Identifying levers for global power

Trump’s clash with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office earlier this year distilled the grammar of power into one brutal reminder. “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having the cards.” In geopolitics, influence is exercised not through rhetoric but through the “cards” a state holds, i.e., choke-points and levers that others cannot easily substitute. If Ukraine lacked such cards, China has shown how to wield them.

In 2025, Beijing suspended exports of rare earths and magnets, paralysing supply chains for auto-makers, aerospace manufacturers, and even US defence contractors. Markets only steadied after a Geneva framework restored shipments. This was no accident: since the 1990s, China has consolidated over 70 per cent of global rare earth mining and nearly 90 per cent of processing capacity, making it the bottleneck supplier of critical inputs for EVs, wind turbines, and missiles. That is what it means to “have the cards.”

Great powers endure not by being omnipotent but by cultivating non-substitutable levers of asymmetric interdependence. History is full of examples. Britain’s 19th-century dominance rested as much on coal bunkering stations and maritime insurance markets as on the Royal Navy. OPEC’s 1973 embargo quadrupled oil prices and reshaped Western policy. Japan’s post-war ascent was built on machine tools and robotics, industries where tacit knowledge made substitution prohibitively slow.

Seven families

These leverages can be grouped into seven families: resources and materials (minerals, fuels, food); precision manufacturing (machine tools, lithography, robotics); energy systems (pipelines, LNG, renewables); logistics and geography (ports, shipping lanes, undersea cables); finance and payments (reserve currencies, clearing systems, sanctions); digital and standards power (identity systems, payment rails, IP); and security and institutional power (defence exports, diaspora, norms). No state needs all of them, but without some, it risks strategic irrelevance.

Where does India stand? In resources, it holds substantial rare earth reserves but contributes under 1 per cent of global output; the ₹34,000-crore National Critical Minerals Mission and IREL’s partnerships with Japan and South Korea are steps towards closing this gap. In precision manufacturing, India is the 4th largest automobile producer and 6th in chemicals, but lags badly in high-end machine tools, sensors, and semiconductor equipment. In energy, it imports over 85 per cent of its crude oil, yet leads in renewable capacity auctions and has launched pilots in green hydrogen.

Geography is underused: the Andaman-Nicobar choke-point and 7,500-km coastline could be transformed into a logistics hub with secured ports and undersea cables. Finance is weak: the rupee accounts for less than 2 per cent of global forex turnover, but India is exporting UPI and RuPay corridors into Asia and Africa. In digital standards, India is a frontrunner: its Digital Public Infrastructure has been adopted in 20+ countries, offering a “third way” between US big tech and Chinese state-tech. In security, defence exports have seen a upswing, spanning drones, missiles, and patrol vessels, but import dependence in engines and sensors remains high. Narrative leverage is underexploited.

The roadmap must be disciplined. It should be divided into three tiers. Tier I should be immediate levers (0-3 years): Scale DPI exports, consolidate pharmaceuticals and vaccines into regional stockpiles and API security regimes. Also encourage more innovation in pharma. Institutionalise the Indian Ocean as a reliability corridor, with Andaman-Nicobar developed into a logistics and MRO hub for shipping, aviation, and cables. These cards can be embedded quickly.

Tier II should be medium-difficulty, high-payoff levers (3-10 years). Operationalise rare earth processing and magnet plants with Japanese and Korean partners, aiming to capture 10 per cent of global market share in the medium-term. Also, escalate efforts to get access to mines outside India.

Build a precision manufacturing stack (machine tools, metrology, power semiconductors, robotics) using procurement to pull demand and offsets to push technology transfer. Expand defence MRO-plus exports: tie drone and patrol boat sales to long-term service contracts, making regional militaries reliant on Indian spare chains.

Tier III should be long-term bets (10-20 years) Focus on niches where India can become indispensable. In semiconductors, dominate design, OSAT, packaging, and specialty materials (CMP slurries, gases, photoresists), backed by national testing and certification labs. In aerospace, master hot-section repairs and additive manufacturing for spares as stepping stones toward engine autonomy. The deal with SAFRAN should be leveraged to do this. In finance, embed the rupee in South-South trade corridors through UPI-linked settlement and sovereign trade credit insurance.

Above all, India must confront the innovation question. Leverage does not flow naturally from markets; it must be engineered through R&D, technology transfer, and reverse engineering. China’s ascent rested on a strategy of “beg, borrow, steal”: forcing Western players into joint ventures, reverse-engineering German magnets, and absorbing Western designs before scaling indigenous R&D. Prussia in the 19th century did the same with British machine tools, building an armaments base through copying and adaptation. India must do both: fund mission-oriented R&D, while also aggressively extracting technology via offsets, licensing, and reverse engineering.

Innovation at home is too slow; borrowing alone is too shallow. Both must proceed in parallel.

The typology outlined here is only indicative; the precise selection of levers must be a matter of state strategy. What is essential is that government systematically identify the domains where India can realistically build indispensability and then pursue them with a mission-oriented approach. In technology in particular, a few critical levers must be chosen and advanced with concentrated resources and institutional resolve, going all guns blazing until they become unassailable.

The author writes on macroeconomic and geopolitical issues. Views are personal

Leverage does not flow naturally from markets; it must be engineered through R&D, technology transfer, and reverse engineering

Published on September 3, 2025