Great power Rivalry and Southeast Asian agency: Southeast Asia in an Era of US-China strategic competition

ABSTRACT

Great power rivalry is a structural feature in Southeast Asia’s international politics which three decades of post-Cold War academic analysis and diplomatic activity has sought and failed to transcend. The acknowledgement of its return to a central role in the analysis of Southeast Asia’s international politics is both illuminating and instructive. Accordingly, this article centres discussion of three recent books on the region’s international politics around the following great power-related themes: the arrival of Chinese power in Southeast Asia; the return of Chinese activism and US-China rivalry in Southeast Asia; contingent Southeast Asian agency; and the value of theory in illuminating these dynamics.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Southeast Asia
• ASEAN
• great power politics
• Us-China rivalry
• theory
• qualified agency
• hedging

Murray Hiebert, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge (Lanham, MD: Center for Strategic and International Studies and Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).

Sebastian Strangio, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020).

Senior Thai diplomat

‘Thirty-five years ago when Chinese ministers came here, they were quite humble – nowadays it’s no longer so. China now has power, and they are acting like it – they come here and tell us to do this and do that … .The emperor now has the will and the capability to enforce its desires’ (Shambaugh 2021, 151–152).

Former Senior Singaporean Diplomat

‘The ASEAN region remains one of the most important regions in the world if America is interested in trying out a diplomacy-first strategy to match the growing Chinese influence in the world’ (Shambaugh 2021, 103).

Introduction

The defining feature in the contemporary relationship between China and Southeast Asia has been the success of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s decision to launch economic and political reforms in late 1978. The subsequent transformation in China’s economy has intensified interdependence between China and Southeast Asia. Critically, interdependence has been asymmetrical in nature, set against a backdrop of rising Chinese power and increasing US-China great power rivalry,¹ with Southeast Asian states retaining various degrees of agency. In charting the details and trajectory of China-Southeast Asian relations in the current era of Sino-US ‘strategic competition’ the books under review make an important contribution to the literature.² They deserve to be widely read and debated. Our discussion is structured around themes that are raised by a close reading of the books. These include: the arrival of Chinese power in Southeast Asia; the return of Chinese activism and US-China rivalry in Southeast Asia; contingent Southeast Asian agency; and the value of theory in illuminating these dynamics.³

The arrival of Chinese power

As the quote from the Thai diplomat at the outset of this article highlights, Chinese power has arrived in Southeast Asia. And the effects of Beijing’s increased ability to project power over Southeast Asia – be it economic, military, or cultural – have been complex. On one hand, both China and Southeast Asia have benefitted spectacularly from increased economic growth and the exchange of goods and services. On the other, since power concerns are embedded in the political dimension of any relationship, the Southeast Asia states are now fully exposed to the ‘coal-face’ of great power politics.

To illuminate the complexities of the contemporary China-Southeast Asia relationship, it is instructive to highlight an example discussed in all three of books examined here (Hiebert 2020, 389–400; Shambaugh 2021, 223–226; Strangio 2020, 192–194). In late September 2016, the nationalistic mainland Chinese publication Global Times levelled a broadside against the Singaporean government. The charge was that Singapore had attempted to insert into the final report of the Non-Aligned Movement’s September 2016 Summit, a reference to the unanimous 12 July 2016 ruling on the South China Sea issued by the Arbitral Tribunal of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague. The ruling was widely viewed as being unfavourable to China’s interests. As Shambaugh notes, ‘the Tribunal ruled unanimously that there was no legal basis for China’s “historic rights” claims and the nine-dashed line’ which is included in Chinese government maps of the South China Sea (Shambaugh 2021, 152).

The resulting testy exchange in the Global Times between Stanley Lo, Singapore’s ambassador to China and Hu Xijin, the editor of Global Times, was closely chronicled in the Singaporean and mainland Chinese press. On 26 September 2016, Ambassador Lo penned two responses to Hu’s critique of Singapore’s stance on the South China Sea (Liu 2016). The next day, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson critiqued the Singapore ambassador’s position (FMPRC 2016). What was to follow was a chilling exercise in power politics from China. In late November 2016, reports emerged that nine Singaporean armoured military personnel carriers had been seized by Hong Kong authorities while in transit from Taiwan to Singapore, where Singapore has conducted military training since the 1970’s (Bland and Vasagar 2016). On 28 November, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson reminded Singapore of its opposition to the Singaporean military’s continued use of Taiwan as a base for military training (China Daily 2016). A relentless drumbeat of anti-Singapore commentary followed in the mainland Chinese print, online and TV media. The vehicles were eventually released on 24 January 2017 (Jaipargas 2017).

