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Despite the rhetoric and bluster of successive Australian governments, there is finally dawning recognition of a stark and confronting reality: Australia is not a serious player, let alone a serious middle power.
Australia has long prided itself on being an invaluable and indispensable “middle power” invested in the continuance of the post-Second World War global economic, political and security “rules-based order” established by the United States.
The nation first established its position in the global “rules-based order” in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War, but its history as an invested and credible “middle power” dates back to Australia’s earliest economic, political and strategic partner: the British Empire.
As a credible “middle power”, this required a commitment by the nation to play a crucial role within the promotion of multilateralism, cooperation and the peaceful resolution of conflict through arbitration via international organisations, but also retaining a reasonable level of sovereign economic, political and military capacity.
Donna Lee and James Hamill of the University of Leicester and University of Nottingham detail these determining factors’ variables, saying: “Middle power status is usually identified in one of two ways. The traditional and most common way is to aggregate critical physical and material criteria to rank states according to their relative capabilities.”
Lee and Hamill argued that “because countries’ capabilities differ, they are categorised as superpowers (or great powers), middle powers or small powers. More recently, it is possible to discern a second method for identifying middle power status by focusing on behavioural attributes.”
“This posits that middle powers can be distinguished from superpowers and smaller powers because of their foreign policy behaviour – middle powers carve out a niche for themselves by pursuing a narrow range and particular types of foreign policy interests. In this way, middle powers are countries that use their relative diplomatic skills in the service of international peace and stability,” they said.
However, as the world has changed and new great powers have emerged, or in some cases, re-emerged, each with their own unique ambitions and designs for the world order, the status of established middle powers, like Australia, Canada, and even nations formally considered great powers like the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan, and Germany, has been called into question.
With this in mind, serious questions about Australia’s own status as a credible “middle power” in this new world order are now becoming more commonplace both among the commentariat and the broader Australian public, even if they’re unfamiliar with the concepts of power hierarchies.
The latest such example comes from the councillor for Albany, Western Australia, Dr Tom Brough, writing for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in a piece titled “Pushed around by China, Australia is not a serious middle power”, in which he outlines just how far Australia has fallen when compared to our major partners.
Being pushed around isn’t a good sign
At the core of Brough’s analysis is the astute observation that any nation, regardless of the position within the global power hierarchy, let alone a self-respecting middle power, as Australia claims to be, would enforce its boundaries (as is common parlance among the pseudo-psychological relationship experts have coined) in the face of increasing coercive efforts by Beijing.
Brough begins his analysis saying, “Serious middle powers enforce boundaries. They do not absorb pressure indefinitely. They do not treat hostility as a misunderstanding. They do not mistake accommodation for statecraft. Australia does the opposite.”
Providing further evidence of this shift in the nation’s position as a “middle power”, Brough references three specific examples of Chinese coercion against the Australian Defence Force in particular. Beginning with the now infamous circumnavigation of the Australian mainland by a People’s Liberation Army-Navy taskforce and the live-fire exercises conducted in the Tasman Sea at the very beginning of the 2025 federal election campaign.
However this is just a taste of things to come, with Australian forces frequently being targeted by the People’s Liberation Army, with a Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidon being targeted by a Chinese naval vessel with military-grade laser weapons while operating in Australia’s Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ), along with the frequent interceptions of Australian aircraft and Royal Australian Navy helicopters operating in the South China Sea.
This is, of course, further exacerbated by the deliberate injuring of Royal Australian Navy divers from the HMAS Toowoomba, while operating in international waters, by a PLA-N destroyer activating its hull-mounted sonar system, and while the Australian government issued diplomatic notices and protests, they have undoubtedly fallen on deaf ears in Beijing.
Brough highlights this, saying: “Six public incidents in three years: laser; chaff ingested into an engine; sonar causing injury; flares dropped within metres of Australian aircraft. Each time: a statement, a diplomatic note, a call for guardrails. Each time, no cost was imposed. Each time, the incident was absorbed.
“Accommodation teaches. Each incident without consequence signals that the next incident will also be without consequence. Statements aren’t costs. Diplomatic notes aren’t deterrence. When hostile acts are met with calls for dialogue, dialogue becomes the ceiling of response.”
