Category Archives: Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD)

A Start on Middle Powers and Their Diplomacy

Posted on by
Reply

It is kinda like wading into a well-developed cornfield; no, maybe it’s more like a cornfield with some incendiary devices strewn throughout. Anyway, this fall the China-West Dialogue (CWD) has waded into a rather concentrated discussion with colleagues and experts around the globe on an examination of Middle Powers (MPs) and their behaviors and policies – Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD).

So, where did we look? We in fact used the fall to showcase a number of possible MPs and to examine the policies and political behaviors of them. At CWD we held the following Zoom sessions:

At CWD we held the following Zoom sessions: 

  • Our lead off was on Japan with Mike Mochizuki (GWU) as the Lead Organizer;
  • then Active Non-Alignment with Latin America, led by Jorge Heine (BU) and former Ambassador for Chile as the Lead Organizer;
  • South Korea with Yul Sohn (Yonsei University) as the the Lead Organizer;
  • Australia and New Zealand with Shiro Armstrong (ANU/EAF) as Lead Organizer assisted by our own Richard Carey (OECD Alumnus); and 
  • INDONESIA and ASEAN with Maria Monica Wihardja (ISEAS) as the Lead Organizer.

These were all really terrific sessions with ‘super’ efforts to bring speakers to the sessions who could speak to MP characteristics and describe MPD. Now, these sessions were all held under Chatham House Rules but I have received remarks from some of our speakers and permission to quote these remarks here at this Post.  

 So, why was the CWD looking at questions of MPD? Certainly, for one, we were examining first which states seemed to qualify as MPs  in today’s global order/disorder?  Then we were interested in what influence, or potential influence these MPs expressed in the growing global order/disorder – growing tensions between the United States and China and the unremitting regional conflicts in the Middle East and Europe.  Where, if anywhere, were MPs influencing international relations and enhancing, perhaps, international stability and advancing global governance actions especially in such critical areas as climate transition, climate finance, debt management, global financial regulation and more? These efforts, we anticipated, could stabilize global relations in the face of current damaging international actions and the sour relations held by the leading powers, China and the US of each other. We were determined to look at MPs especially with the return of a US Trump administration and the possible significant impact of Trump 2.0 on global order stability.

Let me turn in this Post to the remarks of some of our speakers in the Australia and New Zealand session.  All the sessions were great but interestingly, two of our speakers in this session described diametrically opposing views of the impact of MPs on the current international order. One was Gareth Evans, a strong proponent for MPs and their influence in international relations. Gareth is rather well known of course. He was an Australian politician, representing the Labor Party in the Senate and House of Representatives from 1978 to 1999. He is probably best known as the  Minister for Foreign Affairs, a position he held from 1988 to 1996. Like most inquiries, Gareth starts by trying to define what a MP is. It is not an easy task. As he writes: 

For me, there are three things that matter in characterizing  middle powers: what we  are not, what we are, and the mindset we bring to our international role.

As he then describes it: 

‘Middle powers’ are those states which are not economically or militarily big or strong enough to really impose their policy preferences on anyone else, either globally or (for the most part) regionally.  We are nonetheless states which are sufficiently capable in terms of our diplomatic resources, sufficiently credible in terms of our record of principled behaviour, and sufficiently motivated to be able to make, individually, a significant impact on international relations in a way that is beyond the reach of small states.

 

And we are states, I would argue, which generally (although this can wax and wane with changes of domestic government) bring a particular mindset to the conduct of our international relations, viz. one attracted to the use of middle power diplomacy. I would describe ‘middle power diplomacy’, in turn, as having both a characteristic motivation and a characteristic method:

 

  • the characteristic motivation is belief in the utility, and necessity, of acting cooperatively with others in addressing international challenges, particularly those global public goods problems which by their nature cannot be solved by any country acting alone, however big and powerful; and
  • the characteristic diplomatic method is coalition building with ‘like-minded’ – those who, whatever their prevailing value systems, share specific interests and are prepared to work together to do something about them.

Gareth reviews policy initiatives he sees advanced by MPs over the years and described by him as: 

Our [MP] impact I think is more likely to be on individual issues, involving what might be called ‘niche diplomacy’, than across the board.  But that said, some of those niche roles, as I have just listed. can be of much greater than merely niche importance.

