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US Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby has once again pushed back against criticism of his critiques of “middle power strategy” championed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, instead issuing a clarification and an important rallying call for America’s allies.
For much of the period between the end of the Second World War and the mid-2010s, the international system offered middle powers an extraordinary degree of influence, security and strategic relevance. In historical terms, however, this period was the exception rather than the rule.
For most of history, middle powers have operated in the shadow of great powers. Their prosperity and security have depended heavily on the protection, patronage or strategic calculations of larger states, while smaller nations have often been forced to accommodate the ambitions of the powerful or risk becoming collateral damage in their rivalries.
The post-war international order temporarily disrupted that pattern. Underwritten by overwhelming American economic, military and technological power, a relatively stable rules-based system allowed countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the major European democracies to enjoy an unusual combination of sovereignty, prosperity and strategic freedom.
Globalisation further amplified this effect, allowing nations with relatively modest populations and industrial bases to achieve influence far beyond what their raw power might otherwise have permitted.
That era is now ending.
By the mid-2010s, the foundations of the post-Cold War order were already beginning to fracture. The rise of the People’s Republic of China, Russia’s increasingly revisionist approach to European security, the erosion of strategic consensus within the West and the return of great-power competition all pointed towards the emergence of a genuinely multipolar international system.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, combined with Beijing’s growing military and economic assertiveness across the western Pacific have accelerated that transition. The result is a world in which the assumptions that sustained middle-power prosperity for decades can no longer be taken for granted.
The uncomfortable reality is that multipolarity does not necessarily empower middle powers. In many respects, it does the opposite.
As great powers once again dominate the strategic landscape, the relative importance of countries with limited populations, industrial capacity and military mass inevitably declines. Economic interdependence becomes a vulnerability when supply chains can be weaponised. Access to foreign technology can become conditional. Diplomatic partnerships can become transactional. Even alliances that have underpinned national security for generations can no longer be treated as guarantees.
For Australia, this presents an especially profound challenge.
Canberra has traditionally enjoyed the best of both worlds: the strategic protection of a global superpower combined with considerable economic access to the wider international system. Australia has been able to maintain a relatively small population and defence force while benefiting from American strategic power, global trade and access to sophisticated foreign technology.
That model is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Australia’s temptation, like many other middle powers, is therefore understandable to develop a broader “middle power strategy”, bringing together like-minded nations to pool diplomatic influence, industrial capacity and strategic resources. Cooperation between Australia, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other capable democracies is undoubtedly valuable.
A coalition does not automatically become powerful simply because its members share interests. Collective strength is ultimately the product of the capabilities each participant brings to the table. If those capabilities are hollow, dependent or unable to be mobilised independently, strategic cooperation risks becoming little more than an elaborate insurance policy written against an uncertain future.
This is particularly important for Australia.
Compared with Japan, South Korea, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Australia remains a lower-tier middle power. Its population is smaller, its manufacturing base is comparatively shallow and its sovereign defence-industrial capacity remains limited. Much of its most sophisticated military capability depends upon foreign technology, foreign supply chains and, ultimately, the continued willingness of larger powers to provide access.
That is not a sustainable position in an increasingly contested world. Australia therefore needs to rethink what being a middle power actually means.
Partners, not protectorates v middle-power strategy
Importantly, and something that is often lost on Australia’s policymakers, cooperation should not be confused with capability and this is particularly the point of recent critique and criticisms by US Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby from 15 June, in which he pushed back against the idea of a cohesive “middle power strategy” as proposed and championed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney – a distraction that would ultimately see American partners “waste valuable time, money and political capital”.
Rather, the objective should not be to abandon the United States or retreat into strategic isolation. Quite the opposite: the Australian–American alliance remains one of the country’s most important strategic assets. But an alliance is strongest when both partners possess the capacity to contribute meaningfully to their own defence and to the defence of one another.
Australia’s goal should consequently be strategic resilience rather than strategic dependence, but we need to be clear and concise in our understanding of what this means, both in isolation and as part of the broader US alliance framework in the region.
And herein lies the reality of where reporting of Under Secretary Colby’s original critique was overblown and lacking in nuance, at least until now. In two recent media engagements, Colby recently provided further clarification, the first being in an address in Manila, and the second at a press briefing during his ongoing tour of south-east Asia, in which he added further colour and context around his comments in which he declared that America was looking for “partners, not protectorates”.
Speaking in Manila, Colby said: “When our partners are strong, deterrence is strong”, reinforcing that America is not seeking to withdraw or pivot away from the Indo-Pacific region, rather the US, under President Donald Trump, is echoing the foreign and defence policy precedent established by president’s Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, telling journalists during a press briefing yesterday (13 August 13 2026): “I mean, people go back and say, ‘Oh, President Trump is this radical break. I mean, this is the foreign policy of Dwight Eisenhower in a lot of ways. He met with the Soviet leadership, for instance’.”
