Middle power

Thank you for lending an ear to the Voice of the Times for Monday, September 21, 2026.

For today's editorial, the Philippines and the Middle Powers option.

The seeds of a new international economic alliance have been sown, and the United States is not part of it.

The US, in fact, is the reason such an alliance is taking shape.

There's a lot of hope at the moment that coalitions of Western and non-Western mid-sized countries can gang together to shore up multilateralism and global order, protect themselves from predation by major powers run amok.

But do those middle powers see the United Nations as the best instrument for that? So to talk about all this, I spoke to Richard Gowan, who is Crisis Group's Director of Global Issues and Institutions, and Daniel Forty, who is our Head of UN Affairs.

I spoke to them both on Wednesday evening.

On Friday, just as we're putting this out, there's quite a bit of talk about the U.S., the Trump administration potentially taking further action against the International Criminal Court, the ICC, maybe more sweeping sanctions.

be able to build relationships with everyone.

And I think that there is a feeling that the next UN chief will not be able to start making peace overnight.

They will have to start firming up relationships with the P5, developing relationships with middle powers, rebuilding relationships with certain countries like Israel, which has declared Katerish persona non grata, but sort of getting to a point where a range of leaders are comfortable talking to them.

And, you know, we do know that that sort of relationship building can make a difference.

And then to add a truly sort of interesting factoid into the mix, we have the European Union inviting Canada to become its first ever associate member.

So the middle powers are sort of seeing their at least trying to punch above their weight now, as at least as far as Mark Carney is concerned.

So how are you mapping the various political narratives today? And we can maybe start with Europe and it does relate to inflation and affordability and economic strength.

It does inflation.

What what it drives down to is.

You're talking about where does the EU or the UK sit on all of this.

In some respects, and you talked about middle powers, they're a bit washed up.

They're a bit just second order considerations.

Let me lean into this then.

Why is it not being seen as the beginning of development of a completely different way of thinking about the world, moving beyond a US and China centered world towards thinking about how middle powers define values, define ambitions, so that we can really see over hopefully the next three years of your tenure, the beginnings of reconstructing a new architecture rather than Britain flying its own flag.

You're hired.

I agree with a lot of what you said.

And of course, as a foreign secretary and a politician, you're going to tell us that Britain matters a lot in the world.

Fine.

The more interesting question is, what is the formal architecture that we're going to create? And of course, you're going to say we're going to stick up for values, we're going to work with other people, but Mark Carney has done something very, very unusual, which is to say there is a possibility for an alliance of middle powers.

And it really matters.

W- Is that market, with the active intervention and resistance of the United States, enough to restore and get the benefits of that old world order? I mean, I guess we'll see.

These countries are going to try, but the US is putting a lot of pressure on middle powers and on Canada not to, to cozy up to China.

Uh, and so like the European trying to play off China versus the US or to work with both is just going to be really, really tricky, not just in the big picture, maybe once Trump's gone, but in the details of, of a, a newly protectionist US, so.

Yeah.