Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Tuesday that nations such as India and those across West Asia are increasingly positioned to chart their own diplomatic courses, noting that as the distribution of global power shifts, those countries may not necessarily align with either Washington or Beijing.
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2026 panel on economic predictability in New Delhi, Sunak described the global economic order as passing through a period of structural transformation, with the erosion of multilateral, rules-based arrangements generating heightened geopolitical instability. As reported by a news outlet, he said the framework within which investment and operations had long been conducted was already weakening before recent political developments, characterising those developments as a reflection of deeper systemic pressures rather than their origin, and adding that the absence of a clearly settled new order was itself a source of considerable uncertainty and risk.
Pointing to shifts reshaping the international order, Sunak described China as having reached a level of capability across economic, defence, and technology sectors that places it on broadly equal footing with the United States, describing that condition as an unprecedented characteristic of the global economy.
Sunak noted that nations such as India and those across the Gulf region had reached a point where they were setting their own foreign-policy directions, no longer defaulting toward either of the two dominant global powers, and that those countries now held the capacity to determine their own paths forward. He said that group maintained independent positions, separate from those held by either the United States or China, describing the situation as representing a new pattern of behaviour in which the parties involved would act according to their own preferences.
Sunak addressed the state of global security, noting that the number of active state-based armed conflicts — 61 at the time of his remarks — had reached a level not recorded since the Second World War, and that this concentration of violence across so many fronts posed ongoing risks to international stability. Sunak told reporters that, looking at those figures, he had concerns.
He also raised the approach taken by US President Donald Trump toward international diplomacy, noting that Trump viewed the situation as presenting 61 separate opportunities to secure a Nobel Peace Prize. Sunak also pointed to remarks from the president's deputy chief of staff, who described the current global environment as one shaped by force, strength, and power.
Acknowledging that the position sits at the outermost reaches of strategic thought, Sunak put forward the view that military capacity and geopolitical strength were taking on greater weight in international affairs. He pointed to the alignment taking shape between economic priorities, national security considerations, and technological progress, while noting in a quoted remark that such a perspective was, in his view, on the more absolutist end of the spectrum.
Sunak described an interplay of overlapping threats, with hard power having regained its grip on global affairs and nations increasingly treating economic resilience and technological capability as extensions of their own defence — a condition one analyst described as a world of "unreachability."
The panel's discussions centred on what it takes to lead organisations through a world economy pulled in competing directions by volatility, fragmentation, and rapid change. Joining Sunak on the panel were Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, and Jonathan Gray, President and Chief Operating Officer at Blackstone.
The Bloomberg New Economy Forum is scheduled to take place in New Delhi between 13 and 15 October 2026, convening around the theme "A World in Play: Defining the New Levers of Power."
