This article examines recent interest in hedging as a feature of international politics in the Asia Pacific. Focusing on the small states of Southeast Asia, we argue that dominant understandings of hedging are misguided for two reasons. Despite significant advances in the literature, hedging has remained a vague concept rendering it a residual category of foreign policy behavior. Moreover, current accounts of hedging tend to overstate the strategic intentions of ostensible hedgers. This article proposes that a better understanding of Southeast Asia’s foreign policy behavior needs to dissociate hedging from neorealist concepts of international politics. Instead, we locate the concept in the context of classical realism and the diplomatic practice of second-tier states. Exploring Southeast Asia’s engagement with more powerful actors from this perspective reveals the strategic limitations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the dilemma that Southeast Asian states face from a rising China challenging the status quo in the western Pacific.

中文翻译：

---

东南亚外交政策中的对冲与大战略

本文探讨了最近对作为亚太地区国际政治特征的对冲的兴趣。着眼于东南亚的小国，我们认为对冲的主流理解是错误的，原因有二。尽管文献取得了重大进展，但对冲仍然是一个模糊的概念，使其成为外交政策行为的剩余类别。此外，对冲的经常账户往往夸大了表面上对冲者的战略意图。本文提出，要更好地理解东南亚的外交政策行为，需要将对冲与国际政治的新​​现实主义概念分开。相反，我们将这一概念置于古典现实主义和二线国家外交实践的背景下。