Recent criticism by Elbridge Colby, the U.S.
deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, whose work has significantly shaped recent American defense thinking, of the emerging debate on middle-power autonomy deserves serious attention.
Colby is right on one important point: no single middle power, and probably no loose coalition of middle powers, can militarily match the United States.
Nor is there a coherent “middle-powers movement” united by a common ideology, threat perception or geopolitical project.
Türkiye, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Korea and the major European states do not view the world in the same way.
Their interests often diverge and, at times, directly collide.
Yet, Colby draws the wrong conclusion from these realities.
The absence of military parity does not make autonomy meaningless, and the difficulty of building a unified bloc does not eliminate the strategic significance of middle powers.
The real question is not whether they can replace the U.S.
They cannot.
The question is whether the U.S.
can achieve its own strategic objectives without them.
Increasingly, it cannot.
This is the central contradiction in Colby’s argument.
Washington wants its allies and partners to spend more, produce more, assume greater regional responsibility and reduce the burden on the U.S.
But once these states acquire greater military, industrial and diplomatic capacity, Washington becomes uncomfortable with the political autonomy that follows.
It wants stronger partners, but not more independent ones; more burden-sharing, but not more power-sharing; greater defense production, but continued dependence on the American defense industrial base.
Autonomy isn't military equivalence Colby’s argument rests on an excessively narrow understanding of power in international politics.
He treats the ability to reproduce the scale and quality of the American defense industrial base as the decisive test of whether middle-power autonomy is viable.
But strategic autonomy does not require another state to become a smaller version of the U.S.
Autonomy means possessing enough national and collective capacity to preserve political choice under conditions of pressure, including in situations marked by conflicts of interest within alliances, a dynamic that has become increasingly salient with the rise of transactional and pragmatic foreign policy approaches.
It means reducing critical vulnerabilities, diversifying defense and economic relations, shaping regional outcomes and preventing dependence on one external actor from determining every strategic decision.
In practice, middle powers do not seek global dominance; they need enough capability to impose costs, shape outcomes and make their cooperation indispensable.
Türkiye’s use of domestically produced drones in Ukraine and Libya illustrates this, as does South Korea’s growing role as a key supplier of advanced defense systems to Europe, both enhancing their strategic leverage without requiring great-power status.
Contemporary power is also increasingly distributed across different domains.
Military strength remains essential, but geography, industrial specialization, energy, logistics, technology, markets, supply chains and diplomatic networks matter as well.
South Korea has become indispensable in defense manufacturing.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states influence energy, investment and regional diplomacy.
Indonesia occupies a critical position in the Indo-Pacific.
Brazil carries weight in food security, the environment and the politics of the Global South, while also increasingly positioning itself as a diplomatic interlocutor in global crises.
Türkiye combines military capacity, defense production, strategic geography and a multidirectional diplomatic network, and has emerged as a key mediation actor in regional conflicts.
More broadly, middle powers are increasingly stepping into mediation roles, as seen in recent tensions involving Iran, where countries such as Pakistan and Türkiye have leveraged their diplomatic channels to de-escalate crises and facilitate dialogue between rival actors.
None of these countries can rival the U.S.
in aggregate power.
But each can shape the environment in which American, Chinese, Russian and European strategies succeed or fail.
This is why middle-power cooperation does not require the creation of a single bloc.
Colby is correct that such states lack a common basis for permanent alignment.
But he is wrong to assume that cooperation must be universal and institutionalized to matter.
The emerging model is more flexible.
Middle powers form issue-based coalitions around trade, energy, defense production, critical minerals, maritime security, technology and diplomatic mediation.
Their partnerships are selective, temporary and interest-driven.
Limits of American power Colby’s most serious mistake is to infer omnipotence from....
