I had a debate very recently with my China-West Dialogue (CWD) colleague, Colin Bradford. In a memo we were working on for CWD, he described the two major trade agreements, CPTPP and RCEP. He then added:

 

These two trade agreements show that middle powers are able to take multilateral actions on their own that make an impact.(*)  

But which countries do we see achieving that? And behind that, why have analysts and policy makers become significantly more interested these middle powers in the Trump era recently past?

Counting the Middle Powers

The debate begins with the ‘Who’. Though Colin and I were generally agreed on the content of the article, we went around in circles over which countries we could, and should, identify as middle powers. Now, I was more than ready to forgive Colin his vague characterization of middle powers and then broad inclusion of the same – after all he is an economist – but soon thereafter I stumbled over a rather recent article by Bruce Jones, also of Brookings. and a well known international relations analyst. The article found in FA and titled, “Can Middle Powers Lead the World Out of the Pandemic? Because the United States and China Have Shown They Can’t” tackled the question of the current middle power membership. Given the subject matter of the article, Bruce was called upon to identify in some manner, the states that captured the current set of middle powers:

The concept of “middle powers” is imprecise and somewhat inchoate, but it generally refers to countries that are among the top 20 or so economies in the world, lack large-scale military power (or choose not to play a leading role in defense), and are energetic in diplomatic or multilateral affairs. These countries were seeking to fill part of the international leadership void even before the crisis, particularly when it came to buttressing the rickety multilateral system.

So, there we were. I had no difficulty acknowledging that the term was “imprecise and inchoate” but as for the rest of the features identified by Bruce, well, not so sure. Increasingly, I came to suspect that this was likely to be one of those classic international relations definitions – unclear and contested.

As it turns out, however, I had encountered rather recently the issue of middle powers. In fact I was working  on a research piece: “Effective Multilateralism”**. In that examination I traced through the IR concept of multilateralism but additionally I encountered the question of middle powers. In the article I raised middle powers this way:

What actors can be active participants in multilateralism and in particular what do analysts’ mean when they reference, as they often do, ‘middle powers’ in multilateralism?

My answer was tellingly imprecise.  I started with the reality that there is no commonly identified definition of middle powers, or a generally accepted set of those actors, at least in IR. I started, in fact, rather more historically:

Robert Keohane (1969, 269) decades ago reviewing several books on ‘small powers’ pointed to these powers and their interest in multilateralism: “middle power is a state whose leaders consider that it cannot act alone effectively but may be able to have a systematic impact in a small group or through an international institution.”[1]

 

[1] Robert Keohane quotes here Robert L. Rothstein. Alliances and Small Powers. New York and London: Columbia University Press, I968.

I then added:

Unfortunately, suggesting that multilateralism is built on middle powers raises more questions than the term might otherwise resolve. The category creates confusion. Which are middle powers? Which are the middle powers in contemporary multilateralism and the emerging global order? Korea maybe is and there are frequent references to the same. Traditionally identified so-called middle powers such as Canada or Australia might also qualify as middle powers, possibly? But then what of Japan, France, the UK, Germany or Turkey? And what about the large emerging market states such as Indonesia, Brazil and India? All have been identified at one time or another as middle powers in various examinations of contemporary multilateralism.

It seemed that I had at least metaphorically ‘thrown up my hands’. My conclusion:

 

This terminology is, unfortunately, in the end not particularly helpful. It seems that middle power is just about anything that is not a leading or is not using the traditional notion, a great power. Nevertheless, the impact of ‘small group’ action of a set of actors seems to identify what analysts are looking at, at least in contemporary global governance in the contemporary global order. And, it would appear that these actors need not include the great or leading powers.

But the failure to identify the agreed set of actors that are generally accepted today as middle powers did not extinguish my interest, and the interest of many of my colleagues in focussing on these powers and what actions they might be taking in the current global order. And, as I said above, I will come back to that key issue – why middle powers are considered important, possibly critical to the emerging global order in Part 2 of this Post.

However, identifying middle powers more precisely, probably to my detriment, continued to nag at me. So, I turned to some additional colleagues to try and nail down the set of actors that all, or nearly all, would agree were accepted as middle powers.

