Moscow: India is playing an irreplaceable role in the global systemic transition to multipolarity amid accelerated changes.

Andrew Korybko, an American Moscow-based political analyst, writing in Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), said that the former US-led unipolar system is transitioning to emerging multipolar world order.

During the post cold war era, Indian foreign policy has moved from a policy of non-alignment (policy of being neutral with US and USSR blocs) to the policy of multi-alignment (India is having friendly relations with almost all great powers and developing world). Multi-alignment is the very essence of India's foreign policy and the economic policy of India today.

Indian scholar Sanjaya Baru, a political commentator and policy analyst, believes that the global systemic transition to multipolarity is presently unfolding as a bi-multipolar intermediary phase.

This concept refers to the observation that the US and Chinese superpowers exert the most influence over the international system followed by a growing number of great powers like Russia and India, among others.

Therein lies the motivation for what can be described as Russia and India's joint efforts to assemble a new Non-Aligned Movement ("Neo-NAM") for doing precisely that in order to maximize their strategic autonomy.

Meanwhile, the US-led West's unprecedented anti-Russian sanctions that were imposed in response to Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine raised concerns that this targeted great power would become disproportionately dependent on China.

However, India decisively intervened to avert that scenario by becoming Russia's alternative valve from such pressure as well as its proactive efforts to comprehensively expand trade ties with it in order to replace lost Western ones, said Korybko.

This game-changing development completely altered the forecast that many analysts had and thus compelled them to recalibrate their predictions about the forthcoming dynamics of the global systemic transition to multipolarity.

India jumped from being a latently impressive great power to one with the proven capability to decisively shape international events at their most sensitive moment during the onset of complex processes such as what many have since concluded is now a New Cold War.

Moreover, India is in the unique geostrategic position of having stakes in both blocs, which explains why it closely cooperates with them in order to advance its goal of becoming third pole of influence in the bi-multipolar transitional phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity.

It is for this reason that India has sought to play leading roles in multilateral platforms the Quad, BRICS, and the SCO. The first one serves as its means for balancing China's rise in what India hopes will be a friendly, gentle, and non-hostile way compared to the new AUKUS alliance's non-friendly, harsh, and hostile one.

BRICS and the SCO, meanwhile, are complementary platforms for reforming the international system as it transitions towards multipolarity.

The ideal scenario for India is that it successfully cooperates with US-led structures like the Quad to peacefully "manage" China's rise in parallel with cooperating with China to gradually reform the international system, said Korybko.