President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on May 6, 2025, at the White House. Prime Minister Carney’s emphasis on coordinating the world’s middle powers could cause problems for the global network of US alliances. (The White House/Gabriel B. Kotico)

Why the US Needs to Work with the World’s Middle Powers

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The US alliance system, if it is to survive, must take into account the increasing coordination of the world’s middle powers.

The Trump administration’s recalibration of American foreign policy toward a more unilateral pursuit of more narrowly defined US national interests has prompted considerable introspection among US allies and partners from Europe to Asia to the Middle East. Some have publicly asserted that “middle powers” should band together; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been a leading spokesperson for this proposal. More significantly, many others are acting without advertising their motives. This could prove costly to the United States if it fails to take this dynamic seriously. And taking it seriously will be a long-term task.

What is most interesting about the so-called middle powers is that they aren’t in the middle at all. They are among the largest 20 or 30 economies, excluding the top two, the United States and China. Most of the remaining countries on this list are wealthy market democracies. A few are petrostates, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Others are major emerging markets, like Indonesia and Mexico.

Russia and India are special cases in that each considers itself a great power rather than a middle power. However, neither is, in economic or military terms, a peer of the United States or China. In fact, they share characteristics with both great powers and middle powers. Russia is uniquely isolated within this group due to its invasion of Ukraine. Both require separate discussion elsewhere.

What is special about middle powers? In brief, they have a lot to lose as targets or collateral damage of the great powers, on one hand, and have the most tools to do something about it, on the other. Canada’s prime minister has made each of these points, noting that “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu” and that middle powers have “the capacity…to build our strength at home and act together.”

Great powers and middle powers also differ in their attitudes toward rules. Great powers don’t need systems of rules, though rules can help to lock in their status by constraining others without constraining them to the same extent because they assert........

© The National Interest