By all accounts, the world we have inhabited is being disrupted, turned on its head, and set to its side. In all the think-tank and university-led discussions I have recently attended, it has become customary to acknowledge and lament the inexorable breakdown of the international system, in which conflict is on the march and cooperation is on the wane. The ensuing gap between conflict and cooperation amid global disruption and "rupture" has given rise to what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a "middle powers" strategy. Whether it can materialise, in my view, depends on the extent to which middle powers.
Speaking in January at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Prime Minister Carney has set the global geostrategic tone since. It also lays out a vision of how the international system could still function even when the great powers -- the United States, in this case -- shirk their traditional global leadership. The middle powers, such as Canada and more broadly the democratic nations, can stick together in a kind of minilateralism with "variable geometry" to seek strategic autonomy in trade, energy, supply chains, and other forms of geoeconomic cooperation.
When I first heard and read Mr Carney's speech, my first impulse was to think about how the world would be better off with more leaders like him. Yet my second reaction about his call for middle powers' collectivism and activism is "a great geostrategic idea but who goes first?" That is, who leads among the middle powers? Any global leadership would also have to put up with "free riders", or smaller countries that benefit greatly but don't contribute as much. Even if some middle powers -- say, the larger European economies alongside Japan, South Korea and Australia -- are able to band together, the third challenge is how to prevent the great powers -- that is, the US or China -- from spoiling the resulting cooperative efforts.
The question of who goes first is paramount. When the US principally constructed and underwrote the post-Second World War international system, Washington did so at substantial expense, providing international public goods ranging from international trade and global security to trade privileges, aid, and capacity-building programmes for poorer countries. The US had comparatively vast resources at the time, and such a world in which it led, even while paying for the costs of that leadership, was ultimately worthwhile for securing its national interests.
But now that the US is baulking in a belligerent fashion under the second administration of President Donald Trump, which nation can play this role? If a group of nations want to do so, who goes first? To what extent is US leadership indispensable for a stable, peaceful and prosperous international order? This is the heart of the matter. Mr Carney's middle-powers proposition is essentially tantamount to a "world minus one", in the words of former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, or perhaps "minus two" if China is to be included. Can the rest of the world get their act together without the superpowers? It's not implausible but very difficult. Certainly, we are not seeing it happening or in the offing so far.
Then there is the free-rider problem that is inherent in any group effort. Some group members just want to gain benefits without paying commensurate costs. Let's say if middle powers can organise a trade liberalisation regime and take on global economic leadership, perhaps akin to a multilateralised Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the smaller economies in this grouping would likely benefit more than their larger counterparts. The larger economies, therefore, must allow smaller peers to gain a disproportionate advantage.
Doing so will be hard for the larger economies, especially as they will have domestic constituencies to cater to and vested interests to protect at home. The same logic can be applied to the security realm where medium-sized and smaller nations can come together, but their varying and unequal contributions will be an obstacle. It can happen, but free-riding makes it that much more difficult.
Finally, the biggest players can spoil any get-together. China, for example, has used its influence over smaller Asean member states to prevent them from agreeing to any joint position that goes against Beijing's preferences. In 2012, Asean for the first time was unable to come up with a joint statement on the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. Similarly, the US can twist the arms of its allies and partners not to join any security cooperation among the middle powers over which Washington has no say.
The US and China are already applying pressure on economic partners to choose sides. For example, Huawei 5G users in Thailand and Malaysia may soon find their tech ecosystems incompatible with US-based rivals as supply chains, advanced chips and codes fragment in different directions. Without either or both the US and China, any multilateral trade regime will be much less substantial and comprehensive.
It is tough to operate and function without the great powers. We are so accustomed to the US-led international system, with China's phenomenal rise within it, that organising among the middle and smaller powers seems daunting. One way ahead is to ensure that European middle powers are open and connected to those from outside the continent and to keep a "fortress Europe" at bay. Another is to promote inter-regional linkages, such as Southeast Asia-Europe and Asean-Japan-Korea, not to mention Southeast Asia pairings with the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
While his words were easier said than followed through, Mr Carney spoke with the right spirit of defiance and resilience. His bold and sobering call for greater attention, activism, and agency from middle powers is spot-on, even if it needs a lot of work. At a minimum, middle powers working together more can increase their leverage vis-à-vis the US and China. And then we can hope that Washington will turn around to some degree after the current Trump term ends and that China and US-China relations after President Xi Jinping's tenure will be less fraught and divisive, and more accommodating for what's left of the international system to rebuild on.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is a professor and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science. He earned a PhD from the London School of Economics with a top dissertation prize in 2002. Recognised for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia, his views and articles have been published widely by local and international media. He is also a non-resident associate with the Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics.
