As the middle powers scramble to find ways to deal with the current turmoil in the international system, the growing hope for collective action does not match the reality. Central nations can jeopardize their relationship with major powers by increasing cooperation between them. The partnership, however, does not bring much influence to the international order dominated by the United States and China.
The current wave of interest in central government was initiated by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. In his speech, he called on the middle nations to unite against the oppression by the big nations. “Central powers like Canada are powerless,” Carney said. “They have the ability to build a new order that includes our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, freedom and territorial integrity.” But these ideas are not new. Canadian intellectuals were among the first in the post-World War II era to promote the idea of middle powers seeking agency in the international system, and Carney was falling back on that tradition. He was also responding to an immediate challenge presented by US President Donald Trump—his condescension to America’s closest allies and disregard for their dignity, let alone interests.
As the middle powers scramble to find ways to deal with the current turmoil in the international system, the growing hope for collective action does not match the reality. Central nations can jeopardize their relationship with major powers by increasing cooperation between them. The partnership, however, does not bring much influence to the international order dominated by the United States and China.
The current wave of interest in central government was initiated by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. In his speech, he called on the middle nations to unite against the oppression by the big nations. “Central powers like Canada are powerless,” Carney said. “They have the ability to build a new order that includes our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, freedom and territorial integrity.” But these ideas are not new. Canadian intellectuals were among the first in the post-World War II era to promote the idea of middle powers seeking agency in the international system, and Carney was falling back on that tradition. He was also responding to an immediate challenge presented by US President Donald Trump—his condescension to America’s closest allies and disregard for their dignity, let alone interests.
But the rift Carney announced did not translate into long-term unity. When the US and Israel struck Iran in late February, Carney he refused to curse attacks, focusing his criticism instead on Tehran’s behavior on nuclear proliferation. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced a the same positionbut many other European countries called Trump’s war against Iran illegal and refused to support it. This early difference was telling. Carney’s central proposition—that central powers must act together because “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”—gave way almost immediately to the central influence of individual states’ views and interests. What the war has shown is not the strengthening of the middle power bloc but its fragmentation.
Carney’s position on Iran highlighted a fundamental imbalance of the middle power project: These nations do not share a common enemy, perception of threats, or vision of the order they want to build. Central power agency reaches its peak when the hegemon maintains a broad international order in which countries such as Canada can contribute to stability and adherence to certain norms. While the great powers themselves are seeking reform, there is not much that the middle powers can do except protect their own interests as best they can.
Nowhere is this solidarity more evident than in the diplomatic crisis surrounding the Hormuz conflict. Anne-Marie Slaughter, writing in the Financial Times, describes it as “armadillo order”—alternating groups of states taking tentative, uncoordinated steps while the main drama plays out elsewhere.
The details of the slaughter are more damning than perhaps he intended. One of the armadillo’s defining characteristics, as he admits, is to curl up into a defensive ball and play dead. That, rather than any triumphant narrative of the rise of central power, is perhaps the most accurate description of what the world is witnessing today.
Slaughter identifies several different groups of middle powers in response to the war – the joint proposal of Pakistan and China, the Turkish-Egyptian-Saudi-Pakistani consultations, the civil society initiative of the International Crisis Group, and the British summit of some 40 nations – and considers their plurality as evidence of vitality.
But different opinions seem to be more fair. Overlapping groups do not reinforce each other; they show different interests clothed in the common language of rapid decline. Pakistan’s mediation efforts are inseparable from its strong desire to develop closer ties with Trump. Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia—the four countries most visible in mediation—are the same nations that helped. to hand over the Gaza peace process for Trump by the end of 2025. The direction of Iran’s efforts is also aimed at making life easier for Washington rather than at bringing lasting stability around the Persian Gulf. In addition to restricting the United States unilaterally, the central powers involved give it a multilateral appearance.
