Colby slap down strengthens case for ‘middle power strategy’, but it will only be as strong as the sum of its parts

This flies in the face of the historical norm, where middle powers have been confined to overtly subservient roles under the auspice of a larger imperial power, while the world’s smaller powers fell prey to the larger predators that dominated the global environs and directed the flow of history.

However, by the mid-2010s, this reality was fast approaching its swan song, as the contemporary multipolar world was beginning to emerge, and the monopolar moment would be confined to the annals of history, as the People’s Republic of China began its overt assault on the rules and norms of the post-war order.

As we have steadily waded ever deeper into the waters of the multipolar world, the importance, position, power and relevance of the middle powers, Australia included, have steadily declined as once again great powers ascended to the pinnacle of importance in the global order.

This has only been exacerbated by the ongoing conflicts in eastern Europe and the Middle East, and the increasing assertiveness of China in the western Pacific, demonstrating a return to a world where the “law of the jungle” and “might makes right” are the new rules of the road, throwing many middle powers into a state of confused anxiety.

In response, many middle powers, Australia included, have begun to tentatively coordinate a “middle power strategy”, bringing together a collective of “like-minded nations” in an effort to offset the unpredictability and uncertainty posed by an increasingly fractured, unpredictable and dangerous world.

However, this hasn’t necessarily gone down well with some great powers, most notably the United States, with US Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby taking to X on 15 June to dismiss “middle power strategy” as a distraction that would see American partners “waste valuable time, money and political capital”.

VIEW ALL

Highlighting this, Elizabeth Lawler argues in a recent piece for The Strategist titled “A critique of middle power strategy shows why we need it”, that he inadvertently made the case for it. Colby’s own framing, that access to the American defence industrial base is “a privilege, not a right” is precisely the kind of signal that pushes US partners towards deeper mutual reliance.

If Washington’s support can no longer be taken for granted, the logic runs, then countries like Australia, Japan and the European democracies have little choice but to hedge, pooling diplomatic weight, industrial capacity and strategic depth with one another.

Lawler’s is a compelling rebuttal, and largely a correct one. But buried inside the argument is an assumption that deserves far more scrutiny than it typically receives, particularly in the Australian context: that middle power strategy is a coherent, self-reinforcing system simply by virtue of its members aligning. It isn’t. A middle power coalition is not an abstraction that generates strength on its own account; it is a sum, and sums are only as large as their constituent parts.

For a lower-tier middle power like Australia, sitting well behind Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, or the UK in terms of industrial mass, workforce depth and sovereign capability, this is not a semantic quibble. It is the central strategic problem.

Alignment doesn’t equate to capability

Lawler is right to push back on Colby’s claim that middle powers lack a “coherent basis for alignment”. Australia, Japan, India, the Europeans, and others share democratic governance, broadly comparable economic development and, increasingly, overlapping threat perceptions. Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy leans into exactly this logic, outlining deeper engagement with Japan, India and New Zealand, while explicitly situating that engagement as a supplement to, not a replacement for, the US alliance.

This is not only sound diplomacy, but it also makes logical sense. Shared democratic values and converging threat assessments genuinely do provide a “coherent basis for alignment” in the sense that Colby denies.

But alignment describes intent, not capacity. A grouping of states that agree on strategic direction can still be a grouping of states that, individually, cannot build the submarines, generate the munitions stockpiles, crew the fleets or sustain the industrial tempo that credible deterrence requires. Middle power strategy, as a diplomatic architecture, tells you who is willing to stand together.

It says nothing about whether what they bring to the table, in aggregate, actually adds up to a deterrent effect. That second question is entirely a function of national capability, and it is where the Australian debate too often stalls at the level of communiqués and joint statements rather than shipyards, workforces, and stockpiles.

Australia’s weakest link problem

This matters acutely for Australia because, among the states typically grouped under the middle power banner, it sits closer to the bottom of the ladder in almost every measure of hard capability than the top. Japan retains a substantial and increasingly assertive defence-industrial base.