It is against this backdrop that Singapore’s newspaper The Straits Times published an opinion piece on 1 July 2017 written by Kishore Mahbubani, a former senior Singaporean diplomat and Dean (at the time) of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) at the National University of Singapore. In the article, Mahbubani reflected on the June 2017 decision of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to break off diplomatic relations with Qatar and impose a variety of sanctions (Mahbubani 2017). His subsequent comment that the ‘Qatar episode holds many lessons for Singapore’ (Mahbubani 2017), and the dispute it engendered within the Singaporean elite reflects the deep changes that China’s rise has brought to Southeast Asia.⁴ Referencing the late Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Mahbubani opined that ‘we are now in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era … .As a result, we should change our behaviour significantly’ (Mahbubani 2017). In this view, the first lesson of the Qatar episode is that ‘Qatar ignored an eternal rule of geopolitics: small states must behave like small states’ (Mahbubani 2017). Referencing the Singaporean government’s resolute support for the ICJ’s ruling on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Mahbubani opined that Singapore ‘should be very restrained in commenting on matters involving great powers’ (Mahbubani 2017).

As a rule, former Singaporean foreign ministers and retired senior diplomats do not take to Facebook or the local press to offer a differing opinion on contemporary developments in Singapore’s foreign policy. This was to prove an exception. And it rocked the normally discreet world of Singaporean foreign affairs. Bilahari Kausikan, himself a retired senior Singaporean Foreign Ministry official, offered an authoritative counter assessment (Chew and Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh 2017). A former Singaporean Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam and an ex-Singaporean diplomat Ong Keng Yong, who was the 11th secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), endorsed Kausikan’s view (Chew and Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh 2017). One wonders what Lee Kuan Yew would have made of this debate between senior civil servants that he knew well and who deployed his name as an imprimatur for their arguments.

This was far from the end of the matter. In August 2017, Huang Jing, a full professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School, who hails from the People’s Republic of China, had his Singaporean permanent residency terminated and was required to leave the country promptly. The Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that ‘in collaboration with foreign intelligence agents’, Huang had passed messages from an unnamed state to the Singapore government, ‘to deliberately and covertly advance the agenda of a foreign country at Singapore’s expense’ (Paddock 2017). There is a strong suspicion that the country in question is China (Hiebert 2020, 397), a point underlined by Huang’s subsequent employment as a full professor at a mainland Chinese university (Hiebert 2020, 398). At the same time, China and Singapore’s robust economic relationship has thrived throughout the episode. The fact that Singapore is China’s largest investor and China has been Singapore’s top trade partner since 2013 underlines the reality and complexities of coexistence which these three books so expertly analyse (Shambaugh 2021, 222). Welcome to the world of Southeast Asia in the third decade of the twenty-first century, where China is an inescapable and complex reality.

Chinese activism and the return of US-China rivalry in Southeast Asia

Two effects have flowed from the resurgence of Chinese power in Southeast Asia. The first is increased regional activism from China. The second is the return of great power politics in the form of US-China rivalry. In describing these effects, the authors bring to the table decades of interaction with either China or Southeast Asia. There is no ‘helicopter research’ here. The books contain interviews with a broad swath of Southeast Asian leaders, academics, citizens, as well as Chinese and US academics and government officials.

