Professor Brendan Howe on Rise of the Rest: It takes two tier-twos to tango

In cooperation with the International Relations and Security Cluster, the EASG is proud to bring you this talk on the rise of "second-tier powers" in the context of a fracturing international order.

Public values are generated at the international level, in the absence of global government, through the processes of international cooperation and organization. In a time of increased great power contestation, however, multilateral institutions and initiatives from actors with less than great power resources are severely constrained. Major advocates of collective public values at the international level, herein identified as secondary powers, need, therefore, to imagine other avenues for cooperation and organization. This research advocates that these like-minded actors step up their bilateral collaboration to form minilateral institutions to promote NTS and development issues of common concern.

This presentation explores the potential of practical cooperative policy initiatives aimed at promoting public values in an anarchic international operating environment challenged by the return of geopolitics. The focus is on two second-tier powers which individually share similar geopolitical constraints and challenges in their respective operating environments but also have significant resources and incentives to develop public value generating platforms independently, and in collaboration with like-minded partners. South Korea has variously been described as a shrimp among whales or stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of its relationships with great powers. The United Kingdom is a former great (even hegemonic) power which has faced the challenge of first “losing an empire and finding a role” and second, Brexiting from the larger geopolitical bloc, the European Union.

The analysis is situated within the “rise of the rest” discourse, which has evolved to consider what secondary actors can and should do in the face of great power contestation, hegemonic decline, and abdication of global leadership. This presentation, therefore, asks and attempts to answer the central question regarding how can international public values be promoted by these two diverse second-tier powers through non-traditional security (NTS) and development cooperation in the face of geopolitical challenges?

Brendan Howe is a tenured Professor at Ewha Womans University’s Graduate School of International Studies in Seoul, South Korea, and a Humboldt Research Fellow at Heidelberg University, Germany. He is the President of the Asian Political and International Studies Association and the World International Studies Committee. He has ongoing research agendas focusing on traditional and non-traditional security policymaking in East Asia, peacekeeping and peace- building, human security, democratic governance, international organisation, public diplomacy, and post-crisis development.