Soft Power and the Recalibration of Middle Powers: South Korea as an East Asian Leader and Canada as the Exemplar of the Traditional Model

Abstract

The reshaping of the global system requires a fundamental rethinking of what middle powers need to do to navigate the fast-shifting global geometry of power. In a world that privileges scaling up, across the spectrum from big emerging countries to an overarching concert of powers with an extended scope of regulatory authority, and elaborate and well-resourced public-private transnational networks, secondary players could well be marginalized. However, the middle power model exhibits an impressive—albeit not unchallenged—capacity for revitalization, as in past eras of transition with a shift away from a unipolar locus of power.¹ Moreover, there is strong evidence that this trajectory of relocation can move toward an extension as opposed to a contraction, beyond the model of traditional middle powers. What can be described as an extended “rising middle,” encompassing both established and nontraditional middle powers, if still structurally constrained in many ways, exhibits a capacity for innovation as both receptors and agents of change.