Finally, Gareth sets out what he believes are likely to be possible future initiatives, by at least Australia acting as a MP:

Looking to the future, there are a number of areas in which Australian middle power diplomacy can potentially make a real difference, whether by way of agenda-setting, North-South bridge-building (an aspiration of the MIKTA group within the G20), or simply building critical masses of support for global or regional public goods delivery. These areas include:

 

–   working to make the East Asian Summit become in practice the preeminent regional security and economic dialogue and policy-making body it was designed to be;

 

–   maintaining a leading advocacy role in support of free and open trade, including globally through the WTO and regionally through RCEP and the CPTPP, and vigorously resisting likely protectionist assaults by the Trump administration;

 

–   working to harness, without over-relying on an increasingly erratic US, the collective middle-power energy and capacity of a number of regional states of real regional substance – including India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam –  to visibly push back (through mechanisms like a Quad+, optically useful though not purporting to be a formal military alliance)  against potential Chinese overreach in the region;

 

–   at the same time, actively arguing for the US as well as China to step back from the strategic competition brink, and embrace and sustain over time the spirit of détente which, which dramatically thawed relations between the US and Soviet Union: this would involve both sides living cooperatively together, both regionally and globally, respecting each other as equals and neither claiming to be the undisputed top dog;

 

–   building on our longstanding nuclear risk reduction credentials, bridging the gap between those who, on the one hand, will settle only for the kind of absolutism embodied in the Nuclear Ban Treaty, and on the other hand, the nuclear armed states and those sheltering under their protection who want essentially no movement at all on disarmament;

 

–   becoming an acknowledged global leader, not just bit player, in the campaign against global warming, putting our green energy transition money where our mouth is.” 

 

It is a MPD projected to counter at least some of the likely erratic behavior of Trump 2.0 international actions. 

It is evident that Gareth Evans accepts, in fact promotes, the current and continuing reality of MPs and their capacity to act positively even in a turbulent international setting. This positive MP and MPD view is, as it turns out, in dramatic contrast to another of our Australia speakers, Andrew Carr. Andrew Carr is an Associate Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. His remarks contrast vividly with those of Gareth Evans. While, as I pointed earlier, Chatham House Rules prevail at CWD, fortunately Andrew and a colleague Jeffrey Robinson of Yonsei University published a recent piece in International Theory, “Is anyone a Middle Power? The case for Historicization”. There Andrew and his colleague lay out their view of MPs and MPD. 

We find that while there is some variation, middle power theory can no longer help us distinguish or interpret these states. As such, we conclude the middle power concept should be historicized.

 

In blunt terms, the middle power concept does not capture anything substantive about the behaviour of mid-sized states. It should therefore not be used by scholars any further.

Andrew sees the concept as historically grounded and no longer sustains relevance and in his view must be assigned to a historical period of international relations. The two experts make it clear that using MP and MPD has outlasted its usefulness.

This is a rather clear statement and probably needs some further explanation. Now, interestingly the two researchers examine six MPs – the traditional MPs, Australia and Canada but as well newly emerging MPs – Indonesia, Turkey, South Korea and Mexico. Now Carr and his colleague suggest that there are 30 MPs but their analysis relies on the six just identified. They come away, however, suggesting this:

Argument 1: the middle power concept is unable to shed its 20th century historical legacy 

 

Argument 2: contemporary states no longer reflect the core theoretical propositions of the middle power concept 

There is much insight from the analysis of these two experts. Yet the bottom line is clear: 

The evidence from our six case studies is not universal, but clear trend lines and patterns can be observed. As the 21st century has worn on, these states have all been less internationally focused, less supportive and active in multilateral forums, and shown sparse evidence of being ‘good citizens’.

Put another way the changing international structure is reshaping the behavior of MPs:

As international structures change so too will the power, status, and actions of non-great power states. The changes occurring today are removing the foundations upon which the middle power concept was explicitly created, as supporters and legitimizers of the US-led liberal international order.

So, where does that leave us in understanding which states are the MPs and what can we expect from MPs? Is there a MPD? Does such MPD correspond to what Gareth Evans describes; or are we in a global  order today where such MPD can only be seen ‘in  the rear view’ as Andrew Carr explains with his colleague Jeffrey Robertson?

Well, this is only the beginning of an answer but it is useful to look to a recent piece by Dr. Dino Patti Djalal. Now, Dr. Djalal is the founder and chair of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) and chair of the Middle Power Studies Network (MPSN). In November Dr. Djalal published Middle Power Insights: 1st Edition. What is immediately evident is the membership of MPs in this Report was somewhat distinct from previous authors, at least from Gareth Evans. 

Like others, of course Djalal attempts to identify the current universe of MPs and what policies they promote. As Djalal describes: 

In this article, I refer to middle powers as countries that, by virtue of their considerable size (population and geography), weight (economic, diplomatic, and military strength), and ambition, are placed between the small power and great power categories.

While the objective measures, size and weight are fairly well described, ‘ambition’ is not so easily determined. With these features Djalal suggests: 

Of the 193 countries in the world today, around two dozen qualify as middle powers – some are in the Global North but the majority are in the Global South.

Here, then, is an emerging shift in today’s MPs. We are looking at MPs many of whom today are in the Global South and their behavior is also shifting: 

While all of the middle powers of the North are committed to military pacts, most middle powers in the Global South are non-aligned and tend to pursue strategic hedging. In fact, while the middle powers of the North have developed a fixed view against China, those in the Global South (except India and South Korea) tend to have an open mind and are keen to explore closer relations with China.

