As early as 1589, Bartolous of Sassoferrato, the Italian post-glossator, divided states into three types: small city states, medium states, and great states. It is interesting to note that he said, “middle-sized states are the most lasting, since they are exposed neither to violence by their weakness nor to envy by their greatness, and the wealth and power being moderate, passions are less violent, ambition[s] find less support … than in large state[s].”¹ The idea of linking size to a state’s behavior is seen in today’s definition of a middle power. However, a middle-size concept is too relative to concisely define a country’s position in the hierarchical power structure. How to define a country as a middle-sized state is also difficult since the criteria for measuring middle size varies greatly. Moreover, a middle-sized state does not translate its middle position to purposeful behavior utilizing this position. If being a certain size is a necessary condition to be a middle power, the recognition of its diplomacy by the international society is a sufficient condition for it to be called a middle power in any substantive meaning. It is fair to say that the essential nature of middle powers’ power is social in this sense.

Middle powers’ active diplomacy is accompanied by the rise of multilateralism in international politics. Needless to say that multilateralism has become more prominent as the end of the Cold War weakened great power politics together with transnational economic interdependency. Cooper et al. attributed the three following changes in the international system to the rise of middle powers: (1) the opening of windows of opportunities due to the relative decline of US resources in responding to greater vulnerabilities; (2) change in the post-Cold War global agenda from high policy issues of security agenda to low policy issues of economic security and social concerns of the environment and human rights; and (3) the enmeshing of domestic politics with foreign policy.² The last quarter century following the end of the Cold War has even complicated these changes with recurring economic crises, rising intrastate conflicts, and more organized and dangerous terror groups. As more multilateral management through institutions or ad hoc forms of coalition becomes necessary to respond to these global problems, numerous international venues for middle powers to operate have been created.

While commonly recognizing the changing statecraft of some middle powers, scholars have emphasized their roles in various fashions. Cooper et al. divides middle power behavior into three patterns consisting of catalysts, facilitators, and managers. Catalysts provide the intellectual and political energy to trigger an initiative and take the lead in gathering followers around it. Facilitators focus on issue-specific agenda-setting and engage in some form of associational, collaborative, and coalitional activities. Managers emphasize institution building, creating formal organizations or regimes, and developing conventions and norms.³ They argue that this behavior requires the technical skills of specialists and entrepreneurs. It is Oran Young who earlier expressed the entrepreneurial leadership of a state in the formation of international regimes. All middle power roles can be argued to be entrepreneurial in forming or sustaining international arrangements whether they are informal forums, regimes, or more established institutions. Entrepreneurship involves a combination of imagination in inventing institutional options and skill in brokering the interests of numerous actors to line up support for such options. A leader in this context is an actor who undertakes efforts to craft attractive institutional arrangements and persuades others to come on board as supporters of such arrangements. Middle power does not have to be a supplier of public goods or ethical motivation. What it needs is entrepreneurial skills at facilitating contractarian interactions among participants and brokering their overlapping interests so that all participants accept international bargaining as equitable and necessary. Higgott characterized this role as the “result-oriented diplomacy” in the sense that middle powers care about the results of multilateral interactions and accordingly they practice “mission-oriented diplomacy” cutting across ideological, regional, and developmental barriers.⁴ On the other hand, Henrikson defines the international management conducted by middle powers as mediation—including conciliation, interconnection, and integration—using tools of communication, formulation, and manipulation. Compared with other middle power theorists, he recognizes a larger mediation role taking place not only within institutions but also across or entirely outside them.⁵

Although the definition of a middle power and its diplomacy remain too loose to be qualified as a new theory in international politics, middle power debates have liberated power theories in international politics that used to be monopolized by great powers. There are several dimensions of state power that are relevant to middle powers. A middle power can exercise its “positional power” that it naturally possesses due to being situated in special geographic locations or intentionally or unintentionally created through state or non-state transnational networks. Since a middle power’s positional power can be strategically created in this increasingly globalized world, “network power” is becoming an essential source of middle power that is acquired through seeking multilateral ties in economic, environmental, and diverse nontraditional security areas. Kahler argues that a country with more networks or a country that takes a central position in a network structure can enjoy bargaining power, social power, and the power to influence by exiting.⁶ In forming and maintaining networks, a middle power’s material resources to influence or “soft power” to attract or persuade others are useful. While neither positional or network power of any given middle power is not proportional to its “resource power,” most middle powers require “enough” material capability so that other nations consider them important. Even setting ethical norms and principles in global governance cannot be materialized if a country is considered weak. In this regard, the positional power, network power, and soft power of any middle power diplomacy is based to a great extent on its resource power. In this regard, the most notable middle powers are economically strong countries within the G20 or G30. Nevertheless, one should not forget that even an economically weak country can play use middlepowermanship in some niche area as Malta has done in initiating the movement to build international maritime governance.

