Middle powers can build as many partnerships with other powers as they like, but these cannot substitute for building independent capabilities and hard power.

Across the Middle East, countries with significant human and energy resources tend to position themselves as “middle powers.” Increasingly fashionable as a concept, it seems now to be oversaturated with multiple analyses written on the subject of multi-alignment, multi-vector foreign policy, etc. 

Although the international environment does provide greater room for diplomatic maneuvering, the distribution of actual power remains highly unequal.

Three considerations matter.

First, middle-power status means little in strategic terms without credible military capabilities. 

Second, the influence of many middle powers still depends on their relationships with great powers rather than their ability to operate independently. 

Third, influential middle powers are hardly new. History offers numerous examples of states exploiting geopolitical competition, but few have transformed themselves into great powers. 

Much of the middle power argument rests on the idea that the United States is no longer reliable and that Washington’s power has diminished. The reality is different. The war in Iran underscored how dependent the Gulf countries remain on the United States, which is still by far the most powerful military and economic actor and able to wage wars far from home. Even the US withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq reflected a transfer of responsibility to local actors, a policy Washington had pursued for more than a decade, rather than a decline in American power projection.

Middle Eastern powers are nonetheless diversifying their military and economic partnerships. These measures amount to episodes of bargaining, tactical alignments and short-term gains, but they leave the longer-term balance of power unchanged. Greater room for maneuver should not be mistaken for geopolitical agency, and more partners do not bring more security. The much-touted Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed in September by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan is widely regarded as a deterrence measure rather than an active alliance prepared to field troops.

The vacuum created by Washington’s often uncertain global posture lets Middle Eastern countries explore multiple partnerships. They can still gain prestige and influence by building domestic arms industries and diversified economies by getting closer to Russia, China, the EU, India and Pakistan. But, in the longer run, those efforts rarely change the region’s balance of power. 

Multiplicity of partnerships is hardly unique to the Middle East. The states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, wedged between Russia, China, Iran and Turkey, have practiced it for three decades under far heavier pressure, and their record shows more clearly what separates states that collect partners from those able to act on their own. 

Armenia does not style itself a middle power, but it is now pursuing the multi-vector course its neighbors adopted long ago. Tensions with Russia have led Yerevan to accumulate an incredible number of strategic partnerships with European and Asian countries. It froze its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2024 and says it will not return, launched a bid for European Union membership, signed a strategic partnership charter with Washington, accepted the US-backed Trump Route through its south, and turned to India and France for weapons. 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won June’s election on that program despite Russian trade bans and warnings about gas prices. The pivot remains incomplete: Gazprom controls Armenia’s gas distribution, Russian troops remain in Gyumri, and Moscow is pressing Yerevan to choose between the Eurasian Economic Union and the EU. For the moment, Armenia has diversified its partners faster than it has reduced its dependence. 

The neighboring Azerbaijan provides a more relevant example. After Iranian drones struck the airport in its Nakhchivan exclave on March 5, President Ilham Aliyev called the attack an “act of terror,” put the army on full combat readiness, and closed the border with Iran.

After Russian air defenses downed an Azerbaijan Airlines jet in December 2024, Baku pressed Moscow until Putin acknowledged responsibility and agreed to compensation. Similar to Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan holds strategic partnerships with both Washington and Beijing, and in October Aliyev called the United States and China the world’s only superpowers, leaving Russia off the list.

Lately, Baku has slightly distanced itself from its closest ally, Turkey. Azerbaijani oil continues to flow to Israel through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, despite tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem. Moreover, this autumn, after a senior advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized Baku’s restrictions on headscarves in schools, Azerbaijan barred 31 Turkish nationals from entry into the country, and Erdoğan dismissed the advisor, reportedly at Baku’s request. The Azerbaijani president also told his party congress that Azerbaijan needs “no one’s help or patronage,” and on October 30 he skipped the Organization of Turkic States summit in Ankara despite Erdoğan’s personal invitation.

Azerbaijan’s room for maneuver remains constrained by its large neighbors. Yet, the country emerged as a middle power and could further strengthen its position if it evades direct confrontation, and the present international situation, when its bigger neighbors are consumed by conflicts elsewhere, persists. 

Central Asia offers another example. Similar to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, which shares a 7,500-kilometer (4660-mile) border with Russia and ships most of its oil through Russian territory, has pursued multi-vector diplomacy since independence. In 2022, seated beside Vladimir Putin, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev argued Astana would not recognize the Russian-backed statelets in Donetsk and Luhansk. 

Kazakhstan produces roughly 40 percent of the world’s uranium, champions the Middle Corridor linking China and Europe while bypassing Russia, and last November joined the Abraham Accords. It also maintains close ties with the United States, China and the European Union. Kazakhstan therefore has gradually emerged as a middle power. It also strengthens its military potential, though it uses its natural resources and diplomacy far more powerfully as geopolitical leverage. 

There is a fundamental difference between influencing the decisions of other states and possessing the capabilities necessary to impose strategic outcomes. A country might host major international summits, maintain relations with competing geopolitical blocs, and attract substantial foreign investment without being able to defend its interests against military coercion.

Divisions among Middle Eastern countries further complicate their efforts to escape great-power influence and build a regional order of their own. Oil and gas will not make them effective players. They need military power to back their ambitions and the willingness to use it on behalf of partners and allies.

Another hurdle is that middle powers tend to be highly transactional. They are wary of formal alliance entanglements, which limits coalition building. When Iran struck Azerbaijan in March after the United States and Israel launched their war on the Islamic Republic, Turkey showed restraint. Ankara also has not engaged the Houthis, who had targeted Saudi Arabia. Pakistan, another aspiring middle power, has behaved similarly.

Yet Turkey nevertheless is the clearest example in the Middle East of a middle power whose ambitions are backed by considerable military capabilities. Ankara has large conventional forces, a growing defense industry, and a demonstrated willingness to operate beyond its borders. Its interventions in Syria, Iraq, and Libya and its military cooperation with Azerbaijan have allowed it to shape developments in its neighborhood, and its drone exports provide both revenue and influence.

In the Middle East, the middle power momentum could prove situational, lasting only until a more robust world order settles in. No institution anchors it the way the Non-Aligned Movement did during the Cold War, and even nonalignment rarely meant freedom from dependence: Egypt relied on Soviet arms, Yugoslavia on Western support after its break with Stalin, and India on military cooperation with Moscow. 

History also offers only a few examples of middle powers maintaining their position for a longer period of time and eventually rising to great-power status. Prussia did so in the 18th and 19th centuries through military modernization and diplomatic maneuvering, and Japan followed in the early 20th century. Both transformations depended on structural changes in productivity, industry, technology, and military organization. Few aspiring middle powers in the Middle East have the potential for such a transformation. 

Thus, the growing activism of Middle Eastern middle powers is an important feature of contemporary international politics, but it should not be confused with a fundamental redistribution of power in the region. Their influence remains uneven, their autonomy is constrained by military limitations, and their effectiveness depends on productive relationships with established great powers. Geopolitical balancing is neither new nor a reliable path to great-power status. 

About the Author: Emil Avdaliani

Emil Avdaliani is a research fellow at the Turan Research Center and a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research focuses on the history of the Silk Roads and the interests of great powers in the Middle East and the Caucasus. Dr. Avdaliani has published several books, including his latest, The Caucasian Silk Roads and Eurasian Connectivity, 500-1405: Trade, Culture, and Warfare in Transit, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

The post Why the Middle East and Central Asia Won’t Be Defined by Middle Powers appeared first on The National Interest.