 

Unlike those in the North, middle powers of the South are also generally more averse in using sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy. 

 

It also matters that the Middle Powers of the Global South, relative to those of the Global North, are generally strong proponents of “non-interference” and are more sensitive about the principle of “equality”.

So their policy behavior is less intrusive and by implication less committed to global policy. It would seem to suggest that many of today’s MPs target their actions at the region. As Djalal describes: 

More and more, middle powers are positioning themselves to be a driving force in shaping regional architecture, thus compelling them to step up their response to the challenges inherent in their neighborhood. They are also spearheading various minilateral initiatives that can potentially supplement the provision of global public goods and also enhance the space for meaningful dialogue.

 

By constantly resorting to strategic hedging and diversifying their strategic relationships, middle powers can render multipolarity less volatile and more stable.

At a minimum, then, according to Djalal, the new Global South MPs exercise their MPD at the regional level and possibly in small groups, minilaterally, at the international level. More clearly needs to be examined here. 

So, today was a start but just a start. Much more will need to be examined. We will return to today’s Middle Powers and their Middle Power Diplomacy, especially as the Trump administration unveils its foreign policy actions. 

Image Credit: geopoliticalcompass.com

The New Global Leadership, perhaps

Posted on by
Reply

So there is a lot of spinning now that it is clear – he’s coming back. And as we look out on the global order the current international system appears chaotic enough, even before Donald Trump returns to the White House. As described by Flavia Krause Jackson in Bloomberg: 

North Koreans are fighting in Europe for the first time. Israel is resisting US efforts to halt fighting with Hezbollah and Hamas. China regularly conducts military exercises surrounding Taiwan. Nuclear war is suddenly a risk amid surging tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And that’s even before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

What are possibly answers to this growing chaos? One very clear note appears to be Middle Powers and their capacity to gain influence and importantly perhaps maintain greater openness notwithstanding a world dominated by Trump 2.0.  And these tensions are already apparent as Flavia summarizes the just recently concluded Brazil G20 Summit:

This was the week Lula was supposed to cement his status as the preeminent leader of the developing world. Instead, the chaotic summit he hosted in Rio highlighted his inability to bridge growing divisions between global superpowers. In a surprise anti-climax, Lula even canceled his end-of-summit press conference two hours after it had been scheduled to start.

Still, the first big unknown is how chaotic the new Trump administration can wind up the international system and are there possibilities to ease some of this Trump chaos? How, and who, possibly will seek to temper the chaos and propel forward both global political and economic relationships. Here, Shiro Arnstrong in an EAF piece titled, “Trump-proofing economic security in Asia” sets the stage:

The United States has gone from enforcer to spoiler of the rules-based economic order as it deals with domestic challenges and threatens a return to its pre-World War 2 isolationism. The rest of the world has to avoid the United States dragging the global economy down with it.

In the presumed Trump withdrawal from alliances and partnerships, his determination to close the open trading world with Trump’s loud noises over America First, and its many tariffs, there is a noticeable attention shift to the potential role of Middle Powers in retaining and augmenting, possibly, the global economy for one.

Now, there are all sorts of questions surrounding this attention to Middle Powers and their influence in advancing  the global order. Needless to say it starts with who are the Middle Powers. And, not surprisingly, there is no agreement on who the likely actors are under that apparently highly fungible label. So we know there is the ‘traditional’  Middle Power label that describes at least Canada and Australia. Then there are the new ‘Big Boys’ today – Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and at least for some South Africa and even Nigeria. And then there are the relatively close US partners, or other possible regional powers, so, Turkey, Mexico, Japan and South Korea.  What can I say, it is a recipe with the main ingredient up to the expert or analyst.

And then there is the logic and possible action of Middle Power policy. Now this is a tough category often rather muted in current analyses.  But Shiro gives us some direction here. He targets Trumpworld:

There will be pressure all over the world to ‘protect’ domestic production from a flood of Chinese and other goods shut out of the US and looking for new markets.

There will of course be pressure to cut losses by dealing with Trump 2.0:

The incremental choices of countries to do deals with Trump’s United States — managed trade deals and voluntary export restraints — may be diplomatically expedient but will weaken the rules that underpin global trade and are against their core long term interests. That would reinforce the trajectory of the global economy heading towards an economic nosedive of the kind it suffered in the 1930s.

The Middle Power alternative:

It will be up to the middle powers like Australia and Japan — that cannot change the status quo unilaterally but are large enough to mobilise coalitions of countries for change — to keep the global economy open and save the furniture of the multilateral trading system.

