Choosing Their Own Path: Uncertainty and the Persistence of Hedging in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Why do states continue to prefer hedging strategies despite persistent threats to their security and growing pressure associated with great power rivalry? Based on detailed empirical analysis of three Southeast Asian countries (Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines), this thesis argues that a range of factors explain the persistence of hedging: uncertainty regarding great power competition; mixed views of China; a lack of consensus regarding threats; fear of alienating China; and a preference for self-help strategies or limited alignment over alliances, which create unwanted dependence. Furthermore, this thesis argues that domestic variables, including regime type, bureaucratic institutions, personalities, histories, and leaders' perceptions of threats, produce variations in hedging and the causal pathway to its continuation in the face of security threats and pressures associated with great power rivalry. Thus, external factors explain the persistence of hedging, while internal causes determine its particular expression within each country. This dissertation proposes a Neoclassical Realist theoretical framework of hedging to demonstrate how particular domestic factors account for the unique forms of alignment behaviour in Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. As the dissertation explains, Singapore practices a unique form of hedging which it characterises as "performative hedging," given the importance Singapore places on the appearance of not taking sides, even as it is more closely aligned with the United States based on its history of security cooperation. Vietnam relies on "multidirectional hedging" to maintain positive ties with China even as it deepens its security partnerships with a diverse range of partners in order to preserve flexibility. The Philippines' foreign policy vacillations, by contrast, are better characterised as "underbalancing" as opposed to hedging, given the lack of consistency and purposiveness which the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022) exhibited. Based on the findings from these three case studies, this dissertation makes the following arguments: First, given the prevalence of hedging in the face of direct threats to states' security, hedging should be considered as a valid (if suboptimal) policy response to a threat. Second, hedging is far more resilient under conditions of bipolar rivalry or great power competition than previously assumed. Third, hedging requires both consistency and purposiveness, as the Philippines case study illustrates. This thesis creates new knowledge about the limits and durability of hedging in the face of emerging security threats and new pressures associated with the return of great power rivalry. It also adds greater precision to the concept of hedging, which has been widely used though frequently misunderstood in the International Relations literature. Show more