The Concept of Middle Power's Theory to Reality: Prospect of Vietnam

Abstract

The middle power is playing an important role in the order of international relations. Its voice is being identified in global issues from security cooperation, political, economic to environmental and humanity protection, and the trend of cooperation with peaceful, stable and mutual development. Although the concept of middle power has been discussed very early and received a great concern from many theorists and foreign policy makers, there has not been a unified definition, which becomes a limitation in explaining the behaviors of some countries towards global multilateralism. This article clarifies the theoretical framework of the concept, approach, and analysis of the middle power in the current international relation context as well as gives some comments about power shift, development trend to generalize these into characteristics and comparison tools for the case in Vietnam, serving Vietnam’s foreign policy implementing process in the year to come.