 

Middle powers must convince China and the European Union that their best course of action is to avoid large-scale retaliation and go in the other direction, opening up their economies further. That will make them better off and make the global economy larger, even with restricted access to the US market. …

 

The economic coercion that China deployed against Australia in 2020 and Japan earlier was blunted by the multilateral trading system which, despite its weaknesses, allowed Australian exporters, for example, to find alternative markets and provide an exit ramp from the problem, with the last of Chinese trade restrictions lifted in October 2024. The open global trading system crucially ensures that there are alternative buyers and sellers.

As Shiro concludes, enlarging if possible but at least maintaining the open trade world – with as wide a set of actors as possible, is slightly counterintuitively called for and the answer presumably to Trump tariffs:

The multilateral trading system is the biggest source of economic security for open trading nations. That includes Southeast Asia, which is more exposed than other countries with its high trade shares that are its source of prosperity and security.

 

Utilising platforms in ASEAN-centred institutions and connecting them to other efforts in Europe to promote collective action is where the strategic focus needs to be now, on trade, climate action and other global public goods, otherwise we risk a much smaller, poorer and less secure world.

Interestingly, and as noted earlier, there is a growing interest in Middle Power action in the face of the about to reappear Trumpworld. Another proponent for Middle Power action is Dani Rodrik. Rodrick, a deep thinker when it comes to the global system, has written recently on the role of Middle Powers in the evolving global order. Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. In a recent piece in Project Syndicate (PS),  Rodrik suggests that while Middle Powers are unlikely to become a bloc but rather quite possibly able to possibly shape a variety of paths prompting a far more multipolar environment:

While some American national-security elites seek continued US primacy, others seem resigned to an increasingly bipolar world. A more likely outcome, however, is a multipolar world where middle powers exert considerable countervailing force, thus preventing the US and China from imposing their interests on others.

 

The middle powers are unlikely to become a formidable bloc of their own, mainly because their interests are too diverse to fit into a common economic or security agenda. Even when they have joined formal groupings, their collective impact has been limited.

 

Perhaps the most important contribution middle powers can make is to demonstrate, by their example, the feasibility of both multipolarity and diverse development paths in the global order. They offer a vision for the world economy that does not depend on either America’s or China’s power and goodwill. But if middle powers are to be worthy role models for others, they must become responsible actors – both in their dealings with smaller countries and in promoting greater political accountability at home.

A world that does not depend on the leading powers that is the vision from Rodrik. For this, and other perspectives, the China-West Dialogue (CWD) has directed recent energies this fall to sessions on Middle Powers and Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD). With great thanks to our Lead Co-Chair, Colin Bradford CWD constructed a series of sessions on a number of key Middle Powers. We began this Middle Power Diplomacy series with a Zoom session on Japan with lead organizer, Mike Mochizuki of George Washington University. From there we turned our attention to Latin America in a Zoom session led by our good colleague Jorge Heine from Boston University and a number of colleagues who published a recent volume: “Latin American Foreign Policies in the New World Order: The Active Non-Alignment Option”. From there we shifted to a session on South Korea prepared by the lead organizer, Yul Sohn from Yonsei University. And most recently we turned our attention to Turkey with colleague Guven Sak as the lead organizer. Guven is from The Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). Still, to explore are sessions on Australia and New Zealand with lead organizer Shiro Armstrong from ANU and EastAsiaForum (EAF) and Indonesia and ASEAN with lead organizer Monica Wihardja from ISEAS in Singapore.

There is much learning at hand and hopefully we will be able to draw out the means for Middle Powers to resist the more destructive Trump 2.0 efforts. We will return to these conclusions in the future.

This first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter. Comments and subscriptions are welcome.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/152039338/share-center

Image Credit: G20

 

In a Trump World, ‘Widening the Who’ in the Global Order

Posted on by
Reply

Now we are out a bit early. But that’s not surprising because of the US national elections on Tuesday night. So a few thoughts on that and then a redirection to the, “what do we do about the global order in the light of Trump’s return, including many of his former advisers, to the White House”

The electoral equation in the end proved to be rather simple if also somber. Harris lost too many non-college and latino men and she won women – but not by nearly enough. With the Latinos, Trump won 32 percent in 2020; in 2024 Trump won about 45 percent.  Harris,  on women, won 54 percent but Biden in 2020 won 57 percent. The Harris statistic on women is dismaying.

Now I am not one to focus and comment on US elections – other than as a ‘somewhat informed’ but non-expert – but it does seem to me that the Harris campaign did not strategically break through with a host of electoral groups with her message. And she needed to to secure the Presidency. As Michael Hirsh described in FP: 

Despite overpowering Trump in their only debate on Sept. 10 and raising more than $1 billion in donations in just three months—a new record—Harris often floundered when challenged to deliver a convincing summary of her agenda on critical issues such as the economy and immigration. She also fumbled badly in explaining her flip-flops on issues such as fracking (which she once opposed and later supported, but without pointing out the simple fact that improved technology had made it environmentally safer). That led Wall Street Journal commentator Peggy Noonan to label Harris an “artless dodger.”

