Build–Broadcast–Bolster: A Strategic Framework for Middle Power Influence

Military mass and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) size no longer define influence in today’s security environment. States without superpower arsenals shape coalition decisions, deter aggression, and extract alliance-wide concessions. They do this not by coercion, but by converting specialized strengths into strategic leverage. These middle powers lack coercive leverage to impose their preferences unilaterally, but possess the vision, credibility, and tactical acumen to turn narrow capabilities into tools of wide influence.

Lawrence Freedman notes that strategy is the art of converting resources into power, while Joseph Nye reminds us that credibility and narrative shape outcomes as much as raw force. The Build–Broadcast–Bolster (BBB) framework builds on these insights, showing how middle powers transform niche capacities into sustainable influence through three reinforcing mechanisms:

• Build: Developing niche capabilities or chokepoints, such as advanced manufacturing, control of critical minerals, strategic geography, or technological leadership, on which others depend.
• Broadcast: Framing and signaling capabilities as indispensable to allies and adversaries.
• Bolster: Locking in gains through institutions, governance, and durable credibility to ensure resilience and longevity.

Taken together, BBB mechanisms show how smaller states convert narrow strengths into an outsized influence. This is not an academic point for coalition planners and commanders; recognizing where partners bring leverage in contingency planning, wargaming, and alliance management can matter as much as counting battalions. Properly understood and integrated middle-power influence can shape operational outcomes well beyond traditional measures of force.

Conceptual Framework

A contemporary power analysis relies on two fundamental insights. Lawrence Freedman defines power as the capacity to produce effects more advantageous than would otherwise have been the case and argues that strategy is the art of creating power. Joseph Nye complements this by demonstrating that power derives from successfully converting resources into desired outcomes through effective strategies, rather than merely accumulating material assets.

While these frameworks clarify that power requires the strategic conversion of resources, they offer limited guidance on how states, particularly middle-and emerging powers, can systematically amplify their influence without matching the great power arsenals. The BBB framework addresses this gap. This translates Freedman’s concept of power as a generative process, and Nye’s idea of conversion into a three-part strategy for influence. By building chokepoints or capabilities, broadcasting indispensability, and bolstering these gains through institutional durability, middle powers can create effects beyond their apparent means. The BBB offers a systematic lens for tracing how states engineer lasting relevance in a competitive international environment.

Why These Three Cases?

The following three cases—Taiwan, Estonia, and Chile—each represent a distinct point of entry into the BBB model, illustrating how middle powers convert narrow advantages into durable influence: Taiwan as a case of Build through advanced semiconductor dominance, Estonia as Broadcast through digital credibility within NATO, and Chile as Bolster through the governance of critical lithium resources. Together, they demonstrate how middle powers can punch above their weight by deliberately converting narrow advantages into durable influences.

These cases were not selected to offer a representative sample of all the middle or emerging powers. Instead, they were chosen as clear illustrations of distinct BBB mechanisms while also showing how the three elements converge. The selection criteria emphasize strategic visibility (places where niche capacities visibly shape global or alliance decision making), institutional innovation (new governance or doctrinal structures that lock influence in place), and narrative coherence (the ability to communicate indispensability to partners and competitors alike).

Most importantly, they highlight agency: influence does not flow automatically from material endowments. Taiwan, Estonia, and Chile refined their advantages through deliberate choices that anticipated rivals, reinforced credibility, and embedded leverage in institutions. In doing so, they show that strategic relevance emerges less from static resources such as landmasses or critical minerals than from the continual orchestration of capabilities, narratives, and governance.

Case 1: Taiwan

Build as Deterrence: The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) dominates advanced-node chip production, with a market share increase of 67.6% in the first quarter of 2025. These microchips are critical not only for global technology ecosystems—powering smartphones and computers—but also for precision weapons systems vital for modern security. Taiwan’s strategic development of this semiconductor sector, often termed the “silicon shield,” deeply embedded its indispensability into the economic and military calculations of allies and adversaries. Protecting this chokepoint is a central element in Taiwan’s deterrence strategy. Taiwan’s semiconductor strength also creates a critical vulnerability due to the geographic concentration of its advanced foundries, which pose risks from potential geopolitical conflicts or natural disasters that disrupt the supply chain.

Broadcast: Taiwan brands itself as an essential democratic partner and a linchpin in the global economy and U.S. defense technology projects. Through export controls, strategic alliances, and co-investment in joint R&D centers with allied nations, Taiwan projects its indispensability, shaping the perception that any conflict would trigger widespread global economic disruption.