The behavior of the major competing nations proves that the strategic competition is being resolved on the terms set by Washington. In the Security Council of the United Nations, Russia and China he just held back rather than opposing the unilateral Gaza resolution of late 2025 that gave Trump broad powers and laid the groundwork for his Peace Council. Regarding the resolution of the Security Council recently established by Bahrain to approve the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, Moscow and Beijing. submitted vetoes—but that hasn’t stopped Trump from pursuing a unilateral blockade to force Iran to reopen the channel. What the competing superpowers are doing, in other words, has had no effect on US policy choices. At least for now.
This brings us to the question of military power, which remains the ultimate determinant. Current conflicts have not revealed the emergence of a middle power order; have confirmed the continuity of unity. The United States and Israel launched attacks that changed the strategic landscape of the Gulf in ways that no combination of middle powers could prevent, prevent, or threaten to prevent. When Slaughter observes that coalitions of central powers lack “the ability or the will to make the kind of marginal payments necessary” to function as effective rulers, he is not identifying a constant political failure but a structural inefficiency.
The introduction of Gaza had already made this clear. For more than two years, the entire architecture of middle-power diplomacy—South Africa’s legal challenges at the International Court of Justice, United Arab Emirates resolutions, increased Turkish rhetoric, and the usual European expressions of concern—failed to change American conduct or Israeli military operations in any way. Diplomatic activity was real; its strategic impact was minimal.
Washington offered a clear lesson: Middle power noise creates less friction. The same logic was used in Venezuela. And in the Hormuz conflict, the house of diplomatic consent has been prepared according to Washington’s wishes – not in spite of the activities of the middle powers but because of it. By providing a seemingly legitimate multilateral framework for ceasefires, the central powers have made it easier, not harder, for Washington to pursue unilateral outcomes while distributing the burden of diplomatic justification.
Another problem, which is often overlooked by centralists, is that several of the states that are being recruited to this initial coalition face direct strategic conflicts with the very powers they are being asked to manage together. Australia, Japan, and South Korea—frequently cited as key members of any Indo-Pacific middle power group–maintain heavy security dependence on the United States while facing existential concerns about China that are pushing them toward Washington, not away from it. India, which has the scale and ambition to act as a true powerhouse, is involved in a direct territorial dispute with China on its Himalayan border. For New Delhi, any middle power system that treats Beijing as a co-architect of the global order rather than a strategic rival is not an alliance to join but a trap to be avoided.
The situation in Europe is not much cleaner. Britain’s meeting to discuss Hormuz was the act of a country that retains the diplomatic character of a great power without the military nerve that once produced those effects. France and Germany remain tied to Washington through a dependence on NATO that they have spent decades unable to overcome. Europe’s much-discussed project on “strategic independence” has yielded few results—more defense spending, some industrial coordination—but nothing approaching the potential to create a major crisis against American interests.
The Hormuz conflict will eventually resolve, as conflicts usually do. When it does, the settlement will reflect US interests—and how the internal debate about their definition is playing out within the Trump administration and between it and the broader US national security establishment. The middle powers will claim some credit for any diplomatic architecture that emerges, and they may even deserve it. But loans for decorating the structure are not the same as loans for creating its foundations.
Middle powers depend on the structure of superpowers that can criticize but not create. A liberal and internationalist United States was willing to take them into account, offer union membership, and allow some degree of common arrangement in exchange for diplomatic support. Trump has no such inclination or compulsion. He is well aware that the middle powers depend on the great powers—especially the United States—for their prosperity and security, and he is content to let that dependence do its work. He can tolerate a central power agency and freedom at the periphery. But he will not accept the claims of central power to create the basis of the international system, especially when Washington is actively trying to reshape the operating system of the international order.
It may come when Trump’s current strategies falter, internationalists return to power in Washington, and the United States once again finds it necessary to build alliances and give the middle powers a level of real satisfaction. But as long as the balance of power continues to shift in favor of the United States, the incentive for such a policy will remain limited. Armadillos will continue to move—busily, visibly, and largely without consequence.
