Middle power scholars and epistemic capture
Mark Carney’s ideas that middle powers can restore the liberal-international order have become gospel in some academic circles.
East Asia Forum (EAF) was once a great space for debate on international relations and East Asia. It was open to ideas and encouraged debate. Unfortunately, it’s no longer a place for debate—it’s now an ideological church, and Mark Carney’s ideas that middle powers can restore the liberal-international order are the gospel.
How did this happen? Communities of specialists do sometimes shift from evaluating reality to defending assumptions. When that happens, epistemic communities become echo chambers and analysis becomes advocacy. This is epistemic capture.
It occurs when a community becomes so invested in a particular worldview that alternative interpretations are no longer seriously considered. Certain assumptions become untouchable. Certain conclusions become expected. The role of analysis quietly changes from discovering what is true to reaffirming what is already believed.
Over the years, I’ve submitted many pieces to EAF. Some were accepted, some were rejected. It’s the nature of the academic game and I was never nae too fussed. What one place doesn’t publish, another will. However, never was a piece held with no response - not even a polite “this doesn’t fit our agenda at the moment,” until a recent submission to EAF. It seems the EAF campaign on middle power leadership cannot accept an academic response. No debate will be allowed.
My piece pointed out that middle powers cannot rebuild the liberal-international order. It gave a reasoned academic argument. I assume this did not fit the baloney-machine belief that middle powers can (a) secure maritime trade routes; (b) set the agenda for the global trading system; or (c) preserve the international order and reinforce rules-based arrangements.
The EAF position is now pretty familiar. The gist of it came out in an editorial, which argued middle powers are “pursuing deeper cooperation to safeguard sovereignty, reinforce rules-based arrangements and reduce dependence on any single power” and that “stronger middle-power coalitions” can “rebuild elements of a more resilient international order.”
It has since been pushed in every-second EAF piece: As American leadership weakens and great-power competition intensifies, countries such as Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and various European states can step forward. Through coalition-building, norm entrepreneurship, diplomatic activism, and multilateral cooperation, these states will preserve the rules-based order and prevent international fragmentation. Yadda, yadda, yadda…
It is an attractive narrative—and let’s be certain, not short on supporters. There’s a whole host of ex-politicians and senior academics willing to spin this shit from the pulpit and lead a southern revival feel-good spiritual sing-a-long.
However, there are three key points that such sermons glide over.
First, if the distribution of power that sustained the order has changed, why should we expect the order itself to remain unchanged? International orders are not self-sustaining entities. They are products of underlying power relationships. The liberal international order emerged during a period of overwhelming American dominance and was maintained by that dominance. If the balance of power has shifted, it would be extraordinary if the order remained untouched. Yet many analyses implicitly assume that institutions, norms, and rules can somehow survive independently of the power structures that created and enforced them.
Second, what makes middle powers able to lead? The liberal international order was not created by middle powers. It was built under the protection of overwhelming American military, economic, technological, and financial dominance. Institutions, norms, and rules mattered, but they mattered because they rested upon a foundation of power. Leadership requires the ability to provide public goods, absorb costs, enforce rules, and shape the strategic calculations of others. Middle powers have historically operated within systems created by great powers. They have often been influential participants, but participation is not the same as leadership. To assume otherwise is to confuse diplomatic activism with systemic influence.
Third, even if you hold a belief in middle powers having the capacity to lead, why would you focus on states whose relative position has long since declined? Australia’s successful middle power initiatives were built through diplomatic specialization, innovative and creative policy facilitated through a close academic-policymaker nexus, steady and well-planned diplomatic groundwork, and an ability to secure the support or at least not outright opposition of great powers. Central to this was the maintenance well-funded and well-trained diplomatic personnel. Australia’s capacity to sustain such action has long passed.
The persistent focus on Australian leadership says less about Australia’s actual capacity to shape systemic outcomes than it does about the assumptions and preferences of those making the argument. It reflects a preference for continuity. It allows policymakers and analysts to imagine a future in which disruption can be managed without difficult choices. It promises agency in a period increasingly defined by structural constraints.
Australia was undoubtedly a player in the formation of the UN and its early institutionalization. It played a large role in steering institutions towards a more inclusive and representative structure—always in self-interest of course. Those days are gone. I said as much in a recent South China Morning Post op-ed.
Australia’s role in APEC emerged at a moment of favourable strategic conditions, strong bureaucratic capacity, expanding economic globalization, and crucially, support from the United States and regional great powers. Every middle power success story from the era has one feature in common - the support or at least acquiescence of the dominant great power.
By contrast, Australia’s efforts with the Asia Pacific Community proposal appeared at a time of historically weakened bureaucratic capacity, within a fractured strategic environment marked by intensifying great power rivalry, weaker regional consensus, and little appetite from major powers for institutional redesign. It failed and was quietly shelved within a year.
More recently, initiatives that Australia participated in, such as MIKTA or the NATO Indo-pacific Four (IP4) were the last gasps of breathe as liberal-international middle power era died a slow death. Carney’s recent missives are the table-rattling incantations of a middle power spiritualist medium.
This is where epistemic capture becomes so visible. At EAF, the assumption that middle powers can and should uphold the liberal international order is no longer treated as a hypothesis requiring evidence. It is treated as a starting point. Every piece begins from the premise that middle powers can take up the slack. The debate revolves around how they should act, not whether the objective itself is realistic.
Alternative possibilities receive no attention. What if middle powers are not system managers but system adapters? What if their primary strategic function is not to preserve an existing order but to adjust to a changing one? What if accommodation, restraint, and risk reduction are more rational responses than ambitious efforts to shape the global balance?
These questions do not receive equal consideration because they challenge the underlying assumptions of the discourse itself.
This is the hallmark of epistemic capture. Certain conclusions become difficult to imagine not because they have been disproven, but because they sit outside the accepted boundaries of discussion spun by a small group of like-minded academics and their sycophant wannabes.
The problem is, epistemic capture produces strategic surprise. When analysts become committed to a particular worldview, they struggle to recognise evidence that contradicts it. They underestimate the possibility of systemic change. They dismiss alternative futures as unlikely or undesirable. Most importantly, they fail to prepare policymakers for outcomes that fall outside established expectations.
The lesson is not that experts should be ignored. It is that expert communities require intellectual competition. Assumptions must be challenged. Consensus should be treated with caution. The more widely accepted an idea becomes, the more important it is to scrutinize its foundations.
What’s really sad is that the most senior academics who created the EAF once played roles in the creation of APEC. They fought and were able to be heard amidst voices that opposed them. Now, the institution they created stymies debate.
Perhaps it’s representative of what Australian universities have become? Shutting down academic departments in favor of institutes serving government and industry, appointing chancellors because they fit into the political circles of power, and letting the student experience turn into Boxing Day Sales at a suburban Westfield Shopping Mall.
The belief that middle powers can lead and restore the liberal international order may ultimately prove correct. Equally, it may just leave a few floundering states clinging to the remnants of a long gone international order. It at least should be openly debated.
It’s said that Australia as a middle power punched above its weight. Well, it’s now more like a punch-drunk boxer on their second come-back from retirement launching a bare-knuckle back-street career with the ability to take head blows as their only strength. Somewhere along the lines, the EAF decided to punt on not only a win but a return to the world championship.
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