More than just hedging? The reactions of Cambodia and Vietnam to the power struggle between the United States and China in times of Obama's “pivot to Asia”

Abstract

AbstractSoutheast Asia is a major theater in the superpower rivalry between China and the United States. The states in this region face the challenge how to react to this intensified strategic competition. Some authors suggest a concept of hedging as the main behavioral response of the region. Nevertheless, critics argue that just one concept cannot incorporate all the variation in their behavior. They often name Cambodia and Vietnam as problematic examples – Cambodia rather bandwagoning with China and Vietnam being more a balancer than a hedger. The goal of this article is to create original operational definition of hedging that would address existing limitations through a comparison of the foreign policy of Cambodia and Vietnam during the US pivot to Asia during the Barrack Obama administration. This article finds that hedging can be useful to analyze the responses of Southeast Asian states despite the perceived contradictory stances of Cambodia and Vietnam.