Middle Power Status Research Articles

Will Malaysia become an active middle power?

ABSTRACT Malaysia’s economic growth and democratisation since 2003 have vaulted it into the ranks of the middle powers in the international system. However, Malaysia remains hesitant about its middle power status. It has assumed a counterhegemonic or pro-multipolarity role; it has supported some new international rules and institutions; it leads regional governance institutions; and it advocates for small countries on development issues. However, these middle power behaviours are countered by a continuation of traditional Malaysia diplomacy which is inactive in shaping the emergence of superpower China as well as being disruptive and personalistic, most recently because of its embrace of radical Islam. It would require major shifts in international system structures and Malaysian national role conceptions for Malaysia to become a fully active middle power.

Japan’s Contribution to International Peace: Restrictions and Advantages

Japan is said to be a peace-loving country. In fact, the State’s history indicates that Japan and its politicians have surely sought positive ways to dispatch Japan’s SDF personnel to UN or international operations for the pursuit of UN-centred policy, despite the State’s constitutional constraints. For example, Japan created or amended several laws including the PKO Law in 1992 as well as the JDR Law in 1987 and the Anti-Terrorism Law in 2001. Therefore, one can identify the evolving process of Japan’s contribution to international peace. However, at the time of writing, Japan’s contribution to UN peacekeeping is token. This article points out several restrictions and advantages for Japan to dispatch forces to overseas operations. The restrictions include legal, diplomatic, and situational ones. The advantages include ones due to the State’s record in the UN, due to the state’s diverse and comprehensive approaches to international peace, and those due to the current situation of international peace and security. Japan should take advantage of its middle-power status for its contribution to international peace. Keywords: Japan; International peace; The UN; Middle power

Unusual middle power activism and regime survival: Turkey’s drone warfare and its regime-boosting effects

The emerging middle powers in the Global South increasingly seek to produce domestic defence technologies. Drones in particular have become an important feature of middle power activism. The existing literature heavily focuses on the outcomes of the diffusion of drone technologies for regional and global politics. Yet not much has been written on the domestic impact of home-grown military technologies in middle powers. Therefore, we ask how the manufacture, export and use of drones promote regime survival, focusing on the case of Turkey. Turkey is a critical case because of its demonstrated middle power status and heavy investment in the development of armed drone platforms. Turkey’s drone programme and warfare have considerably raised the international profile of the country’s burgeoning defence sector. Yet we argue that the use of military tech also has boosting effects on domestic regime survival. This happens in three ways: promoting techno-nationalism and pride, strengthening border security and shaping regional order, and contesting global dynamics on the basis of national interests, security and self-sufficiency.

China–US Strategic Competition and Indonesia’s Status Anxiety

Indonesia has been actively seeking to improve its status and has gradually developed a trinity of national–regional–world status, consisting of independent status, regional leadership status and middle power status. In the context of China–US strategic competition, Indonesia is more sensitive to the consolidation and pursuit of its status. In response, Indonesia not only inherits the traditional diplomatic policy of “rowing between two rocks” and refuses to take sides between China and the US, but also tries to lead the ASEAN countries to develop a “third way” in the Indo-Pacific region. This paper analyzes Indonesia’s perception of and response to China–US strategic competition from the perspective of status politics, arguing that status politics plays a key role as the underlying logic of Indonesia’s “free and active” diplomacy — maintaining close relations with both China and the United States at the material level can enhance Indonesia’s economic and military status, and maintaining autonomy at the social level can gain international recognition of its status.

Does South Korea Exercise Middle-Power Diplomacy Toward Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?

It is widely accepted that South Korea has obtained middle-power status because it has fulfilled the necessary behavioral principles in its diplomacy. Even though the Republic of Korea is an active player in Central Asia, the topic of relationships between South Korea and Central Asian republics has barely been explored. Using case studies, the author attempts to evaluate how much South Korea’s policy matches its middle-power status in relationships with two major partners in the region—Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The author concludes that South Korea’s policy toward the two Central Asian partners only partly matches middle-power behavior criteria. The article discusses the practical obstacles to South Korea’s middle-power diplomacy toward Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and elaborates on the shortcomings of the middle-power concept as an analytical framework.

