Caught in the Middle? Middle Powers amid U.S.-China Competition

Abstract

executive summary: This essay provides an overview of this special issue, which seeks to better understand middle-power thinking and strategies in coping with the escalating competition between the U.S. and China. main argument Competition is now the primary format of U.S.-China relations, spanning key dimensions of international politics. The pressures radiating from this structural shift have led Indo-Pacific states to calibrate their policies to this new geostrategic circumstance. This special issue focuses on the responses of a category of regional states understood as middle powers. How have regional middle powers adapted to the intensifying U.S.-China rivalry? What are the considerations and drivers that inform their coping strategies? To address these salient, policy-relevant questions, this special issue spotlights six Indo-Pacific middle powers—namely, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Pakistan—and unpacks their logic and ways of navigating the complexities of the Sino-U.S. rivalry. The insights derived in this issue contribute to broader policy thinking on the evolving choices of middle powers and are instructive for the strategic policies of other regional states in an era of great-power competition. policy implications • Amid the growing U.S.-China contest, regional middle powers perceive a narrowing strategic space for maneuverability. • This reduced strategic space does not equate to decreasing strategic autonomy, however. Regional middle powers retain considerable agency to mold their own paths and that of the broader strategic environment, including developing options to mitigate any fallout from the Sino-U.S. rivalry. • A considerable degree of this middle-power agency is animated by elite calculations of the respective domestic interests at stake. • Strategic ambiguity toward China and the U.S. remains the dominant policy preference of most middle powers probed in this issue.