China has spent the past week making a very deliberate argument about the international system it wants to build. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, Xi Jinping hosted leaders including Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi, with Modi visiting China for the first time in seven years after a prolonged deterioration in Sino-Indian relations. Days later, Beijing staged an enormous military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat and the end of the Second World War, displaying missiles, drones and other advanced weapons while Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stood alongside Xi. The images naturally produced descriptions of an emerging anti-Western bloc, particularly because Putin remains at war with Ukraine, Kim presides over a nuclear-armed state under extensive sanctions and China is America’s principal long-term strategic competitor. Yet India’s presence at the SCO summit complicates that interpretation immediately. India is simultaneously a member of the Quad with the United States, Japan and Australia; a major purchaser of Russian energy and defence equipment; a member of BRICS and the SCO; a country with an unresolved border dispute with China; and one of Washington’s most important potential strategic partners in balancing Chinese power. The emerging world therefore is not simply becoming bipolar again. It is becoming transactional and multipolar, with middle powers increasingly refusing to purchase one relationship at the price of surrendering all the others.
The symbolism of Modi meeting Xi and Putin is especially significant because only five years ago Indian and Chinese soldiers were fighting in the Galwan Valley, where twenty Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers were killed during the 2020 border confrontation. Relations subsequently deteriorated sharply, with India restricting Chinese applications and investment while accelerating strategic cooperation with the United States through the Quad. The border dispute remains unresolved, and India has no reason suddenly to trust China strategically. Yet New Delhi has gradually reopened diplomatic engagement as military disengagement has progressed in some areas. This demonstrates the difference between strategic competition and permanent diplomatic hostility. States can regard one another as security competitors while still recognising that geography and economic scale make communication necessary. India cannot move China away from its border. China cannot remove India from the Indian Ocean. Neither therefore benefits from converting every disagreement into complete economic or diplomatic separation.
This is where strategic autonomy becomes more than a slogan. India’s objective is not equidistance between Washington, Moscow and Beijing. The relationships are qualitatively different. America is increasingly important for technology, investment, defence cooperation and balancing China. Russia remains important for defence legacy systems, energy and Eurasian diplomacy. China is simultaneously India’s largest strategic competitor and one of its most consequential economic relationships. Strategic autonomy means preserving enough relationships that no external power acquires a veto over Indian policy. It is closer to portfolio diversification than neutrality: assets are weighted differently according to risk and return, but concentration in one asset creates vulnerability.
Trump’s tariff pressure has strengthened this logic. Washington’s decision to impose substantial tariffs on Indian goods while criticising India’s purchases of Russian oil reminds New Delhi that even a close strategic partnership with America does not eliminate economic coercion when interests diverge. India therefore has stronger incentives to demonstrate that it possesses alternatives. Meeting Xi and Putin signals that American market access is valuable but not politically sufficient to determine every Indian foreign-policy choice. This does not mean India is “moving into China’s camp”. In fact, India has strong structural reasons not to do so because China is the much more immediate territorial and geopolitical competitor. The signalling is subtler: partnership with India needs to accommodate some Indian autonomy because coercion can increase the value New Delhi assigns to alternative relationships.
This is the recurring weaponisation-of-interdependence paradox. A powerful state possesses leverage because another country depends on its market, technology, currency or security support. Using that leverage can generate immediate concessions. It simultaneously teaches the targeted state that dependence is dangerous. India responds by diversifying energy purchases, payment mechanisms, trade relationships and diplomatic partnerships. Europe responds to American security uncertainty by increasing defence spending. China responds to semiconductor restrictions by investing heavily in domestic technology. Russia responds to Western sanctions by redirecting trade towards Asia. Coercion therefore can be effective today while reducing the stock of coercive leverage available tomorrow.
China understands this extremely well and is attempting to position itself as the alternative pole around which dissatisfied states can diversify. Xi has increasingly presented Chinese-led institutions as part of a more representative international system, arguing that Western institutions give developing countries insufficient influence. The appeal is strongest across the Global South, where governments often resent the assumption that they should align automatically with Western positions on Russia, China, sanctions or governance. China offers infrastructure finance, trade and political rhetoric emphasising sovereignty and non-interference. That package can be attractive to governments that view Western conditionality as intrusive.
But Chinese leadership comes with dependencies of its own. A country borrowing heavily from Chinese institutions, relying extensively on Chinese technology or orienting commodity exports towards Chinese demand can become vulnerable to Beijing in exactly the way it previously feared vulnerability to Washington. Multipolarity therefore does not eliminate dependence. It creates competition between possible dependencies. The strategic advantage for middle powers comes from having enough alternatives that they can bargain among them.
This is why the SCO matters even though it is not comparable with NATO. The organisation contains states with major disagreements, including India and Pakistan and India and China. It therefore cannot realistically function as a unified military alliance against the West. Its value is different. It creates a diplomatic platform where Eurasian governments can coordinate on security, trade and regional issues without Western states setting the agenda. The breadth of membership is possible precisely because the organisation demands less ideological and strategic uniformity than a military alliance.
This is the breadth-versus-depth trade-off of international institutions. NATO possesses extraordinary depth because Article 5 theoretically commits members to collective defence, but that depth requires substantial strategic alignment. The SCO can include mutually suspicious countries because its commitments are shallower. Calling both organisations “blocs” therefore obscures more than it explains.
BRICS has developed through a similar mechanism. Its members do not share one economic model or foreign policy. India and China compete. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been regional rivals. Brazil has little interest in joining an anti-American military coalition. What these countries share more consistently is dissatisfaction with parts of the existing distribution of global institutional power. BRICS therefore functions less like a coherent alliance and more like a coalition for bargaining over the rules of the system.
That distinction matters because Western policymakers can create the very bloc they fear if they treat every participation in non-Western institutions as evidence of hostility. If Washington tells India that meaningful partnership requires reducing relationships with Russia, distancing itself from BRICS and treating China exclusively through confrontation, the price of alignment becomes extremely high. India can instead cooperate with America where interests overlap while refusing to accept alliance discipline elsewhere. A flexible American strategy should prefer partial alignment on strategically important issues to demanding total alignment and receiving less cooperation overall.
The China question is where this flexibility reaches its limit. India and the United States share substantial interests in preventing one power from dominating the Indo-Pacific. The Quad therefore provides maritime cooperation, technology coordination and strategic signalling without becoming a formal military alliance. This suits India because it strengthens balancing capacity while preserving autonomy. It suits America because Indian geographic and military power complicates Chinese strategic planning.
China consequently has incentives to improve relations with India enough to weaken the logic of the Quad. Beijing does not need India to become an ally. It benefits if India becomes less willing to participate in balancing coalitions. This is why Sino-Indian rapprochement should be analysed as competitive diplomacy rather than reconciliation. Xi can reduce border tension and expand economic engagement partly to decrease India’s incentive to align more closely with Washington.
India can exploit this competition. Better relations with China reduce immediate border risk and potentially improve trade conditions. Stronger relations with America increase India’s bargaining power with China. Continued Russian ties reduce dependence on both. This is classic multi-alignment.
The danger is overestimating India’s ability to balance indefinitely. Strategic autonomy works only when the country possesses enough economic and military capacity that other powers value the relationship more than they dislike its independence. A very weak state attempting to play several great powers against one another can simply become pressured by all of them. India’s growing economy gives it much greater room because access to the Indian market, Indian Ocean geography and India’s role in Asian power balances are increasingly valuable.
Economic growth therefore is the foundation of strategic autonomy. A country with a $10 trillion economy will possess dramatically more diplomatic flexibility than the same country at $3 trillion. This is why foreign policy cannot be separated from domestic development. GDP is not merely a prosperity statistic; over long periods it becomes geopolitical optionality.
China’s military parade made the opposite argument about power through physical capability. Beijing displayed advanced missile systems, drones, aircraft and other weapons intended partly to demonstrate that the People’s Liberation Army has become technologically sophisticated enough to contest American military dominance in East Asia. Military parades are not reliable measures of combat effectiveness because governments display what they want observers to see. But they are strategic communication. Weapons are shown not only to domestic audiences but to Taiwan, Japan, India and the United States.
