This article adds a geoeconomics dimension to the geopolitics-focused middle power literature that generally depicts Malaysia as an ambivalent middle power, especially from the identity and behavioral perspectives, even if the country's middle power status stands on stronger capability indicators. The wider aim is to consider insights that a geoeconomics approach can bring to discussions of emerging middle powers from the Global South. Drawing from critiques and openings in the middle power and geoeconomics literatures, this paper explores other ways to think about geoeconomics and middle powers beyond zero-sum power competition that allow analytical space for smaller or middle states from the Global South to be participants in, even shapers of, geoeconomics. Towards this end, the paper develops a reconceptualised geoeconomics that pays especial attention to spatial dynamics, relational agency, and the long arc of time. It then applies this framework to Malaysia, showing Malaysia's geoeconomic contributions in several issue areas but focusing the analysis on two key cases—mobilising the South and mobilising with the South, as well as advancing global Islamic finance—that reveal Malaysia's contributions through varied forms of agency along the long arc of these projects towards their geoeconomic impact.
Policy implications
- Policy analysts should go beyond seeing geoeconomics always as a zero-sum game linked to geopolitical competition, as this excludes significant geoeconomic developments, especially those occurring in the Global South, that have contemporary impact in a shifting world order.
- Policy analysts should consider the analytical value of a reconceptualised geoeconomics that incorporates transnational economic spaces, time, and broader notions of agency centred on convening power, ideational capabilities, expert/innovation capabilities, and market institutional power to reveal geoeconomics in areas beyond geopolitical power competition.
- Policymakers should pay attention to, and cultivate, other sources of agency that are more open to Global South states such as convening, ideational, expertise, and market institutional power.
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Policymakers should recognise the incremental value created by collaboration to safeguard economic security through geoeconomics.
Photo by Zukiman Mohamad