Middle power strategic choices and horizontal security cooperation: the 2009 Australia-South Korea security cooperation agreement

ABSTRACT

This article examines why Asia-Pacific middle powers cooperate with each other on security issues. The article challenges the assumption that middle powers are primarily influenced by great-power structural factors in their security relations with each other. It argues that the dominant structural explanations of security cooperation between secondary states—balancing against the rise of China, responding to burden-sharing pressure from the United States, or hedging during a period of great power transition—have not been sufficiently tested. Using the 2009 Australia-South Korea security cooperation agreement as a representative example of middle power security cooperation, it finds that inter-personal leadership preferences played a key intervening role in filtering existing structural incentives into actual policy cooperation. It shows how congruence in leadership preferences shapes when and with whom middle powers are likely to cooperate on security issues. The article opens up the research agenda on middle powers by examining how they approach security relations in bilateral and horizontal contexts with each other.

KEYWORDS:

• Middle power
• security cooperation
• Australia
• Korea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Peter K. Lee is a PhD candidate in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, at the Australian National University.