Washington is no longer viewed by its allies as a champion of collective security, free trade, and the rule of law. At the same time, China’s economic power and political influence continue to grow, intensifying the distrust of many governments that are increasingly dependent on constructive relations with Beijing. In this environment of US and China’s dominance of the international system, and with Russia committed to upending the current global order, “the middle powers must act together,” warned Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney in January, “because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”.
Can “middle powers” bolster existing multinational institutions like the United Nations? Can they partner where their interests align to safeguard their common interests? There are plenty of reasons for scepticism. But if they fail to assert themselves where they can, Washington and Beijing may ensure they suffer what they must.
On diplomacy, coalitions of willing middle powers like the EU, India, Japan, Brazil, Canada, and others could work together to boost financial and political support for institutions such as the UN, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and WTO. They can agree on common strategies to ensure the US abandonment doesn’t sink these organisations and China doesn’t come to dominate them. For now, it will be much easier to shore up existing institutions than to build new ones, particularly since Washington and Beijing can undermine anything that other powers try to construct. Yet, the UK and France are the only middle powers with Security Council seats, and the US, China, and Russia have considerable power to resist reform.
On security, the material military advantages the US and China still hold leave most middle powers dependent on a basic alignment with Washington on troop coordination, weapons development, and intelligence-sharing. But exceptions are emerging. Greater defence coordination within Europe is an ongoing response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, though this process will take considerable time, money, and political will. Rivalry with China, the poor quality of Russian defence products, and doubts about America’s long-term reliability as a partner have moved India’s government, which has sharply increased defence spending in recent years, toward more security trade with Europe. Greater defence cooperation between Europe and Canada reflects shared fears about America’s trajectory. Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey could develop their own nuclear deterrents.
In economics, it is easier for middle powers to hedge on trade, investment, standards-setting, and development finance than in the security sphere, because here the US and China are less dominant. This is an area where real progress is already visible. Recent EU trade agreements with India and the South American bloc Mercosur have already made history. Canada’s bid to broker a deal that would connect Asia-based (and the US abandoned) CPTPP trade group with the European Union would be extraordinarily complex but potentially profoundly beneficial across both continents. Brazil, with an abundance of the rare earth minerals that mineral-rich China has threatened to use as an economic weapon, has developed supply chains to multiple countries, most recently India, rather than exclusively to the US. Other middle powers blessed with critical minerals can do the same.
Finally, middle powers left vulnerable by the US, and Chinese willingness to weaponise their respective economic leverage can form collective economic security deals, agreements that commit willing members to coordinate responses to unilateral tariff pressures and/or violations of existing trade agreements or WTO rules in ways similar to the security guarantees offered to NATO members by the alliance’s Article Five. To accomplish this, however, each of these middle power governments must overcome considerable domestic resistance to the concessions needed to forge new trade agreements.
On technology, middle powers face an even more complex environment. On tech trade, the US-China tech rivalry allows middle powers to pivot between the two. But there are no multinational institutions making rules to bring predictability to tech innovation and use, and the overwhelming dominance of American and Chinese firms in cutting-edge technologies leaves middle powers without much bargaining leverage or a common development strategy on Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are no middle power tech champions asking their governments to establish the rule of law, privacy standards, or open governance. Companies in Europe, Canada, or India could collaborate to build their own champion and develop an open, powerful AI “stack” that all can use without cost. But that effort would be expensive and time-consuming in times of economic and geopolitical stress.
The broadest challenge for middle powers is that such a diverse group is hardly likely to have a common set of interests on any of these issues. To put it more bluntly, while non-US western leaders generally agree that the rules-based international order is worth protection and deeper investment, leaders in the Global South are quick to point out that western values aren’t universal. Any middle power strategy and architecture that treats non-western powers as rule-takers rather than partners in rulemaking is doomed to produce empty alliances and weak institutions without legitimacy. That means addressing the issues most urgent for Global South governments — development investment, debt management, climate finance, and technology access.
Despite these many challenges, middle powers know that opportunities to defend their interests from US and Chinese dominance won’t remain open forever. If they fail to act, Washington and Beijing will lock in bilateral arrangements across the developing world — in infrastructure, digital systems, and security relationships. Once those deals are made and connections established, it will be much harder for other actors to check their dominance.
The obstacles to a common middle-power strategy in any of these areas remain formidable, but more and more governments now understand the need to assert themselves. Whether and how effective they will, remains an open question.
Ian Bremmer is the founder and board president of Eurasia Group Foundation. The views expressed are personal
