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Middle powers like Australia have often served as powerful enforcers and maintainers of the global “rules-based order”, today, however, they are finding their relevance and positions waning in favour of new, robust nations eager to assert their own influence, power and prestige.
Australia has long prided itself on being a reliable middle power, invested in the expansion and continuity of the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic global “rules-based” order.
Despite this position within the global order, Australia and Australians have had a long, convoluted and often confused relationship with its place both in the world writ large and our place in the regional order closer to home in the Indo-Pacific.
This strained relationship has largely come as a result of our comparatively small population and geographic isolation from our “great and powerful friends”, coupled with the continent’s natural endowment of immense wealth and prosperity combining to underpin our sense of societal and cultural confusion, apprehension and collective anxiety towards the global balance of power.
The history of the 20th century only served to exacerbate these feelings, culminating in the fallout following the fall of Singapore in early 1942 and Australia’s pivot from the British Empire to the United States as primary strategic benefactor. While the Cold War period and the immediate decades of stability and peace – built on the back of the “Pax Americana” or “American Peace” following the collapse of the Soviet Union – went a long way towards shifting and, indeed, entrenching the belief of the “End of History” into the psyche of the nation and its policymakers, in many ways establishing a false reality that is like a runaway train now rapidly approaching.
This has seen successive Australian governments continue to tinker around the edges of national economic, political and strategic power while the world and, indeed, the Indo-Pacific continues to develop at an ever-increasing pace, essentially becoming the literal incarnation of the frog in boiling water.
While we certainly haven’t been alone in indulging in this naive world view, Australia – unlike comparable nations like Canada, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Denmark and others – occupies a markedly different and far more complex geopolitical and strategic environment.
Accordingly, it is becoming increasingly important for both policymakers and the Australian public to understand the shifting dynamics of global power, especially how we define “great”, “middle”, and “small” powers while recognising that it is becoming increasingly important as the gap between theory and practice in international affairs continues to widen.
In Australia’s case, Eduard Jordaan from Singapore Management University offers one of the most useful takes on what makes a “middle power” today. He argues that while all middle powers aim to stabilise and legitimise the global order usually through multilateralism and cooperation, there is an increasingly clear split between traditional and emerging middle powers.
Traditional middle powers tend to be wealthy, stable, egalitarian democracies with limited regional clout. They often keep their distance from regional power struggles, try to carve out independent identities and lean towards global reform through consensus and compromise.
Emerging middle powers, on the other hand, are semi-peripheral, often newly democratised (but not always) and less economically equal, but they punch well above their weight in their regions. They favour reform over revolution, push for regional integration and work to differentiate themselves from weaker regional neighbours.
However, in the emerging new multipolar world dominated by multiple competing centres of economic, political and strategic mass, middle powers are set to play an increasingly important role, particularly those emerging across the world, while established middle powers like Australia are relegated to positions of declining influence, importance and power.
Highlighting the shift in the global and regional balance of power is Robbin Laird and Kenneth Maxwell of SLDinfo.com in a piece titled Beyond great power competition: The rise of middle powers in a globalized world, in which they unpack this shift in global power dynamics, establishing the following thesis: “The globalised, interconnected nature of today’s economy has created a fundamentally different dynamic where major powers are more enmeshed within global networks than they are controllers of them.”
A vastly different global and regional dynamic
At the core of Laird and Maxwell’s analysis is debate about the familiar language of “great power competition” between the United States and China which no longer captures the full picture. The pair argued that this framing belongs to the colonial era, a time when imperial powers wielded control over distinct colonies and resource flows.
In stark contrast, the modern world is one of dense global networks, complex global supply chains, economic interdependence and technological ties that blur lines of unilateral control, even compared to the 1990s.
They articulated this, saying, “The original great power competition emerged during the Age of Discovery and colonial expansion, beginning around 1500 when European maritime powers, Spain, Portugal, Britain, the Netherlands, and France, competed to establish global empires. These powers sought to control territories, resources and trade routes through direct colonial administration, with the mother country exercising comprehensive control over its colonies. Over 450 years from 1500 to 1945, these major European powers competed with one another over colonies, with no established global rules until the 20th century...”
“Contemporary ’great power competition’ as an organising principle for American foreign policy has proved remarkably shallow and short-lived, never describing a coherent strategy but rather representing a narrative of world politics that provides insight into how US policymakers saw themselves and the world around them,” Laird and Maxwell added.