China’s regional activism has reshaped Southeast Asia. Most obviously, the rise of Chinese economic power has altered the physical geography of Southeast Asia and increased connectivity. Strangio describes the construction of highspeed railway links that penetrate mountainous jungle, connecting the western provinces of China to the Indian Ocean via Laos and Myanmar (Strangio 2020, 111–114; 149). Hiebert highlights a number of rail projects in Indonesia, most notably the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project (Hiebert 2020, 429).. Our attention is also drawn to the twenty thousand acre Yangon ‘New City’ project, spearheaded by a Chinese state owned corporation (Hiebert 2020, 89–93). Shambaugh describes a tour of Forest City, a joint project between the Malaysian state of Johor and the Guangzhou based Country Garden group (Shambaugh 2021, xv). It is twenty square kilometres in size and spans four separate islands. There is also the construction of massive dams along the upper reaches of the Mekong and Irrawaddy rivers (Hiebert 2020, 57–62; 143–145). Such is the scale of change that Thai political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak gives voice to many Southeast Asian strategists when he observes: ‘this is a situation I feel can degenerate. If more dams are built and water is scarce, then China can use its upstream position as a leverage and even as a coercive instrument’ (Hiebert 2020, 200). And more dams are on the way. In Indonesia, agreements have been signed for Chinese companies to construct dams in North Kalimantan and North Sumatra (Hiebert 2020, 430–431). A major dam is being planned in the Batan Taru rainforest in Sumatra, a joint Sino-Indonesia project involving Sinohydro, the Chinese State Owned Enterprise that built the Three Gorges Dam in China (Hiebert 2020, 431). And then there are the casinos in Cambodia and Laos constructed for a largely Chinese clientele, bringing with them a myriad of social issues (Hiebert 2020, 18; 153; Strangio 2020, 52–54, 100).

With great power comes expansive territorial claims. China’s economic growth has allowed Beijing to project its naval power into the South China Sea, and in the process, alter the geopolitics of Southeast Asia. A dormant territorial dispute in the South China Sea has been transformed by China’s rise into one of the major security issues in post-Cold War politics. The South China Sea’s rise up the international security agenda has been a circuitous one and rightly receives the attention of all three authors (Hiebert 2020, 47–63; Shambaugh 2021, 152–154; Strangio 2020, 178–179,184–185, 192–193, 25, 282–283). Beijing’s initial approach appeared to be an accommodating one. In stark contrast to the developments of 2016 highlighted above, for a period of time, there was an appearance of respect for international institutions. China ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1996 and signed ASEAN’s Declaration of Conduct on the South China Sea in 2002. In late 2007, a more revanchist aspect to Chinese policy emerged. Beijing unilaterally established an administrative unit called Sansha in the Paracel Islands region of the South China Sea. In July 2012, Sansha was upgraded to a prefecture level city. In China’s view, Sansha’s jurisdiction covers the Xisha (Paracel), Nansha (Spratly), and Zhongsha (Macclesfield Bank and Scarborough Shoal) island chains, effectively establishing Chinese control over much of the South China Sea. Paralleling its economic expansion, Chinese foreign policy has transformed the geography of the South China Sea. Beijing has constructed military installations and even created physical islands which previously did not exist. This has come at a cost. As Shambaugh notes, ‘China’s claims and physical presence in the South China Sea are cancers on its overall image and relations with the region’ (Shambaugh 2021, 154).

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The South China Sea issue highlights an important reality. While the specifics will differ, the rise of any great power causes a myriad of dislocations which invariably unsettles the status quo. Instability is par for the course when a great power rises. And this needs to be remembered in any assessment of China’s relations with its regional neighbours. As Richard Betts and Thomas Christensen note, if we use the United States’ rise in the nineteenth century as a template, with its numerous interventions in the affairs of states in Latin America, it would not be surprising if China’s rise leads to as much, if not, greater levels of regional and extra-regional conflict (Betts and Christensen 2000/2001, 23). In addition to the dislocation caused by the South China Sea, we can add the opaque practices of Chinese government-linked companies. These include less than environmentally sensitive infrastructure practices, which often rely on workers recruited from China rather than from the local population (Hiebert 2020, 97–99); illegal immigration (Hiebert 2020, 107–103; Strangio 2020, 154–155); the anti-social behaviour of Chinese tourists in Southeast Asia (Hiebert 2020, 323–326); and tensions generated by Chinese operated online gambling in Southeast Asia (Strangio 2020, 268). Certainly, it is in China’s own self-interest that it address these issues. Whether it has the will to do so is another matter entirely.

