Meet Me in the Middle: Evaluating Middle Power Cyber Doctrine and Strategic Culture Through the Cases of Canada and Australia

The global expansion in reliance on information and communication technologies has thrust the digital world of cyberspace into the forefront of strategic security discourse. Meanwhile, the responsibilities, capabilities, and strategic interests of middle powers have been fraught with ambiguity and debate in international relations literature. While existing studies examine how the cyberspace domain has become an increasingly competitive arena for geopolitics and strategic competition between and among great powers, there remains a dearth of literature evaluating cyberspace objectives and behaviour for middle powers. This paper aims to fill this gap, drawing on prior frameworks of analysis used for great power cyber studies, alongside extant middle power literature, to employ the theoretical lens of strategic culture toward evaluating the unique behaviour of middle powers in cyberspace. This paper thus suggests that cyberspace presents scholars with an outlet to further examine and define middle powers in the international realm, as well as middle powers with opportunities to assert and potentially expand their position in the global order, while protecting and promoting their distinct interests. This paper also incorporates a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative cyber data, and the deployment of a Most Similar Systems Design to assess two middle power case studies: Canada and Australia. The findings help to challenge and refine our understanding of what roles, capabilities and objectives define middle power behaviour in cyberspace, as well as provide insight into the implications that the rise of cyber operations and security considerations might have for Canadian and Australian grand strategy, and middle power strategic culture more generally. Ultimately, this study serves to refine past theoretical assumptions in the context of a novel and expanding domain for statecraft and competition, and identify a foundation from which the principles of a more coherent and effective cyber doctrine for middle powers might be pursued.