Malaysia Between the United States and China: What do Weaker States Hedge Against?

Abstract

This article analyzes Malaysia's alignment behavior vis-a-vis America and China, with a focus on explaining how the weaker state's insistence on hedging has both motivated and limited its defense links with the competing powers. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that regional states choose to align militarily with the rebalancing America to hedge against China, the article argues that this characterization is only partially true; a more accurate account is that weaker states do not hedge against any single actor per se; rather, they seek to hedge against a range of risks associated with uncertain power relations. In the case of Malaysia, while Putrajaya aims to mitigate the challenges of an assertive Beijing, its alignment behavior is more a function of a desire to offset several systemic and domestic risks, namely, the shadow of entrapment, abandonment, and alienation, alongside the fear of authority erosion at home.

Malaysia’s Hedging Strategy Towards China Under Mahathir Mohamad (2018–2020): Direct Engagement, Limited Balancing, and Limited Bandwagoning

“…Through a comprehensive hedging strategy secondary powers can reap in an almost opportunistic manner current and future economic and security benefits from the hedging target, while maintaining their insurance options through close relations with other nations. A hedger can therefore pursue both “risk-contingency” and “returns-maximising” options within a single strategy (Kuik, 2008: 171, 2016a: 3–7).…”

“…In applying an updated hedging framework, based on Kuik (2008Kuik ( , 2016aKuik ( , 2016b and with interesting amendments made by Hiep (2013), this article aims at making a humble contribution to the theoretical discussion and empirical analysis of hedging in Southeast Asia. Kuik introduces five components, namely, indirect balancing, dominance-denial, economic pragmatism, binding engagement, and limited bandwagoning.…”

“…Despite the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea, bilateral – and in particular economic – relations improved under Prime Minister Najib Razak (2009–2018). All in all, he continued the use of a hedging strategy towards China, already employed by Mahathir Mohamad during his first term in office (1981–2003; Goh, 2016; Kuik, 2016a: 156; Wey, 2017: 397). After his surprising return to power in May 2018, Mahathir, however, stopped certain key projects that Malaysia and China had signed under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).…”

Cuestión de amenaza: La influencia de los factores domésticos en el comportamiento de Vietnam y Malasia ante el ascenso del poder militar chino

“…La estrategia supuso no tomar partido entre las potencias y fue desarrollada, en primer lugar, con el objetivo de protegerse contra la potencial amenaza que podría resultar de China. En segundo término, se consideraron el peligro de conflicto y las preocupaciones domésticas asociadas a un gran poder como autoridad (Kuik, 2016;Rinehart, 2015).…”

Getting hedging right: a small-state perspective

“…In 2005, Evan Medeiros lamented that hedging is “highly underdeveloped both in international relations theory and security studies literature.” This holds true today. While a growing number of studies offer different conceptualizations and cover a range of diverse hedging cases (Tessman 2012 ; Tunsjo 2013 ; Jackson 2014 ; Fiori and Passeri 2015 ; Kuik 2016a , b ; Hoo 2016 ; Murphy 2017 ; Koga 2018 ; Ciorciari 2019 ; Korolev 2019 ; Lim and Mukherjee 2019 ; Liao and Dang 2019 ; Pitakdumrongkit 2020 ; Chan 2020 ; Teo and Koga 2021 ; Cao 2021 ), there is still no consensus as to how hedging should be defined and applied. Jurgen Haacke ( 2019 ) observed that “as the literature on hedging has expanded, the concept’s analytical value is no longer obvious.” David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne ( 2021 ) have criticized the dominant understandings of hedging, arguing that the term remains “a vague concept rendering it a residual category of foreign policy behavior.”…”