Middling through

The last major MSC event in India was in 2015. The India-EU free-trade agreement (FTA) is expected to be formally signed in the coming months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made a joint announcement in January after almost 20 years of India-EU negotiations were completed. The MSC meeting opened with a session on “the mother of all deals,” as the FTA has been described since.

Another session went further: Will new alliances come to the world’s rescue, and can that be achieved through multilateralism?

Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd who heads Asia Society, a New York-based think tank, spoke of the need for United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reform but asked if the permanent members — the US, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom (UK) would actually do it. India is among contenders for a permanent seat.

There’s a realisation that international rules have been created after major wars. The League of Nations followed World War I and the UN came after World War II. Some are holding on to the idea that something cannot be refashioned in the absence of a global conflict.

Rudd said in the face of 60 ongoing armed conflicts, global powers should act together to ensure that support mechanisms are in place.

The UN secretary general must be prepared to take risks and that’s something which most international bureaucrats are trying not to do, he said. But many experts have questioned the relevance of the UN itself.

The world would be worse off without the UN, Rudd said, adding that 70 per cent of global trade, for instance, happens through World Trade Organisation (WTO) routes. Although the WTO is not a UN agency, it works alongside. Also, with democracies in Asia, Europe and other parts of the world floundering, institutional resilience is more crucial than ever.

David Lammy, former deputy prime minister of the UK and Labour Party MP, said countries such as Australia, the UK and India can have common interests and take common positions without having China or the US in the room. He added that India, Brazil, Germany and South Africa should have a say at the UNSC. The body itself is unable to break the logjam, he said. But cautioned, “This is not the time to abandon the UN.”

Ahead of its India meeting, the MSC released a middle-power survey. In July, French market research company Ipsos conducted it among middle powers in the G20 grouping — Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Turkiye and the UK. On average, from each country, 1,000 adult, internet-using participants were selected, based on their educational qualification, among other criteria, for a “representative sample”. In India, where the age range was 18 to 54, the survey found people saying the government was “too accommodating” of China and the US. A relative majority of respondents expressed optimism about India’s ability to defend its interests in the world in the next five years.

Sophie Eisentraut, the survey’s overseeing author and head of research at MSC told the magazine while there’s no agreed-upon definition of the geopolitical term, a middle power influences global issues, and the description covers a range, from the Netherlands to India.

The survey was done at this time because, from a European perspective, the US is seen as retreating from its global leadership role and leaving gaps in global governance, she said, adding that the US is also “turning against some of the elements of the international order that it has long supported, rules and law, and collective problem-solving of the types that is meant to provide global public goods”.

She said the survey sought to find what middle powers could do to first protect themselves from “the chaos and the geopolitical upheavals emerging” and second what can they do together to fill some of the gaps, “and, ideally, shape a better international order” that works more for the small- and middle-size countries. “Middle powers can collaborate to build greater agency in geopolitics,” she said. When trying to build capacity in defence or supply chains or reducing dependencies on the US or China, middle powers seem to be talking in similar language. “But not so much when it comes to getting together for the greater good.”

Most of those surveyed said their governments were “too accommodating” of US President Donald Trump’s administration. Respondents in the EU, where the MSC is housed since 1963, saw their bloc as a powerful economic player which could have pushed back harder on US tariffs. The survey differed in its findings on China, with many saying their governments’ approach was “about right”.

When studying relations among middle powers, Eisentraut said respondents in Western societies were asked if they thought their countries should work with only other democracies. To many it didn’t seem

to matter. That was limited to capacity-building. When discussing rules of the international order or how to provide public goods many felt closer cooperation with like-minded countries would work better.

But could a future surge in right-wing politics in Europe alter that?

“One would have to go through issue areas and what the immediate effect would be,” she said, adding that while cultural exchange and migration might become difficult, countries with strong far-right forces could still cooperate on security, defence or economic matters.

Such parties do not prefer internationalist policies and they are not in favour of multilateral cooperation but that might not affect capacity-building because they are interested in it, too.

The risk is with “more ambitious” cooperation that goes beyond material gains.

The survey showed, more than in the “global north” countries in the “global south” were confident about the future. 

Even so, the meeting and the survey both seemed to suggest that middle powers are themselves struggling to understand their role in the world today.