Politicians, media commentators and academics routinely assert that Australia is a middle power. They assume that while their country is not a great power, it has a loftier status than smaller states around the globe, enabling it to “speak louder than the latter and to exert some influence on the former”, as John Campbell once put it. In fact, Australia’s middle power imagining is delusional. This has always been the case, but Trump 2.0 is presenting Australia with a wake-up call about its middle power delusion.
Trump 2.0 and the crisis in Australia’s delusional middle power imagining By Allan Patience