WASHINGTON—In his headline-making Davos speech in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed to a “rupture in the world order,” calling upon middle powers to band together and create a new multilateral system that would ensure their security and prosperity.
The rupture that Carney spoke of is real. But middle-power multilateralism remains an aspiration rather than an achievable reality.
Today, amid so much global tumult, middle powers find themselves caught between hegemons that they increasingly view as untrustworthy and unreliable. They have also realized that they are participating in a global system that no longer prioritizes the values-based foreign policy that many middle powers have espoused for years. Yet as global challenges mount, these middle powers will almost certainly continue to partner both with the United States and China, two hegemonic powers seen as unreliable. Thus, they will be unable to reconstruct the conditions that made values-based multilateralism viable.
Washington went its own way
In large part, Carney’s speech was a response to Canada’s neighbor to the south. Since the start of his second term, US President Donald Trump has discussed withdrawing from NATO, threatened tariffs on long-standing allies, and mused about the annexation of Canada and Greenland. These actions have shattered any illusions that the rules- and values-based international order would continue in its current form. Additionally, Trump slashed foreign aid funding and withdrew from dozens of international organizations and United Nations (UN) agencies, as Washington set about redefining the US role abroad and in the world’s security architecture.
Many middle-sized states look unfavorably on these shifts by the administration because, for the past eighty years, the US-led rules-based international order has benefited them. It has allowed middle powers to translate their economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities into greater influence than each would have alone.
Many of these smaller states saw active participation in international institutions like the UN as the most effective way to achieve their foreign policy objectives. Washington’s commitment to international organizations, based on the perception that these organizations help the United States gain legitimacy and support for its priorities, enabled this.
But now, the US withdrawal from many of these international organizations has weakened their credibility and effectiveness, raising questions about how viable these bodies will be in future multilateral efforts.
Additionally, over the past eight decades, Washington largely stood by as a permissive hegemon, allowing middle powers to pursue their own foreign policy moves even when they went against the interests of the United States. For example, when the International Criminal Court was created, the United States refused to ratify the Rome Statute but did not overly deter other states from doing so. Even in Trump’s first term, the United States was willing to act as a permissive hegemon. After Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, other countries launched the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership with little contestation from the United States.
But during Trump’s second term, the United States has increasingly used economic coercion and political pressure in response to decisions abroad that the White House disagrees with. For example, the Trump administration is imposing sanctions against International Criminal Court officials, and it has threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on goods imported from Canada if Ottawa moves ahead with a trade deal with China.
In the rules-based international order, many middle powers also benefited from alliances with the United States. But now, the shared threat perception that bound these alliances has diminished. Under Trump, the United States has shifted to closer, more transactional ties with adversaries such as Russia and China, and it has come to see allies more as potential liabilities. This marks a change from the past, when middle powers supported and participated in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they suffered substantial personnel losses. Without a shared threat assessment, middle powers can no longer be certain that the United States will act in ways consistent with their interests.
Middle powers against themselves
Currently, middle powers lack clear plans to adapt to the loss of the structures that enabled their influence.
Beyond that, some of the newer middle powers are authoritarian, and they have joined the world stage looking to erode global norms and promote anti-democratic ideals. A growing number appear to be skeptical of advancing the values-led multilateralism that defined previous decades of middle power collaboration.
To be sure, in the post-Cold War era, the middle powers’ values were not perfectly aligned. But the United States was a forcing function, bringing middle powers together to cooperate within powerful economic and security architectures. Without Washington serving as a coordinating force, long-term coalition building among middle powers will be difficult. Some middle powers may try to advance coalitions on topics deemed to be in their national interest, such as regional security or trade, but the sweeping value-based multilateral regimes of decades past are unlikely to be replicated moving forward.
