by Mithil Goyal
For most of the last century, global politics was framed around the great powers; the United States and Soviet Union during the cold war and later the unipolar dominance of the US after 1991. More recently, the focus has shifted towards the great power rivalry between the US and China. But outside this rivalry, there are numerous countries which are quietly reshaping the global system like Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, India, South Korea and so on. They aren’t hegemons and don’t dominate militarily, but they matter a lot in the global sphere of politics. Today, they are more active, more assertive and more influential than ever. On one hand, we have superpowers like the United States and China with global military power, whereas on the other hand, we have smaller states with limited influence. Middle powers exist in the centre of both of them — too big to be ignored but not big enough to dominate. Middle powers don’t act as a unified bloc and they are not always pulling in the same direction. They have something else like diplomatic flexibility, regional credibility and strong stakes in a functioning global order. Countries like Norway, Brazil, Indonesia or Mexico don’t throw their weight militarily but they show up, they negotiate, build coalitions and use soft power to shape how multilateralism works in a fragmented world. At the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Indonesian diplomat Dino Pati Djali captured this perfectly by saying, “In the 21st century, the world order will be shaped not by the great powers or major powers, but by the proliferation of middle powers”. There are new alignments between middle powers across the global south and global north including partnerships like Australia and India or South Africa or Brazil. These alignments are not driven by ideology or bloc politics but by shared interests. Turkey is emerging as a very influential middle power. Under President Aragon, Turkey has become one of the most assertive members in the geopolitical sphere. It’s a NATO member but also a buyer of the Russian weapon system. It has maintained relations with both Russia and Ukraine and has troops in Syria, ties to militias in Libya and ambitions in the South Caucasus. It has also brokered the Black sea grain deal, one of the most successful pieces of wartime diplomacy in Ukraine.
We can also take India as an example which has deep relations with the United Nations through the Quad and tech co-operation but it also maintains strong military and economic ties with Russia even after the invasion with Ukraine. India has been a historic leader in the global south by being the member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a key player in the BRICS bloc. Its foreign policy combines a kind of strategic autonomy that resists binary choices. This kind of hedging makes middle powers unpredictable as they are not locked in alliances as the great powers expect them to be, and this complicates diplomacy. India isn’t putting all its diplomatic capital into America or China — it is diversifying its partnership to maximise returns or minimise risks. This exactly makes middle powers so flexible and powerful. In International Relations, strategic autonomy refers to the state’s ability to define and pursue its national interests without being overly constrained by agendas of more powerful actors. Today, this autonomy is less about neutrality and more about maneuvering, especially in the global system that increasingly is being pulled in the opposite directions by US and China’s rivalry.
Sources –
https://www.visionofhumanity.org/middle-powers-reshape-global-order-in-post-superpower- a/
Le Dragon Déchaîné 