s permanent seat are cheap until Article 108 is faced. The Visegrad backing is welcome, and Mr. Blanar’s line that India ‘must be at the table’ will be quoted often. But permanent membership needs ratification by all five permanent members, and China has never endorsed India’s claim. Even rhetoric can mislead: Turkey’s President Erdogan told the Assembly that a system in which 190-plus countries are ‘subject to the whims of five countries’ is unfair, yet Turkey belongs to the Uniting for Consensus group that opposes new permanent seats. Students should read reform speeches for what they oppose as well as what they condemn.
5. Mehta is right about the diagnosis and incomplete about the remedy. Mehta argues that none of the systemic wars — Russia-Ukraine, America-Iran, Iran-Saudi, Israel and its neighbours — has a bargaining solution within current ideas of territory, power and prestige, and he ends with Musil’s line that ‘keeping what we have leads to war’. That is a fair warning against confusing the pageantry of summits with progress. But in a world without a hegemon, issue-based coalitions of the kind Mr. Jaishankar describes — the ‘like-minded’ coming together on a ‘compelling cause’ — may be the only collective action on offer. Guterres, in his final address, told superpowers ‘their power isn’t so super’; the corollary is that middle powers must do more of the organising themselves.

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