Perhaps most provocatively, the pair stated something that Australian policymakers and the public seem reluctant to materially grasp, saying, “The ’return of great power competition’ is essentially an easier way of admitting that the United States is in relative decline, as the unipolar moment or the three-decade period of US global predominance that started with the collapse of the Soviet Union is ending.”
Amid this shift, Laird and Maxwell argued that middle powers such as Australia, South Korea, Japan, India and Brazil are stepping into pivotal roles within the broader realignment of the global and regional order and the multilateral organs that underpin the global commons.
Unlike today’s great powers, these nations don’t command vast military empires but they do significantly wield influence through diplomatic skill, regional leadership, coalition building and issue‑specific expertise.
As a result Laird, and Maxwell argued that these nation are able to shape global outcomes by advancing multilateralism, mediating disputes and leveraging norms of “good international citizenship”.
As a result of the interconnectivity of the globalised economy, major powers become more enmeshed in global networks than controllers of them. The space opens for these middle actors to flex their agency. They adopt hedging strategies, engaging multiple great powers simultaneously to maximise benefits while preserving strategic autonomy instead of tying themselves neatly into one bloc or another.
Laird and Maxwell don’t necessarily overlook the importance and centrality of the US and China, stressing they are still important and central to the global power paradigm, saying, “Global supply chains have become so integrated that China has gained global export and manufacturing share across multiple sectors, but this expansion has made Chinese firms dependent on global networks for components, markets and technology. The value of US goods imports from China rose from about US$100 billion in 2001 to more than US$400 billion in 2023, with Chinese factories assembling products for export to the United States using components from all over the world.”
“This interdependence creates mutual vulnerabilities that did not exist in the era of colonial empires,” the pair added.
Laird and Maxwell subsequently established that regionally, the influence of middle powers is already evident. In the Indo‑Pacific, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia and Japan craft diverse strategies, some leaning into US alliances, others maintaining delicate balances with China while still pursuing deeper trade integration via agreements like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Where we begin to see the growing influence of emerging middle and great powers and the seismic shift in the global power paradigm comes from emerging economies, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are acting as “swing‑states” in the “Global South”.
As with established middle powers, these nations are leveraging aggregated power through multilateral organs such as BRICS and the G20 to push for institutional reforms, climate justice, financial diversification and greater equity in global governance and associated norms.
Laird and Maxwell added, “Unlike the colonial era, when territories were either colonisers or colonised, today’s non-European middle powers, Australia, South Korea, Japan, India and Brazil, operate as actors with significant influence. One of the leading trends in world politics which in the long run, are just as important as intensifying major-power rivalries is the growing desire of these countries for more control over the shape of the global order and greater influence over specific outcomes.
"Middle powers have developed sophisticated strategies that would have been impossible in the colonial era. With the ongoing major power competition between the United States, China and Russia, middle powers attempt to rearrange their security strategies and alignment behaviours by adopting hedging strategy to avoid taking sides by engaging all sides simultaneously.”
Building on this, they added, “Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa are ‘swing states’ that are capable of creating new power dynamics due to their non-alignment with great powers. These countries have no ideological affinities with each other, and their lack of ideological orientation reinforces the transactional impulse that conditions their policies. Middle powers have considerable and growing agency to operate their policies of multi-alignment and are not merely pawns in major power contests, with technology competition potentially transforming these nations from peripheral actors to critical nodes in global innovation networks.”
The ’constraining’ effect and relative power decline
This emergence of a growing number of middle powers is rapidly reshaping the architecture of global governance, often in the face of great powers, particularly where they often pursue transactional or unilateral policies, leaving a gap in multilateral cooperation.
In contrast, middle powers are increasingly filling that space, reinvigorating international forums, driving collaboration on climate and health and promoting a “resilient multilateralism” that emphasises consensus‑building, non‑confrontation and context‑sensitive approaches.
Laird and Maxwell unpacked this reality, saying, “The rise of middle power agency suggests that the future global order will be characterised not by major power dominance alone but by complex multipolar arrangements where middle powers play decisive roles. The international system is undergoing a dramatic shift from an American-dominated rules-based order to a more intricate and sophisticated multipolar order, with middle powers holding a special place due to their proactive diplomacy, strong economies and moderate influence.”
