Why Was Australia Never a Middle Power? Contextual Influence and the Myth of Middle-Power Agency

Australia is routinely described in academic and policy discourse as a “middle power”. The label has been attached to Australian diplomacy from H. V. Evatt’s activism at the founding of the United Nations to Gareth Evans’ “good international citizenship”, Kevin Rudd’s “creative middle power diplomacy”, and contemporary debates about AUKUS, the Pacific and Australia’s role in the Indo-Pacific. Yet the apparent continuity of the term conceals a deeper conceptual problem: the Australia-as-middle-power literature often begins by assuming Australia’s middle-power status and then assesses whether Australia possesses the resources, behaviours, autonomy or moral purpose expected of such a state. This paper suggests that this approach mistakes classification for analysis. Much of the literature asks whether Australia deserves, performs, has abandoned, or should reclaim the middle-power role. In doing so, it frequently takes Australia’s agency and purpose for granted. Australia is expected to support rules, strengthen multilateralism, act as a good international citizen, stabilise regional order, mediate between great powers, or exercise creative diplomacy. Whether Australia has “enough” power is then judged against these assumed purposes. What often disappears is the prior analytical question: what does Australia actually want in a given situation? Drawing on David Baldwin’s contextual definition of power, the paper argues that power cannot be meaningfully assessed outside a specified “scope” and “domain”. Scope requires asking “influence with respect to what?”, and domain requires asking “influence over whom?” Only once Australia’s concrete objective in a given situation is specified can scholars identify the relevant actors, the resistance/support Australia faces, the resources that may matter, and the outcome by which influence should be judged. Without this sequence, debates about whether Australia is a middle power, whether it has the resources of a middle power, or whether it behaves like one remain analytically circular. To make this argument, the paper historicises the problem by revisiting Evatt’s early use of “middle” and “small” power language. It shows that for Evatt, Australia’s claim to influence in post-war order-making rested less on a stable middle-power identity than on wartime contribution, sacrifice, active belligerency and the conviction that peace-making was too important to be left to the Great Powers alone. The paper contrasts this with later and contemporary uses of middle power as a status category and foreign-policy expectation. It concludes that Australia, and, by extension, any other “middle power”, is better understood not as a middle power but as merely a non-great power whose influence varies across contexts. In the case of Australia, this reframing clarifies debates about its choices, from AUKUS to Pacific diplomacy, by shifting attention from abstract middle-power expectations to Australia’s actual objectives, domains of influence, available resources and achieved outcomes.