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Lunchwith the FT Life & Arts
Foreign Minister SJaishankar: ‘The virtues of the
old world order are exaggerated’
ByAlec Russell, Financial Times, London,March 14, 2025
India’s foreign minister on his country’senduring bond with Russia, dealing with a transactional Trump and the merits ofunpredictability
A few dozen Sikh separatist activists are protestingnoisily outside the central London hotel where the target of their ire isstaying. On a quiet Sunday morning, their chants echo through Westminster andSt James’s Park.
But it is going to take more than that to put India’ssteely and erudite foreign minister off his stride. S Jaishankar has been onsomething of a grand tour of the west — and at quite a time. I have been taking“the pulse at the epicentre of the alliance”, he says after slippingunobtrusively into the restaurant at the Taj Hotel. It is hard not to concludethat he has enjoyed his peripatetic 2025 immensely.
Jaishankar is India’s longest-serving foreign ministersince Jawaharlal Nehru, who was prime minister and foreign minister for 17years. In his nearly six years in office he has been a leading voice in arguingthat the “liberal rules-based order” is biased and in need of a shake-up. Nowhe has had a ringside view for some of its most destabilising moments since ittook shape 80 years ago.
Jai9shankar’s Brunch with the FT in London comes atthe end of a whirlwind seven weeks taking in Donald Trump’s inauguration, theMunich Security Conference, and hosting most of the European commissioners inDelhi even as Europe agonised that Trump was reading the last rites on thepost-1945 western alliance.
My guest cuts a dapper, elfin figure and he parriescriticism like a champion fencer. As the public face of India’s nationalistgovernment, he can also have an icy tongue. Jaishankar takes charge of the menuand orders for us both a masala dosa, the crisp fermented batter with potato,spices and chutneys, which is a staple of southern Indian breakfasts. He optsto start with a portion of upma, a semolina porridge.
I broach the small matter of the upheaval in thewestern order. It’s not a question of missing this or liking that. I got what Igot. I’m a realist “This was a long time coming,” he says. “There appears to besome surprise that he [Trump] is actually doing what he said he would do. I’mnot surprised. Maybe I took him more at face value . . . ” Americans havebecome weary of global entanglements, he says, and feel the “ “benefits areless and the costs more” than they used to be. “I’m not being entirelyfacetious, a multipolar world used to be our talking point. It’s now become theAmerican talking point.”
So will he miss anything about the old order? “It’snot a question of missing this or liking that. I got what I got. I’m arealist,” he says. “I don’t conduct foreign policy by saying I wish it couldhave been this or I wish we could go back or I wish this didn’t happen. It’shappened. “I’m not saying everything before was entirely bad or entirely good,”he adds, highlighting how India’s economy has expanded in recent years tobecome the world’s fifth-largest. “I think that’s not the way reality works.”
Henry Kissinger, a renowned believer in realpolitik,lauded Jaishankar shortly before he died in 2023 as the practising politicianmost in tune with his approach. Is he happy with the idea of being aKissingerian? “In my part of the world that’s not necessarily a compliment,” hedeadpans. Kissinger played a key part in restoring ties between the US andChina, India’s great regional rival, and backed its arch foe, Pakistan, in the1971 Indo-Pakistani war. Jaishankar says they knew each other for many yearsand would talk often. “But I profoundly disagreed with him on many issues,” headds, especially on China. Kissinger became too close to Beijing, he says, andso stopped having a realist’s view of it. “When you are over-invested in anyrelationship, it clouds your judgment.”
Jaishankar is warming to his theme when his upmaarrives. When I look surprised at the idea of having semolina for breakfast, heasks the waiter to bring me a bowl and asks if I am interested in the historyof food. “The Romans were very fond of semolina,” he says. “Interestingly theRussians eat a lot of semolina as well; they have porridge in the morning madeout of semolina.” My bowl swiftly follows.
Fortified likea Roman legionary, I quote a line from his latest book, where he elaborates the“India First” foreign policy of his boss, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Therehe approvingly cites Ram, a god-king in the Hindu epic Ramayana, as the epitomeof a rules-based order. So given that he does seem to believe in such a system,how should a successor to the post-1945 order operate? “If we don’t have anorder then you are looking at a very anarchic world . . . very Hobbesian,” hesays. “Unrestrained competition would add to the stresses and in some wayconstrain the benefits. No question there should be an order. [India wants]something more than evolutionary but which is comfortable and steady,” he says.But it has to reflect the world as it is now and not as it was post-1945 when“the rules were weighted in favour of the west”.
