# The comedy of middle power politics Every scholar of international relations has read John Mearsheimer’s _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_. The classic expounds how great powers seeking only security and survival are compelled to compete for power and dominance. The resulting conflict is unintended but structurally unavoidable: rational behavior produces outcomes that none of the actors necessarily wants. As Mearsheimer puts it: > “This situation, which no one consciously designed or intended, is genuinely tragic. Great powers that have no reason to fight each other—that are merely concerned with their own survival—nevertheless have little choice but to pursue power and to seek to dominate the other states in the system” That Mearsheimer calls it a tragedy matters. Tragedies, such as _Hamlet_, _MacBeth_, and _King Lear_, play with our imaginations and suck us into the world of the protagonist, struggling between human desires and forces that lie beyond their own control. The hero doesn’t arrive at disaster through stupidity or wickedness but through choices that propel them towards an outcome we all know is coming. You just can’t write that sorta shit about middle powers. Now the fate of middle powers are often enough tragic, but they hardly meet the narrative criteria for tragedy. Looking at the history of middle powers, it’d make a lot more sense to write it up as _The Comedy of Middle Power Politics_... and wow, does Australia serve it up nowadays. First the submarines. Australia knew that it was time to replace its aging fleet of Collins class submarines. The Collins-class submarines were large, long-range diesel-electric boats based on Swedish shipbuilder Kockums’ Type 471 design, extensively adapted to Australian requirements and built by the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) at Osborne in Adelaide, South Australia. They had a troubled development and early reliability problems, but they ultimately became pretty capable and were valued for their long range, endurance, and quietness. Availability and maintenance remained persistent weaknesses, and they were getting old. This set in place the foundations for a decent comedy. After a short comedic dalliance with Japan and then France, an overly effervescent and comically snide Australian Prime Minister came up with another idea—he’d get nuclear submarines from the U.S. Just like _Three Men and a Baby_, _The Three Amigos_, or _The Three Stooges_, comedic settings thrive on the juxtaposition of three characters convinced of their own importance, while none quite understands the larger forces shaping the plot—and so it was with Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson, and Joe Biden.  The deal started with the promise of nuclear submarines, but soon turned to a requirement to first buy Virginia-class boats from the U.S., which it turns out, probably won’t come either. Australia entered a wonderfully circular position of paying to increase America’s ability to build submarines so that America might eventually have enough submarines to sell some of them back to Australia. Shakespeare could not do better with Shylock and his pound of flesh. The real comedic twist lies in the farcical nature of watching all this unfold as the Australian audience walks past rows of tents in their capital cities and wonders why the f#ck they need need $368 billion worth of submarines, and not houses or decent public transport. Second, the alliance itself. All comedy rests on solid comical set-ups. In 1908, Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin was nervous about Asia, so he invited the U.S. navy for a visit. Knowing Australia was pretty keen on all things being white, Roosevelt (that’s Theodore) decided to paint the fleet white—the Great White Fleet, it was known as. Sixteen gleaming American battleships steamed into Sydney Harbor, and enormous crowds welcomed them as representatives of another great and powerful friend: English-speaking, reassuringly familiar and, unlike the increasingly distracted British, actually present in the Pacific. Yet while Australians held banquets and waved flags, American naval officers were gathering intelligence for contingency planning, and plans were subsequently prepared for attacks on Australian ports should the United States find itself at war with Britain and its empire. This, my reader, is called dramatic irony: a gap in knowledge, where one character (and often the audience) understands the reality of the situation while another character does not. It’s a classic comedy trope and is used in _Twelth Night_, _Much Ado About Nothing_, and in more modern forms in _Fawlty Towers_ and _Blackadder_—also apparently in middle power alliance politics. That comedy foundation has never entirely disappeared. Australia understands the relationship sentimentally—as one of kinship, shared values, common sacrifice and mateship—while the United States, like every great power, understands it strategically. Australia is not a friend but a geographic location with enormous strategic depth, useful ports and airfields, and comparatively secure approaches. Australia today is, in the coldest reading, an extraordinarily convenient piece of military real estate: distant enough from China to be defensible, close enough to provide a launch point for long-range operations into the Indo-Pacific, and politically dependable and equally dopey enough to host American forces unquestionably. Canberra is essentially the impulsive, chaotic, and naïve Curly, while Washington is the domineering (but still dopey) Moe—and it always helps to have a middleman, and that’s why AUKUS has Larry or shall we say, London. Third, we have Australia’s incessant anti-China fluff. Here the comedy is less _The Three Stooges_ than _The Wizard of Oz_: an enormous and terrifying figure is projected onto the screen, surrounded by smoke, noise and warnings of impending doom, while Australia sets off down the Yellow Brick Road in search of security. The grand threat of China: Put about in masses of Murdoch media articles, bandied around like nuts at the pub by dumb-ass politicians, and spread in strategic circles because--well, I don’t know why, maybe because it gets you those spots on CNN and Fox? In the end, it’s pretty clear this whole show was stolen straight from the _Wizard of Oz_. A comedy set on the premise that the terrifying monster everyone fears is largely a projection, while the real deficiencies belong to those running from it. Like the Scarecrow, Australia lacks the brains to think independently about its strategic environment; like the Tin Man, it lacks the heart to imagine a relationship with China beyond fear and suspicion; and like the Cowardly Lion, it lacks the courage to pursue an independent foreign policy. The joke, when the curtain is finally pulled back, is not that China presents no risks, but that the monster Australia has constructed obscures the weaknesses Australia is unwilling to confront in itself. China is in the end, just another state seeking to improve its lot, albeit in different ways and with different means.  Three comedic tropes: farce, dramatic irony, and comic misdirection. The submarines give us farce: an increasingly elaborate sequence of promises, reversals and expenditures in which Australia pays enormous sums to solve a problem that always seems to recede into the next act. The alliance gives us dramatic irony: Australia talks of mateship and shared sacrifice while the great power necessarily calculates geography, access and strategic utility. And the perceived China threat gives us comic misdirection: everyone stares terrified at the booming apparition on the screen while paying considerably less attention to the shortcomings of the characters standing before it. Put them together and Australian strategy begins to resemble less a carefully constructed grand strategy than a comedy of errors. And voila! That there is _The Comedy of Middle Power Politics_. Where Mearsheimer’s great powers are tragic because they understand the game yet cannot escape its logic, middle powers are comic because they so often misunderstand the game, exaggerate their part in it, and then stumble enthusiastically into situations partly of their own making. Their tragedy, when it comes, may be real enough; but the comedy lies in watching them write and rehearse the script that leads them toward it. *** Pint of Guinness please barman! - [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/junotane)! ## Related articles - [[2025-10-27 South Korea, Canada, and a middle-power submarine Can Australia Join|South Korea, Canada, and a middle-power submarine: Can Australia Join?]] - [[2026-05-25 Middle powers can't hedge forever|Middle powers can't hedge forever]] - [[2026-05-26 Mad Max Middle Power Australia|Mad Max Middle Power Australia]]