Jaishankar Forwards India's Address at UNGA 81: A Call for Peace When Everything Is Becoming a Weapon

Peace is becoming expensive precisely because the world keeps treating war as someone else’s problem.

At the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, India’s message was succinct yet powerful. Wars may still be fought with missiles and soldiers, but their consequences travel through shipping lanes, energy markets, financial systems, food supplies and technology networks. A conflict thousands of kilometres away can reach a household through the price of fuel or a factory through a disrupted supply chain.

This was the larger significance of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s address in New York on September 26. His argument went beyond any single conflict. India was warning about a global system in which the instruments of interdependence are themselves becoming instruments of pressure.

The phrase that captured this anxiety was stark: “weaponisation of everything.” It came against the backdrop of an 81st General Assembly whose presidency has itself placed “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation” at the centre of its programme. The UN has described the session as opening at a moment marked by conflict, inequality, climate emergencies and an erosion of trust.

When War Reaches the Kitchen Table

India’s central proposition was rather simple. The inability to maintain peace is no longer merely a security problem. It is a development problem.

When commercial ships are attacked, the disruption does not remain at sea. Energy becomes more expensive, insurance costs rise, delivery schedules stretch, and businesses begin calculating risks that did not exist yesterday. When grain movements are interrupted, food security becomes vulnerable. When technology or finance becomes a lever of geopolitical pressure, countries with limited room for manoeuvre pay a disproportionate price.

India thus placed great emphasis on attacks against commercial shipping and seafarers in the Gulf and across the routes extending from the Red Sea towards the Black Sea. New Delhi called for restraint, de-escalation, civilian protection and uninterrupted energy and commercial flows. India has also reiterated support for efforts to end the war in Ukraine and backed a two-state solution as the basis for durable peace in West Asia, while pointing to its humanitarian assistance for Palestinians.

These stands are not void of economic logic. The global economy may appear digital, but much of its physical foundation still travels by sea. Energy, industrial inputs and agricultural commodities depend on maritime routes that cannot be replaced by a software update when they become unsafe. India therefore has reason to view maritime security as economic security.

Not Everything Should Become a Weapon

For decades, interdependence was presented as a pathway towards prosperity. Countries traded because trade created mutual benefit, while shared economic interests were expected to raise the cost of conflict. India’s warning was that this logic is weakening when finance, market access, supply chains, technology, resources and connectivity can all become sources of leverage, producing a peculiar contradiction.

Countries remain deeply connected, yet trust between them is declining. The response is clearly visible in the language of “de-risking” and diversification. Governments want alternative suppliers, additional markets and greater resilience because dependence on a single corridor, technology platform or financial channel can become a geopolitical vulnerability during a crisis. Jaishankar described this emerging environment as one in which extreme competition is creating chokepoints and weakening the institutional foundations of cooperation.

The question, then, is no longer whether countries should be interconnected. It is whether interdependence can remain an engine of prosperity without becoming an instrument of coercion. This is the bigger question.

The Global South is Paying the Bill

For developing countries, the problem becomes more immediate because geopolitical shocks collide with unfinished development. India described the predicament as a “4F crisis” of food, fuel, fertiliser and finance. The formulation matters because these pressures rarely arrive separately. 

Higher energy costs affect transportation and production. Fertiliser shortages can constrain agriculture. Disruptions to grain movements can deepen food insecurity. Financial pressures can then leave governments with less room to respond. Recent reporting on Jaishankar’s UN address confirms that India linked these pressures with climate effects, fertiliser shortages and impediments to grain movement.

The stakes are thus larger than immediate relief. Developing countries are still trying to industrialise, create employment and expand basic services while dealing with a global system that is becoming harder to predict. 

India argued that progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals is under pressure and that restrictions on market access and non-market practices can constrain the industrialisation ambitions of the Global South.

The cruel irony is that those least responsible for many geopolitical shocks can often be among the least equipped to absorb them. This is where India’s UNGA message moved from geopolitics towards political economy. A world that demands resilience from developing countries must also examine whether the international systems governing trade, finance, technology and connectivity allow them enough room to build it.