Indeed, the management of China’s relations with Southeast Asian states requires a degree of skilful diplomacy that is probably elusive for even the most sophisticated state. But China appears to have particular difficulties in this sphere. It is possible to argue that there was a quite competent level of Chinese diplomacy in the period of its ‘peaceful rise’ from 1991 to 2008 (Kang 2007). Whatever one’s view, this changed after the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–09. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership since 2012, a more assertive approach has been in evidence. Accordingly, all three authors highlight Southeast Asian concerns about how Chinese power has been exercised. They catalogue an ambivalence, if not outright negative view of China. Hiebert observes that ‘all countries in Southeast Asia view China with some mix of expectation and fear, aspiration and frustration’ (Hiebert 2020, 5). Strangio notes that ‘China has presented each of the Southeast Asian states with a similar challenge: how to benefit from its booming economy while safeguarding its sovereignty from the perils of overdependence’ (Strangio 2020, 37). He concludes that ‘suspicions of the PRC’s intentions remain widespread’ (Strangio 2020, 6). Shambaugh confirms this, highlighting survey research which reveals that ‘China came dead last in “trust” rankings among Southeast Asians’, and notes that ‘the more China’s presence and influence grows, the less it seemingly is trusted’ (Shambaugh 2021, 162). He finds Chinese diplomacy in Southeast Asia wanting, noting that ‘despite the intensity and density of China’s diplomatic outreach in Southeast Asia, Beijing’s behaviour displays distinct vulnerabilities’, and that ‘real listening, taking criticism constructively, and recalibrating its policies are not necessarily characteristics that China is known for’ (Shambaugh 2021, 182).

There are real consequences that flow from China’s less than robust positive regional image. Specifically, it reinforces Southeast Asian strategic calculations for a balancer and opens the door to other states, particularly the United States, to complicate China’s policy in Southeast Asia. This observation points us to the second effect associated with the arrival of Chinese power in Southeast Asia. As much as the books under review make clear China’s increasing capability and intent to expand its power, it is equally true, as Michael Green’s study of US foreign policy the Indo-Pacific region since 1789 shows, that the United States will not tolerate other states establishing control over the region (Green 2016, 5). This sets us up for a rivalrous US-China relationship.

The authors are clear that Southeast Asia is at the frontier of a new era of great power rivalry in the form of US-China strategic competition. Shambaugh’s book begins with the sentence ‘great power rivalry is back’ (Shambaugh 2021, 1). He goes further and contends that that ‘Southeast Asia is the epicentre’ of US-China global competition (Shambaugh 2021, 242). This is a quite remarkable statement. If true, it reverses longstanding US policy since the eighteenth century that establishes an emphasis, in practice, on Northeast Asia over Southeast Asia. It therefore needs to be supported, in a dedicated section, with a comparison of the relative US-China influence in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. In contrast, Herbert and Strangio see lots of evidence of great power rivalry, but are more cautious in generalising from the Southeast Asia case (Hiebert 2020, 19–27; 547–549; Strangio 2020, 2–3, 282). As evidenced in the books under review, US-China great power rivalry in Southeast Asia includes both direct and indirect competition. And the issues over which competition have occurred include: sparring for wins at the various ASEAN regional meetings over specific issues of interest to Beijing and Washington such as the South China Sea; a reinvigoration of the US economic, diplomatic, and military presence in Southeast Asia to match China’s increased presence; and a concerted Chinese effort to expand its economic footprint through economic exchange and infrastructure projects under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The authors display varying degrees of pessimism about the US’s ability to match China in the great power game in Southeast Asia. Writing in 2020, at the tail end of the Trump administration, Strangio is concerned at US ‘disengagement’ from Southeast Asia (Strangio 2020, 276). He highlights ‘the erratic nature of American engagement [which] has been compounded by the increasingly zero-sum language’ used to frame US competition with China (Strangio 2020, 276). That said, while the Biden administration’s recent National Security Strategy certainly represents a continuation and intensification of many aspects of its predecessor’s policy towards China, in one respect, there is a distinct difference. There is a clear acknowledgement from the Biden administration that states have a choice between Beijing and Washington, which the US respects (OPUS 2022). Hiebert’s position on the optimism/pessimism spectrum is harder to characterise. While he notes that geographical distance limits Washington’s influence over Southeast Asia (Hiebert 2020, 549), this is balanced by the new-found US clarity on strategic competition with China (Hiebert 2020, 547–549). Where Shambaugh’s argument does stand out is in his relative optimism concerning the US strategic position. He is quite clear on this point, stating categorically that ‘the cultural, diplomatic, economic and security footprint of the United States across Southeast Asia remains unprecedented. In most dimensions it is, in fact, greater than China’s (Shambaugh 2021). Authoritative survey research conducted by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore is cited, highlighting China’s perceived reputational weaknesses (Shambaugh 2021). In this respect, Shambaugh contends that the ‘pervasive perception and media narrative across the [Southeast Asian] region’ of a rising China and declining US is ‘not accurate’, and that he can ‘envision China stumbling’ (Shambaugh 2021).