Colby said: “This is the foreign policy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who began the military rebuild after Vietnam, but at the same time we’re engaging with the Soviet and the Chinese leadership. And it’s the foreign policy in many ways of President Reagan, who people often talk about the ‘evil empire’ speech, but they forget – and of course the military build-up, but they forget that President Reagan was the one who met General-Secretary Gorbachev in Reykjavik and visited Moscow while he was president and brought the Cold War to a conclusion through diplomacy.”
Shifting focus and to further clarify his commentary on “middle power strategy” when set against this broader American foundation, Colby said: “On the middle-powers thing, actually, a key point of our approach ... let’s distinguish something. There’s a category of countries that are middle powers. That’s an analytical component. That’s fine. That’s just an analytical discussion about how they should operate.
“Then there’s a middle-power strategy, which is like, oh, middle powers should work together often because – on the putative basis for what you just laid out, which is that they don’t trust America or they don’t have enough capacity for America or don’t believe America has enough capacity or whatever it might be, and then they should collaborate together.”
Colby added: “What we’re going against – and actually largely often in the interests of the stated middle powers – is actually that that’s not a smart or wise strategy. Part of the point is we’re not nervous about it from our self-interested point of view because we know that the size of the American economy, our investments at the cutting edge of technology, the quality and scale of our defence industrial base, the quality of the American Armed Forces, they’re unbeatable.
“So we know that we will be okay. What we’re actually trying to communicate is that middle-power countries, especially ones that are threatened or feel a higher degree of threat, risk wasting a lot of time, effort, resources, et cetera, if they embark on a futile and kind of foolhardy quest along those lines ... this is an important point to stress – we’re actually encouraging countries – and this is distinct from past administrations – we actually want middle powers as an empirical category to build up their strength. And we’re also encouraging them to indigenise a lot of their defence industry.”
Going further, Colby said: “I mean, we actually view this kind of critique of the middle-power strategy as, if anything, being really in the interests of those countries themselves not to embark on a course that’s ultimately going to be a waste of time ... We are not saying you shouldn’t indigenise some of your defence industrial dollars. We’re just saying, hey, look, let’s focus on results.
“That’s the key point. Don’t use – and there are some countries that are doing this – don’t use your defence industrial dollar as a kind of political or industrial economic strategy for your domestic context. Make sure that when you’re thinking about, hey, where – what kind of aircraft are we going to buy? What kind of interceptor are we going to buy? What kind of ships are we going to buy? That should have military deterrent utility that’s focused on strategic reality.”
With this clarification, it becomes clear that Australia’s objective as a middle power (albeit a lower-tier one currently) should not be to abandon the United States or retreat into strategic isolation. Quite the opposite: the Australian-American alliance remains one of the country’s most important strategic assets. But an alliance is strongest when both partners possess the capacity to contribute meaningfully to their own defence and to the defence of one another.
Enhancing sovereignty, resilience and capability
Australia’s goal should consequently be strategic resilience rather than strategic dependence.
That means building the industrial capacity to manufacture more of what the Australian Defence Force requires; securing domestic access to energy, critical minerals and strategic materials; developing sovereign expertise in advanced manufacturing, electronics, artificial intelligence, space and autonomous systems; expanding the national workforce available to defence and high-technology industries; and maintaining sufficient stockpiles and production capacity to withstand prolonged disruption.
It also means accepting that resilience will cost money.
A country that wishes to remain prosperous and sovereign in a multipolar world cannot simultaneously assume that someone else will always provide its security, manufacture its weapons, secure its supply chains and guarantee access to critical technologies.
The central lesson of the emerging international order is therefore straightforward: Australia cannot choose whether the world becomes more competitive, dangerous and multipolar. It can only choose how prepared it will be when that world arrives.
Middle-power cooperation will remain important. Alliances will remain indispensable. Partnerships with other democracies will become increasingly valuable. But ultimately, Australia’s security cannot rest upon the assumption that others will always be willing or, more importantly, be able to come to its aid at the drop of a hat.
The Australia that emerges in this era of renewed and intensified great-power competition must therefore be considerably more resilient, competitive and self-reliant than the Australia that entered it. Not because Canberra should abandon its allies, but because the most valuable ally is one that possesses the capacity to sustainably stand on its own when circumstances demand it.
This will require an implicit understanding from both Australia’s policymakers and the public that in the multipolar world, strategic autonomy will no longer be a luxury reserved for great powers. It will be a prerequisite for the survival and prosperity of serious middle powers.
