Multipolarity offers middle powers more choices, but fewer guarantees

Iran received the political support it wanted at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek. The organisation condemned military attacks against Iran, called them violations of international law and the UN Charter, reaffirmed Iranian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and urged a political and diplomatic solution.

But the SCO did not offer to defend Iran. That gap between political solidarity and collective defence is the most revealing part of the episode. It shows what middle powers can expect from the international order taking shape around organisations such as the SCO and BRICS.

For years, multipolarity was often described as a challenge to the US-led system, with China, Russia and non-Western institutions expected to form an alternative bloc. For middle powers, membership or engagement in those organisations appeared to offer protection from Western isolation and pressure. The war involving the United States, Israel and Iran has exposed the limits of that expectation. None of these relationships offers a security guarantee comparable to a formal military alliance.

The emerging order is therefore not necessarily replacing one alliance system with another. Instead, it is creating a dense network of overlapping partnerships. These ties can provide diplomatic and economic options without ensuring that another state will stand beside a partner when its security is directly threatened. For middle powers, the result may be more room to manoeuvre but less certainty about who will provide protection.

Türkiye offers a clear example. It has belonged to NATO for more than seven decades and remains part of the Western security architecture, yet Ankara has maintained relations with Russia despite the war in Ukraine, expanded engagement with China and joined the SCO as a dialogue partner. Its disagreements with the United States and Israel over the future regional order in the Middle East have also become more visible.

That does not mean Türkiye is abandoning NATO or moving into a Chinese- or Russian-led bloc. Its strategy depends on avoiding that binary choice. NATO provides security benefits that the SCO cannot replicate, while relations with Russia, China, Iran, Gulf states and other regional actors widen Türkiye’s diplomatic and economic options. Brazil is presented as another example, although the supplied article ends before developing its case.