Economic Power
There are so many types of power that countries wield: military power, soft power and economic power. Having or using only military power is very expensive: after all, weapons cost money, positioning troops in another country costs money. Ask the Americans how much the Iraq war cost. Soft power includes the non-military ways of creating a favourable opinion about one’s country abroad. Like American universities and Bollywood. Economic power can work in many ways. It can be of the “I have this technology but won’t share it with you unless you do that” kind. Like the US did with super-computers decades back. Or it can be in the “Play by my rules or you won’t get access to our markets to sell your products”. Like what China does. And to a lesser extent, even India. Three recent instances of how India is wielding its economic power would not have been possible even a decade back. The first one is the ongoing discussion with Blackberry on getting access to its data for security (r...