Instead of closing the huge funding gaps facing multilateral organizations and development programs, European governments have followed the Trump administration’s lead and significantly cut their foreign aid budgets.
By Sophie EISENTRAUT
In his historic speech at Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called on middle powers to confront an increasingly harsh geopolitical reality by joining forces to create a “third way” between bowing to great-power pressure and acting alone. But when it came to defining that path, Carney’s speech outlined two projects of very different dimensions. The first involves pursuing the relatively limited goal of enabling the world’s middle powers to resist great-power bullying. The second, longer-term project would have them cooperate to build an improved international order in which rules-based multilateralism still plays a significant role.
Middle powers have made significant progress on the first, more self-serving project, helping each other strengthen critical capabilities and cooperating to reduce dangerous dependencies. For democracies like Canada, Carney suggested, this can often require working through coalitions of the willing focused on particular issues, including partners who may not share “all our values.” Even governments that have long supported close cooperation with other democracies have enthusiastically invested in more pragmatic alliances. France, for example, has reached an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to deepen cooperation on artificial intelligence. The European Union, for its part, has created partnerships on raw materials with Kazakhstan and South Africa and signed 12 new bilateral agreements on security and defense, including with Norway and Moldova.
But while middle-power governments have been quick to insulate themselves from the whims and dictates of the great powers, they have made little headway in Carney’s call to “build something bigger, better, stronger, fairer.” And beyond the West, his vision of a middle-power-led international order has so far found few supporters. Many leaders in the Global South, instead, are focused on creating partnerships that would allow their countries to navigate the chaos caused by the collapse of the existing multilateral order. Western leaders have also been reluctant to act on Carney’s vision. Despite their grand promises to defend multilateralism and the rules-based order, European leaders have been largely silent about US President Donald Trump’s repeated violations of international law.
Instead of closing the huge funding gaps facing multilateral organizations and development programs, European governments have followed the Trump administration’s lead and sharply cut their foreign aid budgets. Voters don’t seem particularly enthusiastic either. In nine of the 11 middle-power countries surveyed in July for the Munich Security Conference—Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—fewer than half of respondents expected their governments to do more to address global challenges like climate change and humanitarian emergencies. Only in Canada and India did a majority of respondents expect their governments to be more proactive in these areas.
Many observers hope that this inertia will be temporary and that, once middle powers have strengthened their defenses, they will return to rebuilding the international order. But governments that are too focused on strengthening their own capacities may end up encouraging the very actors whose behavior prompted these efforts in the first place. Many governments, for example, see the purchase of American weapons as the easiest way to strengthen their militaries, thereby strengthening American influence. There are other dangers as well. Blind cooperation with regimes can quickly lead to strategic silence.
As more countries embrace “pragmatism,” turning a blind eye to violations of human rights and international law by partners may become the new normal. Notably, in March, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz responded to US and Israeli attacks on Iran by saying: “This is not the time to teach lessons to our allies.” Moreover, the growing reliance on coalitions of the willing focused on particular issues risks accelerating the fragmentation of the international order. As global challenges, from economic growth and climate change to security and migration, become harder to compartmentalize, governments are retreating into silos focused on particular issues. As multilateralism gives way to a patchwork of ad hoc initiatives and ad-hoc clubs, contradictions and tensions are bound to grow.
Cooperation in self-empowered clubs will also fail to produce comprehensive results, feeding the same grievances that discredited the old order. Finally, an overly narrow focus on strengthening the relative power of individual countries could consolidate a zero-sum approach to geopolitics. Governments may conclude that, to compete effectively, they too must bend international rules and norms. And as this approach of relative gains gains momentum, middle powers may become less willing to give up sovereignty in pursuit of common goals. Those leaders who embrace Carney’s vision as the only viable way forward for their countries cannot wait until they are secure in their positions to draw up a blueprint for the international order they want to build. They must start now, ensuring that the paths they build today can eventually converge on Carney’s “third way.”