French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a “coalition of independents” during his trip to South Korea in early April echoed his rhetoric from last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue. This time he elaborated that “I think our objective is not to be the vassals of two hegemonic powers. None of these hegemonic powers, I would say. And we don’t want to depend on the dominance of, let’s say, China, nor do we want to be too much exposed to the unpredictability of the US.”
“Having such an agenda shared by [South] Korea, France, and bringing with us the other Europeans, Canada, Japan, India, Brazil, Australia, you start having a sort of third way.” The world order that Macron described is known as bi-multipolarity wherein two superpowers reign, in this case the US and China, but not as absolutely as during the Old Cold War due to the rise of Great and Regional Powers since then. The world order that he’s advocating for, however, can be described as tri-multipolarity.
This refers to a system where a third force of significance has emerged, which isn’t a superpower in its own right but has more influence in shaping the world order than Great and Regional Powers do. That force balances between the superpowers, places relative limits on them as a result of the aforesaid policy as well as its role in international affairs, and advances the goal of complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”) by serving as a magnet of attraction for others. Tri-multipolarity can take three forms.
The first is one country, most likely a civilization-state, playing this role. Some believe that Russia already does or is poised to do so. The second is a strategic partnership between two Great/Regional Powers doing so instead. The Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership has such potential. And finally, the last possibility is a policy coordination platform between several Great/Regional Powers, especially civilization-states. Some believe that BRICS already plays this role or is poised to do so.
This final form is the one that Macron has in mind, but he arguably took a page from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tri-multipolarity playbook. It was explained in early March how “India’s New Multi-Alignment Trend Prioritizes Middle Powers For Tri-Multipolarity Purposes” per the Financial Times’ report on this subject. Prior to that, proposals were made here in 2022 and here in 2024 about how Russia-India-ASEAN and then just Russia-India could play this role, but they didn’t materialize.
The importance in referencing them is to show that Macron’s proposal builds upon what the Financial Times described as the foreign policy modus operandi already employed by Modi, albeit without them using the tri-multipolarity terminology, and the two related models that were earlier proposed. As such, it can be concluded that India is integral to any tri-multipolarity model at this point in the global systemic transition due to its sheer economic and demographic size, thus making it the global pivot state.
Macron’s inclusion of India in his “coalition of independents” testifies to Paris’ appreciation of this role just like early February’s interim Indo-US trade deal does the same for Washington and the continued closeness of Russo-Indo ties despite fake news to the contrary does for Moscow. The direction in which India tilts at any given time – be it more closely to the EU via France, Russia, or the US – therefore exerts outsized influence over the shape of the emerging world order and should thus be closely monitored.
