Why New Zealand and ASEAN must build middle power momentum

Middlepowership is determined not merely by size or strength, but more fundamentally by agency and purposeful, autonomous activism. Agency means the ability to make one’s own choices – based on one’s own preferences – and to act on them, rather than being pushed or pressured by others.

“Middle powers”, accordingly, are non-great powers that possess what may be called “3-I agency”: the capacity to advocate their own initiative(s); to advance those initiatives into institutionalised cooperative mechanisms alongside likeminded partners and/or neighbouring states; and to amplify those mechanisms into impactful collaboration that meaningfully shapes the course of regional or global affairs.

By this definition, middle powers encompass more than the established, “shining” examples of Australia, Canada, and select European states that have exercised such 3-I agency for decades through the initiation and institutionalisation of a variety of multilateralist, humanitarian, and other cooperative norms and internationalist ideas. Rather, the category also includes undeclared, “shy” middle powers – states such as New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, along with other ASEAN members – that have quietly performed impactful middle power agency without explicitly claiming the label.

Middlepowers include 'shy' middlepower states such as New Zealand and ASEAN countries

New Zealand offers a compelling illustration. Alongside Brunei, Chile, and Singapore – the “Pacific Four” or P4 – New Zealand advanced an initiative and gave it institutional form through the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement in 2005.

Though launched by four small economies, the agreement’s reach grew considerably: it expanded into the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 2008 and 2016 and subsequently evolved into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2018.

Its relevance endures today – rising geoeconomic uncertainty drew the United Kingdom to join in December 2024 and prompted several other economies to signal interest. The “Auckland Principles” now set the benchmark standards governing new membership applications.

Singapore and Malaysia offer further examples of quiet middle power agency. Beyond the P4, Singapore has played an instrumental role in initiating and institutionalising inter-regional forums, including the Asia-Europe Meeting and the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation.

Malaysia, meanwhile, has championed the idea of “East Asian cooperation” since the early 1990s, advocating for frameworks that bridge Southeast and Northeast Asia, bind shared interests across both likeminded and not-so-likeminded states (for instance, democratic, semi-democratic, non-democratic nations), and build durable cooperation through institutions (and layers of continuously expanded collaborative platforms).

Working alongside fellow ASEAN members and dialogue partners in North Asia, Malaysia hosted the inaugural ASEAN Plus Three (APT) summit in 1997 and then the inaugural East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005, both of which have continued to bind interests and deepen layered collaboration.

The catalytic impacts have been significant: without APT, there would have been no Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) in 2000, no CMI Multilateralisation in 2010, and no Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in 2011.

Without EAS, there would have been no 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2020 – an agreement encompassing all ASEAN states, the three North Asian economic powerhouses of China, Japan, and South Korea, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Southeast Asian states, in short, have practiced middlepowership for decades – long before the current era of global geopolitical turbulence.

Their middle power agency has not only advanced inter-regional forums and East Asian multilateralism (at both regional and regional-plus levels), but also given rise to indigenous minilateral mechanisms, well before the term “minilateralism” entered the Indo-Pacific lexicon.

Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore formally institutionalised the Malacca Straits Patrol in 2006, with Thailand joining in 2008. A decade later, Indonesia and Malaysia, together with the Philippines, advanced the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement for the Sulu and Sulawesi Seas in 2016, with coordinated joint patrols launched the following year.

Medium- and small-sized states, even shy ones, possess middle power agency, especially when they work together to translate ideas into institutionalised, impactful cooperative mechanisms.

The conditions underpinning the present-day middle power moment differ from earlier periods in at least three respects.

First, the United States is no longer viewed as a benign anchor. During the so-called “liberal international order” era, Washington was widely regarded by middle powers across the Atlantic and Pacific as a benign superpower, a credible provider of international public goods, and a reliable ally offering indispensable security guarantees, market access, and technological know-how – a relationship whose roots stretch back to the post-World War II decades.

Today, most middle powers view Washington in a far more ambivalent, and often alarmed and apprehensive, light. Among those Western middle powers that have long adopted a US-centric, alliance-first approach at the cornerstone of their foreign policies, Canada and the European states stand out: they increasingly perceive Trump’s America less as a helping hand and more as a potential source of harm.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth attends the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus Plenary in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in November 2025

Second, China’s rise has reshaped the strategic landscape for all middle powers. Beijing’s rapid transformation from a peripheral actor into a formidable global superpower – across economic, military, and technological dimensions – now confronts both established and aspiring middle powers with a complex, shifting mix of attraction and anxiety across bilateral, regional, and transboundary issues alike.

Third, the middle power moment has gone global. Earlier phases were concentrated largely in the Global North, most visibly in North America, Europe, and Australasia.

Today, a growing number of activist Global South countries – alongside Japan and South Korea – are asserting themselves as middle powers across multiple world regions. Southeast Asia is a case in point: Singapore pioneered the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) alongside New Zealand and Chile, while Malaysia has championed the ASEAN–GCC–China framework.

