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Australia's Middle Power Diplomacy

Panel presentation to China-West Dialogue Webinar, 'Middle Power Diplomacy - Australia and New Zealand', 6 December 2024

There is no standard definition, or agreed international list, of ‘middle powers’, and no lack of continuing argument about not only the coverage of the concept, but its operational utility, and in some cases its acceptability to those so labelled. Although Australia and Canada would be on just about everyone’s list, my successor as Australia’s Foreign Minister, the Coalition’s Alexander Downer, used to insist that we were not a mere ‘middle’, but a ‘pivotal’ power. As he said in 2006, ‘we are not “middling” or “average” or “insignificant”… we are a considerable power and a significant country’.

To me, and I think most in the global policy community these days – and certainly the current Australian government – ‘middle power’ language has no connotation at all of mediocrity or insignificance. But what is it that distinguishes us from, at one end of the spectrum from great powers like the US and China, and – although the boundaries here are fuzzier – from what might be described as major powers (like Russia, India and Japan)? And at the other end of the spectrum, from small powers?

Focusing on objective measures of physical size – of population, GDP, landmass, defence expenditure or the like – doesn’t take the definitional argument very far. Norway, and in our own region Singapore and, I would guess, New Zealand, would be on just about everyone’s middle power list, but all have populations of less than 6 million people, 50 times smaller than Indonesia which would be universally so regarded.

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. ‘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.

For middle power diplomacy, as I have described it, to be effective, requires a number of factors coming together: practical opportunity, often limited given the realities of great and major-power dominance; available diplomatic resources, energy and stamina; intellectual creativity, seeing opportunities which others have missed; and credibility, practising what you preach and being seen as genuinely independent, nobody’s deputy sheriff (a perception that Australia has found it sometimes hard in the past to shake off, and will certainly become harder for us in the future if the AUKUS submarine project enmeshes us with US decision-making to the extent many like me fear).

There are many examples over the years of Australia effectively practising middle power diplomacy as I define it, including:

  • the role of 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 Labor governments in initiating the Uruguay round of trade negotiations, Asia-Pacific dialogue mechanisms like APEC and ARF, the Antarctic mining prohibition treaty, finalising the Chemical Weapons Treaty, and initiating the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

  • the role of an Australian Coalition government in bringing to conclusion the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

  • the role of Australia and Indonesia working together to craft and drive the Cambodian peace settlement

  • the role of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in leading the global fight against apartheid, with sports, trade and cultural boycotts and financial sanctions; and

  • 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).

I think it is romantic to believe, as some want to, that middle powers could ever have the kind of capacity to shape the world order that is exercised by the great powers – US and China. And it may be almost as romantic to think that we have, individually or collectively, 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. Our 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.

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 over-reach 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 never easy to craft 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

Raw economic and military power will always count for a lot in international affairs. But it does not count for everything. Middle powers with a sense of where they want to go, and with the credibility, resources, and energy to follow through, can have a major impact in making this region and the wider world safer, saner and more prosperous. That’s the challenge for Australia and all those who think like us.