Category Archives: Geopolitics
Raisina Files 2026: Identities, Contests, and Concerts
Editors : Samir Saran and Vinia Mukherjee
Editors’ Note
In an age of assertion, states rediscover their identity; where there is rivalry, they navigate contests; and amidst uncertainty, they must rediscover the skill and art of concert. The challenge before us today is not to erase differences but to orchestrate them: turning frictions into a negotiable framework, and competition into sound and effective cooperation. The old certainties of the post-Cold War era have frayed. Power is diffusing, alliances are shifting, and the architecture that once underpinned stability is strained by wicked rivalries, technological disruptions, and societal fragmentation. Nations are rediscovering sovereignty—whether over borders or bandwidth alike. Societies are renegotiating belonging, memory, and aspiration. The grammar of the global order is being rewritten in real-time.
This edition of Raisina Files is framed by a simple proposition: The world we are entering will not be defined by power alone, but by how identity shapes power, how contestations discipline ambitions, and how cooperation is reconstructed under stress. We present this notion in three sections.
The first section, The World, examines the theatres where contests are most visible—geopolitics, security frameworks, and the evolving geometry of power. From great-power rivalry to emerging-power agency, from deterrence to diplomacy, these essays explore how states navigate turbulence without surrendering their autonomy. They ask: Who sets the rules when rules themselves are contested? What forms of alignment endure when alignment is no longer ideological but transactional? And how do emerging actors convert flux into leverage?
The section opens with a piece by Dhruva Jaishankar, where he writes about the questions that United States (US) allies, partners, and competitors alike need to ask themselves of how much and to what degree they will accommodate, or hedge against, the US’s new approach to the world. “Navigating the multiple layers of US policy at this juncture remains important, in large part because the United States continues to wield tremendous international power.”
The second essay, by Stefania Benaglia, weaves for us Europe’s “moment of clarity”: “The question is no longer whether the EU must take greater responsibility for its own security; it is how Europe should do so, and at what political, economic, and societal cost.”
Europe is also the pivot of Rachel Rizzo’s article, which concerns itself with how the continent can reshape its defence relationship with India outside of formal alliances. She outlines a framework beyond “building legacy systems like tanks, ships, or fighter jets and building a massive export-import market.”
Marites Dañguilan Vitug takes us to the South China Sea, and makes a case for two plausible pathways by which Manila could leverage its ASEAN chairmanship to steer the grouping towards resolving territorial disputes with China: arbitration, and reframing the conversation on the dispute as a test of the international legal order—“a concern of existential proportions for all states in the region.”
The fifth essay, by Mahdi Ghuloom, is an exposition of the role of civil defence infrastructures in limiting the consequences of conflict and war. Still, he writes, as in the case of Israel, even such an effective defence model is not a substitute for credible deterrence.
Stormy-Annika Mildner then asks an oft-repeated question, “Should the WTO be written off?” She emphasises that while a return to the “old” WTO system is unrealistic, a rules-based trade order remains essential to make sure that smaller nations “are not sidelined in a global trading environment that is increasingly being dominated by power politics rather than rules.”
It is also “rules” that Arta Moeini convinces us to rethink—but not just those of trade—rather, of the entire paradigm with which we view the emerging world. It is a world, he writes, where we are not just rearranging global power, but reshaping political life “around deeper and older units of human association: civilisations. It signals the reassertion of cultural sovereignty, the revival of regional orders centred on spheres of interest, and the restoration of multiplicity as the natural condition of humanity.”
Itonde A. Kakoma closes this section with an indisputable argument, amidst the turbulence, for peace-making. “The challenge that confronts the international community is to define what a credible ‘Agenda for Peace’ entails in an era defined by fragmentation, polarisation, transactionalism, and war.”
The second section, The People, turns inward to the social contract. Power, after all, is meaningful only when it delivers welfare and well-being. In an era of disruptions—technological, economic, demographic—citizens demand dignity as much as growth. Trust in institutions, the resilience of communities, and equity in opportunity become strategic variables. These chapters probe whether states can remain competitive externally while remaining cohesive internally.
The first two essays take aim at the need for a “human-centric” shift to tech and AI. Christine Hine, in a piece that tells us stories about the promise of AI in smart healthcare, warns against a simplistic appreciation of where the faults of AI may lie. “The consequences of AI are not inherent within the technology, but occur through the value-laden choices that decide how and where AI should be deployed and by whom.”
Erin Watson then writes about how the digital shift has opened up opportunities for more women to take part in the economy. But does it also grant them dignity? Not automatically, she says; the need is for “governance choices that place women’s labour and social protection at the centre of the digital economy.”
