India Joins a New Club of Middle Powers That Wants to Sideline Superpower Politics

India co-sponsored the new Partners for Multilateralism grouping at the UN. It is cheap, useful diplomacy, but it cannot change who holds power on the Security Council.

On **21 September 2026**, on the eve of the UN General Assembly's high-level debate in New York, External Affairs Minister **S. Jaishankar** co-chaired the first summit of a new grouping with a long name: **Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity**, or **P4M**. He shared the chair with European Council President **António Costa**.

India was not just in the room. It was one of seven initial co-sponsors, alongside **Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, the European Union and Kenya**. "India is glad to join as a co-sponsor," Jaishankar told the gathering. "We meet at a time when the global order is under stress."

The idea came from four founders: Costa, Brazilian President **Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva**, Kenyan President **William Ruto** and Canadian Prime Minister **Mark Carney**. Their message is that global problems should be handled through the UN and broad coalitions, not dictated by whichever great power is strongest at the moment. That is why the grouping has been described as a way around superpower politics.

This piece looks at what P4M actually is, why India signed up, what it can realistically achieve, and the awkward contradictions that sit inside it.

The founders set out their pitch in a joint newspaper column published the same morning. P4M, they wrote, is **"not about creating another exclusive bloc or another international bureaucracy."** Its purpose is "the opposite": a flexible, open framework for countries "from different regions and political traditions that are willing to work across divides."

In practice, that means P4M is not a treaty, not a new UN body, and not an alliance with a secretariat or a budget. It is a network. The summit produced a joint declaration committing signatories to the UN Charter, international law and reform of multilateral institutions. It named areas for practical cooperation: **resilient supply chains, trade and international finance, artificial intelligence, climate change and global health**. The agreed next step is regular exchanges open to partners from every region.

Beyond the seven co-sponsors, more than a dozen further countries were listed as signatories, including **Norway, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Türkiye, Uruguay, Guatemala and Moldova**. The mix is deliberate. It spans Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific, and includes both rich and developing economies.

The founders' column also gave the grouping its sense of urgency. They pointed out that **2025 saw the highest number of state-based armed conflicts recorded since 1946**, spread across **35 countries**, and record global military spending of **nearly $3 trillion**.

None of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — **the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France** — signed on as founders or co-sponsors. France is an EU member, but no permanent member joined in its own name at the launch.

That absence is the point. Costa said openly in his opening remarks that the UN Charter is being "repeatedly violated," including "by permanent members of the United Nations Security Council." Brazil's Foreign Minister **Mauro Vieira**, standing in for Lula, went further, saying some powers "seek to divide the world into spheres of influence" and attack institutions such as the WTO, the World Health Organization and the International Criminal Court.

The backdrop is hard to miss. On **7 January 2026**, the United States announced it would withdraw from **66 international organisations**, including **31 UN entities** such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UN Women. Washington had already begun leaving the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement. Carney himself had spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January about middle powers needing to work together as the old order frays.

So P4M is, in part, a response by middle powers to a year in which the biggest powers — not only the United States — have treated rules as optional.

The speeches were more pointed than the usual summit language, and they show that the grouping is not one voice.

**Ruto (Kenya)** called the crisis "not a crisis of cooperation" but one of "rules and institutions that have not kept pace." He pressed for permanent African representation on the Security Council under the Ezulwini Consensus, noting that a continent of **54 countries and more than 1.4 billion people** has no permanent seat. He also warned P4M against becoming "another declaration of faith in multilateralism."

**Mia Mottley (Barbados)** spoke for small states that "can only survive in a rules-based order." She backed permanent representation for Africa and, notably, for India, arguing that countries responsible for so many people cannot be denied a voice.

**Anthony Albanese (Australia)** used the platform to confirm Australia's bid for a non-permanent Security Council seat for **2029–30**, and argued that middle powers must "play a stronger role."

**Carney (Canada)** could not land in New York in time; Canada's UN ambassador read his speech. Its core idea was "variable geometry": small coalitions formed around specific problems, which prove what works and then bring it back to the wider UN system to scale up.

