The Age of Smart Power

IT’S NOT A good thing that the world is in crisis. But just as intelligent individuals never fail to embrace the situation, the intelligent nation cannot fail to see its opportunity in a global crisis. When anarchy is the order of the day, there must be a market for a vendor of order, albeit a different kind of order than what has prevailed to date and a better, kinder one than what some others might want to dump on the planet. Politician and public intellectual Ram Madhav’s new book, The New World: 21st-Century Global Order and India, is premised on the fact that the world order is changing. But what good can such change bring India?

To begin with, we must dispense with the post-war liberal world order, one centred on the United Nations, which survived the Cold War and was preserved by American power. American decline is a fact although it doesn’t mean the US ceases to be the strongest and biggest. Not yet. The obvious alternative, a world according to the People’s Republic of China, isn’t home yet. But sooner or later Beijing is likely to overtake and overpower Washington. The Chinese have successfully used a combination of hard and soft power, very unlike the brute force of the erstwhile Soviet Union, but nevertheless what Madhav calls a “carrot-and-stick approach” that “will inevitably trigger a major global fault line.” This is smart power, with largely Chinese ingredients. Not everyone likes it. And that opens a window for India.

The book is replete with descriptions and prescriptions in its sweep of global geopolitical history and visions of the future, but it will suffice here to note some essentials, such as the need to understand the present moment for what it is: for instance, when we began celebrating the emergent post-Cold War multipolarity, we actually “walked into a ‘heteropolar reality’ where non-state players from big tech giants to global NGOS to religious organizations to terror outfits, had come to challenge national sovereignty.” While no war on terror has successfully concluded, technology as a whole and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular have led us into the era of hybrid humans. Without appropriate intervention, this could spell the end of humanity. On the other hand, its vast demographic pool of talent notwithstanding, India lags far behind the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovation and is not a player in the ecosystem of AI genomics, semiconductors or quantum computing. The government is redressing these lacunae but an overhaul will need a robust scientific culture and institutional strength.

When it comes to strategic management of the changing world order against the backdrop of declining multilateralism, India needs to make a choice: it might be far more rewarding to build regional multilateralism in the neighbourhood than hanker after a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. But the eye should be on the maritime domain and not fixated on the continental landmass of Asia. Accept that the age of soft power is over. This is the age of smart power, which alone can build a national brand. India is a budding “ dharmocracy”, that is, democracy with distinctly Indian characteristics which, nevertheless, the world can partake of. Two things are indispensable for the success of Brand Bharat: one, it must have self-confidence even as it changes the nomenclature of its laws and its symbols of state and not let the West determine the terms of the new world order; two, it must not miss the opportunity offered by a world of churn.

Also by Ram Madhav
– The Hindutva Paradigm: Integral Humanism and Quest for a Non-Western Worldview
– Partitioned Freedom: Unravelling the Tale of India’s Independence

bookBrand BharatRam Madhavsmart powerThe New World: 21St-Century Global Order and Indiaworld