The ‘Great Insulation’ is coming – not major powers decoupling top-down but small and middle powers building a firewall from the bottom up
3-MIN READ3-MINZhang ZhipengPublished: 5:30am, 6 Apr 2026The US-Israeli strikes on Iran and ensuing conflagration offer a window into how the US-led order works. For all its contributions, it functions like an air conditioner – cooling the American centre by pumping hot air into the periphery. Aggressive interest rate hikes export inflation to emerging markets. Proxy wars outsource geopolitical risk to distant theatres. The United States stays cool while the Global South absorbs the brunt of the heat.
But the vents are closing: developing nations are consciously securing defence autonomy, fostering geoeconomic resilience and asserting resource sovereignty. This is not major powers decoupling from the top down, but small and middle powers building a firewall from the bottom up. The goal is not to isolate, but to insulate.
The Middle East makes for the most telling case in the coming “Great Insulation”. Treated for decades as a staging ground for great-power proxy conflicts, the region has in recent years been reclaiming geopolitical agency on its own terms.
Iran conflict spreads to neighbouring countriesThis is why geoeconomic insulation is accelerating: compared with military autonomy, economic self-reliance is more accessible.
