UN, IMF, World Bank:The last colonial club

Plaque Commemorating Formation of

IMF in July 1944

The global order is a museum of Western power — polished, curated, and protected by velvet ropes. 

The UN, the IMF and the World Bank proudly claim to represent humanity, but the architecture of these institutions still reflects the world of 1945, when colonial empires still breathed and Asia was on its knees. The difference today is jarring: Europe’s share of global GDP has shrunk, but its grip on global governance remains a clenched fist.

Henry Kissinger once said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” The world’s most powerful nations built multilateralism not as a moral project, but as a mechanism to institutionalize their dominance. And they have been intoxicated with that privilege ever since.

The UN Security Council is the most blatant exhibit: five nations hold veto power, including three European or Western states and China that inherited a seat meant for Taiwan. India — the world’s largest democracy, largest population, and a top-five economy — remains an outsider. Legitimacy is apparently optional; victory in 1945 is not.

The Bretton Woods twins are even less subtle. By long-standing tradition, the United States appoints the World Bank President and Europe selects the IMF Managing Director. The coveted voting quotas? Engineered to ensure that nothing of strategic importance escapes Washington’s oversight. This is not governance — it is geopolitical wealth management.

Let us not pretend the rhetoric of “global cooperation” hides the cold math behind it. Former U.S. officials have said the quiet part out loud. President Donald Trump declared: “The United States owes billions of dollars and we’re not paying until they treat us fairly.” If the UN doesn’t serve America’s interests, America will simply choke the funds. It is a protection racket with better lighting.

China markets itself as the alternative champion of the developing world — but only as long as the world agrees to be developed in China’s image. Behind its loans lie ports, digital dependencies, and a map of influence drawn in hidden ink. Beijing wants to rewrite the rules — not to make them fair, but to make them Chinese.

India stands at the edge of this dangerous duality. Its position is unique — a democracy that refuses Western tutelage and an Asian power that rejects authoritarian expansion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared: “India’s voice must be heard in shaping the global order.” He is not asking for charity; he is demanding recognition.

India’s diplomacy is no longer polite. Delhi is calling out hypocrisy in real time. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar argues that Security Council reform is the world’s most urgent structural correction. He means what he says: an order that excludes 4.3 billion people from real power cannot preach democracy to anyone.

During its G20 presidency, India forced the system to listen — bringing the African Union into the room not as a guest but as a member. It was a crack in the colonial glass ceiling of global governance.

The West built the system. China wants to capture it. India intends to rewrite it.

The multilateral world is not collapsing — it is mutating. And the biggest shock to the old guard is this: India is no longer willing to play by rules written to keep it small. The heirs of the empire must finally confront a world where they no longer get to decide who counts as powerful.

The Indian Ocean imperative: New Delhi’s strategy for influence and security at sea

India’s strategic imagination has increasingly shifted from the Himalayas to the high seas. The Indian Ocean, long treated as a backdrop of national defence, is now recognised as the arena where India’s economic security, geopolitical aspirations, and civilisational outreach converge. 

More than 90 percent of India’s trade by volume is seaborne; its energy lifelines pass through narrow chokepoints vulnerable to disruption. Geography, therefore, dictates that India cannot afford to be a bystander in its own maritime neighbourhood. The ambition to act as “guardian of the blue waters” is not merely aspirational — it is essential.

However, India’s path to maritime primacy is complicated. The Indian Ocean of today is not the relatively uncontested space of the late twentieth century. It has become a crowded, competitive, and contested geostrategic highway. India is attempting to consolidate influence in a domain where multiple powers — especially China — are asserting themselves with growing confidence.

Beijing’s expanding presence across the Indian Ocean has transformed regional dynamics. Its investments in ports from Gwadar to Hambantota, along with the establishment of its first overseas military base in Djibouti, indicate long-term strategic intent. Frequent deployment of Chinese warships and submarines in waters close to India’s critical sea lanes and island territories is viewed in New Delhi as more than normal naval diplomacy. The result is a growing perception of encirclement — a maritime “great game” unfolding around India’s periphery.

India has responded by accelerating its naval modernisation and diplomatic outreach. The Indian Navy remains the most capable regional force, fielding aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and modern surface combatants. Doctrinal shifts toward sustained deployments, intelligence-sharing, and humanitarian assistance reflect a confident assertion of leadership. Initiatives like SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and Maritime India Vision 2047 project India as a net security provider, a nation ready to secure sea lanes, support coastal states, and promote rules-based maritime governance.

Yet, ambition outpaces capability in important ways. India’s maritime strategy competes for attention and funding with pressing continental challenges. Significant delays in shipbuilding and defence technology development persist. Internally, maritime governance remains fragmented, demanding better coordination between naval modernisation, coastal security, and blue-economy policies.

Partnerships with the United States and European navies are helpful, but limited. Washington’s primary priority is the Western Pacific, not the Indian Ocean. European naval engagement fluctuates based on global crises. And India’s own insistence on strategic autonomy ensures that no partnership can fully substitute for independent capability. The West may assist India — but will not underwrite its dominion.

Adding complexity, the Global South — where India seeks moral and political leadership — is deeply divided. Smaller coastal and island nations often hedge between India and China, driven by economic necessity rather than strategic loyalty. Influence must be earned continuously, not assumed.

India’s maritime rise, therefore, requires balancing ambition with realism. Absolute dominance in the classical sense may be neither possible nor necessary. What India can — and must — achieve is decisive influence: ensuring that no hostile power can threaten its maritime security, and that regional states view India as an indispensable partner.

If New Delhi can sustain economic growth, modernise its naval power, and unify its maritime governance, India’s role as a responsible steward of the Indian Ocean will not remain a distant aspiration — it will mature into a defining element of Indian statecraft in the twenty-first century.

Mission Statement for IndiVerse: Diplomacy & Power

IndiVerse: Diplomacy & Power is a digital magazine dedicated to exploring the dynamics of statecraft, alliances and influence — from India’s vantage point, yet with global resonance. 

We probe how India engages with trade coalitions, military alignments, regional neighbours in the Indian Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean, and institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Our mission is two-fold:

• To deliver serious policy analysis grounded in rigorous research, sharp intelligence and an understanding of power transitions.

• To present that analysis through literary narrative — rich storytelling, evocative commentaries and voices drawn from diplomats, ambassadors, military and ministerial leadership, thinkers and global business-leaders.

Through in-depth interviews, exclusive dispatches from the field, themed dossiers and op-eds, we aim to map India’s strategic interests, articulate how India is safeguarding its role in the Indo-Pacific region, and examine the shifting contours of global institutions and power blocs.

Whether you are a policy maker, strategist, scholar or engaged global citizen, IndiVerse: Diplomacy & Power seeks to inform, illuminate and challenge. Because in today’s age of ambiguity and flux, the story of diplomacy is the story of power — and the story of India in the world.