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Global power has traditionally been dominated by the great powers, with middle powers serving as their faithful “subjects” and enforcers of the global order of the day, however, are the traditional “weight” classes defining global power relevant today?
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No matter the context, definitions are important, and on the global geopolitical stage, definitions play a central role in understanding the hierarchy and “weight classes” of power that separate the world’s nations.
The relevance of understanding these rather abstract concepts becomes increasingly important as the post-Second World War order, dominated by the United States and supported by the former imperial European powers gives way to an increasingly multipolar world characterised by multiple centres of economic, political, and strategic mass, not least of all, in the Indo-Pacific.
Driven in large part by the meteoric rise of the world’s two emerging superpowers, the People’s Republic of China and India, coupled with the emerging power of a growing number of great powers, ranging from Indonesia to Brazil, all serving to dramatically reshape the global balance of power and the traditional definitions of power and hierarchy on the international stage.
For Australia, a nation that has been entrenched in the post-Second World War order since its inception during the dying days of that disastrous conflict, we are grappling with an increasingly complex new global paradigm.
Accordingly, it is becoming important to understand the contemporary power dynamics, particularly those surrounding definitions of “great powers”, “middle powers”, and “small powers”, particularly as the “theoretical” and “practical” applications of power become increasingly complicated.
In the Australian context, Singapore Management University’s Eduard Jordaan’s definition of contemporary “middle powers” is perhaps the most relevant and timely: “All middle powers display foreign policy behaviour that stabilises and legitimises the global order, typically through multilateral and cooperative initiatives. However, emerging and traditional middle powers can be distinguished in terms of their mutually-influencing constitutive and behavioural differences.
“Constitutively, traditional middle powers are wealthy, stable, egalitarian, social democratic and not regionally influential. Behaviourally, they exhibit a weak and ambivalent regional orientation, constructing identities distinct from powerful states in their regions and offer appeasing concessions to pressures for global reform.
“[However] emerging middle powers by contrast are semi-peripheral, materially inegalitarian and recently democratised states that demonstrate much regional influence and self-association. Behaviourally, they opt for reformist and not radical global change, exhibit a strong regional orientation favouring regional integration but seek also to construct identities distinct from those of the weak states in their region.”
The heavyweight and super heavyweight divisions
Not unlike the UFC or boxing, the global power hierarchy is based heavily on what can broadly be compared to “weight classes” that differentiate a competitor based on their weight, with the international relations variant “weighing” a combination of a nation’s “hard” and “soft” power compared to others.
In the Australian context, understanding the varying “weight classes” becomes increasingly important as we seek to navigate the inherently competitive nature of the new multipolar world and Indo-Pacific closer to home.
This only becomes more important as Australia’s traditional strategy of deferring to a “great and powerful friend” in the British Empire, and now the United States, becomes challenging as these nations continue their own relative economic, political, societal, and strategic decline in comparison to the invigorated rising powers of the Indo-Pacific and more broadly, the developing world.
So, we will begin with establishing an understanding of what constitutes a “great power” at the super heavyweight/heavyweight “class” with a number of historical definitions providing a good foundation for understanding the contemporary dimensions of the status.
French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle provides the first understanding and conceptualisation of a true “great power” in rather simple terms, stating: “A great power is one which is capable of preserving its own independence against any other single power.” This framing is further reinforced by famous German/Prussian historian Leopold von Ranke who defines a “great power” as: “If one could establish as a definition of a great power that it must be able to maintain itself against all others, even when they are united...”
This conceptualisation gives a good basis for understanding the framing of “great powers” in the modern context and adds further weight to the increasingly popular term of “great power competition” which is being used to define the new, multipolar world emerging in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These two complementary, if rather simple “definitions”, however, add an important layer of complexity, particularly when paired with this important paragraph from the government’s Defence Strategic Review, which highlights a major “escalation” in Australia’s own status: “Australia does not have effective defence capabilities relative to higher threat levels. In the present strategic circumstances, this can only be achieved by Australia working with the United States and other key partners in the maintenance of a favourable regional environment. Australia also needs to develop the capability to unilaterally deter any state from offensive military action against Australian forces or territory.”
With this in mind, despite the rhetoric around the world becoming increasingly multipolar and us living in an era of “great power competition”, the question has to be asked, is it really the case or does the United States remain the world’s sole “great power”?
This is something seemingly reinforced by Chinese academic Peng Yuan, director of the Institute of American Studies of the China Institutes for Contemporary International Studies, who states that the United States maintains an advantage in 10 areas of national strength, ranging from population and geographic position through to cultural soft power, traditional hard power, and economic power.
Despite this, Yuan does highlight that the United States has, in recent years, seen major slippage in its status as a “great power” as a result of collapsing domestic bipartisanship, declining economic and industrial capacity particularly following the Global Finance Crisis, increased societal political atomisation, and declining power in influence through global multilateral organisations.
Again, we ask, is the United States alone in its position of pre-eminence on the global stage as the sole “great power” or is it merely at the apex of a list of comparatively smaller, yet rapidly developing great powers, even more importantly, do the old European powers still warrant being categorised as “great powers”?
