Role of Middle Powers in the current world order

Remarks to Paris Peace Forum Panel, Paris, 11 November 2024

The world today is full of middle powers in the South, the North and probably the Centre (Central Asia). What is their leverage on the world order as it is presently evolving? Can they overcome their divergences to exert a joint influence?

It’s a little romantic to think that middle powers – individually or collectively – could ever have the kind of capacity to shape the world order that is exercised by the great powers – US and China. Or have the capacity exercised to a lesser but still sometimes significant extent (although more often regionally than globally) by second tier major powers like Russia and India.

Middle powers can have an important impact, but it 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 issues can be of much greater than niche importance. Some examples:

• the role of Australia’s Dr HV Evatt in the creation of the UN: his fight for the rights of the smaller powers against the great powers in the respective roles of the General Assembly and the Security Council, and in his faith in the UN as an agent for social and economic reform and as a protector of human rights
• the role of later Australian governments in initiating ASIA-Pacific dialogue mechanisms like APEC, the Antarctic mining prohibition treaty, and finalising the Chemical Weapons Treaty
• the role of Australia and Indonesia working together to craft and drive the Cambodian peace settlement
• the role of Nigeria in leading many effective conflict response efforts in West Africa
• the role of Canada in initiating the prohibition of land mines
• the role of Norway in initiating the prohibition of cluster bombs
• the role of Mexico and others in initiating the TPNW
• the role of Canada, Australia and South Africa working together to initiate and achieve global consensus for the concept of the responsibility to protect (R2P)
• the role of Brazil in formulating and advocating the creative concept of ‘RWP’ after R2P was misapplied in Libya
• the role of a cooperating constellation of middle powers in forging the path-setting European Green deal on climate change, and the determination of Brazil’s President Lula to lead a Southern charge on climate action at forthcoming COP conferences

There is no agreed definition of ‘middle powers’. To me they are best described as simply those states which, objectively, are not economically or militarily big or strong enough, to impose their policy preferences on anyone else – certainly not globally, and at best only occasionally regionally, but which are nonetheless sufficiently capable, credible and motivated to be able to make an impact on international relations.

What to me matters most in identifying middle powers is not in fact any objective measure of size – of GDP, population, landmass, defence expenditure or anything else – eg Norway would be on everyone’s middle power list, but ranks around 120th on population size. And there is a lot of overlap in various lists, if not between middle and great powers, certainly as between middle and major powers.

To me the best definition of middle powers is the effectiveness with which they practice what I describe as ‘middle power diplomacy’. In turn, I would describe middle power diplomacy in terms of its characteristic motivation and method.

Its 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 its characteristic diplomatic method is coalition building with ‘like-minded’ states – those who, whatever their prevailing value systems, share specific interests and are prepared to work together to do something about advancing them.

It is never easy to craft such coalitions across geographical, cultural and ideological divides, and never has been, but I remain confident – from the experience of the past – that the need to do so is as well recognised as ever, as is the will and capacity to do so. But it will require, as ever, strong leadership. Coalitions don’t build themselves: they have to be forged.