"No One Can Force Vietnam to Choose Sides": Vietnam as a Self-Reliant Middle Power

executive summary: This essay examines how Vietnam is adapting to U.S.-China rivalry and argues that Vietnam's room for strategic maneuverability is diminishing as it faces growing internal and external pressure for policy adjustments. main argument In the past few years, Vietnam has been increasingly labeled as a middle power. Vietnam's emerging middle-power status coincides with a shifting strategic environment marked by China's expansionism that has nudged Vietnam toward closer U.S. relations. However, Vietnam's persistent foreign policy of self-reliance and independence, informed by the country's historical experiences and concerns over regime security, ensures that Hanoi stays nonaligned. Thus, while retaining autonomy in developing closer U.S. ties, Vietnam strikes a delicate balance between the two superpowers. Instead of relying on a single security guarantor, Vietnam has actively sought to promote rules-based principles and multilateralism in advancing its national interests, particularly vis-à-vis the South China Sea and the Mekong River. However, external and internal developments have strained Vietnam's ability to balance between the two superpowers. policy implications • While increasingly wary of China's behavior, Vietnam is unlikely to enter a formal alliance with the U.S. due to its firmly held values of self-reliance and independence. • Vietnam will continue to leverage multidirectional diplomacy to shape regional security and economic architectures in an effort to counterbalance China's influence and reduce Vietnamese dependence on China. • Vietnam should exercise more flexibility and show greater resolve in protecting its national interests. To this end, without abandoning its foreign policy of self-reliance and independence, Vietnam should explore new options to advance security cooperation with other major and middle powers with which it shares strategic interests.

Indonesia’s G20 presidency: neoliberal policy and authoritarian tendencies

ABSTRACT Multilateralism at the regional and global stage is essential for Indonesia’s foreign policy. Apart from ASEAN, which has long been a pivotal array for Indonesia’s regional economic interdependence and political stability, the G20 is recently added to the country’s interest. It serves Indonesia’s desire for global leadership and middle-power status. As Indonesia began its year-long presidency of the G20 in 2022, the government is confident that hosting numerous meetings and the Group’s summit at the end of 2022 is a notable milestone for its international leadership exposure. This time, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo emphasises priority agendas: strengthening global health architecture, transitioning to green and renewable energy, and promoting the digital economy. This commentary evaluates and projects Indonesia’s G20 presidency amidst the country’s democratic decline in recent years. It argues that Indonesia’s proposed agendas are more ambitious goals than strategic. Instead, the country’s priority will be marked by a solid neoliberal economic policy and stability, which is likely to cause even more democratic setbacks at home.

Vietnam's Emergence as a Middle Power in Asia: Unfolding the Power–Knowledge Nexus

With Asia's current geopolitical rise, International Relations communities in China, Japan and India have attempted to develop indigenous theoretical approaches that attract heated scholarly debates. Little attention, however, is paid to the state of affairs in weaker states. As power today is widely diffused to various actors in the international system beyond the big powers, the power–knowledge literature should be broadened to respond to the growing multiplexity of world order and the call for diversity of International Relations knowledge. As a case in point, this study examines how Vietnam's emerging middle power status has shaped policy and scholarly discourses in the country regarding the trajectory of Vietnam's foreign policy and the burgeoning interest of its International Relations community in a Vietnamese School of Diplomacy. Such scholarly endeavour will help shed light on the heightened agency of middle powers in world politics and the prospects for a Southeast Asian contribution to global International Relations heritage.

Innovative Development Finance for Health Sector Development: Focusing on the Air Ticket Solidarity Levy System in the Republic of Korea

Financial sustainability has been a perennial problem in international development. Furthermore, among different areas of developmental support, securing sufficient financial resources is particularly significant in the health sector where people’s very lives are at stake. Given the above, we examine innovative development finance (IDF) for the health sector with a particular focus on the air ticket solidarity levy system in the Republic of Korea. After an overview of the origins and the present state of the solidarity tax system, we explain how it was implemented in the context of South Korea’s health ODA (Official Development Assistance). A first-ever health ODA stakeholders’ perception survey with its implications on the airplane tax system follows. For policy suggestions, we suggest incorporating a COVID-19 agenda into the Global Disease Eradication Fund (GDEF) immediately, and to raise public awareness in a timely fashion. We believe the Korean case is significant for both its direct impact in the Eurasian region as an emerging donor, and for its unique position due to its middle-power status whose trajectory could serve as an example to many other nations seeking sustainable financial schemes.

