Countries like India, China and Brazil are gaining influence at the global level due to their economic strength and not because of their armies, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.
"We recognise that countries such as China, India and Brazil are gaining influence less because of the size of their armies than because of the growth of their economies," Clinton wrote in an oped in 'New Statesman' published yesterday.
"And we have learned that our national security today depends on decisions made not just in diplomatic negotiations and on the battlefield, but also in the financial markets and on factory floors."
"So the US has made it a priority to harness more effectively the tools of global economics to advance our strategic aims abroad," she wrote.
"That might mean finding innovative financial levers to ratchet up pressure on Iran's nuclear programme, or forming new public-private partnerships that put corporate energy and expertise to work on such challenges as climate change and food security."
"We are also focused on boosting our economy at home through a greater emphasis on economic statecraft and what I call jobs diplomacy," she said.
Clinton said new regional and global centres of influence are quickly emerging, and not just India and China but also countries such as Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa, as well as Russia.
Some of these are democracies that share many of our core values; others have very different political systems and perspectives, she wrote.
