As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby sets out how middle powers can navigate a world of competing orders – and why a more independent, cooperative strategy is needed.

Some countries such as Australia, Canada, Britain and the Scandinavians put middle power diplomacy at the centre of their foreign policy settings. Their collective activities have contributed to some significant outcomes such as internationally agreed disciplines on land mines, small arms controls, and chemical weapons. Australia and Indonesia together drove the Cambodian peace settlement to a successful conclusion. Australia initiated and led a group of mainly developing countries to have agriculture included in global trade rules. And there are many more examples where great powers have been happy to yield leadership to middle powers temporarily.

But it has also been the case that middle powers have oversold their achievements and claimed to be architects of the international system when, in reality, their role has been mainly procedural: ‘drafting language, hosting meetings, or executing decisions already shaped by great-power bargains’.

Rather than create new institutional arrangements, middle powers tend to legitimise them which provides leverage to gain benefits and to help shape institutions led by great powers. One exception to this was APEC, which was created by Australia and South Korea and which major powers eventually joined on the terms established by its middle power creators.

Great powers look to middle powers to lend depth and legitimacy to institutions that have been shaped to reflect great power interests. The benefit for middle powers being early movers is to secure a place in the emerging institutional architecture and access to channels to shape outcomes that may advance their national interests, where they cannot achieve such outcomes by acting alone.

With the new multipolar order forming into competing parallel orders, the question for middle powers is whether to become ‘early legitimisers’ of emerging new institutional arrangements and be able to shape their development. The choice can be........

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