Foreign Policies of the Middle Powers. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021. xi, 148pp. (Figures.) US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-7396-2483-3.
In the edited book The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers, Brendan M. Howe and the chapter writers seek to make a conceptual and empirical contribution to the growing literature on Asian middle powers and their impact on security and economic issues. The book provides a different perspective to the study of Asian middle powers by associating their behaviour to humanitarianism and the concept of human security.
The literature on Asian security was until recently dominated by the role of the great powers while little attention was given to the perspective and influence of middle power states. Moreover, the study of middle powers was for too long limited to Western conceptual approaches applied repeatedly to a series of well-known case studies that include Canada and Australia while the notion of “middlepowerhood” was insufficiently theorized and studied empirically from an East Asian perspective. In recent years, various academics, including Lee Ji Yun, Sarah Teo, and Andrew Carr, have focused their research on the role of Asian middle powers. This concise and timely book is therefore part of an attempt at filling concurrent research gaps by studying the behaviour of Asian middle powers through an alternative conceptual framework resulting from a different geographic location and epistemological outlook.
The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers puts forward an Asian middle power model based on state behaviour rather than size, where actors focus “their niche diplomacy on regional humanitarianism” (3) and not on power balancing or bandwagoning strategies. The Asian middle power model builds extensively on the concepts of human security and non-traditional security and predicts that Asian middle powers are likely to focus their diplomatic efforts on “humanitarian and human-related policy-making,” with a particular focus on Southeast Asia (11). This conceptual framework leads to the selection of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand as case studies to the exclusion of Indonesia and Vietnam, as neither are defined in this project as so-called “new normative middle powers” (3). Indonesia is said to want to play a power balancing or bandwagoning role akin to Western middle powers while Vietnam’s success derives from its repressive political regime. While such classifications are debatable, one should also note the work of Ronald Behringer (not cited in this edited book) on the connection between (Western) middle powers and the human security agenda (The Human Security Agenda: How Middle Power Leadership defied U.S. Hegemony, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012).
The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers is based on good scholarship and solid research. The introduction and conclusion offer a conceptual overview of the middle power literature and how the concept should be revisited through East Asian perspectives, while the four case studies are rich in content, full of insights and relevant information. The chapter writers switch comfortably from in-depth historical reviews of foreign policy making to the latest economic and security initiatives adopted by their respective countries of study, including responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical chapters also explore the economic-security nexus and cut across domestic and international politics. This is all significant when studying the foreign-policy initiatives of middle powers, which lack access to overwhelming military might to influence the outcome of events.
Some shortcomings should be mentioned, however. First, the Asian middle power model is discussed in chapter 1, yet it is inconsistently applied throughout the different case studies. While all the chapter writers classify their countries of study as middle powers, the conceptual discussion could have been further elaborated and deepened based on the empirical findings. The case studies shed light on the adoption of non-traditional security policies but insufficiently link such initiatives to the notion of “middlepowerhood,” creating a disconnect between the conceptual and empirical parts of the edited volume. Second, the inclusion of an alternative case study could have strengthened the overall discussion by contrasting the so-called “new normative middle powers” to one middle power still driven by power balancing or bandwagoning considerations. On that note, one may also question the extent to which the behaviour of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan truly derives from humanitarian rather than geopolitical concerns.
Irrespective of these limitations, The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers challenges some standard assumptions regarding the role of middle powers in the region and introduces a conceptual lens to focus on their humanitarian objectives, especially in Southeast Asia. The book convincingly examines the importance of Asian middle powers and the impact of their normative foreign policy and niche diplomacy when studying the promotion of peace and human security. It serves as a reminder to all readers interested in Asian security of the growing role of middle powers in an era still regarded as dominated by rising China-US rivalry that could ultimately lead to conflict.
Ralf Emmers
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore