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Hedging and grand strategy in Southeast Asian foreign policy

February 2021
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 22(1):1-31

DOI:10.1093/irap/lcab003

Authors:

David Martin Jones

King's College London

Nicole Jenne

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

This article examines recent interest in hedging as a feature of international 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 Asian Nations and the dilemma that Southeast Asian states face from a rising China challenging the status quo in the western Pacific.

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Hedging and grand strategy

in Southeast Asian foreign

policy

David Martin Jones

, and Nicole Jenne *

Visiting Professor, War Studies, Kings College, University of

London, UK;

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

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International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Volume 00, (2021) 1–31

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcab003

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Hedging and grand strategy in Southeast Asian foreign policy

Abstract

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