Summer Print Edition: Happymon Jacob on South Asian Defense and Security Policy

What does it mean to depend on a world you cannot trust? In this episode of the Summer 2026 Print Edition series, Armaan Mathur (MALD'26) and Katherine Walsh (MALD'26) sit down with scholar, columnist, and author Dr. Happymon Jacob to excavate the fractures and possibilities of a global order in flux. From the death of normative globalization to the rise of minilateralism, Jacob argues that the old architecture of collective security and multilateral institutions was never as universal as it claimed, and that its unraveling may be less a tragedy than an opportunity for the Global South to finally claim its seat at the table. Drawing on India's quest to become a pole in international politics, he maps a world where trust is transactional, alignment is strategic, and values and interests are far less separable than once assumed. Provocative, pragmatic, and cautiously optimistic, this conversation challenges us to ask not how we restore the old order, but whether we should want to.