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Shi Jiangtao

Just weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is due to visit the White House, tensions have flared between Washington and its allies after one of the administration’s sharpest rebukes yet.
Speaking in Manila on August 10, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defence for policy, pressed regional partners to increase defence spending and align more closely with American priorities.
He said Washington sought “partners, not protectorates” and cautioned against “the delusion of fashionable but superficial ideas like middle-power alliances designed to exclude America”.
The remarks reinforced the message Colby laid out in mid-July that there was “a great deal of hubbub about a collective ‘middle powers’ strategy these days”.
On social media and in a subsequent New York Times interview, he said the strategy was based on a “faulty understanding” of international relations and that allies risked “wasting valuable time, money and political capital on a distraction”. He said access to the US defence industrial base was “a privilege, not a right”.

The remarks have intensified a debate among US allies over how to reduce dependence on Washington in the transactional Donald Trump era without drifting into Beijing’s orbit.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University of China, said it reflected Trump’s “flexible realist” strategy and efforts to get more from partners while discouraging coordination that did not involve Washington.
“It is easy to see Colby’s position as both doctrine and negotiating tactic, though in practice neither is simple,” he said.
“The Trump administration has for months criticised nearly all of its advanced allies, often using this as a form of extortion, yet none have significantly or lastingly improved relations with Beijing. This has been both revealing and instructive.”
Analysts also said Colby’s remarks gave Beijing an opportunity to promote its vision of a multipolar world not dominated by Washington, presenting itself as a more respectful and steadier alternative in unstable and uncertain times.
Jagannath Panda, head of the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Sweden, said Colby was signalling that Washington now saw defence cooperation as being conditional on political conformity.
“His dismissal of middle-power coordination further implies that Washington prefers capable partners individually dependent on the United States rather than collectively autonomous,” he said.
Such pressure might see short-term compliance but it could push US allies to hedge and diversify, according to analysts.
“Over time, coercive dependence generates incentives to diversify procurement, establish minilateral defence arrangements and reopen economic channels with Beijing,” Panda said.
Over the past year, the term “middle powers” has gained new currency as governments try to find room to manoeuvre between Washington and Beijing, at a time when the US and China have become more transactional and assertive.
At the June Group of Seven summit in France, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney urged middle powers to form flexible, issue‑based coalitions to preserve sovereignty and resilience in a harsher world order.
In another move by middle powers to deepen coordination and move beyond the US security umbrella, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on August 7, declaring that an armed attack on one would be treated as an attack on all three.
Against that backdrop, Beijing has been pushing for alternatives to an increasingly unpredictable Washington. But experts said most middle powers were sceptical about China being a substitute on security matters, even as they grew wary of US volatility.
At the heart of the dilemma is how countries caught in the US-China rivalry can balance three competing goals: preserving the American security umbrella; preventing overexposure to Beijing; and building enough domestic and minilateral capacity to avoid being trapped by either superpower.
“China offers markets, infrastructure and diplomatic attention, but its partnerships are selective, transactional and rarely supported by dependable security guarantees,” Panda said.
“Beijing’s limited willingness to assume responsibility during major international crises also weakens its claim to be a comprehensive alternative.”
Ahead of another highly anticipated Xi-Trump summit, Panda said Beijing would likely use targeted incentives to show that strategic flexibility produces benefits.
“But its objective is not an autonomous third pole. Beijing prefers middle powers sufficiently independent of Washington to weaken American primacy, yet insufficiently united to constrain China collectively,” he said.