The message is deterrence:
intervention against China will be expensive.
This is particularly important around Taiwan. China’s military strategy does not necessarily require defeating the United States globally. It needs enough regional capability to make American intervention in a Taiwan conflict uncertain and costly. Geography helps China because the Taiwan Strait is close to the Chinese mainland and thousands of kilometres from the continental United States. China can operate from land bases while America needs extended logistics and regional allies.
This is local military superiority inside global inferiority. A country can remain weaker overall while becoming stronger in the specific theatre that matters most to it.
That is why Japan, the Philippines and Australia have become increasingly important to American strategy. Bases, logistics and allied forces reduce the geographic disadvantage. India matters differently because it can impose strategic pressure across the Indian Ocean and Himalayan frontier, forcing China to consider multiple theatres.
Again, alliance networks multiply power.
China’s answer is building networks of its own, although they remain less formal.
Russia provides energy, military cooperation and geopolitical coordination.
North Korea creates additional strategic pressure in Northeast Asia.
Pakistan complicates India’s security environment.
Central Asian states provide continental connectivity.
These relationships do not create a Chinese NATO.
They create strategic depth through overlapping partnerships.
Putin’s presence beside Xi therefore matters even though Russia is increasingly the weaker economic partner. Western sanctions and the Ukraine war have made Russia more dependent on Chinese trade and diplomatic support. China benefits from discounted Russian energy and from a major military power focusing Western resources in Europe.
But Beijing also needs to avoid becoming completely identified with Russian revisionism because China benefits enormously from global trade and generally prefers international stability where its commercial interests are concerned.
This creates another asymmetry.
Russia benefits more from disruption of the Western-led order.
China benefits more from reforming the order while preserving much of the economic system underneath it.
The two countries therefore share an opponent more clearly than they share an identical desired world.
This is why describing their relationship as a seamless alliance is misleading.
Anti-American convergence is not the same as strategic identity.
The presence of Kim Jong Un at the Beijing parade reinforces the symbolism but also exposes the limits. North Korea’s nuclear programme and unpredictability create problems even for China, which does not want regime collapse on its border but also does not necessarily want uncontrolled North Korean escalation triggering greater American and Japanese military presence.
China therefore performs a balancing act: protect enough North Korean stability to prevent collapse while restraining enough behaviour to prevent regional counter-balancing.
This is the same security dilemma repeatedly appearing in different forms.
One state’s attempt to increase security causes neighbours to arm, reducing the original state’s security.
North Korean missiles increase Japanese defence spending.
Chinese military expansion strengthens the Quad.
Russian aggression expands NATO.
Actions designed to improve one country’s strategic position generate countervailing coalitions.
This is why military power alone rarely produces permanent regional dominance. The stronger one actor becomes, the more incentive others possess to cooperate against it.
China’s Global South strategy attempts to prevent this by combining material power with economic attraction. Infrastructure investment, trade and development finance create constituencies benefiting from good relations with Beijing. This is positive-sum influence rather than coercion. The most durable great-power strategies usually contain both.
America’s post-war power came not simply from aircraft carriers but from universities, financial markets, technology, trade access and institutions allies wanted to join.
China understands that lesson.
The Belt and Road Initiative was partly an attempt to reproduce aspects of it through infrastructure.
Its results are mixed. Some projects generated valuable transport and energy capacity. Others created debt problems, political controversy or weak returns. But the strategic concept remains important: countries align more willingly when relationships produce visible development benefits.
The United States therefore should not respond to Chinese influence primarily by telling developing countries not to work with China. That asks governments to sacrifice potential infrastructure or trade without necessarily offering an alternative. Competition works better when America, Europe, Japan and India provide better options.
This is especially relevant in Africa and Southeast Asia, where governments often prefer bidding powers against one another rather than choosing one bloc. Multipolarity can increase their bargaining power. A government can seek Chinese infrastructure finance, American technology, European market access, Gulf investment and Indian pharmaceuticals simultaneously.
