[Middle Powers] - Definition’s Way

What qualifies a country to be considered a "middle power"? As we saw in the first installment, there are various lists of middle powers in circulation, as well as competing definitions. Wikipedia counts some fifty middle powers. Most authors follow the G20 framework. That is, excluding the five permanent members of the Security Council (France, Great Britain, the United States, Russia, and China), the following countries make up the G20: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, and, if we don’t want to limit ourselves to the middle powers of the South-which is our case-Japan, Germany, and Italy. It should be pointed out that while France and the United Kingdom are great powers by virtue of their status as permanent members of the Security Council and nuclear-armed states, their economic and demographic weight now places them among the middle powers. It seems to us that we have here a basic corpus with which to begin our investigation.

What Criteria?

In a recent article, former Indonesian ambassador Dino Patti Djalal, currently president of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia and also president of the Middle Power Studies Network, gave the following answer to the question of what criteria qualify a middle power: "I refer to countries which, by virtue of their considerable size (population and geography), weight (economic, demographic, and military), and ambition, fall between the great and small powers. Of the 193 states in the world today, around two dozen can be considered middle powers, some in the Global North but the majority in the Global South. While all Northern middle powers are engaged in military pacts, most Southern middle powers are nonaligned and tend to pursue strategic hedging policies."

Djalal continues, "Right now, we have the largest number of middle powers in history, and this number is set to grow with countries like Pakistan, Mongolia, and Ethiopia. It’s not just the number that counts; there’s also a qualitative difference. The middle powers of the Global South are stronger and richer than when the nonaligned movement was born six decades ago. India’s defense budget exceeds that of the UK; Saudi Arabia spends more on its military than France, and South Korea more than Italy. By 2030, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and South Africa will all have more purchasing power than Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden."

Djalal has less to say about the middle powers of the North. However, like Ivan Krastev in the FT article we quoted in our first installment, he observes that allies close to the United States are distancing themselves from Washington’s instructions. For him, Turkey is a typical case in point: although a member of NATO, Turkey is pursuing its own policy toward Ukraine and the Gaza crisis.

The Former Relay Powers Become Autonomous

This analysis is in line with that presented by Ghassan Salamé, whose latest book, Le Choix de Mars, takes a particularly acute and informed look at the world today. In his view, the correct criterion for establishing whether a country is a middle power lies less in its economic or military weight than in its ability to act and take effective initiatives. A power is a power not so much on account of its potential but rather of its real actions. The consistency of the latter provides a true indication of middle-power status. There are some twenty such powers around the world.

As Salamé explains, "At the outset, the middle powers were characterized above all by their vocation as a relay for a great power." Zbigniew Brzezinski, when he was President Carter’s special adviser (1977-1981), identified certain states as "relay middle powers": he placed the Shah’s Iran, alongside Nigeria and Pakistan, in this category for their pro-American positions.

"But today," notes the eminent professor, echoing the views we have already encountered, "middle powers no longer function as relays; they act on their own behalf, driven by geopolitical and security opportunism. Such is the case of India and Indonesia. Their local or national initiatives aim to influence the international system as autonomous powers." This is a major development. Brazil, for example, is once again questioning its nuclear abstention and refusing to support Ukraine. South Africa, Nigeria, the Iranian-Turkish duo, and India are all in the same frame of mind, even if the latter oscillates between a middle and a great power.

Our interlocutor also notes that achieving great power status-the level above that of the middle powers-implies enjoying a peaceful regional environment. This is a challenge for China, which has poor relations with each of its eight neighbors, from the Philippines to India and Vietnam. The United States, on the other hand, has no problems with Canada or Mexico. Like the great powers, every middle power has some kind of "Monroe Doctrine" in mind (named after US President James Monroe, the doctrine that US foreign policy should focus on the Americas) and is obsessed with dominating its region. Therefore, to define a middle power, in addition to intentionality, the regional context counts. Formal criteria are of little relevance. Furthermore, according to Salamé, a middle power is also a power that lacks something-it’s a power that’s not completely fulfilled.

A parallel of sorts can be drawn with the geopolitics of Asia. In a somewhat hostile environment, Beijing appears to be on the defensive-it fears that North Korea will use it just as Pyongyang uses the Russians. China and the US, in very different regions, are arriving at a similar line of reasoning. Another important point, on which our interlocutor concurs with the analyses we have quoted, is that the nonaligned countries did not mitigate East-West tensions. The same countries today are no longer likely to be disciplined; they are uninhibited in their intentions, strengthened as they are by new power relations that work in their favor. They are developing transactional approaches to international relations. Morocco, for example, recognized Israel in exchange for its recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in December 2020.

Saudi Arabia, according to Salamé, offers something of a counter-model. It does not aspire to greater autonomy but to more guarantees of protection from the Americans, following the Japanese or Korean model. It will be objected that the Japanese have adopted the political system of the United States, from which the Saudi monarchy is far removed. However, for Saudi Arabia, the priority for making itself "American compatible" really lies in the dismantling of Wahhabism, which is more urgent than any possible democratization.

For an Open List

What conclusions can we draw? For our purposes, it seems preferable not to draw a line under the list of middle powers, at least initially. The basic corpus is undoubtedly the one we have indicated: the G20 countries minus the "great powers" in the sense of permanent members of the Security Council. Several examples suggest that we should not confine ourselves to this overly rigid classification. Take Spain in the Global North or Morocco in the Global South-not negligible in economic terms, these are regional powers that exert influence beyond their economic weight, in Europe and Latin America for Spain, in Africa for Morocco. We could make the same point for Kazakhstan or Kenya, two powers whose choices have an impact on the balance of power beyond their region.

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office now has a unit dedicated to identifying and influencing areas of cooperation between the UK and these countries. The list of middle ground powers has not been made public in order to protect sensitivities.

However, we understand that it includes five Asian countries, five African countries, and five Latin American countries. This list does not, therefore, overlap with that of the major emerging G20 members. We shall see later that an open list is even more justified if the focus is not just on geopolitics but on global issues and geo-economics.

But isn’t it time to test these various proposals with a case study? We would like to offer readers a few profiles of middle powers from both the Global North and especially the Global South.

The author of this series warmly thanks Hortense Miginiac and Anthéa Ennequin for their essential contribution to the realization of this project.

Image: Kenyan President William Ruto and World Bank President Ajay Banga at the closing of the summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris on June 23, 2023.

Copyright image : Alan-Ducarre