Crunch time for the middle powers
How would a global alliance to defend the principles of international order work in practice?
Hassan Damluji, February 2025
This is the second of a three-part series on the role middle powers must play to defend the principles of international order in a post-hegemonic age.
G20 leaders gathered in Brazil in 2024. But are forums now needed where middle powers can organize without the presence of the US, China and Russia?
(Source: Picture by Ricardo Stuckert/PR. Foto oficial da Aliança Global contra a Fome e a Pobreza, Rio de Janeiro.)
In the first part of this series, I explored three options that countries must choose from as we enter a “new age of empire”, and our rules based international order gives way to the ‘rogue’ giants of the US, China and Russia. The first option is to get behind a giant for protection, accepting disempowerment and economic disadvantage in the hope that it enables some level of self-preservation. The second is to build regional blocs that can each act as a rival giant, to counter the threat from the US, Russia and China. Yet even the strongest regional grouping – the European Union – would struggle to compete against the giants alone. The third, and best choice is a global alliance of middle powers that can act together to reestablish rules in the international system, bringing about a post-hegemonic global order that is fair and peaceful.
How could such an alliance be built?
At its core, a middle-power alliance would require a joint determination to raise the costs of rogue behaviour, by agreeing to hold ranks in condemning violations of the international principles listed above, and by working to take coordinated action to disincentivize it. The US, Russia and China are big enough to pick off countries one-by-one, but they will struggle to be simultaneously condemned and ostracized by all.
We have to be realistic about what coordinated action would look like, at least in the early days of such an approach. Malaysia cannot be expected to send troops to defend Greenland. But there would still be a meaningful difference between disinterested chuckles of Schadenfreude, and a consistent, loud voice of solidarity.
Today, European countries bemoan the lack of Global South solidarity with Ukraine, while much of the Global South is angry with Europe ignoring the war crimes carried out by Israel. A middle power alliance would require that countries who want to preserve an international order be less selective in their moralizing and more consistent in supporting each other.
Perfecting such an alliance will, if it succeeds at all, take decades. But even the first early steps, and the clear direction of travel, would raise the cost for rogue actors and send an important signal. The work should start now, in three areas.
The first area is diplomatic. This is essentially about building trust. And while pulling together a global coalition is painstakingly difficult, there are quick wins to be had. The UK is already back at the negotiating table with Europe. Both sides should realise that there is no safety in abandoning the other in a dash for favour with Donald Trump. Trump’s actions are manifestly attempting to prize the UK away from Europe. The same day that VP Vance was castigating Europe on stage at the Munich Security Conference, Trump was giving Keir Starmer a surprise phone call, to say how much he’d love to meet up. The UK must see this divide-and-conquer tactic for what it is: a trick. Instead, they should strengthen ties with the EU, starting with a united front against both Russia in Ukraine, and the US in Greenland.
Japan and Korea are another critical relationship that is ripe for strengthening. For too long, historical grievance and party politics have allowed these potential allies to be divided, while the threat of China grows on their doorstep. They should no longer rely on the US to midwife their diplomacy. Instead, there is an opportunity for bold leadership on both sides of the Korea Strait to focus on their mutual interests. The next step would be far more coordination between East Asia and Europe. Japan and Korea have long seen Ukraine as a test case for expansionism, which could later affect them. But the ties that link these East Asian middle powers with Europe remain flimsy. They have done relatively little to support Ukraine and might expect little from Europe in their hour of need. That must change.
A third source of quick wins could be Latin America—a region marked by strong cultural ties and a network of alliances that, while robust in some areas (such as the Pacific Alliance), remain weak for the overall region. Historical grievances over power imbalances in US-Latin America relations have often reignited regional unity, and recent events are once again bringing these tensions to the surface. While Argentina -led by a president who seems tailor-made for the US playbook- may currently align closely with Washington, other nations in the region can use this moment to foster greater integration and collective influence.
In the urgency of the hour – these countries are all in clear and present danger – a flurry of diplomacy could quickly bring groups of countries together within regions and also create common frameworks between them. Borrowing from the pandemic, the mantra could be: none of us are safe unless all of us are safe.
If necessary, where the violations of the giants are seen to have nullified their legitimacy as permanent members of the UN Security Council, a rival, Middle Power Security Council could be built, allowing the creation of a new corpus of international law to back up the diplomacy. Even better, the middle power alliance could assert that given the illegitimacy of the Security Council, its powers revert to the UN General Assembly, allowing every country a vote in matters of war and peace (although this more inclusive outcome is probably less realistic).