His drive to reform the global architecture such asthe UN Security Council is incontestable. But his depiction of India as awholly unthreatening actor does not appear to chime with Canada’s allegationsthat Indian agents were linked to the assassination of a Sikh separatistactivist there in 2023 — a charge that India denies. As America retreats, thereis a stark interpretation of our world, I say: what if we are entering an ageof “might is right”?
Jaishankar looks at me as a naïf. “There was always anelement of that, that ‘might is right’. I think the virtues of the old orderare somewhat exaggerated. Sometimes when you are on the receiving end of the[decisions of the global order] you have a slightly different view.” Foreignpolicy is in the 70-year-old Jaishankar’s DNA. His father was a legendary publicservant, who was one of the most outspoken advocates of India’s acquiringnuclear weapons. His son runs a think-tank in Washington DC. He himself had aglittering career as a diplomat, serving as ambassador in Beijing andWashington, before in 2015 becoming foreign secretary, the equivalent ofpermanent under-secretary of the UK Foreign Office. It was in that role that hecaught Modi’s eye.
As his dosa arrives — and as, on his advice, my soggyuntouched one is swapped with a fresh hot version — he spools back to growingup in the 1960s and 1970s. “He [my father] would encourage us to challengehim,” he says. At some point when he was thinking of finishing a PhD, hisfather said, “Would you rather spend your life analysing what others have done?Or would you rather have somebody one day analyse what you have done?” Thatquestion has piquancy today.
When, in 2019, Jaishankar became minister of externalaffairs, there were many in the liberal intelligentsia of Delhi who thoughtthat to join the government was a betrayal. His Bharatiya Janata party, whichwon a third term last June, pursues a Hindu nationalist agenda. What of theidea that he was selling his soul? Did he hesitate over entering politics? “That wasn’t an issue for me at all,” he says.“I’m not the first guy who’s done it. And I was very comfortable with thepolitics of my party. We were a very nationalist household and my fatherdrilled that into us. The culture, the thinking [of the party], that was not anissue at all. I was very much in sync with that.”
When I ask what he learnt from last year’s election,when Modi fell short of the majority his party had coveted, Jaishankarhighlights the difficulties of being an incumbent running for a third term —and the BJP’s victory in three recent regional elections. Modi’s opponents sayhe has undermined independent institutions, including the judiciary and themedia. The BJP is also accused of overseeing a triumphalist Hindu majoritarianrule and riding roughshod over concerns of its large Muslim minority. I ask myguest for his response to the last Indian to have Lunch with the FT, lawyerIndira Jaising, who said “the rule of religion is replacing the rule of law”.“Other than laugh scathingly?”
Jaishankar says. “We are a secular country . . . Secularism does not mean you suppress your own religion. Unfortunately . . . itbecame a political fashion to say that the majority should not express itsfaith or should keep it within itself.” “I think this belief was a very elitistview of a certain generation. I think the country has moved on and they don’tseem to have understood it.” It is a familiar refrain. Modi has sometimesdismissed the Delhi chattering class as the “Khan Market gang”, a reference toa high-end market. I ask if the FT is part of the gang. Jaishankar just smiles.
The old Indianelite tried to imitate the west, he says, as a sign of modernity, whereas Indiatoday is more confident about being non-western but not necessarilyanti-western. Since the end of the cold war, when India was non-aligned but hadwarm ties to Moscow, Delhi has moved ever closer to the US. The bond looks setto be its tightest yet with the like-minded nationalists Trump and Modi incharge.
So far India has not faced the fusillade of threatsTrump has levelled at America’s traditional allies, although he has threatenedto hit India with reciprocal tariffs. I flag up that Trump has called India the“biggest tariff abuser”. “We have our issues,” says Jaishankar, who —unsurprisingly — is at his most emollient when it comes to talking of America.“I can see he [Trump] has his concerns.” He predicts America and India willreach a trade agreement this year. Is Trump, I ask, also a realist? He is,Jaishankar says, but “because you’re a realist doesn’t mean you don’t havebeliefs and convictions and feelings. They coexist. I do think he’s a very strongnationalist and in pursuit of his nationalist goals he’s very realist aboutmany parts of the world.” So what about his unpredictability? I cite RicGrenell, a Trump aide, who told the FT last year that “predictability is aterrible thing”.