Final thoughts
Australia’s strategic moment of truth is no longer something looming on the horizon. It has arrived, and the country is already behind the pace of change.
For decades, Australia operated within an international environment that made strategic complacency remarkably easy. American military primacy, expanding globalisation and an increasingly integrated international economy created an extraordinary degree of security and prosperity. Canberra could maintain a relatively small defence establishment, outsource much of its industrial depth and assume that the broader international system would remain sufficiently stable to protect Australian interests.
That world is disappearing in real time, before our eyes.
The Indo-Pacific is no longer simply an important region of the global economy. It is becoming the principal theatre in which economic power, military capability, technological superiority and political influence will be contested. The strategic competition unfolding across the western Pacific is occurring not on some distant frontier, but in Australia’s immediate neighbourhood.
Canberra increasingly recognises this reality in its language: strategic resilience, sovereignty, national security, self-reliance, deterrence, denial. The problem is that Australia’s rhetoric is moving considerably faster than its capacity to act.
Defence acquisition remains painfully slow. Industrial mobilisation is still treated largely as a policy aspiration rather than a national undertaking. Critical supply chains remain vulnerable. Skilled-workforce shortages constrain expansion. Sovereign manufacturing capacity remains inadequate in many strategically important sectors. Across government, too many processes, institutions and assumptions remain calibrated for a strategic environment that no longer exists.
Australia cannot simultaneously declare a strategic emergency and continue behaving as though there is no emergency.
A peacetime system cannot simply be given more ambitious objectives and expected to deliver wartime-level outcomes. If Australia genuinely believes that the strategic environment has deteriorated fundamentally, then the machinery of government, industry and defence must change accordingly.
That does not mean abandoning Australia’s alliances or retreating behind some artificial conception of self-sufficiency. Geography makes engagement unavoidable. The economy depends upon international trade. The alliance with the United States remains indispensable. Australia’s security is inseparable from the stability of the Indo-Pacific.
But these realities should strengthen the case for sovereign capability, not weaken it.
An alliance is most valuable when Australia possesses something substantial to contribute. A partner that cannot sustain its own military operations, replenish its equipment, protect its critical infrastructure or maintain access to essential technologies during a major crisis is not strategically resilient. It is strategically dependent.
Dependence may remain comfortable during periods of stability. It becomes dangerous when the assumptions underpinning that stability begin to fail.
Australia therefore needs to think beyond simply acquiring more platforms. It needs to build the national capacity required to sustain a technologically sophisticated state under prolonged strategic pressure.
That means rebuilding industrial depth. It means expanding domestic production of munitions, missiles, vehicles, ships, autonomous systems, electronics and other strategically important technologies. It means securing energy and critical-mineral supply chains. It means investing heavily in advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, space, quantum technologies and sovereign engineering expertise. It means developing the workforce required to operate and expand these capabilities.
Most importantly, it requires continuity.
Strategic capability cannot be built according to the electoral cycle. Factories, shipyards, research institutions, skilled workforces and defence-industrial ecosystems take years or decades to develop. They cannot be switched on when a crisis begins.
Australia nevertheless possesses extraordinary foundations upon which to build.
Its geography gives it enormous strategic significance. Its natural resources provide the raw materials required by advanced industrial economies. Its universities and research institutions possess genuine strengths. Its agricultural, energy and mineral sectors provide an economic foundation envied by many nations. And its position astride the maritime approaches to the Indo-Pacific places Australia at the intersection of the region that is increasingly defining the global balance of power.
The problem is not a lack of assets. It is the failure to consistently convert those assets into deep, well-rounded national power.
Australia has spent decades treating its advantages as permanent rather than as resources requiring deliberate mobilisation. That assumption is becoming increasingly dangerous. Natural resources do not automatically produce industrial strength. Wealth does not automatically produce military capability. Alliances do not automatically produce strategic autonomy.
They must be converted into capability through political will, institutional reform, investment and sustained national effort. The central question facing Australia is therefore no longer whether the strategic environment has changed. It plainly has.
The question is whether Australia is prepared to change with it.
The next decade will determine whether Australia enters the emerging multipolar order as a resilient, technologically sophisticated and strategically consequential middle power – or as an increasingly wealthy but increasingly dependent country whose security rests upon assumptions it can no longer control.
The opportunity remains enormous. But so too is the cost of hesitation.
Australia does not need to become a great power. It does, however, need to become a serious power: capable of defending itself, sustaining its forces, protecting its economic lifelines and contributing meaningful strategic weight to its alliances even when the international system is under extreme pressure.
That is the standard the new world will impose. And Australia needs to start meeting it now.
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
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