Rishi Sunak & S. Jaishankar

Rishi Sunak: You know, I think, look, we're in this world, it's obviously, you know, multipolar. We've seen breakdown of some things that we took for granted. As a result, people are trying to diversify their relationships.

In one way, that one sense the world is, you know, converging on Jay's foreign policy of strategic autonomy, which some of us are waking up to in a way that, you know, he's been talking about and India's been practicing for many years.

Now, having said that, you know, I'm, I'm less confident or persuaded that what we will have is one overarching middle power architectural institution, and I think what is more likely is that you get a set of overlapping mini-lateralism, right? Where are there going to be groups of countries that come together, middle powers, maybe every so often with, with some of the bigger ones, on a particular cause or overlapping set of interests. And I think part of the reason for that is if you just look at this stage, right, we're on here on a middle powers panel, we've got actually an enormous diversity, right? We've got one country that shares a very large land border with the United States.

We've got two middle powers over here, both of whom have a deep and abiding security relationship with the United States, which is always going to be the foundation of everything else that Australia and the UK do, even as they look to, to hedge and diversify a bit. And even between us, one's a Pacific power, one's a European power.

And then in India, and we're talking about middle powers panel, I think, I mean, I'm sure Jay would say this, that's probably not the right description for India, right? I don't know what you've described it, Jay, as.

S. Jaishankar: I'm a host, so I'm here for courtesy purposes.

Rishi Sunak: Whether it's, upper, upper middle or emerging leading and, and which obviously has a very different perspective.

Erik Schatzker: Dr. Jaishankar, Rishi made a very good point. India does not like to be called or described as a middle power. Why is that?

S. Jaishankar: Okay. Let me, before I come to that, you know, I would say more than middle power, in a way, we are powers in the middle.

I mean, It's, it's partly what we are today, confronting when we look at the global landscape. So what, what really would define a middle power? I think, countries who have the ability to, to use the Prime Minister's words, who have the power to empower.

I'm using it more in an international relations S. Jaishankar: sense, who have the ability to make a difference. So let's use a very loose terminology for middle power. Would India be a middle power?

You know, it's, it's, it's not a comfortable description, because if you are the most populous country in the world, you have a GDP of four trillion, give or take, yeah, and you have a lot of growth ahead of you, staring you in the face, then a middle power somehow seems to be limiting yourself by that definition. But that's not what I would really quibble about.

I think the issue, and, and in a way, what Prime Minister Carney did at Davos was he was expressing the predicament of really countries who are part of an alliance