Looking at the Trail of Middle Power Definitions

Fortunately, I have as a close colleague, iAndrew Cooper from Waterloo University and the Balsillie School there. Andrew had long involved himself in the debate – who are the middle powers. So I turned to him to identify for me what he believed was the  ‘definitive’ definition of middle powers. And, he returned the following definition from one of the better known volumes that he was involved in with co-authors Richard Higgott, Kim Nossal. 1993. Relocating Middle Powers” Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order. Vancouver: University British Columbia Press. And the definition provided at page 24:

A middle power “…emphasizes entrepreneurial flair and technical competence in the pursuit of diplomatic activities. Not only is this diplomacy devoted to building consensus and cooperation on issue-specific agendas, it is invariably differentiated and has an important temporal element as well.”

Two things emerge from this definition. First the volume focuses on what can I think be identified as the ‘traditional middle powers” – Australia and Canada. And the authors hint at the fact there are different sources for identifying middle powers. This multiple approach was confirmed in probably what is likely the most in depth examination of middle powers – this the article by Jeffrey Robertson  “Middle-power definitions: confusion reigns supreme” in the Australian Journal of International Affairs (2017. 71(4): 355-370. Robertson indicated (p. 365) that these two governments sought to create a special international role for themselves: 

In the post-World War I and post-World War II periods, Australian and Canadian policymakers sought to distinguish their countries from other states on the basis of the function they played in the maintenance of peace and security. Accordingly, they used functional definitions to describe middle powers.

This description, according to Robertson, evolved in later periods including during the Cold War and then Post Cold War. relying first on ‘functional’ definitions, then ‘capacity’ definitions and in the end  ‘behavioral’ definitions. As Robertson suggested, the differing characterizations were all done:

to allow Australian and Canadian policymakers to distinguish themselves from a growing number of emerging states with claims on the international system.

Robertson revealed, in other words, that there are multiple ways to identify middle powers – functional, capacity and behavioral. Choose a different approach – ‘Voila’ a different set of actors. As Robertson argued:

All middle-power definitions suffer from clearly identifiable weaknesses and thus have never been fully accepted in the conceptual scheme of political science and international relations. This has both increased debate on the subject and at the same time challenged the capacity of educators to teach the subject successfully. These identifiable weaknesses have been substantially covered in previous studies. (p. 362)

If you used the ‘traditional’ approach well, you’d conclude that Canada, Australia and possibly South Korea would be middle powers. Maybe also Singapore. If you used capacity and identified the top 20 powers (by nominal GDP at current US dollar exchange rates as of 2019) – excluding the ‘great powers’, or what I think is increasingly identified as the leading powers you’d get in order: Japan, Germany, India, UK, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Russia, South Korea, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Indonesia, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Switzerland, Quite a collection and hardly all identifiable as middle powers.

Quite recently a new designation was proposed. As I described it in Effective Multilateralism, this organization was constructed by the current French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian along with his compatriot,  the German foreign minister Heiko Maas. As described :

In 2019 these foreign ministers launched a new ‘Alliance for Multilateralism’ tied to the UN. The leaders and the participants are not referred to as middle powers, but the host and co-host countries and the participants are all designated as ‘goodwill powers’. That designation emphasizes the collective action purpose of this contemporary multilateralism. There no reference to ‘middle powers’, or power generally which as we’ve just pointed out is rather misleading. Thus, ‘goodwill powers’ may be a useful term.

Well I am not sure that ‘goodwill powers’ brings us any more clarity or closure to the middle power  definition but it does strike me that the members identified as participating in the Alliance overlap with what many would accept as middle powers.

In the end Robertson (p. 366) ignores the history and concludes. this approach as the better way to capture middle powers in the current global order :

In the context of middle-power definitions, a pragmatic approach discourages the question ‘What really is a middle power?’ and, rather, focuses on how we ought to use the term in the context of a specific field or subfield. One possible definition for a middle power may thus be as follows: in the context of global governance in the 2010s, a middle power ought to be considered as a state with an interest in and capacity (material(367)resources, diplomatic influence, creativity, etc.) to work proactively in concert with similar states to contribute to the development and strengthening of institutions for the governance of the global commons.

While an agreed definition seems beyond our reach, it is evident that the various definitions and the groups proposed seem to be linked to various multilateral initiatives that have arisen in the global order. And to that I will turn in Part 2.

* Colin Bradford. 2020. “A New US Strategic Approach to China and to Global Diplomacy”. CWD Memo. January 2020.

** “The Possibilities for ‘Effective Multilateralism’ in the Coming Global Order”. Research Memo. December 9, 2020.

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