Middle Power Diplomacy in an Age of US-China Tensions

Abstract

Over the past four years, while the Trump administration doubled down on its "America First" foreign policy and Sino-American tensions continued to sharpen, another trend has been equally pertinent: the growing relevance of middle power diplomacy A loose collection of like-minded, mid-sized players who also are traditional US democratic allies--including Europe (i e , Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the EU itself), Canada, Japan, and Australia--have reinforced partnerships with one another and increasingly taken it upon themselves to press forward with multilateral solutions to various regional and global challenges in the absence of leadership from Washington Underpinning their efforts is a shared concern about the unraveling of international order as the United States abdicated its traditional leadership role under President Trump and China's assertiveness has grown, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic Reluctant to pick sides in the increasingly zero-sum competition between Washington and Beijing, they therefore had a stronger rationale to band together more closely--though this is far from straightforward in practice