Australia’s Middle Power Approach Towards Climate Change in Pacific Island

This article tends to examine the ways Australia approaching climate change in the region associated with its middle power status. Pacific Islands or Southwest Pacific Region is a regional territory that almost of all its surface covered by water. The region is prominent for having numbers of island countries or island states which are very dependent on natural conditions. They are vulnerable to the change of nature thus it hits their top national security. The issue of climate change in recent years has gotten more serious attention from all over the world and so does the pacific island region with no exception. Australia with its unique feature of being known as a middle power state and as the most secure nation in the region has served a distinctive approach on addressing the issue of climate change. The behavior and identity approach are adequately in line to establish certain strategies associated with middle power status in the role of guiding Australia’s foreign policy.

Australia's Middle Power Approach Towards Climate Change in Pacific Island

This article tends to examine the ways Australia approaching climate change in the region associated with its middle power status. Pacific Islands or Southwest Pacific Region is a regional territory that almost of all its surface covered by water. The region is prominent for having numbers of island countries or island states which are very dependent on natural conditions. They are vulnerable to the change of nature thus it hits their top national security. The issue of climate change in recent years has gotten more serious attention from all over the world and so does the pacific island region with no exception. Australia with its unique feature of being known as a middle power state and as the most secure nation in the region has served a distinctive approach on addressing the issue of climate change. The behavior and identity approach are adequately in line to establish certain strategies associated with middle power status in the role of guiding Australia’s foreign policy. Keywords: climate change, Island states, middle power, Australia, foreign policy.

From rule‐takerto rule‐promotingregulatory state: South Korea in the nearly‐globalcompetition regime

AbstractWhen rapid economic growth catapults a country within a few years from the margins of the global economy to middle power status, does global regulatory governance need to brace for a challenge to the status quo? To answer this question, we extend the power transition theory of global economic governance to middle powers: A rising middle power should be expected to challenge the international regulatory status quo only if increasing issue‐specific strength of its regulatory state coincides with preferences that diverge from the preferences of the established powers, which are enshrined in the status quo. We examine this argument empirically, focusing on South Korea in the realm of competition law and policy. We find that South Korea, a non‐participant in the international competition regime until the 1980s, developed in the 1990s substantial regulatory capacity and capability and thus “spoiler potential.” At the same time, however, its policy preferences converged upon the norms and practices established by the United States and the European Union, albeit with some distinct elements. Under these conditions, we expect a transition from rule‐taker to rule‐promoter. We find that South Korea has indeed in recent years begun to actively promote well‐established competition law and policy norms and practices – supplemented by its distinct elements – through technical assistance programs, as well as various bilateral channels and multilateral institutions. The findings suggest that the power transition theory of global economic governance is usefully applicable to middle powers, too.

Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Leadership: Reflection on Thailand’s Emerging Middle Power Diplomacy in the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD)

Thailand’s diplomacy was considerably more active during Thaksin’s premiership than the governments after him. Thailand’s intellectual and entrepreneurial leadership in the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) is characterised as a catalyst, facilitator and manager state as described in the behavioural middle power approach. Utilising the behavioural model of the middle power approaches, this study argues that Thailand is a potential emerging middle power state in Asia for its role in intellectual and entrepreneurial leadership in the ACD. Even though the ACD after 2006 was somewhat negligent due to Thailand’s internal political strife. The ACD remains a significant foreign policy reflecting Thailand’s middle-power status.

South Africa’s soft power and the diplomacy of nuclear geopolitics

From when it was reaccepted into the international community in the early 1990s, South Africa has made significant contributions towards the construction of new international regimes governing states’ interaction globally. South Africa’s global and regional governance advocacy for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty (ANWFZ), the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa (FNRBA), as well as other related nuclear disarmament conventions, remain notable. This article makes two claims: First, it accounts for the evolution of South Africa’s soft power by arguing that achievements such as the unprecedented and voluntary dismantling of its nuclear warheads inspired the Republic’s new international image as a global norm entrepreneur. More importantly, the study submits that South Africa’s nuclear diplomacy has evolved through two overlapping stages of norm promotion towards the establishment of regional/global multilateral frameworks and institutions on nuclear disarmament and niche construction in the global nuclear industry. The wider significance of South Africa’s participation in nuclear geopolitics is the attraction the country gains from international respect, recognition, acceptance, and legitimacy, both regionally and globally. A major conclusion reached is that the moral authority and middle power status that Pretoria enjoy internationally are partly attributed to its unique commitment to the global nuclear denuclearization regime.

