The World Cup of diplomacy

India, Indonesia and the United States will chair three key multilateral groupings in 2023. Which of them will make the biggest global impact?

- Kishore Mahbubani

The race is on!

Soccer's World Cup in 2022 is over. The final game could not have been more exciting. Next year, be prepared for another competition, albeit an unusual one, but possibly more exciting and with far greater ramifications globally the World Cup of diplomacy.

Unusual because three key countries India, Indonesia and the United States will be taking over the chairmanships of three significant multilateral groupings - the Group of 20 (G-20), Asean and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) respectively. In 2022, by an unusual coincidence, all the summits for the three major groupings were held in South-east Asia (in Bali, Phnom Penh and Bangkok).

The big diplomatic question for the world is which of the summits of the three groupings in 2023 will be the most successful.

In 2022, there was no question that Indonesia won the race with its hosting of the G-20 meetings in Bali in November.

At the Bali meeting, Indonesia delivered two outcomes that improved the geopolitical chemistry of the world: the meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, which muted talk of a war over the Taiwan Strait, and the encounter between Mr Xi and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which calmed relations between the two Asian giants.

Can India, Indonesia and the US do better in 2023?

INDIA: G-20 CHAIR IN 2023

India has announced an expansive G-20 agenda that homes in on some of the most pressing challenges facing a world convulsed by the effects of climate change and economic setbacks, the effects of which have driven hundreds of millions into extreme poverty. To focus minds, Mr Modi, in his op-ed published in The Straits Times on Dec 1, crystallised what is at stake into a starkly simple and unifying theme: One Earth, One Family, One Future.