For far too long, the Indo-Pacific has been viewed through the lens of great-power rivalry between the United States and China. And while it is true that the region is mired in intense strategic competition, and that its economic rise is interwoven with deepening structures of international cooperation and institutional fragmentation, there is an important other structural dynamic at play here: that of the growing significance of the region’s ‘middle powers’. Rather than viewing these countries as either ‘small’ or of merely ‘regional’ importance, the emerging structures of the Indo-Pacific are increasingly influenced by a diverse set of countries that function as important stabilisers, agenda-setters, and institutional brokers. These countries wield considerable influence in the region today, both through their significant contributions to regional diplomacy, economic connectivity and new norms of cooperation, and by serving as a vital counterweight to the increasingly ‘suspended’ middle ground of great power great games, unable to provide collective goods without being viewed with suspicion.

Middle powers occupy a unique structural space in the international system between great powers who possess massive hegemonic power and smaller states who have limited ability to affect outcomes in the region. The influence of middle powers in the Indo-Pacific is of particular significance in an extremely asymmetric region. Instead of trying to balance the powerful, middle powers can develop alternative and inclusive structures and processes for multilateral cooperation to enhance the influence of smaller states and to prevent them from being forced into exclusive and zero-sum great power rivalries. They are also key political shock absorbers in the region that can dampen the potential for great power rivalry to undermine and destabilise institutions........

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