Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech in Davos earlier this year has stimulated a global debate on what the "middle power moment" is, is not, and must aspire to be. This talk presents a Southeast Asian perspective on who the middle powers are; how the middle power moment is unfolding across Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific amid the global polycrisis; and why Canada and ASEAN member states must work more closely together toward a converged middle-powership to cultivate mutually beneficial partnerships across sectors.
Dr. Cheng-Chwee Kuik, an APF Canada Indo-Pacific Visiting Scholar, argues that although Canada and the ASEAN states will be neither principal allies nor sufficient partners to one another, a survival-driven middle-powership remains not only desirable but imperative.
Dr. Cheng-Chwee Kuik is a Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, and his presentation will be based on his new book, Theorizing Hedging: Explaining Shifts and Variations in Alignment Choices (Cambridge University Press, 2026).