Pavlina Pavlova sets her article in the backdrop of the societal benefits of technological advancement, and how digital transformation is a key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. But the costs are plenty—among them loss of privacy, lack of safety, and fraud and exploitation. Securing digital ecosystems thus becomes, in itself, a value worth fighting for.
Amrita Narlikar writes about values, too—of both individuals (what we live by), and institutions (what diverse actors bring to the negotiating table). These values are just one of the multiple layers of Saṁskāra, a concept of Indic origin that can serve as both a theoretical lens and a compass for policymakers.
We close this section with an article by Arezo Kohistany, which zooms in on the imperative for BRICS+ countries to meet their basic growth needs. One answer, she proposes, is in the form of a development financing institution that can fill in where the typical development banks fall short.
The third section, The Commons, expands the lens to our shared spaces—planetary, digital, maritime, and financial. Climate change, biodiversity loss, fragile supply chains, and sustainability transitions expose the paradox of our time: sovereignty may be a national assertion, but survival is a collective task. The commons have never really been abstract ideals; they are battlegrounds of negotiation and, today, must become laboratories of cooperation. The question is not whether interdependence exists but how it can be governed.
Sara Roversi stuns us with some figures: Between 1961 and 2020, the total real value of global agricultural production increased nearly fourfold, outpacing world population growth—but in 2024, 8.2 percent of humanity were undernourished. The question therefore, she says, is not whether the world can grow enough calories, “but whether our institutions can redesign those systems fast enough to keep them viable, fair, and within planetary limits.”
Sustainability is also what Anusha Kesarkar Gavankar writes about in her essay on green ports. How can ports help economies achieve growth that benefits many? After all, nearly 40 percent of the global population live within 100 km of a coastline, and so it is the people who are central to sustainable port development.
Niven Winchester then writes about another endeavour to redefine infrastructure through sustainability. In his piece, he describes the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as a regulatory tool to combat emissions leakage in global trade. In particular, he examines the potential impact on the countries of the Gulf region.
The last two essays transport us to the realm of our oceans—the vibrant ecosystems that feed billions of people, foster human development, generate economic growth and prosperity, secure energy supplies, and preserve ecological diversity. Liz Karan and Anindita Chakraborty remind us of the global scale and complexity of the challenges facing our oceans, and argue for continued trust in multilateral frameworks that can still give us pathways for international cooperation.
And Nancy Karigithu, in a piece that closes this volume, argues for targeted and sustained efforts to develop a more inclusive framework for sharing the benefits from ocean resources.
Together, these 18 essays that follow the three arcs of World, People, and Commons, reflect the tensions of our present day and what we can build for the future. Identities assert. Contests disrupt. Concerts must reconcile. The task before policymakers, scholars, and citizens alike is not to romanticise a vanished order nor retreat into insulated sovereignties. It is to craft frameworks where competition does not preclude cooperation, where welfare underwrites legitimacy, and where stewardship tempers ambition.
If the twentieth century was about constructing order, and the early-twenty-first tasked us to defend it, the coming decades will be about a massive reimagination. The future will not belong to those who deny contests, nor to those who weaponise identity without restraint. It will rightfully be claimed by those who can harmonise differences into durable arrangements—those who understand that stability is not inherited, but engineered.
This volume is an invitation to that engineering.
Read it here.
Six shades of leadership: A Davos barometer
As the traditional global order fractures, Davos 2026 reveals a new reality: The future no longer belongs to those with the most eloquent rhetoric, but to the leaders combining technical competence with the quiet confidence of actual delivery.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, is not merely an assemblage of elites; it is a barometer of the zeitgeist. Each year, it reveals how leaders interpret power, responsibility and risk in a changing world. This year’s interventions presented six distinct shades of leadership, conveyed through four key perspectives and embodied by two central actors. Together, they present not consensus, but a sharp study in contrast.
The first shade was managerial stewardship, articulated by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. His address pointed to a moment of “rupture.” He argued that intensifying great-power rivalry has led countries to seek “greater strategic autonomy,” creating a “world of fortresses.”
Carney’s speech was rooted in institutional confidence. He framed the strengthening of domestic economies and collective investment in resilience as twin objectives, arguing for a world order that respects human rights, sustainable development and sovereignty. His Davos was a call to be “principled and pragmatic” rather than to re-architect the global order. This was leadership that trusts existing institutions and believes the world still has the patience to let them work.