The differing calculations are already visible across Asia and beyond.
Japan has expanded cooperation with like-minded states while keeping the US-Japan alliance as the foundation of its security policy, especially given its deteriorating ties with Beijing.
South Korea remains one of the few US allies that has sought closer ties with Beijing, reflecting its deep economic dependence on China, even as it remains anchored to Washington.
Australia has moved to harden its defences and supply chains and deepen military cooperation with the US, while India has advanced its doctrine of “multi‑alignment” – seeking to preserve strategic autonomy through selective engagement with Washington, Beijing, Moscow and others simultaneously.
Shi said China’s own foreign-policy focus remained fixed on the US, and middle powers were still more likely to deepen alignment with Washington while hedging harder with Beijing.
“In essence, they remain US allies, and China is the major rival of both Washington and nearly all of them, geopolitically, militarily and across numerous trade fields,” he said.
The broader problem is structural: the US may be unwilling or unable to underwrite every alliance burden, but middle powers cannot replace that role either, according to Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore and a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China.
He said that by hedging their bets, countries might create distrust on both sides.
“A middle or smaller power trying to hedge may find that it creates suspicion and abandonment by both major powers or, worse, punishment from both,” he said.
Rana Mitter, professor and S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it was unlikely that most powers would seek to hedge with Beijing.
“Beijing has little tradition of providing security and has relatively limited experience of working with partner governments on these issues, though there are exceptions such as Pakistan,” he said.
Mitter argued that for those less certain about US commitments, China’s pitch could have appeal – but not enough substance where it mattered most.
“Regardless of American language around security, very few middle powers are likely to seek out China as a security alternative, as most of the issues that concern them are not ones where China is likely to provide significant additional capacity,” he said. “Beijing will need a more persuasive security offer than simply not being the US.”
There have been growing concerns among middle powers about China’s assertiveness, according to Takashi Hosoda, an assistant professor at the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic, who called it a form of “great-power exceptionalism”.
Beijing has drawn backlash in recent years over its close ties with Russia, growing diplomatic assertiveness, attempts to challenge the US-led post-war order, and selective invocation of the United Nations and international norms.
Meantime, Hosoda said Washington would inevitably recognise that effective cooperation with middle powers remained indispensable in areas like industrial policy, defence and economic security.
He likened the US-led alliance network to the companions in Journey to the West, a 16th‑century Chinese classic that tells the story of a monk and his unruly disciples travelling to India in search of sacred scriptures.
“Throughout their journey, they frequently quarrel over direction, priorities and individual responsibilities. Yet whenever confronted by a common adversary, they reunite and continue towards their shared destination,” he said.

Sourabh Gupta, a senior policy specialist with the Institute for China-America Studies, said Colby was articulating a coherent “flexible realist” strategy.
“It is a somewhat narrower, unenlightened and self-interested one, but it is not a mere negotiating tactic,” he said. “The United States is in relative decline, which in the national security arena means it is unable and perhaps unwilling to fully underwrite all its alliance burdens.
“The middle powers – individually or collectively – are unable to make up for this slack.”
Gupta said the practical result was that many allies would continue to align more closely with Washington while also building domestic capabilities in case US support weakened.
“Because of the great asymmetry between what the US and what its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific bring to the table, the latter can build out their capabilities collaboratively with Washington today and yet repurpose these platforms and capabilities to comport with a more strategically autonomist policy outlook tomorrow,” he said.
Still, Gupta said Colby’s rhetoric could further undermine Washington’s credibility, even as it underscored US military and industrial strength.
“That Washington is calling upon allies and partners to furnish what it used to furnish by itself suggests in the first place that it is incapable of doing so today – a sign of its relative decline. Colby’s rhetoric betrays weakness and decline, not strength and command.”
He said middle-power activism was an “unambiguous plus” for Beijing.
“The dilution or softening of bloc-like formations has always been a cardinal priority of Chinese post-Cold War international relations,” Gupta said. “The more distributed the global power structure, the more amenable it is to Chinese diplomatic management.”


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American allies caught in the superpower rivalry are trying to reduce dependence on Washington without drifting into Beijing’s orbit


American allies caught in the superpower rivalry are trying to reduce dependence on Washington without drifting into Beijing’s orbit.


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Why China will need a ‘more persuasive security offer’ to win over middle powers

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}American allies caught in the superpower rivalry are trying to reduce dependence on Washington without drifting into Beijing’s orbit

American allies caught in the superpower rivalry are trying to reduce dependence on Washington without drifting into Beijing’s orbit