India must prepare for the age of techno diplomacy

The contemporary international system increasingly reflects a paradox: deep economic interdependence coexisting with profound strategic distrust. Globalisation has integrated markets and supply chains over the past three decades, yet recent developments suggest that integration has not produced political convergence. Instead, economic links are increasingly being deployed as instruments of pressure and leverage. We are living in an era of ‘weaponised interdependence’. Networks originally designed to facilitate global commerce, financial messaging systems, digital infrastructure and logistics chains now enable States that control key nodes in those networks to exert pressure on others. The erosion of trust among major powers further complicates…