Worse, possibly, was the view expressed by Opinion Writer Peter Baker who suggests that Trump represents a significant current of American thinking. As he wrote in the NYT:

The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states — and swept away the understanding of America long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties. … With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

 

No longer can the political establishment write off Mr. Trump as a temporary break from the long march of progress, a fluke who somehow sneaked into the White House in a quirky, one-off Electoral College win eight years ago. With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

 

Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.

In fact, according to Baker, Trump was appreciated for all his effrontery and racism:

Rather than be turned off by Mr. Trump’s flagrant, anger-based appeals along lines of race, gender, religion, national origin and especially transgender identity, many Americans found them bracing. Rather than be offended by his brazen lies and wild conspiracy theories, many found him authentic.

So with Trump in the White House and his people in the Administration where do we go? On the immediate geopolitical front we are very likely to see rising tensions with China – though I believe there is a path to less tension. We are very likely to see pressure on Ukraine to halt the conflict with Putin even at the cost of transferring Ukrainian lands to Russia – a real cost and speaking of costs we are likely to see a blizzard of tariffs on Chinese goods and possibly beyond. But it is a bit early to fill in the contours of Trump 2.0 foreign policy.

But, instead, let me look at the outline of the direction we saw coming from Democrat and Democrat-leaning experts and operatives. In particular let me look briefly at the design described by Anne-Marie Slaughter in a recent Foreign Affairs piece titled: “How America Can Succeed in a Multialigned World: The Importance of Building Truly Global Partnerships”. Anne-Marie is currently CEO of the think tank New America. From 2002 to 2009, she was Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. In 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed her as the first woman Director of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department. She has been a ‘close in’ Democratic voice and it is why I refer to this article to give an inside possible glimpse at where the Harris administration might have moved had she been elected and indeed the possibility of Anne-Marie’s very real likely participation.

Anne-Marie is quite aware that there are two challenges this Biden administration faced and would be front and center for a Harris administration – the rising geopolitical tensions with Russia, and with China and with Iran, but also the existential global governance threats, climate, finance and weakened multilateralism and the institutions that no longer served global order purposes. Anne-Marie moved back to gaze at the Biden administration and its effort to build not just an alliance system but beyond that to a ‘multipartner world’. As Anne-Marie declared:

It [the Biden administration] has reanimated and expanded traditional alliances such as NATO and strengthened and created a host of new diplomatic and security partnerships. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described in Foreign Affairs a network of “partners in peace,” the result of an intense diplomatic strategy to safeguard U.S. interests abroad while rebuilding competitiveness at home.

Yet as she described the effort:

 These partnerships are important and valuable. Still, the Biden strategy overall has tilted too far in the direction of geopolitical competition over global cooperation, even as it tries to do both at once. To strike the right balance, the next administration must partner with a wider variety of global actors, focus those partnerships more on existential global threats, and accept a more decentralized, messier world that welcomes leadership from many different quarters.

 

The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process.

So the future of multipartnering was just not just constructed on state, regional and international organizations but extending to non-state and substate actors. As Anne-Marie argues:

The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process.

Her conclusion for this multipartner approach is as follows:

A national security strategy dedicated to building a multipartner world will still leave plenty of room for the United States to lead on the global stage. Moreover, embracing multisector partnerships gives open societies such as that of the United States a leg up in in geopolitical competition, given the autonomy and energy of American civic, corporate, philanthropic, technological, scientific, and educational institutions.

This wide multipartner approach, as described in part by Anne-Marie Slaughter, is unlikely to be captured and furthered by the incoming Trump administration. But it is worth keeping in mind and may well be an approach that will be valuable for many national, regional and international actors in the near future, even if not for a Trump America.

Meanwhile, another piece in a multipartner world is a possibility. And we at the China-West Dialogue (CWD) are keenly examining the role today of Middle Powers in furthering efforts to meet the challenge of global threats and to diminish the ratcheting up of geopolitical tensions. We are currently examining with colleagues across the globe the potential for Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD)  to tackle global threats and stabilize the global governance environment. As the lead co-chair of the CWD, Colin Bradford has written:

Global pluralism, developed in 2020-2023, posits the existence already of “autonomous” strategies and independence in foreign policies as a “global political dynamic” in global relations.  Pluralism is a core concept for CWD, in that it leads to the “pluralization” of relations with China as an “alternative framework” to address the toxic tension in the bilateral China-US relationship in recent years. This has been the goal of CWD from its foundation.

 

In the last year of CWD exchanges, the importance of Middle Powers and Middle Power Diplomacy has arisen as the domestic driver of pluralism.  This new CWD series seeks to elucidate the factors enabling countries to be Middle Powers and the features of their international behaviors which are effective in addressing global systemic challenges.