This does articulate that as the 21st century marches on, the old binaries of global politics, East versus West, the First World versus the Second and Third are becoming increasingly out of step with the world we live in.
What we’re witnessing instead is a multipolar, networked international order shaped less by binary blocs and more by the rise of multiple competing centres of economic, political and strategic mass. At the heart of this shift are the emerging powers of the Global South, India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Türkiye and others, which are no longer content to simply play a supporting role in a system designed by others.
Rather they are seeking to leverage their growing influence, power and position to reform or outright build their own multilateral organs to achieve their own objectives in the global and regional environment.
These countries are not just emerging economies. They are emerging strategic powers – states with the population size, economic weight, diplomatic reach and political ambition to shape global outcomes.
India, for instance, is not merely growing rapidly – it has become a key node in global technology supply chains, a leader in digital infrastructure and a strategic balancer in Indo-Pacific affairs. Brazil, while facing internal challenges, is asserting leadership on climate change, South American integration and reforms to international institutions such as the UN Security Council and the International Monetary Fund.
These emerging powers are not ideological satellites of the West or the East. They are civilisational states, acting in their own interests with their own visions of sovereignty, development and international order. India hedges between Western partnerships like the Quad and BRICS+ engagement with China and Russia. Brazil, under various governments, has pursued independent climate diplomacy, trade arrangements outside the Washington consensus and a more pluralist view of multilateralism.
This dynamic fundamentally reshapes the strategic space for traditional middle powers like Australia and Canada.
Historically, countries like Australia and Canada have leveraged their deep integration with Western institutions – the Five Eyes, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the G7 – to exert influence disproportionate to their size. They have been system insiders with a seat at most major international tables, often acting as norm-setters, bridge builders or honest brokers.
But as the global agenda shifts from traditional security and development to energy transitions, digital governance, climate resilience and reform of global institutions, Australia and Canada face a more contested playing field. Their influence is no longer guaranteed by historical ties or alliances alone.
Rather we see that emerging giants increasingly shape the priorities, set the tempo and demand a greater say in agenda‑setting forums.
For Australia, this means recalibrating its diplomacy and strategic posture. The Indo‑Pacific is no longer a region dominated by US alliances and Chinese economic heft, it is a crowded strategic theatre where India, Indonesia, Vietnam and others are actively shaping regional order.
Australia can no longer simply act as a deputy sheriff of the US-led system. It must earn relevance by deepening ties with non‑traditional partners, diversifying its strategic relationships and investing in regional public goods be it in green energy, digital connectivity, climate adaptation or disaster resilience.
But it’s not all bad news for traditional middle powers. Their comparative advantages remain valuable strong institutions, stable democracies, advanced technology sectors and a reputation for constructive diplomacy. If anything, their utility as connectors in a complex world has grown.
In a system increasingly defined by fluid coalitions, issue‑based alignments and ad hoc minilateralism, countries like Australia and Canada can act as strategic bridges between the Global North and Global South, the West and non-aligned powers and between old powers and emerging ones.
The challenge is adapting to a more competitive diplomatic landscape – influence and power must now be earned through economic and strategic power, political and diplomatic agility, creativity and relevance, not assumed by virtue of history or alliance.
The question for Australia now becomes, can we retain our position?
Final thoughts
In today’s shifting world, is it still good enough for Australia to brand itself as just a “middle” or “regional” power? If that’s the lane we’re choosing, shouldn’t we be aiming for the top of it, shaping the game, not just playing along so we can secure the best deal for ourselves and future generations?
This is especially critical now, as we find ourselves caught in the growing contest between autocracy and democracy. It’s a national conversation we need to have – out in the open. Because when the time comes, it’s the Australian people who’ll be asked to back it, build it and defend it if diplomacy fails.
That means we need more than just strategy behind closed doors. We need a new level of honesty and collaboration between policymakers, elected leaders and the public. Australians need to be brought back into the fold – to believe in the future direction of the country and be willing to invest in it.
We also need to be realistic. While we don’t face these challenges alone, every country will ultimately put its own interests first, as we saw during COVID-19. Blind altruism has no place in this environment. At best, it’s naive. At worst, it’s national self-sabotage.
If we want Australia to emerge stronger, safer and more prosperous in this new era of great power rivalry, we’ll have to break free from the old habit of short-term thinking. It’s time to think bigger and much further ahead. Not just for us, but for the generations who come after.
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.
