The middle powers' dilemma: Are they at the table, or on the menu?

Countries that aren't at the table are on the menu, says Mark Carney

If there is one sort of person that one would deem extremely unlikely to deliver a bridge-burning speech that sets the world alight, it is a central banker. This is a profession that has been trained to say as little as possible, only as much as necessary, and as dispassionately as they can. 

Mark Carney may currently be Prime Minister of Canada, but he was unquestionably a central banker. Indeed, he was so much a central banker that two different central banks hired him. It was somewhat unexpected, therefore, that he became the star of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. 

Mr Carney delivered a speech that, while its delivery remained resolutely technocratic, had content that was notably rousing. He spoke of how the rule-based international order was “no longer functioning as advertised”, and how economic coercion was affecting policy decisions across the world. He argued that nations could only afford principle when they had reduced their vulnerabilities to such coercion. He called for diversification in their international outreach. (In response, United States (US) President Donald Trump declared that he is thinking of imposing 100 per cent tariffs on Canada, thereby proving Mr Carney’s point.) 

But the core of his speech was a direct appeal to the “middle powers” of the world. They should, he argued, act together — because “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”. These were nations that had benefited greatly from the era in which the world was first bipolar and then unipolar, in which the Cold War or Washington’s lazy hegemony made talk of “norms” and the rule-based order real. Many of these nations today are coming to the recognition that, as Mr Carney pointed out, neither geography nor alliance memberships protect them from geopolitical turbulence — and that they do not have the power to go it alone, neither the market size nor the military capacity nor the leverage to set their own rules. 

Across the world, nations with comparable concerns are trying to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and how they can turn the new global disorder to their own advantage. Canada, its Prime Minister said, would use its control of energy resources and critical minerals to strike what bargains it could (he also mentioned its pension funds as a strategic asset). 

Others are drawing up similar lists. Indonesia has reorganised its entire foreign policy around resources like nickel, seeking to use its control of the trade in such metals to protect its autonomy and security and incentivise inward investment. Turkey has expertly played all sides in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, while also trying to recreate a new civilisational niche for itself as the centre of a broad and strategically significant Turkic belt. Saudi Arabia has thrown its vast treasury into multiple projects with which it intends to raise its profile, some quixotic and others not, from intervention in Yemen and Sudan to grandiose building projects along the Red Sea. 

For many of them, this is an unfamiliar and uncomfortable exercise. The United Kingdom, for example, is not happy with the thought that it cannot go it alone. It has been decades since it was a dominant or even hegemonic power — but it has failed to escape the trap of thinking it still is one, an illusion that led to acts of self-harm such as Brexit. Today, however, it is stuck between the US and the European Union, trusted by neither, and protected by none. 

The failure to recognise that your time of greatness has either passed or not yet come is a grave danger to countries. It leads them to leave institutions that protected them, such as Britain did; or to greatly overestimate their military and diplomatic strengths, as the Russia Federation did when it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia may have entered this century still with the trappings of a superpower; it will leave the Ukraine war, when it does, unquestionably as just another middle power, subordinate, economically at least, to China. 

Of course, it has nuclear weapons — but its use of them as a bargaining tool is reminiscent of how Turkey uses the Dardanelles or refugee populations, and Indonesia uses nickel and palm oil. It finds what it has that can threaten or benefit the world and uses it as pressure almost daily. 

The crucial part of this is that nobody can really go it alone — unless they are the US or, perhaps, the People’s Republic of China. Nobody is indispensable, and everyone is open to coercion. They can be truly protected only if they can create rational groupings to protect themselves -in Mr Carney’s words, “coalitions that work: Issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together”. Trying to negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, whether the US or China, is merely the “performance of sovereignty”, he argued, since it is a negotiation from weakness. Britain, for example, has discovered this when it comes to the question of US tariffs, as it no longer has the ability to retaliate the way the European Union does and thus must accept whatever Washington hands out. 

Where does this leave India? Surely we are no longer a middle power of this sort? The Union external affairs minister has in the past said we are moving from being a “balancing” to a “leading” power. 

But what we know is that we are completely without leverage in a Washington that has inexplicably turned against us; and have had to accept a new and unfavourable status quo on our northern border while quietly inviting the Chinese back into our economy. Of Mr Carney’s three criteria for great powers — market size, military capacity, and leverage — we have only one, and even our internal market is not quite large enough to dictate terms to the world. Our anaemic foreign direct investment numbers should tell us that. 

The middle powers of the world have to stand together in the face of great-power intimidation. The ones that are most vulnerable are not those that are the smallest but those that are trying to go it alone. Whatever we may call ourselves today, whatever we may be a decade or two from now, at this precise point in history this is advice that applies to India as well.