Middle powers by definition function as a collective, and as such, an individual nation cannot exercise middle power diplomacy unilaterally. In this sense, there is no use for a country to classify itself as a middle power unless it is able to define itself within a greater collective. Middle powers accrue influence as a group and overcome their limitations in affecting and influencing the policy directions of hegemonic nations. Perhaps the most prominent illustration of this is the G20, where middle power nations are able to contribute to providing a more peaceful international environment in a collective, multinational forum. For middle powers, influence is not a given but needs to be created from communication and economic and political interaction. The middle “power” concept is misleading in this regard as it could denote that becoming a middle power in and of itself automatically brings a certain level of influence.⁷ Moreover, the role of a middle power is fluid and constructive in the sense that its role is ever changing, contested, relative, and intersubjective. This allows middle powers the ability to define what roles it may choose to play and which issues it may choose to pursue. At the same time, a middle power does not have to assume a middle power identity in all international issues.

South Korea’s sustained economic growth since the early 1960s transformed a once aid-dependent poor country into an economic middle power by the mid-1990s. This was internationally recognized when South Korea became a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1996. With its fast recovery from the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis, South Korea’s nominal GDP became the 11th largest in the world in 2002. Since then, the country’s economic size has been ranked between 11th and 15th in the world. According to the 2013 World Bank data, South Korea, with a GDP of 1.3 trillion US dollars, ranks as the 14th largest economy in the world, but it is only 28th in terms of per capita income. In terms of territorial size, South Korea is a relatively small country, ranked 108th among the 234 countries of the world. However, it has a fairly large population of about 50 million which ranks 23rd in the world in terms of population. Its human capital is competitive as it is ranked 15th in 2013 UNDP’s Human Development Index report. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute usually ranks South Korea around the 10th greatest military power when weighed by defense spending. All these statistics illustrate clearly that South Korea is one of the leading middle powers in the world.

It should be noted that South Korea has been a middle power for the past two decades in terms of its resource power. However, since South Korea is still caught in the Cold War-type adversarial relationship with North Korea and has been long focused on bilateral diplomacy with surrounding big powers, its statecraft has not matched its middle power diplomacy until recently. In this sense, South Korea is a latecomer to middle power diplomacy, which used to be dominated by a few conventional European middle powers. This timing is rather unique since academic and policy discussions on middle powers have been limited over the past decade.

Debates on middle power (jung-gyun-guk) diplomacy both in government and among policy experts began following the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak in 2008. Under the slogan of “Global Korea,” the Lee government hosted many international events such as the G20 Seoul Summit, the Fourth High-level Forum for Development Effectiveness, and the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit. These global agendas, such as development assistance, peacekeeping operations, and climate change have been highlighted to a greater degree than under the previous governments. As a matter of fact, the previous Roh Moo-hyun administration first introduced South Korea’s mediating role as a bridge builder and a hub nation under the slogan of a “Northeast Asian Era of Peace and Prosperity.”⁸ This precocious move under the vision of the Roh government’s pursuit of an autonomous foreign policy backfired as it resulted in a loss of trust and cooperation from Washington. Accordingly, the Roh government changed its focus from being a peace broker in Northeast Asia to a trade networker across all the major regions of the world. Although the Roh government introduced the concept of middle power roles and established important free trade networks, it did not set middle power diplomacy as an umbrella policy vision. Under the Lee administration’s “going global” foreign policy, middle power diplomacy has been adopted strategically to enhance the country’s national status. Policymakers view “middle power” as a useful term in positioning South Korea as a significant country between a few great powers and the other weaker countries. With the aspiration of playing a bigger role, middle power diplomacy has been popularized. Soft power, network power, and public diplomacy are usually employed as useful ingredients in assisting South Korea’s middle power diplomacy. Therefore, one can say that the recent efforts to look beyond East Asia and seek a global role are an important turnaround in South Korea’s foreign policy history.

The shift toward a more global role for South Korea has been accompanied by the parallel development of strengthening its alliance relationship with the USA. Security ties with the USA have been tightened due to North Korea’s ongoing nuclear ambitions, and more specifically, its conventional threat following the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. The ROK-US Free Trade Agreement, after being delayed for several years, was finally ratified in March 2012. Accordingly, Seoul’s attempts to increase its multilateral activities have been supported by Washington within the framework of US-led multilateral cooperation.

The current Park Geun-hye government has also carried on the policy of middle power diplomacy in global affairs. One notable achievement of her government is the creation of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Australia (MIKTA) middle power network in 2013. Primarily existing as foreign ministers’ gatherings, it is neither a caucus nor an institution. This network focuses on cooperating on global agendas such as poverty reduction, climate change, nuclear disarmament, and democratization. All the members being part of G-20, they aim at its effective governance as well as UN reforms. Snyder suggests that for South Korea, the grouping has the potential to play an important role in widening South Korea’s diplomatic aperture beyond an alliance with the USA and allow it to focus on relations with surrounding major powers such as China, Japan, and Russia.⁹ The vision statement was adopted at the Fifth Foreign Ministers’ MIKTA meeting held in Seoul in May 2015. Here, member countries define themselv...