Bolster: Taiwan’s asymmetric defense doctrine integrates the security of semiconductor fabrication facilities into broader alliance commitments, making their protection a shared international interest. This doctrine institutionalizes the economic and strategic significance of the chip sector within U.S.-led Indo-Pacific defense planning, ensuring that operational and logistical support extends to safeguard upstream supply chains vital to military capabilities.

Implications:

• Strategic: The economic fallout from disrupting Taiwan’s semiconductor supply acts as a powerful deterrent against Chinese coercion or attacks.
• Operational: U.S. and allied Indo-Pacific command plans explicitly incorporate semiconductor facility protection as a defense priority, coordinating cyber, physical, and logistic assets accordingly.
• Tactical: Critical infrastructure supporting chip manufacturing—energy, water, and transportation—is prioritized for defense alongside more traditional urban missile defense systems.

Taiwan’s case illustrates Freedman’s insight that strategic advantage is inherently dynamic and must be continuously renewed. It also exemplifies Nye’s concept of smart power, in which the combination of coercive deterrence, economic indispensability, and reputational credibility reinforces Taiwan’s security through control over a critical global supply chain chokepoint.

Case 2: Estonia

Build: Following the 2007 cyberattacks that targeted critical infrastructure, Estonia rapidly invested in cutting-edge digital infrastructure and cyber-defense capabilities. This established Estonia as a NATO pioneer in cyber resilience and governance innovation, with flagship systems such as X-Road (a secure data exchange layer), i-Voting, and KSI blockchain for securing data integrity and forward-leaning assets such as data embassies that safeguard government data abroad. By creating interoperable cyber chokepoints and digital platforms, Estonia has built a unique niche capability on which both national and alliance security increasingly depend.

Broadcast as Force Multiplier: Estonia has successfully branded itself as NATO’s “first-mover laboratory” in cyber defense. Hosting NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) reinforces its standing as a key hub for research, training, and operational innovation in cyber warfare. This digital state brand conveys credibility and indispensability to its allies, amplifying Estonia’s influence in alliance decision-making and cyber policy shaping far beyond its size.

Bolster: Institutionalization transforms cyber vulnerability into strategic agility by systematically integrating civilian and military efforts. Its whole-of-nation approach prepares for rapid mobilization against cyberattacks, enabling effective coalition response readiness. This institutionalization transforms cyber vulnerability into strategic agility. NATO partners have increasingly adopted Estonia’s framework and cyber playbooks, influencing alliance posture and capability development. Maintaining Estonia’s technological edge will require continuous adaptation and investment to keep pace with evolving cyber threats and rapid technological advancement abroad.

Implications:

• Strategic: Estonia demonstrates how a small state can command outsized alliance influence by cultivating a strong reputational brand in its critical security domain.
• Operational: NATO’s growing adoption of Estonia’s cyber frameworks requires militaries worldwide to study and emulate Estonia’s civilian–military cyber integration model.
• Tactical: Lessons from Estonia’s experience directly inform the design and deployment of the U.S. National Guard cyber mission forces and allied cyber resilience units.

Estonia’s transformation illustrates the power of human agency to turn digital vulnerabilities into a core asset. It validates Freedman’s concept of power as a process requiring continuous adaptation and Nye’s view that strategic influence depends on credibility and narrative as much as material capability. Estonia’s cyber domain role is a model of how smaller states can synchronize capabilities, narratives, and institutions to gain lasting influence.

Case 3: Chile

Build: Chile controls the world’s largest lithium reserves and is a critical resource for batteries and defense technologies. Rather than allowing resource nationalism to cause fragmentation, Chile launched a transparent, multi-stakeholder, National Lithium Strategy in 2023. This framework governs Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) and balances state control with private partnerships, avoiding the classic “resource curse” where rich reserves fail to translate into economic or strategic gains. The strategy includes the creation of a state-led National Lithium Company, strong environmental safeguards, and active involvement of indigenous groups and local communities.

Broadcast: Chile positions itself as a leading Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) compliant supplier. Chile attracts premium global markets and partners committed to responsible sourcing by branding lithium as ethical, sustainable, and socially responsible. Chile’s reputation has enhanced its geopolitical leverage by making its lithium preferred in supply chains sensitive to ESG concerns.

