How Small Powers Turn Vulnerability Into Strength

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During the U.S.-imposed tariff showdown, the European Union displayed a glaring lack of strategic unity. Germany, dependent on car exports, sought to avoid escalation. France, half-heartedly, called for a firmer line. Faced with an unpredictable Trump, European leaders chose appeasement. They accepted an unequal balance of power to avoid a trade war, sacrificing their own leverage and retaliatory tools. 

Canada, equally dependent on the American security umbrella, took a different approach. Unlike a weak European Union, unable to impose its conditions or defend its interests in Washington, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada drew clear red lines. In May 2025, he declared that his country was not for sale, defying Trump’s ambition to make Canada the 51st state. His predecessor, Justin Trudeau, had renegotiated NAFTA in 2018 while avoiding rupture. 

How can we explain this phenomenon? To what extent do small and medium-sized powers manage to assert their sovereignty in an international system dominated by great powers when others fail?

Structural Vulnerabilities

Small states are often economically and commercially dependent, making them vulnerable to sanctions and coercion from powerful neighbors—as Qatar discovered during the 2017 blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. They also tend to be marginalized in major international negotiations, where great powers set the terms of trade and access.

Their security dependence is equally constraining. To ensure survival, small states must often seek protection within larger alliances, as the Baltic countries did by anchoring their defense in NATO. Yet this protection can come at the cost of autonomy, reviving Cold War-like dynamics now visible in places such as Moldova and Georgia, caught between Russia and the European Union.

Finally, limited military and diplomatic resources restrict their freedom of action. Unable to project hard power, small states must rely on a combination of creative diplomacy, soft power and strategic partnerships to navigate an international order shaped by much larger players.

How to Assert Sovereignty?

To thrive on the international stage, small powers benefit from mastering the rules of international relations and pooling resources to amplify their influence. Regional integration serves as a power multiplier, whether through the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), or Mercosur—a South American trade bloc. Canada leveraged the EU and Mexico to contain Trump during the NAFTA renegotiation. Similarly,  the Baltic states rely on multilateralism (NATO and the EU) to assert their sovereignty.

Beyond regional alliances, small powers often turn to international law and multilateral institutions strategically. Legal norms can serve as a shield: after abolishing its army, Costa Rica invested heavily in regional and global organizations, wielding law as a strategic tool. Singapore similarly wields international trade law and WTO mechanisms to advance its interests.

Soft power can also serve as a weapon of influence—through cultural diplomacy, scientific achievement, or principled commitment to norms. Would Israel and the PLO have reached mutual recognition without Norway’s diplomatic efforts? Oslo has used its oil wealth to build one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, forging a global reputation far exceeding its size.

Neutral Switzerland has long practiced mediation diplomacy in the service of peace. In Africa and Asia, this role once belonged to Algeria under President Boumediene (1965–1978), whose Third-Worldist era saw major diplomatic breakthroughs. Today, Oman plays a similar role in U.S.–Iran talks.

Many levers turn weakness into an asset. Geography is a primary resource. However vulnerable Turkey may be, entangled in endless internal crises, its geostrategic position remains undeniable. Singapore on the Strait of Malacca, Oman in the Gulf, and Djibouti on the Bab el-Mandeb are prime examples of small powers that profit from geographic advantage. Beyond such geostrategic linchpins, island states can leverage their exclusive economic zones—Mauritius and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean are cases in point.

A second lever is specialization—diplomatic, but above all, economic. Nothing predestined landlocked, resource-poor Luxembourg and Switzerland to become a tax haven and a financial powerhouse, respectively. Yet Switzerland’s industrialization rate exceeds France’s. In 2023, industry accounted for roughly 13-14% of France’s GDP, compared with 25% in Switzerland––a country 14 times smaller (41,285 km² and 8.9 million inhabitants).

In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates have displayed stronger economic health than Saudi Arabia, notably by betting successfully on an investment-led model.

The third and final lever is resilience and adaptability under pressure—the capacity to survive through flexibility. In 2017, tiny Qatar turned the blockade imposed by its Arab neighbors (who accused it of financing terrorism) into an opportunity. It used the crisis to diversify its economy and reaffirm its geostrategic ties with Turkey and Iran. Doha deployed a triple strategy: diversifying supplies via Tehran and Ankara; rapidly developing logistics and agricultural infrastructure; and expanding sports soft power by securing the 2022 World Cup. Rather than suffocating it, the blockade strengthened Qatar’s economic and diplomatic autonomy.

Closer to home, Finland and Sweden, neutral countries well-versed in mediation diplomacy and backed by Scandinavian normative soft power, shifted into the Euro-Atlantic camp after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was a sovereign choice that transformed their security paradigm.

Singapore, the Archetype of a Small Power

Singapore has been independent since 1965. Despite its small territory—7728 km² for six million inhabitants––it has become a recognized power through a successful development strategy. The city-state lacks both strategic depth and natural resources, yet it has thrived. Its sovereignty rests on two pillars: a social contract offering economic prosperity in exchange for political discipline, and institutions fiercely committed to maintaining decision-making autonomy from regional great powers.

