Putin’s Special Envoy to the US Kirill Dmitriev, who’s also head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, mocked what’s known as the “Middle Power” strategy in mid-July wherein such countries cooperate with one another for optimizing their respective balancing acts between the world’s Great Powers. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, who’s considered to be the brain behind Trump 2.0’s foreign policy and especially the military component thereof, published a critical thread about this on X.
In his words, “’Middle powers’ don’t have a coherent basis for alignment. [Their strategy] also isn’t borne out by reality, in our experience.” He continued: “We see an *upsurge* in desire for engagement with the United States, not a reduction. Under President Trump’s leadership, countries not only see the value of American engagement, they can no longer take it for granted. We unquestionably see an incredibly strong and continuing demand signal for U.S. military presence and engagement around the world.”
For whatever one’s opinion of his views may be, Elbridge’s attempt to discredit the “Middle Power” strategy and his championing of the US’ military presence around the world challenges Russian interests, which supports the rise of “Middle Powers” and is against the US’ foreign military deployments. That’s why it was very odd to say the least to read Dmitriev’s tweets on this matter. His first post of relevance was him sharing Elbridge’s thread with a caption condemning the EU and the UK for pursuing this policy.
Dmitriev wrote that “The EU/UK’s faulty ‘middle power’ strategy started to freak out the US. EU/UK vassals should know their place.” He then quoted the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman, who posed a critical question to Elbridge asking whether he realizes that countries are experimenting with this approach due to the newfound threats that they perceive from the US. Dmitriev then wrote that “Vassals panic and will soon beg for forgiveness for their ‘middle power’ heresy.”
This was then followed by him responding “Yes” to a person who wrote under his post that “They’ll be begging for forgiveness by next quarter. Middle power strategy has the shelf life of a Davos talking point.” Only he can account for why he holds these opinions, let alone why he decided to publicly share them despite representing Putin even though his profile clarifies that “Views my own”, but he’s ironically contradicting his own previously expressed opinion about the EU’s de facto German leader.
Dmitriev was very dovish towards it in an interview with German media last month that was analyzed here at the time, but the salient part thereof was when he told his interlocutor that “if Germany and Russia cooperated, they would form one of the strongest economic powers the world has ever known. The combination of German technology, the Russian people, and Russian raw materials would be a tremendous force. We feel there have been many efforts to separate us.”
It’s veritably in Russia’s interests for there to be a Russian-German rapprochement that leads to the outcome that he described, yet that can only happen if Germany successfully practices the “Middle Power” strategy that Dmitriev inexplicably mocked. With all due respect to him, he should therefore reflect on the contradiction between his recently expressed opinion on the matter and what he earlier said about Russian-German relations, after which it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to clarify his views.