Even among like-minded states, there is divergence in how to approach the “rupture” in the world order. Where Carney called for like-minded and similarly sized states to work together to counter the coercion of hegemons such as the United States, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that he is a pragmatist on the issue, and that his government can take a “common sense” approach to balancing relations with Washington, Beijing, and Brussels. In pursuit of this goal, Starmer traveled to China and approved plans for a Chinese mega-embassy in London. At the same time, he has sought to maintain active ties with Washington and continued to pursue closer ties with Brussels.
For proof of middle powers’ inability to chart their own path and sever their relationships with Washington, look to the Iran war. After the first US and Israeli strikes, Carney initially issued a statement supporting the strikes, but days later, he walked it back, saying that his support came with “some regret.” He also then called the conflict a “failure of the international order.” Carney’s initial statement was a striking admission for Canada, which had months before espoused one of the clearest visions for a middle power-led order.
Other states have also struggled to find their footing. The United Kingdom initially declined to support the war, banning the United States from using British military bases to strike Iran, but it later reversed its position. Still, the United Kingdom and other NATO allies have refused to get drawn into the war. The United Kingdom and France are now leading the charge for a defensive mission in the Strait of Hormuz, but such an effort would only begin once fighting in the area ends. Nevertheless, the effort seems designed to appease Trump’s calls for NATO to help.
Gulf states, too, offer an example of the difficulties middle powers face. Many spent years trying to cultivate closer ties with Iran, only to find themselves now under attack and confronted with their reliance on the United States for security. For these states, Iran’s attacks have raised questions about the effectiveness of their strategy for engagement with Washington. Some have sought to develop closer ties, only to find that these ties were not enough to earn them early warning about the war. Yet, after the war, Gulf states are likely to continue their relationship with the United States, still joined with Washington in key security and financial partnerships, but with additional questions about the United States’ reliability as a partner.
Many middle powers see Washington as an essential partner—but also an unpredictable one. For these states, tensions will develop between their desire to build an alternative world order and the reality of needing to act in their self-interest, which can require continuing to partner with Washington.
China is not the answer
At the same time, China has begun positioning itself as a seemingly stable actor in the world order, including through expanding its role in many UN agencies. It has done this even while accelerating its cooperation in the Axis of Autocracies, a loose grouping of China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia. This group has sought to undermine the US-led security architecture through a full-scale war in Europe, conflict in the Middle East, and continued aggression in Asia.
Despite attempts by China to present itself as an increasingly stable and reliable alternative to a disruptive United States, Beijing is not the answer to back-stop a middle-power order. And countries seeking to build this new world order know they will not find a helpful partner in China, as Beijing has routinely used economic leverage as a coercive tactic. For example, after the United States deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antiballistic missile system to South Korea, China limited South Korean entertainment available in China, banned the sale of some South Korean products, and ordered travel companies not to sell tour packages to South Korea. And when Canada arrested Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States, China responded by arresting two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in an act of hostage diplomacy that tanked relations between Beijing and Ottawa. Indeed, these are the very actions of a predatory hegemon that Carney warned against at Davos.
It is also not clear whether China is even willing to take on a partnership role for middle powers in building a broad security architecture and alliance-based system. Carney, Starmer, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have each made trips to China this year, eager to explore new partnerships and reduce dependence on Washington, but these trips amounted to little in terms of concrete action.
Additionally, attempts by Beijing to build different multilateral structures tailored to its own interests, such as the BRICS group of countries or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), have largely failed to gain traction. The BRICS remains an incongruent grouping, and the AIIB has been dragged down by charges of shoddy governance, leaving these bodies more as transactionally oriented groupings of states rather than viable, multilateral alternatives.
Recognizing this, middle powers are unlikely to partner with China any more than what is necessary. Instead, they will see Beijing as a necessary counterweight to the still required relationships with Washington, rather than a core partner in building a new multilateral order.
Thus, instead of setting about assembling the building blocks of a new world order, middle powers will need to continue the harder and less glamorous work of securing the best available position within an increasingly hostile system. Yet, that won’t stop leaders from invoking the middle-power moment in their political rhetoric, since opposing the United States can help boost domestic support, even when governments cannot truly break away from Washington.