Taken together, these trends are expanding the scale, scope, and speed of dynamic middlepowership.

The emerging global middle power moment is cross-regional in its scale, drawing in not only established middle powers from the Global North but also aspiring ones across the Global South – with efforts increasingly bridging the two, as reflected in the growing number of proposed partnerships and high-level visits that established middle powers are directing toward their potentially significant counterparts across the Global South.

In scope, evolving clusters of middle power partnerships are showing signs of cross-domain and cross-sector collaboration spanning the developmental, diplomatic, and defence domains, as well as in trade, investment, and connectivity cooperation; in bilateral, trilateral, minilateral consultative mechanisms; as well as in military and non-traditional security sectors. In speed, these cross-circle, cross-domain partnerships are advancing at a pace that outstrips anything seen in earlier phases.

These features of the current “global middle power moment” are no coincidence – they are the products of several interrelated factors.

Chief among them are “shared vulnerabilities”: virtually all countries, regardless of their level of development, feel increasingly exposed to the risks of global volatility, with some feeling more vulnerable than others. “Shared values” and “shared visions” matter too, but shared vulnerabilities are the primary driver.

Given the vast differences between Global North and Global South countries – not to mention the divergences within the various regions of the Global South – values and visions are likely to remain varied and, at best, realistically shared only within relatively small circles.

The global middle power moment today is best understood as a middle power realignment – a phenomenon unfolding across the globe.

The term, however, requires clarification. Realignment is not about shifting allegiance from one superpower to another, nor about middle powers coalescing into an independent bloc to compete with great powers or gang up against any particular state. It is not about middle powers acting as a single – let alone united – coalition, appointing themselves to fix the world’s problems and restore the international order on their own. After all, all, middle powers will remain a highly diverse set of activist states with diverging aspirations, values, and outlooks.

Looking ahead realistically, the global power structure will remain fluid, power relations will remain fragile, and responses to the world's expanding problems will remain largely fragmented – within and across regions – for years and decades to come.

Global middle power realignment is therefore best conceived as a continuous process of survival-driven, collective self-help recalibration.

In this process, a wide and growing number of non-great powers – feeling increasingly exposed to the volatile action-reaction dynamics between superpowers, and more vulnerable than before – are finding greater reason to work together despite their differences.

Shared vulnerabilities generate greater needs toward shared visions, however partial and selective, and toward concerted action: managing common challenges, pooling capabilities and resources, and pursuing collective action that is converging, if not always coordinated.

New Zealand and Southeast Asia are uniquely positioned to transform this emerging global middle power moment into an enduring momentum – one capable of generating multiple layers of exemplary, significant, and sustainable collaboration both between themselves and beyond.

This position is grounded in their past and ongoing accomplishments: time-tested, mutually beneficial cooperation forged bilaterally, minilaterally (notably through the Five Power Defence Arrangements), and regionally (through the EAS, RCEP, and ADMM-Plus), achieved despite geographic distance and cultural difference. It is further propelled by their present and future imperative to respond jointly to the shared challenges and shared vulnerabilities outlined above.

A converged middlepowership between New Zealand and Southeast Asia is not merely desirable, it is actionable, and points in three concrete directions:

Boosting existing multi-level, multi-domain collaboration with Southeast Asian partners and their respective circles, including relevant ASEAN-led institutions (such as RCEP and ADMM-Plus), as well as CPTPP and DEPA.

This means substantiating cooperation in concrete terms while demonstrating that middle powers from different geographic regions and at different levels of development can work together for shared interests, even when they are not necessarily likeminded politically or strategically.

Bridging the perceptual and policy gaps between two broad types of middle powers: the alliance-centric (mostly in the Global North) and the alliance-allergic (mostly in the Global South).

This sends a signal that middle powers with different strategic DNA or orientations ought to work together – not least to manage mutual expectations, minimise unrealistic demands, and avoid the emergence of competing and incompatible alignment clusters that would make middle power diplomacy a source of problems rather than solutions.

Building new layers of mutually beneficial partnerships across domains and sectors, on critically complementary and continuously catalytic foundations – substantiating the pragmatic logic that countries with shared vulnerabilities must work together for shared interests and needs.

Taken together, New Zealand and Southeast Asia's converged middlepowership, pursued in these directions, should help co-cultivate constructive narratives and concrete actions at a time of unprecedented geopolitical uncertainty and geoeconomic disruption.

These narratives would foreground shared vulnerabilities rather than shared values alone, embrace the logic of prudent pragmatism, and adopt an outlook of and-with rather than either-or.

Each country may choose its own primary or prioritised partners, but all should pragmatically cultivate additional layers of cooperation as a hedge against unforeseen circumstances.

About the author

Cheng-Chwee Kuik is a professor of international relations at the National University of Malaysia (UKM)’s Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS) and concurrently a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

The Foundation's Asia in Focus initiative publishes expert insights and analysis on issues across Asia, as well as New Zealand’s evolving relationship with the region.