Making Sense of the Haze: Hedging and its Attributes

Abstract

Tensions and competitive rivalry underpinning the Sino-American bilateral relationship has led to an increasingly turbulent and uncertain international environment. The scramble to avoid a binary choice between the United States or China has influenced several small and medium powers to adopt a Hedging foreign policy. But what does Hedging imply? What are its characteristics and how does one distinguish between Hedging and other types of foreign policies? In an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, connectivity and amity with all great powers is essential for the survival of small and medium powers. Many scholars agree that Hedging is a preferable foreign policy option in this milieu because it facilitates close partnerships with great powers. However, it is imperative that clear boundaries are established between Hedging and other foreign policy approaches which also underscore friendly relations. Vague and catch-all definitions which solely accentuate “connectivity” and “robust relations with all great powers” undermine the analytical rigour of scholarship on foreign policy and cast a shadow of doubt regarding the meaning and characteristics of this approach. To this end, this article conducts a review of how Hedging has been defined and applied by scholars. By doing so, it helps distil the key attributes of Hedging and contributes to scholarly efforts to develop a precise definition of a Hedging foreign policy. The surveyed data for this research is largely restricted to secondary literature on the foreign policies of Southeast Asian and South Asian States.