The middleweight and regional powers
In contrast, “middle powers” or “regional powers” can best be encapsulated in the “middleweight” class division and are far broader in their characteristics and their position within the global environment.
These nations, still capable of moderate-levels of influence on the global stage, make up the majority of nations within the global power-ranking context and arguably constitute most of the former European imperial powers, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and now Japan, which rapidly declined from widely held consideration as a potential superpower during the 1990s.
However, unlike the conceptualisation of the great powers, clearly defining “middle powers” is a far trickier proposition, particularly within the context of the rapidly evolving global geopolitical and strategic environment, something that the Global Security Institute’s own Middle Power Initiative (MPI) attempts to explain, which defines a “middle power” thus: “Middle power countries are politically and economically significant, internationally respected countries that have renounced the nuclear arms race, a standing that give them significant international credibility.”
Shifting to the definitions of a “regional power”, which is similarly complex yet complementary to the aforementioned definitions of the “middle power” concept, Martin Beck — academic with the German Institute of Global and Area Studies — characterises a “regional power” along a number of power characteristics, including forming part of a definable region with its own identity, disposes over comparatively high military, economic, demographic, political, and ideological capabilities, defines the regional security agenda to a high degree, can be recognised as a regional power by other powers in the region and beyond, especially by other regional powers and be well integrated into the region.
Equally important is the environmental context in which these middle and regional powers find themselves located. This becomes apparent when you compare the region’s over which these nations claim primacy, for example, Australia (seemingly in an attempt at ignorant escapism) claims primacy over Oceania, while the United Kingdom, France, Japan, South Korea and Germany all claim regional power status in an inherently competitive geographic environments, respectively.
Importantly for Australia, a nation which frequently defines itself as a middle power and regional power, is it perhaps more appropriate that the mutually compatible concepts of “middle power” and “regional power” have a tiered hierarchy with nations like the United Kingdom, France (being nuclear powers), Japan, and Germany be characterised as being “Tier 1” middle or regional powers?
Comparatively, Australia could be more appropriately classified as a “Tier 2” middle or regional power, although this is largely as a result of the relative benevolence of the region against which we measure ourselves against, alongside a range of powers, including Indonesia (a rising great power in its own right), Turkey, Brazil, Pakistan, Israel (by virtue of their status as a nuclear power), Italy, and Spain, respectively.
Finally, at the bottom end of the middle or regional power hierarchy is the smaller middle and regional powers like Austria, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, South Africa (particularly in recent years following the ongoing economic, political, and domestic collapse), Colombia, Mexico and Canada, which is granted a disparate amalgamation of countries with an equally disparate level of economic, political, and strategic influence, but broadly as a result of the respective rise and decline fit that category.
The featherweight division
Finally, at the bottom level of the global power hierarchy is the “small powers” or the featherweight division which are defined overwhelmingly by their population size, which equally impact the subsequent size of their respective economies, military power, and territory.
Perhaps the best explanation/definition of this level of power is a part of work conducted by Clive Archer and Neill Nugent who explain, “One axis considers whether the factors involved are endogenous or exogenous: that is to say, whether the smallness lies in the internal aspects of a country itself (such as its population or gross domestic product [GDP]) or in its relations with other states (such as the size of its armed forces or its alliance status).
“The other axis involves objective and subjective evaluations: that is, whether the smallness is seen in terms of ‘measureable’ elements (such as geographical area or size of the diplomatic corps) or ‘impressionistic’ elements (notably views held and/or expressed by practitioners and commentators either at home or abroad),” the pair explain.
While limited by the real spatial realities of population and ensuing economic, political and strategic size, these small powers wield power and influence through aggregated weight and by partnering together to build mass in the international community and through multilateral organisations like the United Nations, World Bank, World Health Organisation, and others.
Additionally, these small powers seek to build alliances and multilateral partnerships with middle/regional powers and the world’s great powers to expand their economic, political, and strategic influence with the world’s major decisionmakers through integration and direct dialogue.
Final thoughts
With a new understanding, is it reasonable for Australia to position itself as a “middle” or “regional” power in this rapidly evolving geopolitical environment, equally, if we are going to brand ourselves as such, shouldn’t we aim for the top tier to ensure we get the best deal for ourselves and our future generations?
Importantly, in this era of renewed competition between autarchy and democracy, this is a conversation that needs to be had in the open with the Australian people, as ultimately, they will be called upon to help implement it, to consent to the direction, and to defend it should diplomacy fail.
This requires a greater degree of transparency and a culture of collaboration between the nation’s strategic policymakers and elected officials and the constituents they represent and serve — equally, this approach will need to entice the Australian public to once again invest in and believe in the future direction of the nation.
Equally, it is important for us to recognise that while we don’t face these challenges in isolation, each and every nation is and will put its own interests first, the COVID-19 pandemic proved that, therefore we can no longer afford to be blindly altruistic in our approach to the nation’s future, to do so is willful ignorance at best and national vandalism at worst.
If we are going to emerge as a prosperous, secure, and free nation in the new era of great power competition, it is clear we will need break the shackles of short-termism and begin to think far more long term, to the benefit of current and future generations of Australians.
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
