The Power of the Less Powerful: doing more with more
Pursuing the call for middle powers around the world to step up, Alasdair Gordon-Gibson considers opportunities for the humanitarian sector to regain trust through a more honest engagement with a changing world order.
In an opinion piece for Global Policy, Mark Beeson argues that we must not let the naked application of power determine our collective future. Faced with the crisis of climate change and the prospect of related existential threats amidst the turbulence of a political rhetoric that declares openly that might is right, he says less powerful states need to think differently and creatively about their roles and options.
Warnings of collapse and an urge for creative action are echoed across the humanitarian sector. A recent article in The New Humanitarian opens with the observation that ‘as 2026 begins, the global emergency aid system is locked in a crisis of trust and legitimacy. It’s asked to do more with far less’. All the signals appear to support this bleak analysis, and evidence to date seems to prove it right. However, as analysts and academics have argued before, opportunities for positive change can emerge from periods of despair: a solution will emerge from new ways of thinking and working.
Too often the lens of vision for reform turns towards comfortable approaches that declare a change in direction and a new partnership with affected peoples, but where the patterns of power and participation remain unchanged. A bolder, more uncomfortable engagement with the hierarchies of power is required that directs thinking towards doing more with more: from more participation and greater agency in the uncomfortable places of politics and power.
This means turning the lens away from the aspirations of universal principles that are increasingly contested in the complex environments of contemporary humanitarian action, where failures to protect have led to the loss of trust and legitimacy. Instead, the focus must be on basic demands for dignity and respect which form a more universally recognised expression of protection and social justice.
Scholars have long argued for a more locally relevant representation of human rights (small ‘h’ and small ‘r’) and have provided philosophical as well as practical direction towards this goal. Solidarity, once absent from much of the dominant humanitarian lexicon, is now seen as a concept that supports, rather than undermines, the traditional approaches of neutrality and impartiality. The conundrum is how to remain in solidarity with those whose dignity and respect is being abused, while retaining access to a discussion that can influence the abusers.
The emerging realities of a changing pattern of geopolitical engagement, away from the Liberal Peace that has dominated paradigms of power in the Global North since the Second World War, and away from a rules-based international order where the human right to life with dignity and respect were codified as Human Rights within a broad rights-based framework that too often crowded out others in the room. The institutional narratives that were constructed to govern the humanitarian discourse became locked inside a self-referring echo-chamber, where its relevance to reality of peoples in crisis became unrepresentative: the humanitarian direction to preserve and protect had lost its way.
Anguished reflection on the failures of institutional redirection, such as those proclaimed with much fanfare at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 and its declaration of a Grand Bargain to bring greater relevance and participation of the communities affected by crisis have often turned to talking about a ‘humanitarian reset’, where greater access to funding and planning was seen to be the salve to soothe the cries for localisation.
Dysfunction in the humanitarian system cannot be resolved by re-arranging a jigsaw where the patterns remain the same. Its crisis of irrelevance stems from dishonesty about its identity and its relationship with power, delegitimated by a selective discourse around its defining principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence, seen by many as a product of the Global North that appear increasingly irrelevant to populations failed by its liberal world order. The evidence of failures to protect in conflicts such as in Gaza, Sudan and Myanmar present a discourse of political hostility and indifference to the humanitarian project. The declaration of principled approaches which too often ignore the basic need of affected people to live with dignity and respect is a dishonest representation of its humanitarian purpose.
A solution to the current dysfunction is not a humanitarian reset, which suggests the rebooting of an existing system, but will emerge from a new pattern of connections and communications that lead to a functioning engagement with the structures of power and authority that construct the discourse. This requires a meaningful participation of the local in the construction of a humanitarian discourse that is honest, relevant and representative to the peoples it aims to protect.
The power of the less powerful starts with honesty; we need to be more honest about our participation with power. This means acknowledging the complex relations of compromise that are implicit, if not complicit, in our terms of engagement with authority, when a discourse of solidarity can appear a threat. The present transformation of the geopolitical landscape, where rules-based order is fading, and in the view of Thucydides writing in the 5th Century BCE ‘the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer as they must’, can be turned into an opportunity to rewire the relationship to protect the weak and so avoid being trapped by aphorisms of the past.
It takes courage for the weak to stand against the strong, but as history has shown and as current patterns of engagement risk confirming, an abusive system persists through what Václav Havel has described as the participation of ordinary people believing a lie. Global Policy, together with many others, have called us all to witness the hypocrisies and false declarations of principles that such asymmetries in power present. Scholars such as Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Hopgood have presented the opportunities that can arise from more honest, relevant and representative – more ‘ordinary’ – terms of engagement with power. Strength to contest the institutional power of the multilateral system as well as the organisational power of the state and non-state authorities comes not from disengagement, but from a principled participation that is in solidarity with people seeking dignity and respect. This does not mean integration at all costs, where compromise becomes complicity, but it does call for a participation that may present awkward collaborations. A humanitarian approach that defines clear red lines which protect the dignity of those it represents will legitimate its participation in the discourse of power and offer more honest opportunities than the traditional approaches permit.
Referring to the status of ‘middle powers’, in his address at Davos the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, promoted a new form of engagement that does not retreat by building walls. Instead, he promoted something more ambitious: a ‘value-based realism’ which is both principled and pragmatic: “principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge.”
This means locating a middle ground, where the humanitarian can participate with power in the rituals of its discourse but with the trust and legitimacy to influence the outcomes. Such a space for participation already exists but is not recognised by the institutions and organisations that dominate the discourse and govern the humanitarian ‘system’. Enid Welsford has charted the history of one who speaks truth to power that has relevance and popular legitimacy across the world. Modern iterations include the memes and AI generated images that mock and satirise the egotistical plundering of power in the social media today. Faced with the disillusion and despair cast up by these realities, the humanitarian sector needs a new kind of bargain with power that reflects and relates to the history, cultures and complexities of real life for the millions of people abandoned by the current discourse of politics and power.
As Mark Carney stated in his address at Davos, ‘we must take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be’. He observes that in a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact. The humanitarian sector must search for a similar balance and cannot ignore the realities of the realist approach. Its strength must come from the power of legitimacy, integrity and its solidarity with people who have the right to life with dignity and respect.
Honesty will require the humanitarian sector to recognise its limits and work within its boundaries. It resembles Carney’s call for a middle way for a middle power: one that recognises the hierarchies in the geopolitical landscape and works within them to craft a discourse and carve a path that protects the vulnerable. A complex but more honest identity where the humanitarian can belong yet not belong: an auxiliary to power when it works and an anarchist when it does not.
Alasdair Gordon-Gibson, PhD. Honorary Lecturer, University of St Andrews, Graduate School for Interdisciplinary Studies. Author of ‘Humanitarians on the Frontier: Identity and Access along the Borders of Power’ (Bloomsbury, 2023). ‘Conflict and Development’ (third edition, Routledge 2024, co-authored with Andrew Williams).
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