India Wants Its Development Story To Sail

India did not approach the General Assembly merely as a critic of the existing order. It also placed its own development experience on the table.

Jaishankar pointed to improvements across health, nutrition, education, drinking water, electricity, roads and housing, alongside India’s digital public infrastructure, physical infrastructure, startups and innovation ecosystem. His argument was that India’s progress matters beyond its borders because its development affects roughly one-sixth of humanity.

More significantly, India presented development cooperation as something that can be shared.

The minister cited 600 major Indian development projects across 78 countries, covering infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture, information technology and capacity building.

The scale of India’s development partnership is also reflected in UNDP data. Between 2000 and 2023, India extended more than USD 14.7 billion in grants and USD 32 billion in concessional lines of credit, supporting more than 600 development projects across 68 countries.

Diplomacy today is no longer confined to the transactional logic of donor and recipient. Its actual value lies in whether countries can exchange technologies, institutional experience and practical solutions that work within their own realities. There is an important human dimension to this record too. More than 180 Indian peacekeepers have lost their lives while serving under the UN flag, according to the United Nations.

This also illustrates the logic behind India’s argument that multilateralism cannot survive merely as diplomatic vocabulary. It requires people willing to carry its burdens.

AI Could Democratise Opportunity

During India's address, Artificial Intelligence was presented as a potential instrument of human empowerment and economic growth, but India resisted the idea that the next technological revolution should simply reproduce the inequalities of earlier ones. Countries, Jaishankar argued, should have the ability to shape their own AI ecosystems, including models and deployment strategies aligned with national priorities. India also indicated that AI would form part of its partnership agenda with the Global South.

The World Bank estimates that around 2.8 billion people lacked access to digital ID for online transactions in 2025. That figure illustrates how uneven the digital foundations of the global economy remain.

If countries without strong digital infrastructure become dependent on technologies designed elsewhere, the digital divide could become a new form of economic dependence.

India’s answer is therefore tied to a larger idea of technological sovereignty. It states that AI should expand the capacity of countries to solve problems rather than become another chokepoint controlled by a narrow set of actors. Misused AI can sharpen bias and deepen distrust. The challenge is consequently double-edged: widening access while building safeguards against misuse.

The Dawn of Cultural Diplomacy

The most distinctive part of India’s message came when the argument moved beyond economics and strategic competition. Jaishankar spoke of economic rebalancing already taking place and political rebalancing becoming extremely visible. The next task, he suggested, is cultural rebalancing.

Countries carry different histories, political traditions and development priorities. Expecting those differences to disappear is unrealistic. The harder task is creating enough mutual respect for disagreement to remain manageable.

Culture therefore enters the argument as something more substantial than ceremony. Recognition of different civilisational experiences can become part of the architecture through which countries negotiate a changing international order. In that sense, India’s message at the UN was also an argument against a world where every difference is converted into confrontation.

Can Multilateralism Catch Up?

The speech ultimately returned to the institutional question. The post-1945 international system was built for a different distribution of power. The economic weight of countries has shifted. Technology has transformed the nature of influence. New security challenges have emerged, while developing countries demand a greater role in decisions that affect their futures.

India’s answer was reformed multilateralism, not the abandonment of multilateralism. Being the most populous nation, it argued for broader consultations, transparent decision-making and institutions that better reflect contemporary realities. The 81st General Assembly presidency has itself called for a UN capable of adapting, reforming and delivering in an era of conflict, technological transformation and declining trust.

Peace requires more than silence on battlefields. It requires shipping lanes that remain open, food and energy that can move, finance that does not become a weapon, technology that does not become a privilege reserved for a few, and institutions that developing countries believe represent them.

India’s invocation of Mahatma Gandhi at the end of the address therefore carried a meaning larger than ceremony: “there is no way to peace; peace is the way.”

In a world where war is disrupting economies, economics is becoming a tool of pressure, technology is becoming a new frontier of competition, and trust is becoming scarce, the question is no longer whether humanity understands the value of cooperation. It is whether the world can rediscover it before every connection becomes another chokepoint.