The major European economies, for all their internal debates, command manufacturing scale that Australia simply does not possess, although it is declining at a rate of knots, as a result of successive policy failures.

South Korea has built one of the most productive weapons-export sectors in the world. Australia, by contrast, continues to wrestle with a shipbuilding sector prone to schedule slippage, a munitions-manufacturing base still being rebuilt from a low starting point, and a workforce pipeline that struggles to keep pace with the technical demands of contemporary naval, air, and space programs.

None of this is fatal to the case for middle power cooperation, but it does mean that when Australia sits at the table as one node in a broader hedging network, it risks being the weakest link rather than an equal contributor.

A coalition’s strategic value in a crisis is rarely determined by its most capable member; it is frequently determined by whether its least capable members can pull their own weight, sustain their own logistics, and avoid becoming a liability that others must prop up.

If Australia’s contribution to a Japan–Australia “strategic depth” arrangement, or to broader AUKUS and Indo-Pacific hedging architecture, is contingent on capability that hasn’t yet been built, a submarine fleet years from full operational reality, munitions stocks still below what a sustained contingency would demand, a shipbuilding workforce still being trained, then the “sum of the parts” is, for now, smaller than the diplomatic rhetoric implies.

Hedging without hollowing out

It is worth noting that Lawler’s broader point, that being that middle powers are “engaging in a familiar practice of strategic hedging to reduce vulnerability and build greater resilience”, is the correct strategic instinct.

Hedging against an uncertain US commitment is not anti-American; it is prudent statecraft that any capable government would pursue regardless of who occupies the White House.

But resilience building only functions if the states doing the hedging are simultaneously investing in the underlying resilience of their own systems: their industrial base, their workforce, their sovereign stockpiles, their capacity to sustain operations independent of any single partner for a meaningful period.

Meanwhile, diplomatic hedging without domestic capability building is not resilience. It is the appearance of resilience, and appearances have a way of collapsing at precisely the moment they are tested.

This is where the Australian debate needs to shift its centre of gravity. Far too much of the domestic conversation around AUKUS, the Japan relationship, and the broader Indo-Pacific middle power architecture treats the signing of agreements and the joint communiqué as the substantive achievement, rather than as the starting gun for a much harder and more expensive phase of actually delivering sovereign and interoperable capability.

Colby’s dismissal of middle power strategy was wrong in its conclusion but not entirely wrong in its instinct: a coalition built on aspiration rather than delivered capability genuinely is closer to a distraction than a deterrent.

The corrective to Colby’s critique isn’t simply asserting that alignment exists; it’s ensuring that each node in the alignment, Australia very much included, is bringing hard capability to the table rather than intent alone.

Any ‘middle power strategy’ is only as strong as the sum of its parts

The strongest version of the middle power argument, then, is not the one Lawler makes explicitly, but the one her piece leaves implicit: middle power strategy is a genuinely sound response to a less reliable United States, but its strategic value scales directly with the individual power, industrial depth, and resilience of each participating state. For countries like Japan, France, or the UK, that foundation is largely in place, even if imperfect.

For Australia, it remains a work in progress, one where shipbuilding schedules, munitions production, workforce generation and sovereign industrial capacity are still catching up to the ambition articulated in strategic documents and ministerial statements.

None of this is an argument against middle power cooperation. It is an argument for taking the “power” in middle power seriously, rather than treating alignment itself as the strategic output.

Colby’s critique should be read by Canberra not as a reason to abandon the hedging logic that underpins the 2026 National Defence Strategy, but as a pointed reminder that diplomatic architecture cannot substitute for what has to be built, funded, and crewed at home. Australia can be a valuable node in a middle power network, but only if it is investing, with real urgency, in becoming a strong one.

The sum of middle power strategy will only ever be as good as the sum of its parts, and right now, Australia owes the rest of that coalition a great deal more capability than it has yet delivered.

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Stephen Kuper

Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.