Contingent Southeast Asian agency

All this talk of great power competition can give the impression that Southeast Asian states have relatively little agency in dealing with great powers. The authors provide copious evidence to the contrary. Strangio notes that ‘the interests of major powers have always collided in Southeast Asia’ (Strangio 2020, 7), while Shambaugh points out that Southeast Asian states are ‘no stranger to great power competition’ (Shambaugh 2021, 9). Hiebert underlines that ‘Southeast Asia is determined never to let itself be dominated by China’ (Hiebert 2020, 4). Indeed, Southeast Asian agency has deep historical roots. It has always been a region that has reflected and shaped global trends. Thus, it is impossible to understand the trajectory of the global economy without an appreciation of the East Asian developmental state, which included a number of Southeast Asian states (Haggard 1990). Nor is it possible to understand the trajectory of the Cold War security without a clear understanding of the Second Indochina war, popularly known as the Vietnam War (1965–75). One can venture further and add the First Indochina War (1946–54), where the Vietnamese communists defeated French colonialism. Equally significant is the Third Indochina War (1979–91), where the Vietnamese were defeated by a US supported ASEAN-China coalition, in the context of the collapse of Soviet power at the end of the Cold War (Khoo 2011). Indeed, China appreciates Southeast Asian historical agency well. Southeast Asia served as a revolutionary base for the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty. Fifty-nine of the one hundred and two branches of Sun Yatsen’s anti-Qing dynasty Tongmenghui (United League) were based in Southeast Asia (Shambaugh 2021).

All the authors highlight Southeast Asian agency (Hiebert 2020, 7,11, 538–547; Shambaugh 2021, 5, 14–15, 179–237; Strangio 2020, 34–35). And if it is true – as Shambaugh finds – that China’s academics do not really understand Southeast Asia particularly well, even as its diplomats don’t particularly care about how their diplomacy is perceived in Southeast Asia, then there may be a lot more latitude for the more adroit and well-resourced Southeast Asian states to exercise agency (Shambaugh 2021, 14, 137, 142, 151–152, 164–165). That said, some qualification is required to the preceding statement. The Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan argues the exact opposite view in an interview with Shambaugh. According to Kausikan, ‘China understands ASEAN better than the US and knows far better how to work with ASEAN, which is a polite way of saying manipulate our weaknesses’ (Shambaugh 2021, 15). Of course, Kausikan is making a general statement. As with any generalisation, the relevant issue is whether it applies to China’s relationship with specific Southeast Asian states. The agential power of Southeast Asian states varies with at least three considerations – geography, state power, and the availability of alternative external powers to cooperate with.

Strangio notes the geographical distinction between a maritime and continental Southeast Asia (Strangio 2020, 283). This certainly resonates in that it establishes a material barrier for the projection of Chinese and US power over specific parts of Southeast Asia. Continental Southeast Asian states are most exposed to Chinese power. This has had some transformative aspects. Laos has gone from being a ‘landlocked’ to a ‘landlinked’ country (Strangio 2020, 104). The completion of the oil and natural gas pipeline linking Yunnan province to the port of Kyaukphyu in Myanmar’s Rakhine state diversifies Beijing's energy supply (Shambaugh 2021, 198–199). With the development of the Kunming-Bangkok expressway, what used to take six weeks of travel can be accomplished in less than twenty four hours (Strangio 2020, 47). The Laos-China railway project which was started in 2016 will connect China’s Yunnan province to Vientiane by 2022 (Strangio 2020, 105, 112–113).

Political influence follows closely behind economic connectivity. Regardless of the ideological inclinations of the regimes in power, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar’s geographical proximity to China’s burgeoning economic and military power severely constrains their strategic choices. Thus, even in the heyday of Aung San Suu Kyi’s promise of a more democratic future for Myanmar, it had to acknowledge the need to coexist with Chinese power (Strangio 2020, 158, 162, 164). Shambaugh refers to Cambodia as ‘a virtual client state of China’s’ (Shambaugh 2021). Similarly, Hiebert characterises Cambodia as ‘the closest thing to a Chinese client state and a “Beijing bandwagoner” in Southeast Asia’ (Hiebert 2020, 7). He observes that Laos’s traditional ties to Vietnam give it ‘a bit more political space’ than Cambodia (Hiebert 2020, 200). In contrast, the maritime states in Southeast Asia are more exposed to US maritime power and less to China’s land power. This alters the strategic incentive structure. Geography goes some way in explaining Singapore’s foreign policy posture. Located relatively far from Beijing, it has the latitude to make relatively autonomous choices. Singapore may be the state whose foreign policy is most aligned with the US, but that is a strategic choice, not a concession to US power. The difference is critical.

