When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited India as a country offering ‘tremendous support’ to Israel on a global news platform in July 2026, New Delhi was not consulted. Instead, India had found itself publicly compelled into a narrative it had strategically avoided. A state that has simultaneously abstained on United Nations Gaza ceasefire votes, maintained defence ties with Israel, preserved its partnership with Iran, and championed Palestinian statehood at multilateral forums – India has meticulously crafted its foreign policy over the years with pragmatism and strategic autonomy. The episode offers a glimpse into the fundamental shift in how middle and emerging major powers are navigating a fragmented international order.
Such incidents challenge the Western foreign policy discourse assumption that states either align or abstain – that meaningful international engagement requires bloc membership, alliance commitments and ideological consistency. This assumption is becoming obsolete in an increasingly multipolar world. A rising cohort of states such as India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are practicing what scholars have termed modular multilateralism.
First theorised by Seyom Brown as a prescriptive remedy for US foreign policy overstretch in a fragmented world, modular multilateralism proposed that the United States move away from rigid, bloc-based alliance commitments toward flexible, issue-specific coalitions assembled around discrete national interests. The concept has since evolved from a hegemon’s corrective into a rising and middle power strategy — adopted not out of institutional necessity, but as a deliberate architecture for maximising leverage in a multipolar world.
India’s multi-directional relationships are evident in the diversity of its arms suppliers, with the state procuring from France, Israel, United States and Russia. Although New Delhi is gradually reducing its dependence on Moscow for defence supplies, India continues to import energy from Russia, openly defying Western pressure of sanctions. India’s energy imports served domestic economic priorities while signalling that its foreign policy calculus would not be dictated by Western pressure. Despite border tensions over the decades, India maintains a practical cooperation with China, particularly in trade – with the latter being India’s second highest trading partner in the financial year 2024-25. Beyond defence and economics, India practises institutional hedging — engaging the QUAD to counterbalance China in the Indo-Pacific while simultaneously shaping the BRICS agenda alongside the same competing powers, indicative of modular multilateralism in practice.
India’s approach is not isolated. Turkey’s story is similar as it engages in hedging by supplying arms to Ukraine and maintains economic relations with Russia. Ankara also positions itself as an indispensable mediator between Kyiv and Moscow whilst preserving its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policy. On the multilateral front, despite stalled negotiations over its membership into the bloc, Turkey maintains a deep and pragmatic partnership with the EU driven by mutual economic and security priorities. At the same time, Ankara has openly expressed interest in upgrading their dialogue partner status to a permanent membership in the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation). Such multi-institutional strategies reinforce Turkey’s rising geopolitical influence across Europe and Asia.
The UAE is a traditional US security partner whilst enjoying the status of China’s largest gulf trading partner and active participation in the BRI (Belt & Road Initiative). The UAE’s normalised relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords in 2020 despite regional tensions and active membership of the Arab League are a testament to their pragmatic and multidimensional approach to foreign policy. The gulf state also became the primary destination for Russian capital following the imposition of sanctions by the West on Moscow. The UAE only filled a void that was left by the Western states and did so without breaking any ties with the West. Its strategic diversification across trade, security and diplomacy reflects the UAE’s inclination towards modular multilateralism.
Both Turkey and the UAE were subject to regional pressures to pick sides or alliances, but chose to absorb the costs of not doing so rather than surrendering autonomy. Such developments mark a structural shift in a multipolar world in which non-commitment towards any single great power becomes leverage rather than liability. This is evident in India positioning itself as a leading champion of the Global South, Turkey being a highly transactional mediator in regional conflicts and the UAE becoming a neutral financial hub in a multipolar network. Contrary to popular assumption, modular multilateralism seems to be more feasible in a multipolar world where existing institutions are gridlocked.
Modular multilateralism is not a transitional posture. It is an emerging foreign policy doctrine suited to a world where fixed alliances generate costs that flexible engagement avoids. India, Turkey and the UAE demonstrate that strategic autonomy, actively deployed through issue-based coalitions, generates leverage precisely because it denies great powers the certainty of alignment. As multipolarity deepens and existing multilateral institutions remain paralysed by great power competition, this model will likely attract more adherents. When a head of government publicly names another state as an ally and that state responds with deliberate silence, the architecture is not failing — it is functioning exactly as intended.