India’s Leverage Assessment Framework

Foreign Policy & Geopolitics
Published

July 6, 2026

Foreign Policy, Defence & Geopolitics strategy leverage

If leverage were purely a function of aggregate national power, Sri Lanka would have zero leverage over India. Yet both Sri Lanka and the Maldives routinely extract concessions from New Delhi.

Origin

Developed by Pranay Kotasthane in Anticipating the Unintended #348 (June 2026), drawing on David Baldwin’s relational theory of economic statecraft, the Keohane-Nye model of complex interdependence, and empirical analysis of contemporary supply-chain weaponisation.

What it says

Leverage is not about who is bigger. It is a product of three factors: the density of interrelationships between two states, the asymmetry of vulnerability in specific domains, and the willingness to endure short-term costs to establish long-term red lines.

Seven factors determine whether a leverage action will succeed:

  1. Asymmetry of vulnerability — who suffers more in the specific domain?
  2. Political salience in the target state — does it generate domestic political pain?
  3. Target state’s substitutability — can India find alternatives if the target retaliates?
  4. Acting state’s substitutability — can the target replace what India provides?
  5. Reversibility — can India walk it back without permanent self-damage?
  6. Credibility impact — does it hurt India’s reputation with third parties?
  7. Signal clarity — does the action unambiguously communicate a red line?

The first two factors are the most important. They generate a 2×2 matrix: high/low asymmetry of vulnerability crossed with high/low political salience in the target state. Actions in the high-high quadrant have the best chance of success.

Applied

  • When deciding whether India should push back against trade coercion from a larger power.
  • When evaluating specific retaliatory options (arms procurement, pharma patents, regulatory leverage) against the seven criteria.
  • When designing a graduated escalation ladder rather than a binary retaliate-or-acquiesce choice.

When it falls short

The framework is analytically clean but politically hard. Deploying leverage requires institutional coordination across defence, trade, and diplomatic establishments that India’s bureaucratic silos make difficult. It also assumes rational cost-benefit calculation; some leverage actions trigger emotional or nationalistic counter-reactions that defy the matrix.

Further reading