**Jaishankar (India)** kept his remarks short and characteristically India-shaped. He said the world has seen "a steady rebalancing" for decades, but "extreme competition, geopolitical tensions and actual conflicts" have changed its character. He flagged what he called the **"4F" crisis — fuel, food, fertiliser and finance** — and said it "cannot be left to itself." He called for guardrails on new technologies, "de-risking and diversifying" where there are chokepoints, and **"reformed multilateralism,"** with "more participative deliberations and more transparent decision-making."

For India, P4M fits a long-standing pattern. New Delhi describes its approach as **multi-alignment**: keeping working ties with the United States, Russia, Europe and the Global South at the same time, and refusing to be locked into one camp's framing.

India sits in the **Quad** with the United States, Japan and Australia. It sits in **BRICS** with China and Russia. It hosted the **G20** in 2023 and pushed the African Union's admission as a permanent G20 member. Joining P4M lets India stand with a pro-UN, pro-rules coalition without signing anything aimed at a specific country. That matters for a government that has generally abstained on UN General Assembly votes condemning Russia over Ukraine, and that deals with Washington and Beijing on very different terms.

The timing also helps India's own campaigns. On **13 July 2026**, Jaishankar formally launched India's bid for a non-permanent Security Council seat for **2028–29** under the slogan **SHANTI** — "Securing Holistic Advancement through Norms, Trust and Integrity." India has served on the Council eight times: **1950–51, 1967–68, 1972–73, 1977–78, 1984–85, 1991–92, 2011–12 and 2021–22**. Unlike its last two runs, it is not unopposed this time. **Tajikistan** is contesting the single Asia-Pacific seat, and the vote in the General Assembly is due in **June 2027**, needing a two-thirds majority of members present and voting.

A room full of foreign ministers and heads of government from every continent is useful for a candidate that needs roughly 129 votes if all 193 members vote. The Ministry of External Affairs has also listed six priorities for that term: a voice for the Global South, reformed multilateralism, future-ready peacekeeping, threats from misuse of AI, securing maritime commons, and countering terror financing. Several overlap directly with the P4M agenda.

India's deeper goal is a **permanent** seat, which the government says it pursues "at the highest levels." Here the limits of P4M are structural.

Changing the Security Council's membership requires amending the UN Charter. Under **Article 108**, an amendment needs approval by **two-thirds of the General Assembly** and ratification by two-thirds of member states, **including all five permanent members**. Any one of them can block it. No coalition of middle powers, however broad, changes that arithmetic.

The formal talks, called the **Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN)**, have run since 2009 without agreement on even a single negotiating text. In the session that ended this month, India said the IGN had "not been successful in forging any outcomes," though it welcomed the African Group's formal presentation of its reform model in April. The **G4** — India, Brazil, Germany and Japan — says more than **110 member states** have explicitly backed expansion in both permanent and non-permanent categories, well above a simple majority of 97. The talks were rolled over again to the 81st session.

This is where P4M becomes less straightforward for India than the photographs suggest.

**Canada**, one of the four founders, is a member of **Uniting for Consensus (UfC)**, the Italy-led group that opposes adding any new permanent national seats to the Security Council. So are **Spain, Türkiye and San Marino**, all listed as P4M signatories. **Pakistan** is also a prominent UfC member. UfC's own model instead proposes more non-permanent seats, including longer-term elected seats.

Meanwhile, **Brazil** is India's partner in the G4, and **Kenya** leads calls for permanent African seats. So P4M contains countries on both sides of the single reform question India cares most about.

That does not make India's participation a mistake. It does mean P4M cannot be read as a coalition for India's permanent seat. At most, it is a forum where India can make its case to countries that currently disagree — which Ruto himself argued is exactly where dialogue matters most.

There are real arguments that P4M could be more than a talking shop.

First, "coalitions of the willing" around narrow problems have worked before. Carney's speech cited the **Montreal Protocol**, which began as a targeted deal among a limited group and was later ratified universally, putting the ozone layer on the road to recovery. The **International Solar Alliance**, which India co-founded with France in 2015, followed a similar logic.

