Between the Blocs

The dominant story in international relations for the past several years has been about the contest between great powers — the United States, China, and to a lesser degree Russia — and how that competition is remaking alliances, trade, and security arrangements worldwide. It is a real story, and an important one. But it is not the whole picture.

Running alongside the great-power competition, and partly in response to it, a different shift is underway. A set of countries — significant in size, economically substantial, and regionally influential — have been quietly expanding their diplomatic footprint and asserting greater autonomy from both Washington and Beijing. They are not neutral in any old Cold War sense; they have interests, relationships, and preferences. But they are increasingly unwilling to be assigned a side, and they are using that refusal as leverage.

This group has no single label that satisfies everyone. “Middle powers” is the most common term, though it covers a range of situations. “Swing states” captures the strategic dimension. Whatever the terminology, the list of countries behaving this way has grown noticeably in recent years: India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Vietnam, and several others depending on the issue at hand.

Why Now?

The rise of middle-power assertiveness is not an accident. Several structural conditions have converged to create the space for it.

First, the United States — while still the world’s largest economy and the anchor of the most significant military alliances — has shown more volatility in its foreign policy commitments over the past decade than at any point since the Second World War. Partners and rivals alike have recalibrated their assumptions about what American leadership means and how durable it is. That uncertainty creates room for others to maneuver.

Second, China’s rise as an economic partner has given many countries an alternative to dependence on Western trade and investment. The Belt and Road Initiative, whatever its limitations and controversies, demonstrated that large-scale infrastructure financing could come from a non-Western source. Countries that might once have had no practical choice but to align closely with Western institutions now have options, even if those options come with their own complications.

Third, the middle powers themselves have grown. India is now among the world’s largest economies by any measure and has a government with a clear interest in projecting independent foreign policy. Indonesia’s economy has expanded steadily, and its demographic weight — it is the world’s fourth most populous country — gives it a claim to a larger voice in regional and global affairs. Brazil’s role in food supply, its Amazon forests, and its clean-energy transition have made it relevant to debates that go well beyond its immediate neighborhood.

What Hedging Looks Like in Practice

Middle-power hedging is not a strategy that announces itself. It operates through accumulated choices rather than declarations. Some patterns that have become visible:

  • Abstaining on contested UN votes: Several major middle powers declined to vote on resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, preferring abstention to alignment with either Western or Russian positions. India, South Africa, and Brazil were among those that avoided taking sides, drawing criticism from Western capitals but maintaining relationships with Moscow.
  • Diversifying security partnerships: Saudi Arabia and the UAE have deepened defense ties with China while maintaining longstanding relationships with the United States. Turkey is a NATO member that also purchased Russian air-defense systems, a combination that generated significant tension but that Ankara has never fully resolved in either direction.
  • Brokering rather than following: China’s facilitation of a diplomatic normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023 was a signal that middle powers are willing to use Beijing as a channel when it suits them — not because they have joined a Chinese-led bloc, but because the outcome served their regional interests. Saudi Arabia and Iran both made that calculation independently.
  • Engaging multiple economic frameworks simultaneously: Vietnam is a member of both CPTPP — a trade agreement built partly in response to Chinese economic influence — and RCEP, which includes China as a central participant. Managing those relationships simultaneously requires careful diplomacy but reflects a genuine preference for keeping doors open.

Why It Matters

The rise of a more assertive middle tier matters because these countries collectively represent a substantial share of the world’s population, economic output, and natural resources. Decisions made in New Delhi, Jakarta, Brasília, and Riyadh about trade, energy, security, and governance will shape global outcomes in ways that cannot be determined solely by Washington or Beijing.

For a broader view of how power is shifting across the region, see our Asia coverage and the world affairs desk. Our daily briefings track the diplomatic developments as they unfold.

The Limits of Hedging

Hedging is not costless, and the middle powers are discovering its constraints. The strategy works best when the great powers need something from you — market access, raw materials, a favorable vote, a strategic location — and are willing to compete for it through concessions rather than coercion. It works less well when one or both great powers decides that tolerance for ambiguity has run out.

The United States has, at various points, signaled impatience with partners that maintain close ties with China. Export controls on semiconductors and related technologies have created pressure on countries that trade heavily with both the US and China to make choices they would prefer not to make. China has shown its own willingness to use economic pressure — trade restrictions, investment withdrawal — when political relationships sour, as Australia discovered after its call for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.

For smaller middle powers, the risks are more pronounced. A country with a large economy and significant strategic assets can absorb pressure from one great power while leaning on relationships with the other. A smaller country with fewer such assets has less room. The space for genuine independence tends to track closely with economic and strategic weight.

The Multilateral Dimension

One arena where middle-power influence has grown noticeably is in multilateral forums. The G20, which includes most of the significant middle powers, has become a more contested space as its members pursue divergent agendas. The expansion of BRICS — which added Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Argentina (though Argentina subsequently declined) to its original membership — reflected a deliberate effort to build a forum that could represent non-Western interests without being defined solely by China or Russia.

Whether BRICS can translate membership growth into genuine policy influence remains unclear. The original grouping struggled to achieve consensus on major issues, and its expanded form is even more heterogeneous. Saudi Arabia and Iran, both new members, have historically hostile relations. India and China, founding members, have fought border skirmishes within living memory. The forum may serve more as a signal of intent — a declaration that these countries want an international system that reflects their weight — than as an effective governance mechanism.

That signal, however, is itself consequential. When Brazil, India, and South Africa all invest political capital in building non-Western forums, they are communicating something about their appetite for the existing order. Not necessarily rejection of it, but a desire for modification — more voice, more representation, different rules on issues like trade, intellectual property, and development finance.

A More Complicated World

The rise of middle-power assertiveness does not make the world safer or more predictable, at least not in the short term. A world with more autonomous actors making more independent calculations is harder to coordinate. It is also, arguably, more resilient — less dependent on the decisions of a small number of capitals, more reflective of the actual distribution of interests and capabilities across a diverse planet.

The countries doing the hedging are not under any illusion that they have escaped the gravitational pull of great-power competition. They are working within it, trying to maximize room for maneuver while it exists. Whether that space persists or narrows in the years ahead will depend substantially on how the great powers themselves handle the competition between them — a question that, for all their growing influence, the middle powers cannot fully control.