But there is more than geography at play. Like Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam is geographically close to China. By virtue of its relative size and strength as a state, geography has not been destiny, even if it has imposed constraints on Hanoi’s foreign policy posture. State power determines agency in important ways. Shambaugh notes that ‘Southeast Asian states have been the masters of hedging and shifting alignments’ (Shambaugh 2021). Perhaps. But this statement needs to be quickly and heavily qualified by the observation that the agential power of Southeast Asian states varies. Without getting into the complex topic of how one defines power, state power matters greatly in determining the degree of agency that Southeast Asian states possess. States with greater power will have greater agency in defending their autonomy, and in dealing with Chinese and US power. Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand have had greater success in pushing back against Chinese power, even while enjoying the fruits of economic interdependence with Beijing. What unites these three states is a strong tradition of strategic thinking about their place in the world, and relatively strong economies to project power from. Conversely, the states that are relatively weak will have fewer options and will have to ‘bandwagon’ with China. These high level strategic realities have direct effects on the fortunes of specific towns and cities in the books being reviewed. The town of Boten in Northern Laos has a seemingly bright future by virtue of its strategic location along China’s BRI project (Strangio 2020). And when Chinese investments go bad, the weak states have little recourse to action. Sihanoukville in Cambodia is an example of a boom and bust pattern associated with Chinese investment (Strangio 2020, 95–100). And when China makes requests, they are respected. Recent reports (Cadell and Nakashima 2022) appear to confirm that Phnom Penh has yielded to China’s interest in military access to the Gulf of Thailand via Sihanoukville province’s deep water port at Ream Naval Base and nearby airfield facility at Dara Sakor (Hiebert 2020, 150; Shambaugh 2021, 208).

Finally, the existence of extra-regional powers that are interested in playing a greater role in regional affairs increases the latitude for Southeast Asian states. But it needs to be underlined that Southeast Asian state agency occurs in a specific structural context. Much of the post-Cold War era diplomacy and literature on Southeast Asia’s international relations reflects an attempt to transcend great power politics through the construction of an ASEAN security community (Khoo 2015; David, Khoo, and Smith 2013; Southgate 2019). Notwithstanding determined efforts to wish it away, great power rivalry has remained a structural feature in Southeast Asia’s international politics throughout the post-Cold War era. And looking to the future, Washington has a major role to play. To be sure, as Shambaugh reminds us, as a baseline, there is no love lost on the part of Southeast Asian states for either China or the US (Shambaugh 2021). Thus, over time, Thailand’s alliance with the US has atrophied (Strangio 2020, 123–126) as China’s economic and military links with Thailand have expanded (Hiebert 2020, 293–294; Strangio 2020, 119–121). But for all the problems in US-Thai relations, Bangkok still retains its formal alliance with Washington (Hiebert 2020, 310–315). The US benefits in its regional rivalry with China by virtue of its status as a geographically removed extra-regional power, even if it is seemingly instinctively prone to distraction, be it for domestic or international reasons. Indeed, a variety of Asian states have chosen to seek out ‘insurance’ against Chinese power by aligning to various degrees with the US, an actor that did not exist in traditional Sino-Asian relations. Japan is discussed by Strangio as a state that is interested in countering China’s rise in the region (Strangio 2020, 16, 36, 62–63, 101, 140, 166–167, 258, 266). Indeed, besides the US and Japan, the increasing economic importance of Southeast Asia has caused a number of significant states to increase their diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Thus, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, India, Russia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom have increased their engagement with Southeast Asia (Hiebert 2020, 538–547; Strangio 2020, 36–37). In sum, Southeast Asian states have options to exercise their agency in important ways if they meet the necessary requirements for contingent agency. Indeed, one can even argue that contrary to the pessimism that features in much of the discussion of Southeast Asian states’ contemporary foreign policy, the emerging US-China bipolar rivalry arguably opens up greater options for agency by Southeast Asian states.

