Oct 26, 2026 13:23 pm IST

Opinion | Middle Power Myths, And Why The West Needs To Stop Putting India In A 'Box'

India is not a "middle power" waiting to find its place in a Trump-disrupted world; it is a rising power that refuses to be squeezed into someone else's geopolitical hierarchy

Kanwal Sibal Kanwal Sibal Columnist

Kanwal Sibal Columnist

Canada has faced insults and contempt from US President Donald Trump as well as economic pressure. This has goaded Prime Minister Mark Carney to widen his country's geopolitical and economic options. At the Davis Economic Forum, he spoke of “middle powers” joining together to carve out a more autonomous role for themselves at the international level.

This has triggered discussions on many platforms on the international role of “middle powers” in the light of huge geopolitical, economic, technology and security disruptions caused by the Trump administration.

There is no agreed definition of the attributes of “middle powers”. It would seem that major European countries, such as the UK, Germany and France, are now seen as “middle powers”. Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a panel discussion at the recent Munich Security Conference in Delhi on “middle powers” was comfortable with the idea of the UK being a “middle power”. Japan, Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia are also classified as such in the current discourse.

The genesis of this “middle powers” concept is essentially the disarray in the western world because of the manner in which the Trump administration is bullying Europe and its other allies. Trump has discomposed the NATO........

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