The more political leaders and experts talk about changes to the global order, the more precarious the situation that Europe finds itself in appears.
The Europeans have reason to fear being squeezed between the United States and China, for instance when the two superpowers negotiated a trade truce at their Busan summit in South Korea last October. And there is no question that they are exposed to major powers, unable to defend themselves properly—be it the military aggression coming from Russia, China’s use of critical chokepoints, or US economic coercion and the implied threat to annex Greenland by military force.
Many other states are exposed to the same systemic pressures, but have adapted much better to the shifts in international politics. Middle powers like India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates seem to thrive in today’s increasingly fragmented global environment—thanks to smart strategies and unique assets, they are in demand as partners and can increasingly leverage their assets.
These states seem to be the winners of today’s global order. In comparison, the Europeans, who for a long time relied on the transatlantic alliance and US leadership to secure their place in the world, don’t appear to have a clear strategy to safeguard their security, prosperity, and competitiveness (as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz likes to put it) amidst global power shifts.
The Europeans can learn from these middle powers, meaning states that are playing a significant role thanks to considerable strategic capital in one or more areas of international politics. More precisely, the Europeans and especially the European Union should adopt a middle power mindset and focus on what allows these middle powers not only to survive but to thrive: their strategic indispensability.
A Realistic Assessment of European Power
The notion of “Europe” as a middle power and the subsequent call for the EU and the United Kingdom to embrace a middle power mindset may have sounded inappropriate in European foreign policy circles just a decade ago. As French and British strategists (rightly) embraced the Indo-Pacific as a key region for European security, and European states enhanced their engagement with the region, these global ambitions were quickly misread as a return to Gaullist ideas or nostalgia for empire.
Although French President Emmanuel Macron has sometimes called for Europe to be a “balancing power” (puissance d’équilibre) and offer a “third way” to states unwilling to become trapped in the US-China competition, the assessment of the continent’s power in most European capitals—including Paris—beyond this rhetoric is more realistic, suggesting that Europe must find a way to navigate a world of major powers.
Adapting European strategy to this reality needs to start with a realistic assessment of European power. As Russia’s war against Ukraine has brutally demonstrated, Europe collectively is not a fully-fledged security actor. Although the collective military spending of EU member states, the UK, and Norway exceeds China’s or Russia’s, it falls far behind that of the US. More importantly, Europe lacks the capability to collectively project power and remains heavily dependent on Washington. Although Europe has taken considerable steps and made significant investments to build a more autonomous and stronger European defense, these efforts will take time to bear fruit. Dependence and a lack of capability significantly limit the Europeans’ room for maneuver and leverage.
Europe is much better positioned in terms of economic power. With the second biggest GDP in the world, the EU is an economic heavyweight. It is only starting to translate its economic resources into political leverage, for example through the massive sanctions against Russia or the conclusion of new free-trade agreements amidst US protectionism. Still, the EU could use its tools and leverage much more systemically, for example the anti-coercion instrument.
It is, however, important to acknowledge that power does not always play out in material and nominal terms: It also manifests itself in relational power and political leverage. In these areas, the strategies of middle powers are leading the way. It seems unlikely that India, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia will become major military powers that could catch up with the US or China. Their successful strategies (and their being in high demand as cooperation partners) do not stem from their absolute power, but from their capacity to position themselves in a smart way and leverage their assets. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has positioned itself as a leader in AI, and has developed AI partnerships with both the US and China.
Another example is Pakistan. Benefiting from its geographic location, it is an important partner on defense cooperation for both countries. Although ties with the US have been degrading in recent years, Lahore remains a major non-NATO ally for Washington, and a central partner in the US involvement in the fight against terrorism in the region; at the same time, it has significantly enhanced its defense relationship with China, including in the defense industrial realm, especially as China’s ties with India deteriorated.
Embracing Strategic Indispensability
The concept of “strategic indispensability” is originally rooted in geoeconomics and describes how states develop considerable leverage in international politics thanks to their control of specific critical resources or central parts of value or supply chains. This centrality makes states “niche superpowers” and creates so-called chokepoints—critical dependencies that can be leveraged or used for coercion. However, it is a missed opportunity to only see strategic indispensability as a geoeconomics approach. Rather, European policymakers should apply it far more widely.
The experience from recent months demonstrates Europe’s strategic indispensability for the great powers. US President Donald Trump’s implicit threats to “take” Greenland by military force demonstrate how European strategic indispensability can be made to work. The prompt and unexpectedly strong European response, including the threat of economic retaliation, has had a deterring effect on the US.
In addition, while Washington might be able to push the Europeans up to a certain point to adapt to its foreign policy priorities, provoking a full transatlantic rupture would be extremely costly for the US. Washington would lose significant leverage, a key export market, and central military bases.
Europe should also more strongly rely on its strategic indispensability when designing short-term policy responses and long-term approaches vis-à-vis China. Beijing needs Europe more than Europe sometimes acknowledges: The EU is China’s second-biggest trade partner, and the Chinese economy still heavily relies on exports and remains relatively weak on domestic demand.
In the past, China has not weaponized chokepoints to an extent where Europe would fall into a massive economic crisis. The Nexperia crisis (the Netherlands-based chipmaker was at the heart of a stand-off between the EU, China, and the US last fall) and China’s decision to halt chips exports to Europe led to significant disruptions in the European and global automotive industry, but Beijing—despite fueling concerns about supply chains and resilience—has stopped short of allowing whole sectors to collapse. Should Beijing use its economic chokepoints for coercion in the future, Europe needs to play its leverage much more strategically through signaling its willingness to respond with its anti-coercion instruments and pointing to the potential harm to China’s self-image as a responsible global actor.
So, while European strategists and experts busily focus on Europe’s vulnerabilities and chokepoints, it is time for them to adopt a middle power mindset: The realization that Europe in itself is too critical for great powers to seek full confrontation or fully abandon cooperation with it.
Learning the Language of Leverage
Europe needs to use its strategic indispensability much more for political leverage in the future. Ukraine is perhaps the most important test case: Despite the Europeans’ limited military capacity, Washington has realized that it will need Europe for long-term stability. European leaders are equally aware of this and seem to be playing this card to avoid Europe being marginalized in eventual negotiations. The key message from European states must be: You will fail without us.
Beyond dealing with the two superpowers, the Europeans can also apply a mindset of strategic indispensability when it comes to cooperating with other middle powers. Concretely, this implies signaling that the EU brings specific, highly complementary, and mutually beneficial assets, and that joining forces in areas of shared interest will enhance their ability to navigate the volatility in international politics and mitigate risks of great power coercion.
The EU’s Security and Defence Partnerships (SDPs), with the UK, Canada, Japan, and India, among others, are a starting point for translating this mindset shift into practice. These partnerships allow both sides to generate direct gains, but also make Brussels the nucleus of an evolving network of middle power partnerships, demonstrating that middle powers themselves have good options—and alternatives to superpowers.
Gesine Weber is Senior Researcher in Global Security at the Center for Security Studies of the ETH Zürich.