These actions alone would change the calculations of the giants. Just the signal they would send would instantly raise the perceived cost of violations and would thereby reduce their likelihood.
But diplomacy alone is not enough.
The second area of action should be military. Currently, the giants live up to that moniker on all dimensions, but none so more than in terms of pure might. The USA, China and Russia together contain 1.9 billion people, 23% of the world total, and their landmass covers 34 million square kilometers, 26% of the world total. Their economies, at a combined $47 trillion, represents 43% of global GDP. But their military spending, at $1.3 trillion per year, is an extraordinary 54% of world total.
For a middle power alliance to be a credible block on the giants’ aggression, they can no longer punch below their collective weight in hard power. They have the people, the funds and the geostrategic locations to more than match the giants (especially considering that the three hulks are more rivals than allies). But turning that potential into reality requires a generational repositioning.
Military budgets and manpower need to grow significantly, but that is not all. Almost every country currently has a critical reliance on either USA or Russia for their weapons supply, training and other forms of military cooperation. The USA above all, and to a lesser extent Russia and China, have military bases across the world, hosted by other countries, which enable their power. All that would need to be carefully unwound.
The lesson that militaries must learn is that reliance on a single giant for protection is unwise. Only a distributed network of bases, troops, arms manufacturers and centres of excellence premised on strict rules and strong accountability, would provide collective security without the ability of any single country to bully the others.
The gold standard for allied armies is full interoperability, whereby manpower and assets can be recombined, switched and blended between countries. The level of trust, information sharing, and joint training that this takes is daunting. It is of course not realistic that all middle powers would have interoperable defense capabilities in the foreseeable future. But this could be achieved more easily in some cases (e.g. between the UK and EU), while in other cases there could be a level of coordination, without necessarily the full benefits of interoperability.
All this would be painstaking to build – make no mistake – but the result would not just be one-off, effective deterrence. It would be a whole new paradigm for global security. The US has long been cast as the reluctant global policeman, an arrangement that never worked well and has now unraveled entirely. A middle power alliance with effective, modular, networked defense capabilities, with no single point of failure, would allow countries to stand up to security threats and with far less vulnerability. .
The third area of action is economic. Alliances that are purely defensive can be powerful, but they only go so far. For diplomacy and trust to take root, year after year, and for the necessary military spending to be affordable, the middle power alliance needs to be a mechanism for economic growth. Economic benefits from increased linkages between middle powers, cutting across hub-and-spoke relationships with the giants, would create visible prosperity that could make the alliance more popular with citizens. They would also increase the kind of interdependencies across borders that generate trust. And they would add economic cards to the military cards in the hands of the alliance, when it came to deterring bad actors.
What this means in practice is a far more ambitious agenda of free trade agreements, investment treaties, tax agreements and other integrating steps that can spur innovation and fair wealth creation, by combining the unique value advantages of different markets, whether they be natural resources, high-end technology, an effective labour force, or high-spending consumers.
While the military power of a middle power alliance would be concentrated in a relatively small number of more powerful countries, the economic benefits could be much wider, reaching all the way to low-income countries and fragile states. The legitimacy of a middle power alliance would precisely be in its inclusivity, and its rules-based fairness.
All of the above will take time to build, but what is promising about this direction of travel is that benefits will begin to accrue even from the first steps down this road. For the UK and the EU to draw closer and reduce their vulnerability to hostile actions by the US and Russia. For Japan and Korea to deepen their ties outside of American supervision. For Latin America to stand up with one voice against the neocolonialism of both the US and China. For countries worried about their critical dependence on the US and Russia to increase their military autonomy. For countries under the threat of tariffs to start trading with each other more. All these things will immediately send the right signals to three giants who are taking the world down an extraordinarily dangerous path.
Over the long term, a middle power alliance can do far more. It can take us from a twentieth century in which multilateralism was mostly a cover for US imperialism, into a twenty-first century where a better kind of multilateralism can thrive. In the next and final part of this series, I will look at how such an alliance can achieve the necessary broad base political and public support.
This is a three-part short essay series on the end of the US-led world order. You can read the first part here.
Stay tuned and subscribed for the last part…