05 Feb Opinion – The Illusion of Middle Powers
By,
Fabián Calle, Senior Fellow, MSI²
Since the mid-1950s, various countries of the Third World began to speak about non-alignment with the two colossi of the Cold War, namely the United States and the USSR. When one looked closely at the list, it became clear that many of them had strong political, economic, and military ties with both Washington and Moscow.
One of the many examples is Nasser’s Egypt and its very close relationship with the Soviets. If we incorporate as a historical precedent Perón’s pre-1955 Third Position stance, we will see that, after his overthrow, the three-time president chose to go into exile in countries closely linked to the United States in the struggle against communism: Paraguay, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and the Spain of Generalissimo Franco.
The successive suggestions of John William Cooke that Perón should choose Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Mao’s China fell on deaf ears. Returning to the international level, during the 1960s and 1970s, references to the rise of middle powers proliferated throughout the Third World. These could and should develop greater room for maneuver in relation to both superpowers.
In our region, post-1974 Brazil is the main example, when the military government, which had come to power 10 years earlier, decided to partially end its strategic and ideological alignment with the United States. The Soviet collapse between 1989 and 1991 and the beginning of the long unipolar moment led by Washington swept away the rhetorical and academic enthusiasm surrounding middle powers and margins of autonomy in the Third World.
Three decades later, we once again see a resurgence of these visions. We can speak of more than failed schemes, such as UNASUR, and others on a larger scale, such as BRICS (along with all the countries that have been joining, such as Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, etc.). One of the particular features of the past year is the extension of this narrative to the First World, essentially to countries of the European Union and to Canada.
Trump’s tariff policy since early 2025, his references to Canada as the 51st state, the White House’s position of placing the financial burden of the Russia-Ukraine war on European public accounts, and, more recently, the Greenland issue have framed this phenomenon. Some of the milestones in this version 2.0 narrative of opportunities for middle powers include the Canadian prime minister’s speech in Davos and the decision by Western left-leaning media to portray Denmark’s leader as the woman who stopped and defeated Trump’s ambitions. In Canada’s case, the euphoria lasted only a short time. Days after Davos, the government announced it would not move forward with a broad trade agreement with China. Regarding Denmark, it will be necessary to wait to see both the public and, even more so, the confidential text of the agreement being developed regarding Greenland. Perhaps, once that is known, the epic narratives will subside.
The deployment of several dozen British, French, and other European soldiers to that island colonized by Copenhagen three centuries ago ended up staging a display of magical realism, though in this case not Caribbean but Nordic. The sharpest minds in Europe are surely reflecting on how American hegemony since 1945 has played and continues to play a fundamental role in the 80 years of peace in Western Europe, compared to two thousand years of previous wars and conflicts.
The United States has no intention whatsoever of leaving the Old Continent, but rather of focusing more on the Indo-Pacific region in an anti-Communist China framework. In the highly unlikely event that the Americans were to abandon their immense chain of European bases and installations, one would have to ask how many years, five-year periods, or decades would pass before historical rivalries resurfaced between Germany and France, between the British and the French, or between Germans and Poles, etc. Would a Berlin without the American nuclear umbrella accept a French monopoly in that area within the European Union?
Another factor to remember is that various governments and political aspirants with center-right and right-wing ideologies in Europe tend to view Trump and the United States more favorably than their center-left and left-wing counterparts in their own neighborhood.
The International Relations literature contains a vast and highly developed bibliography on the effects of bipolarity in the international system, beginning with the two monumental works of K. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (1959) and Theory of International Politics (1979). In both, it is clear what space remains for third parties and, in particular, for middle powers, with not very encouraging conclusions.
A look at the previous bipolar conflict between Americans and Soviets will lead some to highlight how the United States failed to win either the Korean War or the Vietnam War, just as the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan and lost their influence over Communist China after Stalin’s death.
From those and other cases, one could say that there were substantial margins of maneuver for middle states and even smaller ones. If so, it would give hope to those who point to these spaces for navigating within the new Washington–Beijing bipolarity. The bad news is that in all the cases mentioned, one of the superpowers was present behind the scenes: whether the USSR supporting North Korea and Vietnam, or the United States supporting Afghan fighters and sheltering China against Moscow starting in 1972.
Both Western Europeans and Canadians could begin to draw from the extensive literature produced between the 1950s and the late 1970s in some of the main non-aligned countries in general, and in Latin America in particular. Perhaps they could spare themselves false euphoria regarding their sudden aspirations for prominence.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).