 

A better understanding of these factors and features could facilitate proactive national efforts to deliberately contribute to global pluralism by “punching above their weight” and to influence global governance outcomes that include China and the US but which “globalize” those outcomes, rather than narrow them by allowing great power dominance to prevail.

We have examined with colleagues globally, and always with our colleagues from China in the CWD process, Middle Power actions from Japan and Latin America, especially Brazil, and Korea shortly with Turkey, Indonesia and the ASEAN to come and also with examinations of Europe and the US and China and MPD.

Trump America with its hypernationalist focus and its likely transactional initiatives fails to promote any kind of global order optimism; but there are other pathways. We need to explore these further and promote those that appear promising.

This was first posted as a Substack POst at Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/in-a-trump-world-widening-the-who?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Image Credit: ABC News

 

 

 

What is Needed for MPD Success?

Posted on by
Reply

It is really not possible to begin this Substack Post without a quick glance at the first US Presidential debate of 2024. It was ugly. It was a tough night, especially for President Biden but I will let the political pundits to have their say.

Now to the  subject of this week’s Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter – a focus on Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD) and the capacity of Middle Powers to drive global governance activities. We start with an examination first on multilateralism. There is a strong logic to this starting point given we are beginning by targeting the institutional apex of the international multilateral system – the UN and its agencies. This introduction is also understandable given that the UN will, this September, complete a UN summit cycle which I have referenced in past Substack Posts. This UN summit cycle commenced in 2023 with the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Summit and it will complete with the critical Summit of the Future (SoTF) this September in New York with the finalization and issuing of the Pact for the Future. In preparation for the UNGA 79th edition, and its opening gathering of Heads of State and Government for  the SoTF, and as described by IISD, the UNGA has elected its newest President:

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has elected, by acclamation, Philemon Yang, former Prime Minister of Cameroon, to serve as President of its 79th session. His tenure will be guided by the theme, ‘Unity in diversity, for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for everyone everywhere.’

And with the usual optimism and urgency the new President declared:

I am convinced that through dialogue, through consensus, talking together and looking to the future together, we can solve problems,” Yang said speaking to journalists following the elections.

Yang underscored the continuing multilateral wish:

Outlining the thrust of his Presidency in his vision and mission statement, Yang describes the UNGA as the highest, most representative deliberative body at the global level, which serves as “the lone forum where, based on sovereign equality, States in their diverse opinions meet to jointly seek solutions” through the free expression of diverse convictions, opinions, interests, and  approaches.

To preserve peace, promote sustainable development and protect the planet,” Yang underscores, “the international community should ensure that the objectives jointly set by Member States… are achieved.” According to his statement, the need to fast-track the measures to be taken by the UNGA to ensure the effective implementation of mutual commitments will be one of Yang’s priorities.

The collective effort is heartfelt without question but after the last several decades it has to be accepted as wishful thinking, nothing more. I don’t know how else to describe the effectiveness of the UN.

If formal institutional multilateral action has faltered in the growing international disorder: the rising tensions between the two great powers US and China, and recourse to aggression in the Russian war on Ukraine,  and the Hamas-Israel Gaza war, then where can the global order firm up international stability and advance collective efforts?  Where can the  global order save the planet and improve collective efforts in critical areas of global finance, cybersecurity and AI just to mention three critical subjects?

In our discussions and work at the China-West Dialogue (CWD) we have examined MPD with growing positive reflection and a nod to Middle Power action in the face of weakened multilateral progress. The CWD lead Co-Chair, Colin Bradford has pivoted to an examination of MPD. He does this in a recent article, “Toward a New Era in Global Relations: The Potential of  Middle Power Diplomacy” in the 2024 Global Solutions Summit edition of  Global Solutions Journal. Now almost without exception raising the MPD configuration immediately encourages a discussion over what is, and what is not, a Middle Power. We found that out in one of our recent CWD gatherings. As fun as that discussion can be there is no real conclusion to it and I would note that Colin has avoided that seemingly inevitable discussion by targeting the G20. As Colin points out, the G20 consists of the following:

The 9 EMPs [emerging market powers] along with the 9 AIC [advanced industrial countries] MPs constitute a significant and diverse number of Middle Powers that have the potential to change the global landscape, if and as they choose to exercise global leadership in ways that cut across traditional groups, incorporate contradictory viewpoints and focus hard on practical policy issues and avoid ideological polemics and geopolitical theatrics.

