Shortly after the G20 meeting was upgraded to the top level in 2008, the acronym BRICs (and now BRICS) coined by a Wall Street investor for commercial purposes moved up to be a prominent abbreviation of a new international mechanism for these emerging powers to promote their cooperation. G20 as the premier forum for international economic coordination has evolved to be a steering committee for global economic governance which is considered to include two sub-groups, i.e. the BRICS and the original G7, which often seem to divide on key issues and decrease the momentum of the G20. Under this background, the role of “middle powers” under the G20 emerged as a hot topic, especially led by South Korea after the 2010 Seoul Summit. Mr. Kim Sung-han, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea, gave a public speech on Korea’s role as a middle power in the G20 just a couple of months ago.[①] “The Middle 7 Initiative” was proposed by think tanks and academia.[②] The “middle 7” in the G20 refers to the seven G20 members other than the G7, EU and BRICS. The concept of middle power is almost as old as modern international politics. Literature on this topic is also very rich. A group of countries typically like Canada and Australia officially endorsed the middle power diplomacy in the history. There was a famous “Middle Power Initiative” calling for nuclear disarmament. It is an interesting phenomenon that this term is now entering the new context of the G20 global economic governance. But a lot of questions arise. Fundamentally, what is a middle power? What roles can a middle power provide, and what are the limits?

I. What is a Middle Power?

The concept of a middle power is easy to understand but difficult to define. As Prof. Paul Evans pointed out, there are two methods to define a middle power, one is capability and the other is attitude.[③] The former approach is more quantitative and easier to grasp, such as the ranking of GDP, population, and other criteria, though threshold could be different. However, the latter qualitative standard is more meaningful for a social science study and more strategic for international politics.

When emphasizing the element of attitude or behavior, it is important to differentiate a politically “middle power” from a legally “neutral state” during the World War II such as Switzerland. The latter seeks to stay away from both sides of the global conflict and keep itself safe, while the former wants to have good relations with both sides and tries to broker an agreement. Therefore, the concept of a middle power is very close to a “bridging power”, but not a “hedging power”. To emphasize the status of a middle power in the G20 is actually a very active approach to seek a so-called “niche diplomacy” in the changing global context.

By saying this, a country’s “middle attitude” is often decided by their capability or other physical factors such as geography. However, it is still very difficult to always label any countries as middle powers. For example, Australia after the election of the conservative John Howard government in 1996 and Canada under Stephen Harper since 2006 abandoned their predecessors’ tradition to commit to middle power diplomacy.[④] More importantly, when a country’s interests tend to have different layers, it is safer to speak about a middle power based on different issues. In the G20 context, the two sub-groups, the G7 and the BRICS, do not always represent two interest alliances. Famously, when negotiating about the mutual assessment process (MAP) and drawing up indicative guidelines, Germany and China as the two surplus countries share the same position. When the US and EU diverged on the issues of financial regulation and fiscal disciplines, BRICS countries were mostly at the middle. Almost all BRICS countries except China would like to see the US Congress press China to re-appreciate its currency RMB. But China and the US are not always the most confrontational relations, for example they shared more common grounds compared with the EU in the global climate negotiation. In the Doha Round negotiation, Brazil shared more common interests with the US, while India and China stood on the other defensive side. But when Brazil shifted its strategy from participating in the Cairns Group to seeking support from India and other developing countries for the new “trade G20”, it could be regarded as kind of successful middle power diplomacy.[⑤]

Therefore, a liquid world needs a fluid governance structure or so-called “variable geometry”. It could be easier for one G20 member to pursue the middle power diplomacy, while the fixed Middle 7 in generalities is much less realistic. Canada, the most representative country that practiced middle power diplomacy, is out of the Middle 7. In addition to the provocative South Korea, Australia and Canada, other G20 members also talk about their middle status. Indonesian scholars talk about the role of Indonesia in the G20 as a “bridging” state. Chinese scholars also think China has the advantages of bridging the developed and developing worlds.

II. Roles of Middle Powers in the G20 and Their Limits

Middle powers are cooperative powers. The roles of middle powers are much easier to propose than to practice in the G20. We cannot confidently say middle powers, whoever they are, have played significant roles in the G20 by now. They are not able to help break the stalemate of many structural issues of today. For those core agenda of the G20, financial and fiscal issues were mainly dominated by the debates of the US and EU, while the MAP framework for the long-term global rebalancing was heavily shaped by the US and China bilateral strategic and economic dialogues.[⑥] The proposed Middle 7 have been largely irrelevant in the process.[⑦] South Korea successfully expanded G20’s agenda to the development issue, but did not achieve much on the core issues in the 2010 Seoul Summit.

However, it does not mean middle powers are meaningless. When strategic competition between traditional and emerging major powers intensifies, more international space is created for middle powers. In turn, middle powers could and should help provide more cushions for major power relations and facilitate global agreement. In the trichotomy framework of Oran Young on leadership in international politics,[⑧] middle powers can provide intellectual and entrepreneurial leadership in the G20 and, not negligibly, collectively structural leadership in specific issues. In this so-called geo-economic era, major powers are pragmatic and not bound by rigid ideology any more, which provides more possibilities for middle powers to work.

More elaboration about the three roles of middle powers is useful. Intellectual leadership is attractive but very difficult. An intellectual example is that the concept of financial safety net was initiated by South Korea and then adopted by the IMF and G20. But no significant breakthrough could be expected in economics that could greatly narrow the gaps of major theories and policy choices among major powers. Entrepreneurial leadership is also a marginal and contingent function in most cases. In this context, collective middle power leadership based on different issues, or at least a combination of power, knowledge and skills, could be a more reliable choice.

Moral leadership and political credibility is another advantage of middle powers that is emphasized by literature. It is actually a core part of entrepreneurial leadership but deserves a special emphasis. The most cited successful middle power diplomacy is in the issue of nuclear weapons control, as those countries renounced the nuclear arms race and won significant political credibility and international respect. Moral respect is also an important issue in the G20, such as financial regulation; however, comparatively global economic coordination is much less a moral issue than nuclear disarmament, which could mean less leverage by middle powers based on moral advantage.

Source of documents：