Value of theory

There is a difference in approach in the books under review that reflects their authors’ professional occupations. Hiebert and Strangio are both journalists. By design, their books do not have an explicit theoretical inclination. To be sure, Hiebert has references to balancing, bandwagoning, and hedging, and settles on hedging in the epilogue (Hiebert 2020, 7–10, 538–549). But the narrative is descriptive rather than theoretical. Shambaugh is an academic who makes reference to some of the hedging theory literature (Shambaugh 2021). This observation highlights a strength and a weakness with the books. Unencumbered by theory, the authors can dive into providing a rich description of the state of play in Southeast Asia. As noted above, we learn much about the rich detail of Southeast Asia’s relations with China since pre-modern times, with a heavy emphasis on the post-1945 era, and specifically the post-Cold War era. Theoretically inclined observers will acknowledge the useful role played by these studies of Southeast Asia’s international politics. But they will necessarily reflect on the limitations that are inherent in a non-theoretical or light touch theoretical approach. Our discussion focuses on illuminating the benefits that a theoretical perspective can bring to the topic of Southeast Asia’s role in an era of US-China rivalry.

As Edward H. Carr observed, ‘history means interpretation’ (Carr 1961, 23). This statement applies to contemporary history as much as the distant past. And the tool to power interpretation is theory. As one theorist notes, ‘what one sees when looking at the world depends on one’s theoretical perspective, which colours the meaning of concepts’ (Waltz 1979, 144). In this sense, as Stephen Walt points out, whether understood as such, every author has a theoretical interpretation, the only question is whether it is implicit or explicit (Walt 1998, 29). Theory is a tool with a clear and valuable purpose. According to Snyder, ‘the chief purpose of theory is to abstract out the non – essential variables so that the interaction of the essential ones can be perceived in fullest clarity’ (Snyder 1960, 174). Conversely, ‘without theory one is destined for endless confusion, for seeing everything as relevant, and thus being unable to tease meaning out of the welter of events, situations, trends, and circumstances that make up international affairs at any and every moment in time’ (Durfee and Rosenau 2000).

The broad theme of US-China great power rivalry in Southeast Asia anchors the narrative in the books under review. But readers are entitled to ask: what are the determinants of Southeast Asian agency in response to that rivalry? Can the Southeast Asian case contribute to the existing theoretical literature on non-great power states’ responses to great power rivalry? Conversely, what can the existing theoretical literature on regional states’ foreign policy teach us about the limits and strengths of US and Chinese agency in Southeast Asia? Addressing these questions will allow us to draw on the insights of previous scholarship, and to move forward by confirming, refining, or revising perspectives in the existing literature with reference to the Southeast Asian case.

As noted above, only Shambaugh’s book directly addresses the theoretical debate. Our comments will therefore focus on Where Great Powers Meet. Shambaugh makes the case for hedging as the principal regional strategic dynamic (Shambaugh 2021, 9–11, 179, 242). As a concept, hedging certainly has plausibility in explaining Southeast Asian states’ policy response to China and the US. But the argument in Where Great Powers Meet would have been strengthened by reviewing the hedging literature more comprehensively (Tunsjø 2017; Cooper and Lim 2015; Jackson 2014; Tessman 2012). The review of only two academics in the hedging literature raises a flag (Shambaugh 2021, 10). In advocating hedging, Shambaugh is clear on what is not going on. Echoing David Kang’s prominent 2007 argument which is curiously not cited (Kang 2007), Shambaugh makes a strong theoretical claim that ‘what has not been apparent in Southeast Asia since the Cold War is any explicit balancing behaviour against either Beijing or Washington (Shambaugh 2021, 11). Some readers might be puzzled by this statement since there is a well-developed body of research on balancing specifically applied to Asia that takes a very different view (for example, Liff 2016). This literature needs to be considered before it is rejected.