Social and Humanitarian Factor in South Korea's External Relations and The Korean Question

The development of the socio-humanitarian dimension of world politics provides new opportunities for enhancing the role and influence of the middle powers in the global affairs. That is why for understanding and assessment of their political opportunities on the international arena, it is necessary to analyze the approaches and policies of such countries on using socio-humanitarian factor to balance in the existing world balance power and ensure their foreign policy interests. The aim of the article is to analyze South Korea’s activities in the social and humanitarian sphere of world politics in the context of its foreign policy interests. The research question is: what is the role of the socio-humanitarian factor, in particular public diplomacy, in the external activities of South Korea with regard to the settlement of the Korean question? The author argues that South Korea sees social and humanitarian sphere as a possibility to strengthen its role and influence on the international arena. While developing the discourse of South Korea as a middle power, the South Korean leadership seeks to take part in creating norms and rules in different fields of global governance. Despite controversies concerning its status and policy as that of a middle power, South Korea advances through public diplomacy the discourse that constructs and enhance its middle power status and can contribute in forming the corresponding national identity. South Korea uses national branding as well to strengthen its political image. Further, the article points out that promoting South Korea’s stance and defending its interests on the Korean Peninsula represent a key task of South Korea’s public diplomacy. In particular, the article examines South Korea’s public diplomacy mechanisms on the Korean track towards the United States and emphasizes that although South Korea has actively engaged in public diplomacy in the USA, it still has a lot to do to explain South Korea's concerns to American political elites and U.S. publics and ensure that the relationship with the United States fully serves South Korean interests. Moreover, it is noted that enhancing South Korea’s role in global governance as well as forming constructive unification discourse (unification as a process now and as a result someday in the future) within the country and abroad are supposed to expand its opportunities to maneuver in the regional politics of East Asia and provide support for the South Korean initiatives on the Korean settlement. In the end, the author turns to the inter-Korean relations. The author states that different South Korean administrations have prioritized different functions of the socio-humanitarian factor. Conservative administrations put an emphasis on information pressure on the DPRK while the development of inter-Korean relations was conditioned by the denuclearization of North Korea. Progressive administrations prefer engaging the DPRK in social, humanitarian and economic interactions. In the first case the result was a rollback in inter-Korean relations with the North Korean leader-ship receiving additional grounds for the development of its military nuclear program. In the second case the social and humanitarian area was and remains a dimension providing promising opportunities for cooperation that is beneficial to the both parties as it is aimed at solving specific and practical problems of common interest. In that sense, the author argues that social and humanitarian factor in inter-Korean relations could serve as a safety cushion during intensification of the inter-Korean conflict and provide a launch pad for finding a way out of the impasses.

India in the Emergent Multipolar World Order: Dynamics and Strategic Challenges

India has a middle power status and a rising power mindset. The emerging multipolar world manifests opportunities as well as challenges to India’s foreign policy. The newness quotient is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘economy first’ approach rooted in his desire to create external conditions necessary to ensure domestic economic progress. He has displayed dynamism while engaging all major powers, promoting and reintegrating India with the global economy, promoting greater cooperation with South Asian neighbours and renewing strategic connections in the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Pragmatism in India’s foreign policy is seen in Indo–US relations reaching a new level or in cooperation with China on climate change while opposing its territorial claims in the South China Sea and One Belt One Road Project. To counter China, India has sought close strategic partnerships with the USA and its allies and main partners in Asia-Pacific while retaining its strategic autonomy. A major challenge to India’s foreign policy is the downward spiral of relations with Pakistan.

