“He has a very large mercenary force that has been operating everywhere from Syria to the Central African Republic [and] he has a very large stable of hackers and those who deal with disinformation, cyber warfare both in and outside of the government,” she said.

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Nation states need to pay greater attention to these “asymmetric power centres” which operate with the approval or “even in full cooperation” with state actors like the Kremlin, Clinton said.

On a broader level, countries must start paying greater attention to the rise of cryptocurrencies, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said.

Putin’s propensity to use non-state actors and unconventional methods to advance his goals represented part of the new world order, Clinton suggested.

“We can’t just think about nation states,” she said. “Putin is a great example of that, because with his oligarchic coterie, he has utilised many non-state actors to pursue personal as well as nationalistic goals.”

The US-China rivalry, an omnipresent theme in the three-day forum, was also discussed during the panel session. Blair, among the speakers who was physically present in Singapore, said he believed the West was still calibrating its relationship with the newly assertive China.

The new state of affairs would ideally be one of “maximum engagement but with superior strength”, he said. “In other words, people will understand that you have to engage with China, whether it’s on climate or pandemic, or the stability of the global economy,” he said.

At the same time, Blair said there has to be recognition that China had taken a “different path” in the last few years and had become “internally repressive, more externally aggressive”.

Xi-Biden summit not enough to ease Southeast Asian concerns

Jaishankar, the top Indian diplomat, said the emerging world order should not be cast as a bipolar system dominated by the US and China, as a new multipolar order has led to countries increasingly hedging diplomatic ties and pursuing autonomous partnerships that are “issue based”.

Asked by the moderator, political scientist Ian Bremmer, about ties with China and whether Beijing was aware of “how badly” they had recently “mishandled” relations with New Delhi, Jaishankar said he disagreed with the premise of the question.

“I’ve been meeting my counterpart Wang Yi a number of times … I speak fairly clearly, reasonably understandably, there is no lack of clarity,” said Jaishankar, who formerly was the top civil servant in the foreign ministry. “So if they want to hear it, I am sure they would have heard it.”

“Some of it is about China because they are our neighbour and we are going through a particularly bad patch in our relationship because of they have taken a set of actions in violation of our agreements for which they still don’t have a credible explanation,” he said. “That appears to indicate some rethink about where they want to take our relationship, but that’s for them to answer.”