“A useful exchange on the evolving global security architecture,” Jaishankar said in a post on X after meeting the Norwegian finance minister. Jaishankar appreciated as “valuable” insights on the region from Alexander Schallenberg, Austria’s federal chancellor and foreign minister; “discussed advancing bilateral cooperation in trade, connectivity, and mobility” with Emil Hurezeanu, foreign minister of Romania, and “discussed the complex challenges of European security” with Lars Lokke Rasmussen, foreign minister of Denmark. Jaishankar also met German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Friday and discussed bilateral cooperation and developments on Ukraine.
The meetings took place ahead of an emergency meeting of European leaders called by French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the US-Russia détente and a potential peace summit between the Presidents of the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia. Europe feels it has been shortchanged by US President Donald Trump for working on a peace deal with Russia without taking the continent on board.
Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Summit with Trump backed the peace plan with Russia and reiterated that India has always stood for peace.
Speaking at a panel in Munich with Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, US senator Elissa Slotkin, and Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, Jaishankar challenged the Western perception of democracy as an exclusive Western characteristic.”There was a time, and I would have to say this in all honesty, when the West treated democracy as a Western characteristic and was busy encouraging non-democratic forces in the Global South, and it still does. I mean in many cases, I can point to some very recent ones where everything that you say you value at home, you don’t practice abroad. So, I do think the rest of the Global South will view the successes, shortcomings and the responses of other countries,” he emphasised.Referring to the democratic aspirations of the Global South, Jaishankar noted that while every large country is unique, India consciously adopted a democratic model post-independence due to its deep-rooted pluralism and consultative traditions. “I do think that in our progress as a democracy, the fact that for all the challenges that we have had, even at a low income, we have stayed true to the democratic model. When you look at our part of the world, we are pretty much the only country that has done that,” he said.
“To self-appointed custodians who have never fought an election, who have nothing to do with democracy is actually telling the rest of the world what is right and what is wrong in a democracy. I think it is, to me, inevitable that it will be challenged,” he said.
Jaishankar pointed out the double standards in global diplomacy, highlighting how Western nations frequently engage with political outliers in other societies. “Every country has its own mainstream politics and outliers. If I were to look, for example, like how much Europeans and Westerners reach out to outliers in those societies? If I were to look at what Western Ambassadors do in India, if my Ambassadors did a fraction of that, you would all be up in arms. I think there are double standards here,” he added.
