| Summary/Abstract |
A decade ago, Korea seemed poised to establish new leadership on global and
regional governance using “middle power diplomacy.” Korea hosted the G-20
leaders in Seoul in November 2010, the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid
Effectiveness (HLF-4) in Busan in November 2011; and the Nuclear Security
Summit with over 50 world leaders in attendance in March 2012. In 2013 Korea
joined Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and Australia on the sidelines of the United
Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to form the MIKTA caucus of like-minded
middle powers. Yet experts generally agree that Korea’s middle power diplomacy
has lost momentum in recent years. Follow-up on these earlier summits has been
incomplete and more recent initiatives, such as President Park Geun-hye’s Northeast
Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI) and President Moon Jae-in’s New
Northern and New Southern Diplomacies have failed to gain any traction. What
went wrong? An assessment of these various initiatives suggests that Korean-style
middle power diplomacy has suffered from three problems: capacity; geopolitics
and domestic political divisions. As Asia becomes more contested, Korea will need
to take a clearer stand in support of the neoliberal norms that have underpinned the
post-war international order. Early middle power strategies based on convening
and bridging will leave Seoul in a reactive and vulnerable position as geopolitical
competition increases.
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