If Europe and Asian democracies coordinate, they can reshape the global balance.
By MAX BOOT
Washington Post
February 2, 2025
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in his now-famous speech at the Davos conference, issued a stirring call for the “middle powers” to protect their own interests at a time when the great powers are running roughshod over the “rules-based international order.” Recent examples include not only Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s attempts to claim the South China Sea, but also President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and his punitive tariffs on America’s closest allies. “Middle powers must act together,” Carney said, “because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
The collective potential of the “mighty middle powers” is almost unlimited. I’m not referring to countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia or South Africa, which are often not on the same page as the Western democracies. President Joe Biden learned that it was impossible to mobilize the Global South against Russian aggression in Ukraine, for example. But there is a strong overlap of outlooks between the non-American members of NATO (Europe and Canada) and the great democracies of East Asia and Oceania: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan.
If these countries could act together, they would be a superpower in their own right. The “Eurasia bloc” has a population of nearly 900 million, GDP of $39.5 trillion, defense spending of $830 billion and 3.1 million soldiers. That dwarfs America’s population (338 million) and beats its GDP ($31 trillion) while their defense spending is roughly similar to America’s ($850 billion this year). China, of course, has an even larger population, but it lags in all the other categories; its GDP is roughly half that of the Eurasia bloc. Russia trails even further behind; its GDP ($2.5 trillion) is considerably smaller than California’s.
Read more in the Washington Post