Since independence, Singapore has been acutely aware of its vulnerability to its two neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia. Given its multiethnic society (Chinese, Malays, and Indians), the state fostered a Singaporean identity through civic education, multicultural policies, and bilingualism—making English the official language alongside citizens’ mother tongues. This civic patriotism strengthens cohesion and, ultimately, national sovereignty.

Singapore’s first strategy focused on hard power and deterrence: two years of compulsory military service and a technologically advanced military, notably in air power and cyber-defense. Diplomatically, Singapore built selective partnerships with the United States, Australia, and Israel, while avoiding excessive alignment with one or other power.

Massive investment in port infrastructure turned Singapore into a pivotal hub of global trade. This, in turn, bolstered its pragmatic diplomacy, balancing relationships with the United States (its security guarantor), China (its leading trading partner), and India. Then there’s ASEAN, the cornerstone of Singapore’s multilateral strategy to avoid being dominated by any great power. Singapore has also asserted itself as a mediator in regional crises. The city-state hosted the 2018 summit between Trump and North Korea’s Kim.

Despite its small population, Singapore’s voice carries weight in regional and international bodies. This achievement echoes Israel’s trajectory, which maintains technological autonomy in cybersecurity, drones, and intelligence, even while depending on the United States.

Case Study: Switzerland and Azerbaijan

In August 2025, the U.S. imposed a punitive 39% tariff on Switzerland’s exports—an unprecedented level among Western partners. The blow struck directly at key sectors: watchmaking, precision machinery, chocolate. It exposed the structural vulnerability of the Swiss economy to its leading non-EU market. 

Landlocked and practicing armed neutrality, Switzerland hosts the headquarters of several international organizations, including the UN. Bern relies on its neutrality and mediation role to defuse crises. In Trump’s case, however, these assets turned against it. Switzerland found itself isolated. It belongs to no military alliance that could offset U.S. pressure and lacks offensive economic levers, given its high-end export model. 

Hence, the narrowing of Swiss room for maneuver, especially as Washington demanded greater openness to U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) and alignment with U.S. trade positions. The purchase of 36 American F-35s for €6.18 billion became a U.S. bargaining chip: no tariff relief without full compliance with the contract. 

A paradoxical showdown ensued. Switzerland’s only potential lever—reducing military dependence on U.S. industry—would likely cost more, politically and economically. Possessing only financial and institutional levers, the Swiss case illustrates the limits of neutrality as a sovereignty strategy when it is not backed by solid alliances or a comparable resource base.

Azerbaijan is a small, hydrocarbon-rich nation with limited territory and population compared to its large neighbors—Russia to the north and Iran to the south. Initially dependent on Russia, Azerbaijan, unlike its Armenian adversary, managed to rebalance its foreign policy through multi-vector diplomacy. By leveraging its energy infrastructure (the BTC pipeline to Turkey; TANAP and TAP to Europe), this petro-dictatorship became essential to EU diversification, despite supplying only 4.3% of EU gas imports in 2024. Energy revenues became a shield of sovereignty. 

Diplomatically, Azerbaijan balanced relations among Russia, Turkey, Iran and Western powers while maintaining a strategic partnership with Israel, a military alliance with Turkey, and active participation in the Non-Aligned Movement (which Baku chaired from 2019 to 2023). This gave Azerbaijan a global diplomatic platform disproportionate to its size. To this smart power, it added hard power—force and coercion. This allowed Azerbaijani strategists to retake Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh partly in 2020 and entirely in 2023, culminating in ethnic cleansing and the dissolution of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. 

Azerbaijan’s approach contrasted sharply with Armenia’s—a poor, landlocked country dependent on remittances and demographically weak. Armenia had entrusted its security to Russia and failed to adopt a strategy offering real prospects. Its moral soft power, built around the memory of genocide and the right to self-determination for Artsakh, shattered against the wall of realpolitik. Armenian elites mismanaged the situation through a lack of concrete leverage, an absence of proactive diplomacy, a moral discourse oblivious to power balances, an inability to rally the diaspora around a nation-state paradigm, and a failure to turn the Artsakh cause into a strategic asset. Their mistake was overestimating the durability of a single protector—Russia—without diversifying their options, risking their sovereignty in the process. 

Like Canada vis-à-vis Trump, Azerbaijan showed that a small power can resist and assert itself by combining economics, alliances and military strategy.

The geopolitics of small powers is not condemned to impotence—it depends on their capacity to identify, cultivate, and exploit their margins of maneuver. Cases differ, but a common paradox emerges: despite their constraints, small powers can assert themselves by combining alliances, law, soft power, and strategic positioning. Their survival and sovereignty often hinge more on diplomatic intelligence than on brute force.

Opinion