US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Thursday politely pushed back on India’s contention that multilateralism is in crisis and the architecture of global governance has failed, pointing out that the G20 that India is hosting this year is in itself a case of multilateralism at work and if anyone is challenging it, it is Russia.

In his video message to the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in the morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “We must all acknowledge that multilateralism is in crisis today. The architecture of global governance, created after the Second World War, was to serve two functions. First, to prevent future wars by balancing competing interests. Second, to foster international cooperation on issues of common interests. The experience of the last few years… clearly shows that global governance has failed in both its mandates.’’

Asked for his response to these remarks of Modi, Blinken said: “Of course, Prime Minister Modi is right that there are real challenges to the multilateral system and those challenges… are coming directly from Russia which has been violating the very principles that lie at the very heart of that.

“That is a challenge and we see that playing out at the United Nations Security Council where we have two countries in particular that tend to block the attempted actions of the council to address most urgent global concerns. On the other hand, what we have seen speaking very powerfully and eloquently is the multilateral system in a variety of ways. Three quarters of it came together at the United Nations General Assembly to condemn Russia’s war of aggression and to insist on a just and durable peace. That’s the multilateral system.’’

He was referring to the UNGA resolution last week on Russia. He did not bring up the fact that India abstained from the vote though several Western countries had reached out to New Delhi to reconsider its stated position on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Blinken further said that multilateralism was at work at the G20 meeting on Thursday too. “We see it today here at the G20 thanks to India’s leadership. Even as we are focused on making sure that Russia can’t succeed in its aggression against Ukraine, we are equally focused on engaging and solving problems that affect people around the world….

“We are doing that through the G20, we are doing that through other multilateral organisations including the G7 and other organisations within the UN system…. Of course, there are real challenges — the Prime Minister is right — but I think we have demonstrated including here today in Delhi that we can find workarounds. And those workarounds, when we have an outlier, can be found in the outcome document …”