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This chapter analyzes ten emerging space powers that are beginning to play a significant regional or international role and are likely to expand their space capabilities in the future: Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Almost all of these developing space powers are pursuing hedging strategies of a sort, and they are interested in benefiting from space information while hoping to slow down the space race between more developed actors (particularly in the military sector), thus ensuring that the first-tier countries do not dominate space or ruin it for others. A key advantage of these later-developing Asian space players is that they have an even greater ability to draw on the widespread range of space technologies now available on the international market, including GPS coordinates, weather data, space debris information, communications networks, and remote-sensing images.

Middle powers rise at times of instability in the international or regional orders. Two sets of middle powers, namely the traditional and the so-called “emerging” middle powers, came to being during and after the Cold War, respectively. On the one hand, traditional middle powers, such as Australia and Canada, emerged during the Cold War. On the other hand, emerging middle powers ascended after the Cold War, and are not the traditional “good citizens” but controversial reformists with independent foreign policy portfolios, and they are becoming increasingly vocal in world affairs.

The chapter focuses on India’s relations with Latin America, i.e. Hispanic America and Brazil through three phases: distant acquaintance (late 1940s to early 1960s, or the Nehruvian years), rhetorical solidarity (the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, or the years of nonaligned revisionism), and strategic engagement (mid-1990s onwards, coinciding with India’s emergence as a power with system-shaping potential). It also includes three brief case studies of Latin American decisions that had an inimical impact on India’s interests: Argentina favouring Pakistan’s position on Kashmir in the UNSC; Ecuador nearly recognising a ‘state’ seceding from India; and Brazil favouring expansion of BRICS even at the cost of IBSA. It concludes that India’s relations with Latin America, and especially Brazil, have acquired heft only when propelled by systemic circumstances. Thus, Kenneth Waltz’s emphasis on systemic structure as an explanation of state behaviour also applies to India’s relations with the countries of Latin America.

The 2011 uprisings had a profound impact on the geopolitics of the Middle East due to the vacuum created by the political turmoil consuming its three traditional power centers—Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Two old imperial rivals, Turkey and Iran, competed to fill the vacuum while an emerging new regional power, Saudi Arabia, made a bid for the leadership of the Arab world. At the same time, the United States, despite its efforts to disengage from Middle East conflicts, became more engaged than ever, first with Iran and then in civil wars underway in Syria and Iraq and against Islamic extremist groups. Meanwhile, Russia after two decades of absence, returned to quickly re-establish its influence there.

The 2011 uprisings have changed the Arab region profoundly and irreversibly, even as protesters’ hopes were dashed. The region is now clearly splintering into four parts – the Maghreb, the Levant, the Gulf and Egypt – each gripped by different problems and influenced by different political forces. The Maghreb is moving toward greater openness; Egypt has reverted to repression; the Levant countries are disintegrating; and even the Gulf countries, which did not experience political upheavals, now feel compelled to introduce reforms from the top. The region’s geopolitics had also been greatly altered, as outside powers and emerging regional powers became deeply involved in their own efforts to shape the region. The analysis in this chapter is based on first-hand information that was gathered during numerous trips to the region since 2011, and fifty years of experience living in and writing about the region.