Bolster as Strategic Sustainability: The National Lithium Strategy institutionalizes governance stability through revenue sharing, indigenous board participation, and environmental protection that builds domestic consensus and reduces risk. Political foresight in embedding these governance elements ahead of large-scale resource extraction strengthens contract durability and long-term partnerships, making Chile a reliable supplier critical to allies’ defense supply chains. Ongoing political debates and opposition could pose challenges to the sustainability of Chile’s governance model, potentially injecting uncertainty for strategic partners and investors.

Implications:

• Strategic: Chile’s governance stability secures its role as a dependable partner in the U.S. and allied defense supply chains reliant on lithium.
• Operational: Securing critical minerals, such as lithium, is fundamental to sustaining advanced munitions, batteries, drones, and mobility platforms; adversaries may seek to exploit these supply dependencies through economic coercion.
• Tactical: Innovations in extraction technology and recycling partnerships support the development of agile small-scale defense systems and supply resilience.

Chile’s authority rests on a broad social consensus supporting sustainable extraction and environmental stewardship. This legitimacy reinforces resource capacity and market reputation, creating a positive feedback loop involving strong governance, premium partnerships, and enduring strategic advantages.

How Build, Broadcast, and Bolster Interact Across Cases

Table 1 summarizes the interaction of each state’s Build, Broadcast, and Bolster elements to clarify the key strategic patterns across Taiwan, Estonia, and Chile. Strategic advantage arises not from isolated strengths, but from the deliberate integration of capabilities, narratives, and institutions. Capacity creates credibility, which in turn attracts partnerships, and governance is sustained through a recurring adaptive cycle.

Table 1. How Middle Powers Convert Strategic Advantage: BBB Framework in Action

As Table 1 illustrates, each case demonstrated a different entry point in the BBB. Sustainable influence emerges only when all three elements mutually reinforce each other cyclically. Power conversion is recursive, with states continuously aligning their unique capacities with credible narratives and institutional power.

Whether through Taiwan’s supply chain centrality, Estonia’s reputational agility, or Chile’s governance-led ESG strategy, these examples show how middle powers orchestrate influence beyond their material means. The Build–Broadcast–Bolster framework clarifies these mechanisms and offers a roadmap for how smaller states can navigate and shape a complex multipolar world.

Conclusion

In today’s increasingly interconnected global environment, influence is exerted more frequently by those who render themselves indispensable than by those deemed invincible. While traditional power models focused on military strength, GDP, and resource endowments remain valuable for understanding great power competition, they are insufficient for explaining how middle and emerging powers leverage human agency and smart power strategies to exert a disproportionate influence relative to their hard power.

The BBB framework illustrates that strategic influence is not a passive byproduct of circumstances but is actively constructed by nations through creative problem-framing, aligning national narratives with systemic leverage points, and forming enduring coalitions. These cases demonstrate how innovation, emerging technologies, and anticipatory governance enable smaller states to exert a greater impact than their size might suggest, creating a strategic paradox: great powers’ reliance on complex global systems exposes them to the influence of niche-specialized middle powers.

These dynamics present a complex mix of opportunities and challenges for both practitioners (military officers, analysts, and policy advisors) and academics studying international relations and strategic competition.

• Offensively, the United States and its allies should proactively cultivate specialized dependencies with middle powers to forge partnerships anchored in essential capabilities that transcend traditional military competition.
• Defensively, intelligence efforts must expand beyond tracking material capabilities to include governance innovations and reputational strategies that reveal emerging leverage points.
• Operationally, stability and partner-building missions should prioritize fostering world-class niche capabilities within smaller states over the broad conventional force development.
• Most critically, alliance structures must evolve from burden-sharing models to capability-specialization networks, where smaller partners exercise leadership in distinct domains of influence. This necessitates academics to move beyond the static inventories of material assets toward dynamic, systems-level analyses that trace how capabilities, narratives, and institutions co-evolve to generate lasting strategic advantages.

By illuminating these dynamics, the BBB framework equips practitioners and academics with a powerful tool to anticipate and shape the next era of competitive statecraft, where strategic skill in orchestrating capabilities, perceptions, and institutions through Building, Broadcasting, and Bolstering proves far more significant than the mere accumulation of raw power.

In an age where alliances are strained and the rules-based order is contested, influence will belong not to those with the most enormous arsenals, but to those who make themselves essential. The BBB framework helps explain how—and why—that is happening now.