Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Tuesday led a high-level national seminar in New Delhi, calling for India to integrate military, diplomatic, economic and technological instruments into a unified 'Smart Power' framework to navigate an increasingly fractured global order. The seminar, titled 'Security to Prosperity: Smart Power for Sustained National Growth,' brought together strategic thinkers to examine how India can convert national strength into geopolitical influence.

Key Developments at the Seminar

General Dwivedi opened by pointing to flashpoints reshaping global trade and security. 'Semiconductors and their selective availability have become tools of strategic leverage. The Strait of Hormuz has become a zone of active contestation,' he said. The remarks signal a sharpened awareness within the Indian Army of how economic instruments are being weaponised by rival powers.

He stressed that the boundary between security and prosperity has effectively dissolved, arguing that the vision of collective global progress has been overtaken by narrower national interests. In this environment, he said, India must urgently expand its 'Smart Power' — the capacity to deploy the right instrument at the right intensity toward the right strategic end.

Rethinking the DIME Framework

General Dwivedi called for the traditional DIME framework — covering Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic elements — to be supplemented with technology and a 'whole of nation' approach. He cited expert definitions of Smart Power as 'the strategic intelligence to know which instrument to deploy at what intensity and towards what end.'

'For India, it means using national strength with strategic wisdom to secure peace, accelerate growth and shape the global environment in our favour,' he said. This framing positions Smart Power not as a soft alternative to hard power, but as its intelligent orchestration alongside it.

Hard Power Returns to Centre Stage

The Army Chief offered a pointed assessment of the post-Cold War liberal order. He argued that the 21st century began with confidence that trade, supply chains and digital connectivity would make nations too interdependent for large-scale conflict — but that this assumption has been proven wrong.

'Paradoxically, the same forces that were expected to bind nations together have progressively become instruments of coercion,' he said. Contemporary conflicts, he noted, now impose sustained demands not just on armed forces but on industrial production, research systems and governance structures — a direct challenge to India's current state capacity.

Security as a Precondition for Prosperity

In one of his sharpest formulations of the day, General Dwivedi reframed the conventional relationship between security spending and economic growth. 'Security is no longer a cause that prosperity must bear. It is the precondition for prosperity to commence its progressive journey,' he said, describing the umbrella of hard power as the new normal in global affairs.

This comes amid India's ongoing efforts to modernise its defence industrial base, reduce import dependence and position itself as a net security provider in the Indo-Pacific. The seminar's conclusions are expected to feed into ongoing doctrinal and strategic planning within the Army.