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Hedging and grand strategy
in Southeast Asian foreign
policy
David Martin Jones
1
, and Nicole Jenne *
2
1
Visiting Professor, War Studies, Kings College, University of
London, UK;
2
Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad
Cato´lica de Chile
*E-mail: njenne@uc.cl
Accepted 10 February 2021
Abstract
This article examines recent interest in hedging as a feature of interna-
tional politics in the Asia Pacific. Focusing on the small states of
Southeast Asia, we argue that dominant understandings of hedging
are misguided for two reasons. Despite significant advances in the
literature, hedging has remained a vague concept rendering it a residual
category of foreign policy behavior. Moreover, current accounts of
hedging tend to overstate the strategic intentions of ostensible hedgers.
This article proposes that a better understanding of Southeast Asia’s
foreign policy behavior needs to dissociate hedging from neorealist
concepts of international politics. Instead, we locate the concept in the
context of classical realism and the diplomatic practice of second-tier
states. Exploring Southeast Asia’s engagement with more powerful
actors from this perspective reveals the strategic limitations of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the dilemma that Southeast
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Vol. 00 No. 0
#The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan
Association of International Relations; All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Volume 00, (2021) 1–31
doi: 10.1093/irap/lcab003
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