EAI Asia Security Initiative Working Paper No. 25

Author

Sook Jong Lee is a professor of Department of Public Administration and Graduate School of Governance at SungKyunKwan University. Professor Lee is currently the President of East Asia Institute, an independent, non-profit think tank based in Seoul. She served the Korean Association on Contemporary Japanese Studies as President and the Consultation Committee for National Security Advisor to President. She is a member of the Presidential Committee on Local Administration Reform and the Research Council on a New Era for Korea and Japan. Her previous positions include Senior Research Fellow at the Sejong Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Professorial Lecturer at the SAIS of Johns Hopkins University. She participates in many bilateral or trilateral forums and dialogues among Korea, China, and Japan, and she also speaks at American universities and think tanks. Her research interests are the identity and nationalism angles in foreign policies, soft power, and regional cooperation in East Asia. She published numerous articles and edited books. Her recent publications are “Allying with the United States: Changing South Korean Attitudes,” “Korean Perspectives on East Asian Regionalism,” “China’s Asymmetrical Soft Power to Hard Power in East Asia.” Recent books she co-edited include Public Diplomacy and Soft Power in East Asia (Palgrave, 2011), Toward Managed Globalization (EAI, 2010), and Japan and East Asia (EAI, 2011). She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.

I. Introduction

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 an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member in 1996. With its fast recovery from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, South Korea’s nominal GDP became the eleventh largest in the world in 2002. Since then, the country’s economic size has been ranked between 11th and 15th in the world. In terms of territorial size, South Korea is a relatively small country, ranked 108th among the 234 countries of the world. However, its population is fairly large, ranked 23rd among the 220 countries of the world. Its human capital is competitive as its rank of 15th in 2011 UN’s Human Development Index among 169 countries suggests. South Korea’s military power is usually ranked as one of the top ten in the world as well. In June 2012, South Korea’s population reached 50 million. Combined with its per capita income of about US$24,000, the South Korean media celebrated this achievement as a sign of South Korea’s entry into the “20K-50M Club,” which has only happened for the seventh time in the world after major powers had achieved this status. All these statistics illustrate clearly that South Korea is one of the leading middle powers in the world.

Although South Korea has been a middle power for the past two decades, its statecraft has not matched its middle power status until it only recently adopted middle power diplomacy. South Korea is a late comer to middle power diplomacy, which used to be dominated by a few conventional and rising middle powers. This timing is rather unique since academic and policy discussions on middle powers have been limited over the past decade. New discussions are much desired to reflect the increasingly networked international environment. South Korea poses an interesting case in the study of middle power diplomacy for several reasons. First of all, the international environment has become an era of governance where the hierarchical power structure has been further weakened by emerging horizontal transnational networks focused on diverse issues. Past discussions on middle powers have focused on this phenomenon of power diffusion, but they have not paid enough attention to the new source of power emerging from a network structure that is independent of economic or military influences. Since global challenges will be increasingly governed through inter- or non-governmental transnational networks, network power is likely to be a major source of influence for middle power diplomacy. Second, South Korea is located in a dangerous environment. The Korean Peninsula is the scene of tensions between the two Koreas as well as the two great powers, China and the United States, who compete through their political ties to the two Koreas. This U.S.-China power competition, combined with the security threat from North Korea, detracts from South Korea’s efforts to pursue multilateral middle power diplomacy. With the lingering Cold War security challenge that is paradoxical to globalization, South Korea pursues strong alliance diplomacy with the United States on the one hand, and balanced multilateral diplomacy on the other. These two diplomatic efforts can be linked well when Washington supports Seoul’s intention behind its middle power diplomacy and China recognizes South Korea’s influence in the region positively. However, U.S. strategists often misunderstand South Korea’s middle power statecraft as seeking to break away from the alliance and be closer to China. On the other hand, China tends to dismiss South Korea’s regional role as subservient to U.S. interests. Whether South Korea can overcome this dilemma through complex networks with other middle powers will be a great diplomatic challenge.

This paper has three parts. The first part critically reviews existing discussions on the definitions of middle powers and the international environment favorable for their operation. In this part, I will argue that network power should be the new source of emerging middle powers in the twenty-first century. The second part will examine the Asia Pacific region, where a power transition from the United States to China is taking place. Specifically, I will look at how this power transition pressures middle powers to utilize networking in order to hedge the risk of being dominated by one of the two great powers. The third part considers how South Korea came to actively pursue middle power diplomacy and assesses its capacity to sustain this diplomacy in the future. The conclusion summarizes the opportunities and limits of South Korea’s middle power diplomacy, and suggests some policy directions to harmonize middle power diplomacy with alliance politics.

If middle powers are categorical actors defined by their relative position between great and small powers, middle power diplomacy is statecraft behavior. Linking these two different concepts, I will define middle “power activism” as a middle power’s conscious effort to translate its positional and network power to diplomatic and foreign policy statecraft. Whether such statecraft can enhance a middle power’s influence is a separate question that needs to be answered with empirical findings, and is beyond the purpose of this paper.

II. Theoretical Debates on Middle Powers

1. Multidimensional Definitions of Middle Powers

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] (Holbraad 1984, 12).” 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.

Recognizing the definitional ambiguity, Cooper (1993, 17-19) categorized four approaches in defining a middle power: (1) a positional approach locating a middle power at the middle point in a range of bigness to smallness in terms of population, economic strength and complexity, and military capability, (2) a geographic approach physically or ideologically locating a middle power between the system’s great powers, (3) a normative approach viewing a middle power as potentially wiser, more virtuous, and more trustworthy with its recourse to diplomatic influence rather than to force, and less selfish when taking responsibility for the creation and maintenance of the global order, (4) a behavioral approach defining a middle power by its behavioral tendency to engage in middlepowermanship, such as pursuing multilateral solutions to international problems, embracing compromise positions in international disputes, or adopting the notions of “good international citizenship” to guide its diplomacy.

Ping (2005, 51-53) re-categorized the definition of a middle power to include a statistical definition, a perceived-power definition, and a statecraft-based definition in parallel to Cooper’s positional, normative, and behavioral definitions. As a preparation for establishing a hybrid theory of these three definitions for middle powers, he introduced a new statistical method for identifying middle powers through nine statistical measures. When this method was applied to the thirty-eight member states of APEC, ASEAN, SAARC, and ECO for the year 2000, fourteen states were identified as middle powers in the Asia Pacific region for the year 2000. This statistical definition is a more inclusive method for defining middle powers since the normative definition can be biased to Western values of developed countries and, therefore, excludes non-Western middle powers. However, advocates for behavioral or statecraft definition have criticized this statistical identification of middle powers in that it only delineates the potential candidates as middle powers who are not necessarily engaged in middlepowermanship. Instead, they suggest specific roles and behavioral patterns as sufficient conditions to be qualified as a middle power...(Continued)