This is not ideological confusion.
It is rational diversification.
The Western assumption that countries eventually need to “choose sides” may therefore become increasingly obsolete outside genuinely existential security conflicts.
The emerging system could resemble nineteenth-century balance-of-power politics more than the Cold War, although with far deeper economic interdependence. States form different coalitions for different issues. India cooperates with America on Indo-Pacific security, Russia on energy and defence legacy systems, and China inside BRICS and the SCO. Saudi Arabia partners with America on security while selling oil to China and coordinating with Russia through OPEC+. Turkey belongs to NATO while maintaining relationships with Moscow. Alignment becomes issue-specific rather than identity-based.
This can increase diplomatic flexibility.
It can also make international coordination harder.
In a bipolar system, alliance expectations are clearer. In a multipolar system, every crisis requires assembling a coalition again. Sanctions become harder because neutral states provide alternative markets. Security guarantees become more ambiguous. International institutions contain more competing interests.
The result may therefore be a world with more autonomy for middle powers but less ability for any one coalition to enforce universal rules.
This is the trade-off behind multipolarity.
Countries such as India understandably want greater representation because the post-1945 institutional system still reflects a distribution of power that no longer matches the world economy. India is the world’s most populous country and one of its largest economies but lacks a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. European states remain disproportionately represented in several institutions relative to demographic and economic changes.
Calls for reform therefore have legitimate foundations.
The danger is assuming a multipolar system automatically becomes more democratic internationally.
It may simply distribute great-power privilege among more states.
More poles do not necessarily mean more rules.
Sometimes they mean more vetoes.
The real objective should therefore be pluralised power combined with institutions strong enough to prevent competition becoming unrestricted coercion.
India’s role could become particularly important because it sits between several political worlds. It is a democracy but rejects Western alliance discipline. It is a major Global South state but competes with China. It maintains Russian ties while deepening American cooperation. It supports sovereignty norms but often resists Western sanctions.
This can look inconsistent if foreign policy is judged according to ideological alignment.
It looks more coherent if the objective is maximising national freedom of action while preventing any single power from dominating Asia.
That strategy will become easier as India’s economic weight grows and harder whenever domestic weaknesses reduce bargaining power.
The Modi-Xi-Putin imagery therefore should not be read as evidence that India has selected a new camp. It is evidence that India does not want camps to become the organising principle of its foreign policy.
That distinction will matter increasingly as Trump uses tariffs more aggressively and China offers alternative institutions.
Washington can respond by demanding loyalty.
Or it can recognise that a powerful India capable of saying no to America is also an India capable of saying no to China.
The second may be strategically more valuable.
The international system emerging in 2025 is therefore not simply America declining and China rising. It is becoming more complicated. America remains the world’s most powerful military and financial actor. China possesses enormous economic and industrial power. Russia remains militarily consequential despite weaker economic fundamentals. Europe is attempting to rebuild strategic capacity. India is becoming increasingly important. Gulf states possess financial and energy leverage. Middle powers are learning to diversify.
Power is becoming more distributed without becoming equal.
That creates opportunities for bargaining and risks for coordination.
The photographs from China this week capture that transition unusually well. Xi wants them to demonstrate that the Western-led order no longer monopolises international legitimacy. Putin wants them to demonstrate that Russia is not isolated. Modi wants them to demonstrate that India can cooperate with non-Western powers without surrendering its relationships with the West.
All three can use the same photograph to communicate different things.
That may be the most accurate image of multipolarity itself.
Countries can stand in the same frame without standing on the same side.
The next international order will be shaped by whether great powers understand that distinction.
If Washington treats every independent relationship as defection, it will push middle powers towards deeper alternatives. If Beijing assumes participation in Chinese-led institutions implies acceptance of Chinese leadership, it will encounter the same resistance.
The countries gaining the most from multipolarity will be those capable of maintaining several relationships while becoming indispensable enough that partners tolerate their independence.
India is attempting exactly that.
The photograph is not evidence that the strategy has succeeded.
It is evidence that the strategy is becoming increasingly visible.
