The world is fragmenting, and middle powers are converging. But convergence is not structure, and cooperation does not inevitably lead to coalition.

In January of this year, Mark Carney told the middle powers gathered in Davos, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. The line resonated because it named an actual fear in European capitals and across the Global South alike: being subject to increasing grand power pressure. The proposed cure was so-called middle-power coalitions.

The think-tank world—mostly in the US and Europe—argued similarly: From “swing states” to a “fourth wave of middle-power activism”, concepts for a self-organising middle are in abundant supply, and India appears on every list. That the country is a middle power at all is a contestable label, and Delhi would contest it. I, however, use the term here as shorthand and very much not as a verdict. The mood is unmistakable: exposed middle powers must merge into something like a counterweight to the grand powers. That, at least, is the hope of the moment—and there are many takers for it in Europe. It is seductive but equally wrong. However, not in the way its harshest critics believe.