Second, the agenda overlaps with problems India faces directly: fertiliser and fuel price shocks, supply-chain chokepoints, debt stress in neighbouring economies, and AI governance. Mottley described a June meeting in Vienna where more than 70 countries and 16 development finance institutions discussed long-term financing for schools, hospitals and water systems. Practical work of that kind is where a loose network can add value.

Third, joining costs India almost nothing. There is no binding commitment, no treaty obligation, and no requirement to vote a particular way.

The same features that make P4M easy to join make it easy to ignore. With no secretariat, no budget and no enforcement power, its influence depends entirely on whether members choose to act together on specific files.

The General Assembly can pass resolutions by majority vote, but they are not binding. The Security Council, which can impose sanctions and authorise force, remains untouched. Brazil's own foreign minister warned that P4M "must become more than a forum for restating familiar positions." Ruto said nearly the same thing. When the grouping's own founders flag the risk of empty declarations, observers should take it seriously.

There is also the question of consistency. Vieira told the summit that "it's not possible to defend international law while sending weapons to those who violate it, nor can we invoke international norms selectively." Every P4M member, India included, will face that test on conflicts where its own interests point the other way.

**Is India now part of an anti-US or anti-China bloc?**

No. P4M's declaration does not name any country as an adversary, and its founders explicitly rejected the idea of a bloc. India remains in the Quad and BRICS at the same time.

**Does P4M get India closer to a permanent Security Council seat?**

Not directly. Permanent membership needs a Charter amendment that all five permanent members must ratify. P4M includes both supporters and opponents of new permanent seats.

**What is "reformed multilateralism"?**

It is India's shorthand for changing global institutions — above all the Security Council, but also bodies such as the IMF and World Bank — so they reflect today's population, economic weight and geography rather than the balance of power in 1945.

**What is the "4F" crisis Jaishankar mentioned?**

Fuel, food, fertiliser and finance: the four areas where conflicts and supply disruptions hit developing economies hardest, through price spikes and tighter credit.

**How is P4M different from the G20 or BRICS?**

The G20 and BRICS are fixed-membership clubs with regular summits and rotating presidencies. P4M has no fixed membership, no presidency and no secretariat, and is designed to support work inside the UN rather than run a parallel agenda.

**26 September 2026**: Jaishankar addresses the UN General Assembly's general debate. Watch whether he mentions P4M by name or treats it as a footnote.

**The next P4M meeting**: The declaration promises regular exchanges. Whether a second meeting is scheduled, at what level, and with how many members will show if the grouping has momentum beyond one evening in New York.

**A named, concrete initiative**: Brazil and Kenya both asked for concrete outcomes. The first real test is whether P4M members jointly table a specific proposal — on development finance rules, AI guardrails, or UN80 reforms of the UN system — in this Assembly session.

**The IGN on Security Council reform**: Watch whether talks in the 81st session move toward the "consolidated model" the G4 wants, and whether Canada and other UfC members inside P4M shift their positions at all.

**June 2027**: The General Assembly votes on the Asia-Pacific seat for 2028–29, with India and Tajikistan on the ballot. The size of India's majority will be one rough measure of the diplomatic capital it has built this year.

**India's voting record**: Security Council reform is not usually decided by recorded votes, so the more useful signal is how India votes on General Assembly resolutions involving international law and ongoing conflicts, compared with the principles it endorsed at P4M.

P4M is low-cost, high-visibility diplomacy that fits India's habit of engaging everyone and committing to no single camp. Co-sponsoring it gives India a seat at the table as middle powers try to hold the UN system together at a moment when the largest powers are stepping back from it.

What it does not do is change who holds power at the UN. The Security Council's veto structure is untouched, and the new grouping includes several countries opposed to India's central reform goal. Whether P4M proves useful will depend on whether, a year from now, its members can point to one concrete thing they achieved together.

**Note on perspective**: {{Based on official statements and speeches at the 21 September 2026 P4M summit, the summit declaration, UN records and Ministry of External Affairs material as of 25 September 2026. The analysis weighs India's stated goals against the structural limits of the UN system.}}