"The Feasibility and Future of Middle-state Hedging" - by CWP alum Cheng-Chwee Kuik

SINCE THE LATE 1990s, analysts and scholars have increasingly used the term “hedging”—either as a verb or a concept—to describe Southeast Asian states’ responses to a rising China.1 While different writers have presented varying conceptualisations of hedging, there is a growing consensus among scholars that hedging is a more accurate term to describe middle states’ policy towards China’s rise as a great power and the broader US–China rivalry than the terms “balancing” or “bandwagoning”.2 For decades, international relations scholars have used the latter terms to depict state strategies towards power ascendancy. Balancing involves power rejection—i.e. counterbalancing a rising power, seen as a growing threat, by aligning with an opposing power via alliance and armament.3 Bandwagoning, by contrast, entails power acceptance—if a weaker state cannot counter-balance a rising power, then it is likely align with that power and jump on its bandwagon to maximise benefits and/or minimise security threats.4 Recent literature on alignment in Southeast Asia and beyond, however, suggests that ..

East Asian Policy 2024.16:7-28. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com

KUIK Cheng-Chwee is a Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National University of Malaysia (UKM). He is concurrently a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie China. Nur Shahadah JAMIL is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya

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