The second shade was transactional disruption, communicated by United States President Donald Trump. His rhetoric rejected multilateral restraint in favor of bilateral leverage, presenting economic gain as an overriding priority and alliances as instruments rather than obligations. The message was clear: prosperity follows power, not process. As Trump put it, “We’re a great power […] I think they found that out.” With a focus on tariffs and trade deficits, his Davos was interested only in outcomes, not rules, in immediacy, not institution-building.
The third shade was a desire for normative leadership, expressed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She sought to reaffirm Europe’s belief that values can still anchor power, citing climate leadership, rules-based trade and responsible digital cooperation as sources of strategic strength.
Yet, there lay an unresolved tension: Europe’s influence rests on standards, but its ability to enforce them is being tested by a world that respects speed, scale and leverage more than value-based persuasion. Von der Leyen’s was a Davos of aspiration, eloquent and principled, but also one of wistfulness: “The cooperative world order we imagined 25 years ago has not turned into reality.”
The fourth shade was a return to the principle of inclusion, articulated by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto. The conviction that “there will be no prosperity without peace” framed his speech. Prabowo highlighted Indonesia’s recognition as a “global bright spot,” a result of a legacy of “unity over fragmentation and collaboration over confrontation,” alongside a consistently unblemished record of debt repayment. His Davos was one of excellence at home and cooperation with the world on mutually beneficial terms, proving that sound domestic investment creates international gravity.
Together, these four perspectives revealed a fractured global conversation: stewardship without urgency, disruption without responsibility, values without sufficient power and peace over chaos.
The fifth shade emerged not through rhetoric but through technical confidence, embodied by Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s electronics and IT minister. Speaking on India’s progress in manufacturing and its transformational digital public infrastructure, Vaishnaw carried a quiet authority. He presented India’s story as proof of capability rather than a plea for recognition. On the AI race, he observed that producing massive large language models (LLMs) did not necessarily grant an edge; rather, the creative deployment of AI did. His understated style reminded audiences that credibility flows from delivery, not declaration, setting the stage for the AI Impact Summit in India later this month.
The sixth shade was political presence, represented by Smriti Irani at the WEF Lead Pavilion. Her engagement focused on asserting India’s voice on women’s leadership, health and enterprise through the Alliance for Global Good.
Since its launch, the Alliance has significantly scaled its coalition-building. In 2026, the focus shifted to women’s health as an “economic and national imperative.” Irani’s message, placing women at the center of decision-making, resonated across governments and business movements alike.
Together, these six shades tell a story of a leadership landscape fragmenting across temperaments: managerial, transactional, normative, inclusive, technical and political. Davos remains the stage, but it no longer writes the script. The most consequential leadership today will be provided by those who combine competence with confidence, and ambition with delivery.
In that sense, the clarity of the Indian and Indonesian interventions signified that the future belongs not to those who speak most eloquently about the world, but to those who are steadily building it.
Originally Appeared in The JakartaPost
The Budapest Dossier 2025: Choices In This New World
Ed Samir Saran | Gladden J Pappin
Editors’ Note
As the world begins a second quarter of the current century, there is a clear reshaping of the global balance of power. Yet, it is not only the diffusion of power that is shifting; so is the organising logic of the global system itself, moving toward security and resilience, and carrying implications for economic integration, strategic partnerships, and institutional cooperation. For Europe, this is a moment of strategic reflection; for emerging powers, a moment of assertive arrival.
The essays in this volume probe the tensions and opportunities of a world in transition—the struggle to rebuild credible multilateralism, the race for technological and economic sovereignty, and the search for forms of connectivity and cooperation that strengthen, rather than surrender, national agency. Together, these articles compel a rethinking of inherited assumptions and remind us that legitimacy today is earned through capability, credibility, and the courage to design new compacts. The future will be scripted less by legacy alliances, and more by a wider constellation of actors—from Europe to the emerging powers—with Hungary positioned as a critical bridge in these unfolding conversations.
The Budapest Dossier 2025 captures this moment of inflection, convening scholars across disciplines and geographies to illuminate how a world in flux is recasting its political, economic, and strategic foundations.
Kwame Owino argues that global economic fragmentation—through rising regionalism and stalled multilateral reform—creates new vulnerabilities for sub-Saharan Africa’s lower- and middle-income economies. In a multipolar world shaped by larger emerging powers, Africa’s strongest anchor remains a functioning multilateral system.
Philipp Siegert argues that Europe’s geopolitical comfort zone has collapsed as the global system and global order drift out of alignment. The European Union (EU), caught between globalisation, state agency, and democracy, now confronts an intensified version of Rodrik’s Trilemma that it can no longer evade. He contends that only a shift toward “sovereign internationalism” and adaptive connectivity can restore Europe’s strategic relevance.