“Just one of many donors”: Canada’s engagement with civil society in Afghanistan

ABSTRACTCanada's entry into Afghanistan as a NATO ally was widely considered a necessary military venture, but Canadian operations during the reconstruction period that ensued were criticized as having tarnished Canada's reputation on the international stage. Canada's history as a peacekeeping nation and its perceived middle power status did initially allow it to act as a mediator between the Afghan government, local actors, and the international community. However, our research discovered that Canada did not fully understand the dynamics of the established civil society structures in Afghanistan, nor the ways in which they influence local politics. A limited understanding of “civil society” among Canadian officials and disproportionate focus on professionalized NGOs as its most legitimate representative meant that local civil society groups in Afghanistan and the role they could play to establish democratic structures were largely ignored. By complementing knowledge synthesis of existing scholarly and policy literature with interviews with Canadian and Afghan aid workers, this article examines the process of post-conflict rebuilding in Afghanistan, considering how neglecting Afghan civil society has resulted in less durable social structures. We also examine Canada's image as an international mediator, and identify new ways of assisting rebuilding processes to ensure more durable and peaceful outcomes.

Status-seeking policies of middle powers in status clubs: the case of Turkey in the G20

ABSTRACTThis study applies the theoretical framework of Social Identity Theory (SIT) and its three main strategies, social mobility, social competition and social creativity to Turkey as an emerging middle power in the G20. In doing so, it uses Role Theory’s toolkit in order to assess the impact of Turkey’s middle power role conception, role expectations, and role performance on identity management strategies pursued by Turkey vis-à-vis its middle power peers in the G20 (namely Canada, Australia, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa). The findings of this study acknowledge that Turkey’s status-seeking policies as an emerging middle power are more prone to pursuing social mobility and social creativity rather than social competition. It concludes that Turkey’s weakness in enacting its G20 middle power role and its failure in bridging this middle power role to its middle power status in turns it to an underperforming middle ranked country in the G20.

Critical realism: A better way to think about middle powers

The fundamental problem in middle power scholarship lies in the research design that inadvertently permits bias, tautology, and circularity in the process of realizing the final outcome. Most researchers begin with a presumption that middle powers are countries in the middle range of the world order, capable and willing to play some constructive roles beyond their borders. Thus, they tend to select methods and data compatible with the given presumption, and reach predictable outcomes that determine middle power status by middle power behaviours, or middle power behaviours by middle power status. This is an epistemic fallacy where the ontic category of middle powers is defined by the epistemic knowledge of middle powers. Eventually, any countries with comparable characteristics/behaviours to the given presumption can be classified as “middle powers” conducting middle power behaviours. This article offers critical realism as a much-needed remedy to the stagnant middle power scholarship. It examines a group of countries already categorized as middle powers—Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Australia (MIKTA)—under a critical realist framework, and finds that those countries and their activities cannot be generalized by the conventional middle power conception. In fact, the middle power rhetoric itself holds both a positive and negative ideological implication that requires further scrutiny. Yet, what makes the critical realist research design and its findings invaluable is the commitment to ontological realism, epistemological relativism, and judgmental rationalism that addresses the recurring epistemic fallacy. Therefore, the research findings are not merely new insights about “middle power” countries; they are a valid clue that can help uncover the “real” world that causes the so-called “middle power” categorization.

“Treating Allies with Respect: U.S.-rok Alliance and the Second Korean Nuclear Crisis, 2002–2006”

This article examines the reasons why the level of alliance cohesion between the United States and the Republic of Korea (rok) was suboptimal during the Second North Korean Nuclear Crisis (2002–2006). Existing studies on this phenomenon primarily attribute its causes to factors like the rise of anti-Americanism in the rok and/or the increasing divergence in the two nations’ respective threat perceptions of the North Korea and their resulting policy preferences. However, these explanations are partial at best. The main finding here is that one should understand the frictions in the U.S.-rok alliance in terms of the rok’s status concerns. In particular, the rok, with a sense of entitlement to its solid middle power status, had set out to cooperate closely with the United States in seeking to answer the nuclear problem, based on the spirit of horizontal, equitable alliance relations. However, the United States failed overall to reciprocate, thereby leading the rok to boldly pursue its own set of policies at the expense of eroding alliance cohesion. These events demonstrate that (dis)respect for status concerns in international politics can make a major contribution towards facilitating (or impeding) interstate cooperation.