Why much of the world has little interest in choosing sides — or being told where it belongs.
Western diplomats have a peculiar habit. Whenever other countries begin exercising the freedom of choice that the West has long claimed to defend, they start worrying about the international order.
The latest expression of this anxiety is the search for a third way. With Washington increasingly unpredictable and Beijing increasingly assertive, middle powers are being encouraged to join forces and develop an alternative to great-power rivalry.
It is an appealing idea, particularly in Europe, where the loss of familiar certainties has become a subject of almost professional concern. There is no shortage of conferences devoted to the future of an international order whose previous virtues tend to improve considerably in retrospect.
But there is a complication. Many of the countries supposedly in need of a third way have been pursuing their own for quite some time. They negotiate with Washington, trade with Beijing and welcome European investment without feeling particularly obliged to explain why these relationships should be mutually exclusive.
Europeans sometimes find this opportunistic. Elsewhere, it is regarded as a perfectly reasonable way of conducting foreign policy.
The View from the Centre
Anyone who has spent considerable time in Abuja will recognize a particular quality of Nigerian public life: an extraordinary confidence in the country’s own importance.
It is not confined to ministers or senior officials. I encountered it just as frequently among businesspeople and the influential circles of the capital. Many were internationally experienced, familiar with European institutions and entirely conscious of the problems facing their own country. They had no illusions about the Nigerian administration, and their criticism of corruption could be considerably more devastating than anything a visiting European might dare to offer.
Yet none of this seemed to disturb their conviction that Nigeria occupied a position of natural importance in the world.
I found this fascinating, occasionally irritating and, I must admit, rather refreshing.
In Europe, we have developed elaborate methods of assessing a country’s international standing. Economic performance is measured, rankings consulted, reputations anxiously monitored. Political leaders worry about how their country is perceived in Washington or Brussels. In the Abuja circles I came to know, Nigeria’s importance required no such external certification. The assumption was so deeply embedded that questioning it would have seemed faintly ridiculous.
Of course, confidence is not competence. Nigeria’s institutional shortcomings were obvious then, and national ambition has not always translated into international influence. The persistent distance between the country’s possibilities and its performance remains one of its great frustrations.
But that is precisely what made the attitude so striking. Nigerians could be merciless about their country’s failures without questioning its rightful importance. The two convictions coexisted quite comfortably.
Years later, I was reminded of those encounters when reading a speech by Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar. Speaking in September 2025, he defended strategic autonomy and warned against restrictive ideological alignments. Nigeria, he argued, should preserve its freedom to pursue relationships according to its own interests.
The language was more formal than the conversations I remembered, but the underlying attitude was familiar.
Nigeria is hardly a representative sample of the Global South. Its size, history and regional ambitions give it a particular sense of itself. Nor should national self-confidence be confused with the ability to achieve every foreign-policy objective. Still, those years in Abuja left me with a lasting suspicion that Western discussions about where countries belong often tell us more about Western expectations than about the countries concerned.
Other People’s Maps
International relations specialists have developed an extensive vocabulary to describe countries that refuse to fit neatly into geopolitical categories. They are said to be hedging, drifting or balancing between competing centers of power.
Consider what this language implies. When a government expands trade with China, it is described as moving towards Beijing. When it strengthens security cooperation with the United States, it is moving towards Washington. Should it pursue both relationships simultaneously, its foreign policy becomes an exercise in strategic ambiguity.
Perhaps the government has simply remained where it always intended to be.
The difference is not merely linguistic. It shapes how diplomats interpret the intentions of their counterparts. A country that refuses to endorse a Western position may be considered hesitant, insufficiently persuaded or vulnerable to Chinese influence. There is less willingness to accept that it might have reached a deliberate conclusion of its own.
Nor is this attitude confined to Nigeria. Sophie Eisentraut, writing in Internationale Politik Quarterly, points to an intriguing difference in how countries perceive the changing international environment. In recent surveys, respondents in Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey were more inclined to believe that their countries had gained influence than lost it. In Germany, France, Italy and Britain, the prevailing impression was the opposite.
These are perceptions, not measurements, of actual power. Yet perceptions influence political choices. A government convinced that its opportunities are expanding approaches negotiations differently from one preoccupied with defending a position it fears is slipping away.