But this is just a taste of things to come, and China is far from the only nation Australia will have to compete and contend with in this new era of multipolar competition.
All of this is, of course, separate from Beijing’s active efforts to economically and diplomatically coerce Australia over the past decade, highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic when key pillars of the Australian economy were actively targeted, and ongoing efforts to chastise and coerce the nation’s policymakers and public are on increasing display.
Brough warns, however, that a course correction is needed by Australia, before this becomes too difficult to unwind, saying: “Serious middle powers don’t absorb attacks on their personnel and call for communication guardrails. They impose costs that change calculations. Australia has made a different choice. Accommodation is the policy.”
A taste of things to come
As the number of additional middle and emerging major, or great powers, continues to grow, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, it is only natural that they will increasingly seek to shape the regional and global dynamic for their own interests, ambitions and designs.
This is a historical norm, and is, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, to be expected, with middle powers like Australia front and centre of the new world order. Yet, for whatever reason, our political, policy and strategic class continue to believe that the “normal” established during the post-Second World War order will endure, despite the evidence to the contrary.
Bringing me to an analysis piece by the executive director of The New Zealand Initiative, Dr Oliver Hartwich, in The Australian titled “Trump aide’s ‘might-makes-right’ doctrine threatens Australia and New Zealand’s claims”, in which he argues that, “Seen from Australasia, we might be tempted to think this has little to do with us. America, Greenland and Denmark are far away. But what Trump and Miller are eroding is the legal principle of secure sovereign borders. That has direct ramifications for us here.”
At the core of Hartwich’s thesis is the growing recognition that the world we are now entering is to be dominated by the concept of “might makes right”, where the world is governed by the most powerful nations, who are not only willing to use “hard power” but have the capacity to enact and enforce their will.
Harwitch details this, saying: “Perhaps the rules still matter. But Miller has made clear that Washington no longer thinks so. And when the guarantor of the post-war order becomes its greatest threat, small nations face a reckoning.
“For more than seven decades, the system anchored in the United Nations allowed countries like ours to flourish. They did not need large militaries because great powers had agreed, more or less, to leave one another’s territories alone.”
These comments echo a recent speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he said: “For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection ...
“So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
The foreshadowing of PM Carney is directly reflected across the Indo-Pacific, which has been established as the epicentre of this new era of multipolar, competition between nation-states, whether that is China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Vietnam, or on the Korean peninsula requiring a national rethink about our status as a “middle power” and whether or not we have it within us to retain that position.
With Beijing providing us a taste of things to come, now is the time for Australia’s policymakers to have a proactive, frank and fearless conversation with the Australian public about the two paths before us, or in the words of American poet, Robert Frost, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both” to chart our path forward.
Final thoughts
Australia and Australians urgently need to wake up; we owe it to our children and grandchildren.
This requires a seismic rethink about the nation, our people, our way of life, and how we both see ourselves and fit within the evolving global and regional struggle for dominance and prominence.
The Indo-Pacific has become the hottest contested region in the world. China, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam are all asserting new influence, while Japan and South Korea are returning to a more prominent regional role. This isn’t competition on the horizon; it has already arrived, and it’s not going anywhere. Our national strategy needs a fundamental reset to reflect this reality.
Without meaningful, sustained investment and long-term planning, we won’t simply fall behind – we’ll be overtaken by the accelerating momentum of our neighbours. If we fail to act, the next generation will inherit a nation overshadowed by wealthier, more powerful and more influential states.
For too long, successive governments have chased short-term gains and reactive fixes. But the strategic landscape is shifting rapidly. Business as usual is no longer an option. We need to look ahead, capitalise on emerging opportunities and blunt potential threats before they gather pace.
The issue isn’t whether these challenges will materialise; they’re already here. The real question is, when will Canberra finally put forward a bold, detailed plan capable of rallying industry and the public around a clear national vision?
With China continuing to press its advantage, Australia faces a stark choice: remain a passenger in our own region or step up as a genuine shaper of the Indo-Pacific’s future. The decisions we make now will determine whether we prosper in this new era or find ourselves swept aside by it.
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 at
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.