From the start, then, Colin turns his MPD focus on the role of those Middle Powers in the G20 and more particularly the series of immediate G20 presidencies beginning with Indonesia in 2022, followed in 2023 by India, Brazil in 2024, and South Africa in 2025. As he writes:

The argument in this paper is that, as a result, 2024 could be a year of opportunity for advancing global governance in addressing global challenges by capitalizing on latent, underlying global political dynamics to tee up a new era in which global governance can advance, even as systemic competition continues between the US, China, and Europe. … The Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies during 2024 and 2025, with the US to follow in 2026, could become pivotal focal points for the transition to a new era in global relations in which middle-power diplomacy demonstrates the feasibility of advancing humanity’s quest for systemic sustainability, despite the necessary acceptance of geopolitical tensions as a reality.

What Colin then suggests is:

Middle Powers exist today and have agency and influence precisely because they are:

• Independently concerned with global threats and seek to play a role in addressing them rather than seeking a prominent role in international relations only as a projection of national strength and identity;

• Capable of self-interested contributions to global decision-making characterized by diversity of perspectives, competitive behaviors, and shifting coalitions of consensus rather than fixed allegiances based on normative values; and

• Basing their actions and behaviors in the international arena on national interests and pragmatic articulation rather than values which have resulted in ideological differences and confrontational tensions.”

And as he then concludes:

As these brief examples suggest, there could be a new global order based on secular interests, non-ideological formulations, and multiple sources of global leadership which interactively generate composite outcomes embodying contradictory but valid perspectives from different vantage points that move the world forward to addressing systemic global challenges in significant ways. This shift in the global political dynamic toward pluralism driven by middle power diplomacy does not inevitably lead to “a new global disorder”, but rather could become a more inclusive, integrated network of significant countries to drive global solutions, defining a new global order.

Middle power diplomacy is based on listening, learning, brokering, give and- get bargaining, inclusion, embracing diversity, being as comfortable with “difference” as with “like-mindedness,” understanding that “shifting coalitions of consensus” is better for global governance than fixed alliances and blocs, and adjusting pre-positioning by being open to enabling unexpected insights and different ways of seeing issues and opportunities to shift perceptions and change positions.

So Colin hones in on ‘pluralism’ and the impact of MIddle Power ‘coalitions of the willing’ in advancing global governance policies even in the face of geopolitical tensions. The diverse collective effort, it is presumed, can advance global governance policy.

This line of reasoning is underlined by Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, both former foreign ministers of Australia in an article titled, “Detente: Towards a balance of power between the USA and China”, identified by Colin and focused on Australian action in a competitive geopolitical environment. As these two former foreign ministers see it:

Lasting peace is always best achieved with others, not against them. Of course we have to prepare for worst-case scenarios, but it is in Australia’s interests to bring diplomacy back to centre stage, resist policies of containment and confrontation of China, and promote a political accord between the United States and China that could help ease tensions in the South China Sea and over Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.

Here then a further nuance of Middle Power action targeting Australia as an Indo-Pacific actor.  So it appears that there is a strong favoring of Middle Power action. It is a starting point but more needs to be fleshed out. While we can acknowledge pluralism and the construction of ‘coalitions of the willing’, where have we seen MPD in action especially in the face of great power interests that may not accord with the Middle Power goals. When does the dynamic of Middle Powers action draw together a coalition of the willing that ‘drives global solutions’? How does this dynamic gather and then advance policy? We need more on the mechanics of MPD.

More on that to come.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

 

Stumbling Over ‘Strategic Narcissism’

Posted on by
Reply

“Advancing global governance and human security for a better future”: A Symposium hosted by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), America-China Public Affairs Institute (ACPAI) and the China-West Dialogue (CWD) 

I had the good fortune to attend a ‘closed’ symposium in Washington this past midweek hosted by the organizations identified above. The Symposium identified the attainment of human security and the advancement of global governance as the key subjects of discussion and debate for the two roundtable sessions. The advance notes for the symposium suggested focusing on: 

How, might 2024 turn out to be a year of opportunity for advancing global governance in addressing human security challenges? What role can the Middle Powers play in moving the global relations forward to address humanity’s quest for security and systemic sustainability?

And as the notes further suggested: 

This half-day event aims for a broad engagement of perspectives from China, the United States, and the Global South on the feasibility of revamping global governance in the current context. We seek to convene leading global policy researchers, practitioners, and advocates to debate and recommend specific global institutional, legal, normative, and operational mechanisms that could inform governments’ participation in the major multilateral events of this year. 

 

The first roundtable session on the attainment of human security was led by Henry Huiyao Wang the President of CCG. And as the notes suggested: 

This session seeks to explore the scope of the concept of human security as a useful tool of generating alternative narratives and dynamics of US-China relations that yield more productive relations in global governance policy.

 

Framing questions:

 

  1. How can the idea of human security [to] be articulated in a way to mediate differences between the United States and China, given the prospects of bilateral cooperation on climate change, health, and AI governance?

  2. Multilaterally, how can the scope of the notion be extended to include norms and principles, such as international humanitarian law, human rights, nuclear nonproliferation, and other dimensions in global governance?