By Shambaugh’s own admission, the measurement of hedging he employs is not based on objective measures. Rather, he draws on his ‘own subjective and considered judgements… based on the empirical evidence described for each nation’ in the book (Shambaugh 2021, 243). The obvious question then is this: why not develop objective measures of hedging and apply them to Southeast Asia’s relations with China and the US? The lack of well-defined criteria for hedging has an important consequence. Specifically, the reader is unable to adjudicate between competing claims for a particular state’s foreign policy posture. For example, Thailand is viewed by Shambaugh as ‘the most important swing state in the US-China strategic contest in the region’ and ‘the master of hedging’ (Shambaugh 2021, 185). In direct contrast, Strangio references Thailand’s ‘tilt towards China’ but emphasises its ‘tradition of strategic balancing’ (Strangio 2020, 124). Who is right? How would an onlooker know without concrete measures? Moreover, how does the hedging argument relate to Shambaugh’s equally clear statement that ‘several Southeast Asian states appear to be “bandwagoning” and establishing closer alignments with Beijing’? (Shambaugh 2021, 13). And how is hedging different from Ross’s (2006) argument that accommodation is the critical regional dynamic for non-great powers such as the Southeast Asian states? More generally, on a topic in which seemingly every possible theoretical concept and its opposite has been used to characterise Southeast Asian responses to China and US, the field could surely profit from greater precision and measurement of key concepts.

A more theoretical approach in all three books under review would help us to understand why China has been so effective in strategically manipulating ASEAN’s divisions. In the process, Beijing has torpedoed more than three decades of engagement with ASEAN. It would also go some way in accounting for why ASEAN’s much touted ‘socialisation of China’ model has failed so badly (Ba 2009). Relatedly, it would assist us in understanding why, despite China trading so heavily with the ASEAN states, Beijing has been willing, in practice, to abrogate spirit and the letter of the treaties and confidence building measures that it has signed with the ASEAN states (Shambaugh 2021, 181, 207). As Carr (1939, 233–234) argued in respect to the role of treaties in great power politics, a treaty has no authority ‘other than the power relationships of the parties to it’. Carr’s theoretical lens allows him to generalise that ‘a state whose interests were adversely affected by a treaty commonly repudiated it as soon as it could do so with impunity’ (Carr 1939, 233). This certainly resonates with the record of Chinese policy in Southeast Asia in the post-Cold War in general, and helps us to understand Beijing’s caustic 2016 rejection of the ICJ’s ruling on the South China Sea in particular (SCIO 2016).

Conclusion

China’s rise in Southeast Asia is a clear example of a larger structural power shift in world politics. And while this transition is reflected in multiple spheres, its most stark manifestation is in the trade arena. A pre-covid era analysis by the Sydney-based Lowy Institute revealed that in 2018, one hundred and twenty-eight states traded more with China than the US. Ninety countries traded more than twice as much with China as the US (Leng and Rajah 2019). In contrast, when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, one hundred and fifty-two states traded more with the US than China (Leng and Rajah 2019). After more than four decades of rising Chinese economic power, we now have a Chinese challenge to the US’s strategic position in Southeast Asia. This reality is reflected in the opening scene of Strangio’s book In the Dragon’s Shadow, with Chinese tourists alighting at the former US naval base in Subic Bay in the Philippines, and in the fact that the second major symbol of US Cold War power in the Philippines – Clark Air base – is set to receive a US$ two billion Chinese makeover (Strangio 2020). Indeed, Chinese state banks are paying for a railway linking the two former US bases, as part of Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These are powerful symbolic examples of the global power transition that is being localised in Southeast Asia. The books under review offer compelling insights into the China-Southeast Asia relationship in an era of intense interdependence and US-China great power rivalry – a rivalry that is simultaneously increasing Southeast Asian states’ ambivalence towards Beijing and Washington even while increasing their leverage and value in a new era of strategic competition.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank John Tai, Lara Southgate, and Peter Grace for their detailed feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Nicholas Khoo

Nicholas Khoo is Associate Professor in the Politics Programme at the University of Otago. His research focuses on Chinese foreign policy, Asian security, great power politics, and international relations theory.

Notes

1. Following Jack Levy, I define a great power as ‘a state that is able to play a major role in international politics with respect to security-related issues. The great powers can be differentiated from other states by their military power, their interests, their behaviour in general and interactions with other powers, [and] other powers’ perception of them’. Levy (1983), p.16. For a systematic review of the concept of a great power see Pardesi (2015).

2. The concept of ‘strategic competition’ was first used in a formal US government document in 2018, in the US Department of Defences (2018)’ Summary of the National Defence Strategy of the United States document.

3. Word-length limitations mean that other important issues cannot be discussed. These include regionalism, exemplified in the role played by the ASEAN, and the role of domestic politics, be it in the form of authoritarianism or nationalism.

4. The first was that small states must behave like small states. The second pertained to the value of regional organisations, while the third dealt with the value of the United Nations.