The same geopolitical developments can consequently produce very different reactions. Europeans see fragmentation where others see additional partners. An erosion of Western predominance need not be experienced everywhere as the collapse of international order.
What Carney Gets Right — and What He Assumes
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recognised the predicament of middle powers in his Davos speech of January 2026. He urged them to cooperate rather than compete for the favor of the great powers, suggesting a third path that would give them greater collective influence.
His proposal was more practical than some of its subsequent interpretations. Carney envisaged different coalitions for different issues, with countries joining forces where their interests overlapped. He understood that middle powers could not individually resist every form of economic or political coercion.
There is much to be said for this approach. Countries have good reasons to diversify their supply chains, cooperate on technology and reduce vulnerabilities that leave them dependent on decisions taken elsewhere.
But Carney also spoke of building a better international order. And here the argument becomes more demanding.
It is one thing for countries to cooperate because they share a particular vulnerability. It is another to expect that cooperation to develop into a common vision of how the world should be governed. India and Brazil may find overlapping interests in trade negotiations without agreeing on security arrangements. Nigeria may welcome Canadian cooperation without sharing Canada’s understanding of the institutions that ought to govern international relations.
A coalition assembled to solve a practical problem does not acquire a common political philosophy merely by working well together.
Eisentraut’s analysis suggests that middle powers have so far been more receptive to limited cooperation than to Carney’s larger ambition of collective order-building. This need not reflect a shortage of imagination or leadership. The countries involved may simply see little advantage in exchanging their present freedom of action for another framework of collective obligations.
That is the difficulty with the expression Global South. It identifies a broad range of countries whose experiences of Western predominance may overlap, but whose interests are often quite different. Turning them into a coherent geopolitical actor requires a level of agreement that has rarely existed outside conference declarations.
The Diplomacy of Not Being Impressed
Diplomacy has always involved an element of theatre. Statements of shared values are issued with great sincerity, even when the parties disagree about what those values require. Bilateral relations are regularly declared excellent, sometimes shortly before deteriorating dramatically.
Nobody familiar with diplomatic life expects every communiqué to describe reality with clinical precision. The trouble begins when the courteous language of a meeting is taken as evidence that the underlying interests have also converged.
A government may express sympathy for Europe’s concern about international instability without regarding the decline of Western influence as a problem of comparable urgency. It may appreciate European assistance and still see no reason to support Europe’s position in a dispute with China.
The customary response is to intensify diplomatic engagement. More explanation might help, perhaps another ministerial visit or a carefully prepared strategic dialogue. There are circumstances in which these efforts work perfectly well. But they cannot persuade a government to abandon interests merely because those interests are inconvenient to us.
I remember the Nigerian attitude in this respect with a mixture of admiration and disbelief. The country could be extraordinarily frustrating to deal with. Its confidence was not always justified by its performance, and indifference to outside opinion sometimes came at a considerable cost.
Nevertheless, there was something instructive about the absence of any apparent need to seek permission for its own importance.
Western diplomacy occasionally confuses economic dependence with political deference. It assumes that countries facing serious internal problems will naturally be more receptive to external guidance. The assumption is understandable, particularly when the guidance comes accompanied by substantial financial assistance. It is also frequently mistaken.
National pride survives bad governance remarkably well.
The emerging world is unlikely to organise itself into three tidy geopolitical camps. It will probably consist of overlapping relationships, temporary coalitions and agreements that make sense to their participants without satisfying anyone else’s desire for strategic consistency. Some of these arrangements will prove unstable. Others may become surprisingly durable.
For diplomats trained to think in terms of alliances and spheres of influence, this is not an especially comfortable prospect.
But discomfort is not necessarily evidence that something has gone wrong.
The question for Western governments is not simply why so many countries hesitate to choose the right side. It is why we assumed they were waiting to choose a side in the first place.
There is a certain comfort in imagining that the world’s political geography revolves around one’s own capital. The habit is not exclusively Western, as anyone familiar with Abuja can attest.
Perhaps the most revealing feature of the much-discussed third way is that it answers a question many of its intended beneficiaries never asked.
They were already going somewhere.
Christopher Angel — currently posted, officially silent, and biting anyway.