  3. Are there specific institutional, legal, normative, and operational mechanisms that can be reformed to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 agenda? What are alternative coalitions that need to, should or can drive global governance leadership?

The second roundtable was led by Colin Bradford, the Lead Co-Chair of CWD and non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings. The session was designed to explore advancing global governance “in a new global dynamic of pluralism where middle power diplomacy, it was suggested, might play a key role in lowering the ‘temperature’ in great power relations and promoting greater global governance policymaking. As the notes identified: 

Middle Powers exist today with agency and influence to play a role in addressing global threats. Understanding Middle Power Diplomacy and its implications for the global order can generate transformative forces in fostering multilateral consensus on global governance. The Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies during 2024 and 2025, with the US to follow in 2026, could become pivotal focal points for transition to a new era in global relations in which MPD demonstrates the feasibility of advancing humanity’s quest for peace, security, equality, and sustainable development. This session aims for a broad engagement of diverse perspectives, cutting across disciplines, sectors and regions.

 

Framing questions:

 

  1. What is Middle Power Diplomacy and how [can] the concept factor in independent and cross-national policy space to address global governance challenges?
  2. Following the Bali Declaration in November 2022 and the pause in US-China tensions after the Biden-Xi summit in November 2023 in San Francisco, what are the prospects for MPD to play an active role in global governance leadership?
  3. What are specific issues on which greater potential for convergence and cooperation exist in a global governance dimension, not a geopolitical context for MPD to bridge divides and invigorate coordinated efforts between countries?”

There was a lively discussion throughout the two roundtables that revealed, as one participant put it, that there appears to be two trends in our thinking on the current geopolitics. One trend underscored how critical greater cooperation was called for to deal with the growing transnational problems and the second, and a countervailing trend – greater great power rivalry  and competition. With respect to the first trend, it was hoped that various Middle Powers – seen as countries that can and do punch above their weight – say a Sweden, or Singapore, or Braziland more – work to tackle global governance problems such as extreme poverty or climate change ‘green transition’ policy and financing.

While there was a strong sentiment expressed underscoring the agency of Middle Powers in the midst of great power rivalry, especially in the context of Middle Power leadership of the G20 – Indonesia, India, currently Brazil, and to be followed next year by South Africa, there was an equally strong sense of caution and a view that great power rivalry – Russia, China and the United States – appeared to cripple collective action and to undermine Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD). 

Much of our discussion in MIddle Powers and MPD – what was possible in the face of great power competition – was shadowed by what has been labelled in the recent past as ‘Strategic Narcissism’ and I recalled to the group. The term ‘Strategic Narcissism’ was used, if not created by H.R. McMaster in his book,  Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World published in 2020 at the end of the Trump years. McMaster In February 2017 succeeded Michael Flynn as President Donald Trump‘s National Security Advisor.  For McMaster the term was applied to the US role in shaping global order relations. He defined the term as: “the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States and to assume that the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans.” As he wrote (2020, 18): 

Across multiple administrations, U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy has suffered from what we might derive from Morgenthau’s essay “Strategic Narcissism”: the tendency to view the world only in relation to the United States and to assume that the future course of events depends primarily on U.S. decisions or plans. The two mind-sets that result from strategic narcissism, overconfidence and resignation, share the conceit of attributing outcomes almost exclusively to U.S. decisions and undervaluing the degree to which others influence the future.

McMaster appears to have drawn the concept  from earlier work by the great international relations thinker, Hans Morgenthau. Morgenthau identifies the concept in his 1978 essay: “The Roots of Narcissism” with Ethel Person (The Partisan Review. 1978 vol 45(3): 337-347). McMaster, however, creates what is a new phrase and concept by adding “strategic.” How closely McMaster’s interpretation of narcissism represents Morgenthau’s position is debatable. The language of “alienation” and “aspirations exceeding the limits of ability” is drawn verbatim from Morgenthau, but Morgenthau presents them as human problems. The leap by McMaster to apply this analysis to a national level foreign policy is somewhat questionable. In Battlegrounds, however, McMaster writes that in “The Roots of Narcissism” Morgenthau lamented preoccupation with self in foreign policy because it led to alienation from other nations and aspirations that exceed the limits of ability.  America’s stature as the only superpower encouraged narcissism, according to McMaster with a preoccupation with self, and an associated neglect of the influence that others have over the future course of events. Americans began to define the world only in relation to their own aspirations and desires and there are many that continue to do so in current global order analysis.

While there was much caution, even pessimism expressed over the ability of MPD to successfully temper great power dominance and action, general support was expressed for a view acknowledged at the end of the symposium by one participant that it was necessary to try and ‘move the needle’ – to push back against blocs and their rigidity and to support and advance collective global governance policy and action.   

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/stumbling-over-strategic-narcissism?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true