Abstract: A nation’s strength to thwart diverse threats to its interests and adequately address the varied transformational geo-political challenges in today’s highly troubled world rests primarily on its Comprehensive National Power (CNP). The various parameters which contribute to CNP should be robust, sustainable and ever improving. Some of the constituents of CNP are a nation’s economic power, military capabilities, industrial and technological prowess, infrastructural architecture, its population and the resultant demographic dividends, educational and medical reach, societal harmony within and, more importantly, the respect its diplomacy enjoys in the comity of nations. The CNP gets enhanced from a judicious amalgam of hard and soft power leading to augmentation in its smart power. Diplomacy to further a nation’s goals is, unquestionably, a critical dynamic and, if supplemented with defence/military diplomacy, will prove vastly beneficial for a nation. Full text available here.
