The three types of middle power articles

A review of the types of articles and commentaries on middle powers in five minutes of reading.

If you spend enough time reading articles and commentaries on middle powers, you eventually begin to suspect that the field has produced less a coherent body of scholarship than a highly specialized literary genre—some of it fiction. Like all genres, it contains recurring characters, familiar plot lines, and predictable endings. Most middle power articles fall into one of three categories.

The first type of article is the Messiah article. These pieces are easy to recognize. They begin with a crisis. In the 1990s, it was that human rights and democracy are in trouble; in the 2000s it was multilateralism is failing; in the 2010s it was great power conflict is increasing; and in 2020, it’s the international order is collapsing. Regardless of which crisis it is, middle powers are the savior and all that’s required is a renaissance of middle power cooperation.

Usually, they’ll spin on about something like multilateralism, bridge-building, norm entrepreneurship, coalition-building, or good international citizenship. The reader is then duly informed that middle powers possess a unique ability to save the international system. The details are always less important than the structure. A category of states defined largely by what it is not—neither great power nor small power—is transformed into a near-magical force for global stability.

At the moment of course we’re all enjoying a revival of these types of articles because Canada’s Prime Minister Carney decided to spin sh!t about middle powers at Davos in January this year. Let’s not worry about the fact that every historically successful middle power initiative occurred at a point in time when a skilled, well-led and resourced diplomatic service recognized the ideal time to pick the diplomatic fruit after it was slowly developed through diplomatic-civic sector cooperation; diplomatic-academic interaction; and had already secured tacit support from likely partners—and none of this is true today. Instead, let’s just let loose at Davos without a plan.

It’s a sad fact that middle powers, such as Australia and Canada, are so ensconced in the relatively successful and largely nationalist history of the concept (we punch above our weight!) that whenever there’s a crisis the ex-politicians and academics from that era line up to tell us about middle power diplomacy.

My advice: ask them to install an alternative app store on your Android, sideload a password manager app, and enable 2FA. Those analog phone throwing f@cks (you know who I’m talking about) are from a different era. Phones have changed and the world has changed. Their Messianic middle power dreams of savior and renaissance are just that—dreams.

The second category is the Wedgie article. These are the most common because they’re a snug fit. The article can examine trade policy, cyber security, climate diplomacy, public health, artificial intelligence, maritime security, regional cooperation, cultural diplomacy, or almost any other topic. Somewhere in the title, introduction, and text appears the phrase middle power” or “middle power diplomacy.”

The problem is that nothing in the article actually depends on middle-power status. The concept is entirely incidental. Remove the term and the argument survives completely intact: “South Korea’s middle power tech diplomacy” or “Australia’s middle power regional development assistance,” or “Canada’s middle power trade objectives.” The article is really about tech, development assistance, or trade policy.

The term “middle power” provides atmosphere rather than analytical leverage. It functions largely as descriptive scenery and a wedge to get published by some sop editor with a syrupy soft spot for middle powers.

It’s like the term survives because it sounds respectable and familiar—and that’s really weird because you couldn’t get a more imprecise, feckless, and largely useless term.

Speaking of familiar and cosy, I imagine that’s how Carney’s intervention came about. “What are we gonna do, we’re all f*@ked,” said one advisor after the 51st state comments, the NATO threats, and the tariffs. “Well f@ck me, I’ll prepare something about middle power coalitions,” said the speech-writer. From that point on, if you were a commentator or academic, you could get anything published by just sticking “middle power” in front of whatever you want to talk about.

The third type is the Silent Fart Article. These papers begin with a sense that all is not right. They are the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the snake in the grass, or the silent fart in the line at the DMV. They’re written by academics who once loved the topic, practitioners who worked on the topic, or any combination thereof. One day, they realized that the concept was just making less and less sense, and wanted to say something about it.

These articles point out very real facts. After decades of scholarship, nobody seems entirely sure what a middle power is. Definitions multiply rather than converge. States enter and leave the category with remarkable frequency. They know about all the lines of fluff about what makes a middle from functions, capacity, behavior, and role theory, to practice, status, networks, balancing, systemic impacts, and norm entrepreneurship. I could go on. Really, I could. The more closely one examines the concept, the stranger it becomes.

Why are some states included while others are excluded? Why are liberal democratic behavior frequently treated as evidence of middle-power status? Why do some states become middle powers when they support the existing international order but cease to be middle powers when they challenge it? Why do scholars often identify middle powers only after they have already decided what kind of behavior they wish to celebrate?

These articles point out that the field has become conceptually redundant and circular. Middle powers are defined by desirable behaviors and then praised for exhibiting those same behaviors. Unsurprisingly, the result is often less a theory than a collection of normative preferences.

The irony is that this third category may be the healthiest part of the literature. At least it recognizes there’s a problem. But they’re also whingy, whining, and feckless. Sure, sometimes they’re dressed up by some senior academic and appear in a top-flight publication after s/he reads something by middle power scholar Stephen Nagy and feels compelled to criticize the field, but mostly they’re just written by some second-rate tired and near-retired academic like me with two regular blog readers and a host of angry visitors who only read the intros.

That’s it! The articles and commentaries on middle powers in five minutes of reading. Messiahs, Wedgies, and Silent Farts: the first promises a renaissance; the second barely uses the concept at all; and the third makes you wonder what it’s all about.

Now you can read any of these three types of article at any number of international relations sites. Over time, you’ll notice that one or two types become more popular, and another is shunned. For example, over at East Asia Forum (EAF) at the moment there’s be plenty of Messiahs and Wedgies, but look at their archives from ten years ago, and there’s plenty of Silent Farts.

For a field supposedly devoted to explaining a category of states, the breadth of article types should probably be cause for concern, but it’s also an opportunity. Middle powers are important—and signs are, they’re becoming more important. The field really does need more people thinking about their role in breaking and building international orders.

The next time you read anything on middle powers, keep your eyes out for messiahs, wedgies, and silent farts.

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