Márton Ugrósdy casts Hungary’s worldview as a sovereignty-first doctrine that rejects supranational presumption and globalist orthodoxy, insisting that power and legitimacy rise from the people. Everything else—EU cooperation, global partnerships, foreign policy—follows from that foundational conviction.
Péter Siklósi shows that Europe’s call for autonomy rings hollow in a moment when only NATO underwrites its security. Caught between renewed threats and insufficient capabilities, Europe remains reactive, and not a shaper of the emerging order.
Kimlong Chheng argues that Europe is caught in a crisis of identity and cohesion, where fraying values and sovereignty battles unsettle its political core. These tensions weaken Europe’s regulatory ambition and strategic confidence. Its relevance in a multipolar world, he contends, hinges on restoring trust and a coherent values-driven compass.
Philip Pilkington argues that Europe’s competitiveness crisis is being fundamentally misread: the real rupture is not technological lag but the loss of cheap energy after the eruption of the war in Ukraine. He shows that protectionism, industrial policy, and the Draghi Report all skirt the core issue, leaving Europe to drift toward de-industrialisation. Until the energy question is confronted head-on, Europe cannot reclaim economic strength nor strategic agency.
Victoria V. Panova presents BRICS as a non-Western coalition pushing for an inclusive, law-based global order grounded in equality and respect. As Western structures retreat into coercion, she argues, BRICS offers a more constructive model for a plural world.
Sunaina Kumar casts the Indo-Pacific as the heat engine of global geopolitics—an arena where great-power rivalry collides with the region’s central role in trade, growth, and climate stability. She argues that the challenge for regional actors is to balance security imperatives with deeply interdependent economic futures, using flexible coalitions and minilaterals to navigate an increasingly fractured order. The Indo-Pacific’s ability to shape the emerging system, she observes, depends on inclusive cooperation, resilient connectivity, and a shared commitment to sustainable development.
Lydia Kostopoulos argues that the fusion of AI, data, and converging technologies has turned geopolitics into technogeopolitics, forcing states to reclaim sovereignty in a domain increasingly dominated by private actors. She underscores the need for nations to invest in resilient energy and digital infrastructure, craft trustworthy regulation, and deploy agile policy tools like sandboxes to stay competitive. The future of statecraft, she writes, will belong to countries that wield technology as a deliberate instrument of national power.
Boglárka Ballester-Bólya argues that Europe’s slide in competitiveness is largely self-inflicted—driven by regulatory excess, ideological policymaking, and an energy regime that undermines industry. Hungary’s call for “less red tape, more innovation” is framed as a strategic course correction, restoring productivity, affordability, and ambition. She warns that unless Brussels embraces pragmatism over performative governance, Europe will watch the global race from the sidelines.
Matthias Bauer’s essay portrays a Europe tangled in its own rules — overregulated, under-scaled, and falling behind while others accelerate. He insists that only bold, continent-wide legal harmonisation can restore Europe’s ability to innovate, attract investment, and compete at the technological frontier. Fragmentation, Bauer warns, is not just inefficient—it is a quiet erosion of Europe’s global standing.
Stephen R. Nagy casts infrastructure as the new battleground of sovereignty, where small and medium-sized states craft manoeuvrability through diversified partnerships. Nagy argues that ASEAN and Hungary hedge through connectivity—engaging China, Japan, the United States, and others without surrendering choice or autonomy. In a divided world, he writes, infrastructure is not dependency but agency in physical form.
Jagannath Panda describes the Indo-Pacific as moving from a United States-led hierarchy to a diffuse, coalition-driven order shaped by strategic autonomy, hedging, and competing connectivity visions. As the United States’ centrality wavers and China advances its architectural ambitions, India emerges as the region’s stabilising anchor—democratic, autonomous, and increasingly central to the strategic calculations of major powers. The future, he says, will be written not by hegemonies but by networks of states unwilling to be bound by any single pole.
Szabolcs Pásztor argues that ‘slowbalisation’ has not fully fractured the world into rival blocs but propelled it into a new era of networked connectivity, where emerging economies have become hubs rather than peripheries. South–South trade, digital flows, and value-chain linkages now drive global growth, making decoupling both costly and illusory. He contends that the future belongs to bridges—open standards, cross-regional infrastructure, and cooperative institutions that keep the global system resilient and open.
These essays converge on a simple truth: the international system is being rebuilt in real time. Those who combine resilience, capability, and cooperative ambition will not only endure this transition but help define its architecture.
Read the monograph here.
Samir Saran 