ASEAN’s Evolving Alignment Strategy in the South China Sea: Between Middle and Major Power Dynamics
Heylyung Yun and Mats Engman
ASEAN is a region of vital strategic importance where the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) collide. To avert geopolitical uncertainty and to avoid being pulled into full-fledged conflicts between major powers, the ASEAN states have employed a ‘hedging strategy’ by combining elements of bandwagoning and balancing. However, such a middle-positioning or ambiguous strategy is now challenged as geopolitical tension rises in the South China Sea. The future order of this region will depend on strategic choices and the relative power positions of the ASEAN nations and their agreed modes of conflict and cooperation. This Focus Asia paper focuses on capturing the evolving hedging strategy of the ASEAN states in the South China Sea and its regional implications.
Related Publications
-
Taiwan: Tokyo’s New Ally?
In December 2022, the back-to-back visits by senior Japanese lawmakers, Koichi Hagiuda, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Policy Research Council chairman, and Hiroshige Seko, the upper house secretary general […]
-
Can the China-India Bilateral Gain Momentum in 2023?
The Tawang incident in December 2022 was not a surprise. Both India and China have been steadily investing in border infrastructure development as their respective forces have entered into clashes […]
-
India in a world of asymmetrical multipolarity
In the past decade, the world has gathered an irreversible momentum in global geopolitical transitions, including the fragmentation and reconfiguration of the international order. This is largely due to the […]
-
Hong Kong sees signs of life amid political stasis
At the beginning of 2023 Hong Kong followed mainland China as it dramatically relaxed COVID-19 related travel restrictions. This considerably improved the territory’s economic mood. The tourism industry and retail […]
-
North Korea Needs More International Partners to Weather Its Food Crisis
North Korea has long been one of the most isolated countries in the world, but its isolation became even more extreme amid the pandemic. The country has cut off its […]
-
Engaging The Indo-Pacific: Some Pointers For Europe
The regional dynamics of the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR), especially maritime security-related, are distinctly different from other regions, especially Europe. There are existential sub-regional dynamics that vary across the IPR, which […]