Jaishankar veers off via his beloved sport, cricket,and recalls a 1950s player for England, Brian Statham, who was so good atdelivering the ball in the right place that, brilliant as he was, he becamepredictable. “The moment you become predictable, you’ve handed something overto the other side,” he says. I note the consternation of many of America’sallies over the uncertainty of dealing with Trump. Could his trademarkunpredictability not backfire on India? Jaishankar brushes this aside. Thepost-1945 western order was buttressed by treaty alliances, he says, whereasIndia has been pursuing a looser form of relationship, such as the Quad, thegrouping of India, Japan, Australia and the US. “You have comfort, You don’tspend your life worrying about what-ifs. You spend your life preparing forwhat-ifs commonalities. It’s more like a club. You don’t have legal contractualobligations with other members but it’s a gathering place . . . Thetreaty-based concepts are typical of the old order. The new order is somethingmore flexible.”
A delicious flaky, buttery paratha has followed mydosa. Jaishankar orders a papaya. I raise that other go-to adjective for Trump:“transactional”. “‘Transactional’ has become a pejorative,” he says. “At theend of the day we all do transactions. I do it because that’s what all of usdo. I’m on record to say I have beliefs. I’m more comfortable with somecountries than others. I’m not against transaction, but I’m not an advocate ofbeing purely transactional.” Beguiled by the juicy papaya in front of my guest,I order one too, and turn to the west’s most neuralgic issue with India:Moscow. India’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and itsdecision to keep buying Russian oil have infuriated western officials. All thewhile, Jaishankar has stuck to his script: namely that Europe has a perspectiveon the war, India has its own, and also has an old link with Russia that it isnot going to jettison.
“What happens is that people often try to make thesebig issues of principle,” he says. “Usually you invoke a principle when youwant to persuade or pressure somebody to do something.” When I ask whetherRussia’s increasing reliance on China poses a problem for India, he takes thelong view. Since the mid-20th century, India’s relationship with Russia hasremained quite steady, he says, even as the relationships between Russia andChina, Russia and the west, and the west and China have all fluctuated. “I’m avery empirical person. If I have 80 years of data which suggest a relationshiphas very firm foundations I would tend to use that as a working assumption.”
Three and a half thousand miles away in Dubai, India’ssuperstar cricket team are playing in the final of the year’s biggestinternational tournament. Jaishankar’s staff are following on their smartphonesat a nearby table. We agree on a break for a match update and order coffee.India’s boon in this age of fluid geopolitics is to be able to say to the westthat it is not China — and to the rest of the world that it is not the west.Some diplomats speculate that as part of its multi-aligned formula, India istrying to improve ties with China. Jaishankar accepts my contention that therelationship with Beijing “hasn’t gone so well for us”. This he blames largelyon China’s stance over clashes between its forces and India’s on their borderin 2020. “You can’t have a bad situation on the border and then a goodsituation in the relationship,” he says. “People make out as though there issomething very difficult or profound that I have said. To me it’s commonsense.”
So would it not be problematic for India if Trump doesa “big beautiful deal” with China? “Life is full of what-ifs,” he says.“Sometimes they happen. Many times they don’t. You don’t spend life worryingabout what-ifs. You spend your life preparing for what-ifs.” The wind ofhistory is at his back for now. On the global stage, just about everyone apartfrom China needs India, even if it is not so easy closer to home. For Delhi,ever on its mind is the fear that China is stealing a march on it by wooing itsneighbours. India backed Bangladesh’s autocratic ruler Sheikh Hasina until heroverthrow last August. Relations with the new order are concerning, Jaishankarconcedes.
He rolls his eyes when I ask if it is not time for agrand gesture from India to Pakistan, its troubled neighbour. He is alwaysasked this in or by Britain, he says sharply. Outside the hotel, the activistshave dispersed. Jaishankar’s last engagement is to join David Lammy to watchthe UK foreign secretary’s football team, Tottenham Hotspur. I sense he wouldrather watch the cricket unfolding on his aides’ screens. (After the odd wobbleIndia were heading for victory.) But Britain and India still have to resolvethe small matter of a trade deal — which Jaishankar predicts is “within sight”.And whatever shape the field, as Jaishankar appreciates all too well, this israther a fun time to be an Indian official on tour in the west.
AlecRussell is the FT’s foreign editor .
https://youtu.be/lB6a-iD6ZOY?si=EdxVVYugNBv9iOzI Fragile song by Sting
If blood will flow
when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the color
of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain
will wash the stains away
But something in our minds
will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence
and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are
An ambitious project seeks to use artificial intelligence to speak with sperm whales. But is this even possible? What would we say — and would they want to speak with us?
