When discussing foreign policy strategies available to middle and small powers, international relations experts tend to focus on movement and balancing – concepts popularized by scholars such as Kenneth Waltz and Randall Schweller. The bandwagon is seen as a strategy of weak states whose hopes for survival, in a system dominated by great powers, can be strengthened by aligning closely with regional hegemony. Balancing is seen as suitable for middle states that feel confident in countering a rising or revisionist power, alongside other like-minded status quo actors. There is, however, a middle path that does not receive sufficient attention from academics and practitioners. This approach is called hedging and is structured around three central principles: avoiding explicit associations as well as confrontation with major powers; be both deferential and defiant towards regional hegemony; and diversify diplomatic relations and economic cooperation with a wide range of regional and global actors, with the aim of avoiding dependence on any single power.
Vietnam is a great example of a successful hedging strategy. As a country sharing a land and sea border with the People’s Republic of China – notably an ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea – Vietnam was to (along with other Southeast Asian countries) join a US-led balancing coalition that would counter China’s rise and ensure a rules-based order in the region Indo-Pacific in the broad sense. According to mainstream neorealist thinking, this would be a rational choice for Hanoi, which has ample evidence of its national history. regarding Chinese encroachment. However, there is no indication that Vietnam is pursuing an external balancing strategy towards its large northern neighbor. The country’s leaders remain firm on Defense policy of the “four no’s”. These are: 1. not participating in military alliances, 2. not siding with one country to act against another, 3. not using foreign military bases on Vietnamese territory or using Vietnam as leverage to counter other countries, and 4. not use force or threat. use force in international relations. As long as the “Four Noes” remain part of the CPV party line, Hanoi’s membership in AUKUS, QUAD, or any other similar security partnership is out of the question.
When it comes to strengthening its own defense capabilities, Vietnam is doing what it can to modernize its heavily Soviet and Russian military systems and maintain a credible deterrent. According to GlobalData, Vietnam’s total defense budget expected to increase from $6.5 billion in 2020 to $10.2 billion by the end of the decade. Although this represents a notable increase, we are still far from China’s defense budget for 2024, worth $231.4 billion. Moreover, Hanoi’s increased defense spending corresponds to Vietnam’s overall economic growth and is consistent with the the country’s official foreign policy independence, autonomy, multilateralization and diversification; especially the first two points. In other words, it would be an exaggeration to claim that Vietnam is investing in a military buildup aimed at matching China’s capabilities.
Against Western, or more precisely American, expectations, Vietnam has obviously chosen not to balance China. Several reasons justify this strategic decision. Above all, Vietnam does not perceive China as an existential threat; the long-running dispute over territorial waters and exclusive economic zones in the South China Sea is simply not as bad as Western observers thought or hoped. Second, China has so far not sufficiently incentivized Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries to create or join an anti-China coalition. However, this could easily change if Beijing opts for coercive reunification with Taiwan. The third and fourth reasons are not related to China at all, but to its main competitor: the United States. Hanoi is tired of Washington’s persistent talk of democracy versus autocracy and suspects “hostile forces” of considering regime change in Vietnam, if not in the short or medium term, then at least in the long term. Additionally, Vietnamese leaders remain unconvinced by the powerful U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific, fearing possible abandonment should Washington embark on an isolationist path under a re-elected Donald Trump or presidential administration. like-minded in the future. Finally, on a purely theoretical note, Hanoi is aware that balancing China would lead to a stabilization of the bipolar order, and bipolarity inevitably leads to the creation of spheres of influence dominated by the respective great powers, leaving only very little (if any) room for maneuver for lower states. In short, by refusing to balance China, Vietnam is protecting its autonomy in international affairs.
Too big (a country of 100 million people) and too self-confident (a nation that triumphed over the Japanese, French and American armies) to jump on the bandwagon, Vietnam opted for the hedging strategy. As explained in the introduction, coverage implies equidistance from the major centers of power. Additionally, due to their Taoist-Confucian cultural base, Vietnamese do not perceive other countries as black or white, but rather as black and white (yin and yang). This means that great powers, and indeed all other international actors, are simultaneously seen as friends and foes, as potential partners and possible threats. Consequently, Hanoi is careful not to provoke Beijing by becoming too closely linked to Washington, while deepen its economic and cultural ties with the United States and other liberal-democratic states like South Korea, Japan, and Australia. Likewise, Vietnamese leaders tacitly endorse the United States’ commitment to keeping the Indo-Pacific “free and open,” while resisting U.S. overtures toward closer security cooperation. The Vietnamese variant of strategic ambiguity ensured that Hanoi was courted by all and threatened by none; At least, not in the sense that Ukraine’s very existence would be threatened by Russia.
Regarding the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, Vietnam remains neutral, consistent with its policy of not publicly opposing the major powers. He abstained on four UNGA resolutions condemning the Russian attack on Ukraine. Predictably, she also refrained from recognizing Russia’s illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory. Hanoi was Moscow’s ally during the Cold War, and Russia remains Vietnam’s largest arms supplier. However, the analogies between Sino-Vietnamese and Russian-Ukrainian relations are difficult to ignore. In both cases, there is a vast asymmetry of power, as well as a long history of political domination and cultural influence from a larger state. How is it then that China and Vietnam managed to avoid escalation despite a prolonged maritime conflict, while Russia and Ukraine found themselves embroiled in the worst armed conflict on European soil since the end of the Second World War ?
From the Vietnamese perspective, one could argue that Ukraine miscalculated when it chose to balance Russia by aligning with the West in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution of 2004 (an additional reason for the Communist Party in power in Vietnam to fear a change of regime in Hanoi). The reader towards membership of the European Union and NATO under Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, it was a clear signal that Ukraine wanted to distance itself from the “Russian world” and join the “collective West”. In other words, it was a zero-sum game that would result in an advantage for Washington (Brussels being a secondary player) and an equivalent loss for Moscow. In comparison, Hanoi always ensures that any rapprochement between Vietnam and a Western or liberal-democratic country is not seen as detrimental to Beijing. For example, a U.S. aircraft carrier may call at Da Nang, but the U.S. Navy should not expect to obtain permission to use it as a permanent base in the South China Sea. Every measure taken or not taken by Hanoi aims to serve Vietnam’s national interests without disrupting the regional status quo.
Since 2004, Ukraine’s tumultuous democracy has produced three openly pro-Western presidents (Yushchenko, Poroshenko and Zelensky) who sought to balance Russia, and one resolutely pro-Russian head of state (Yanukovych), who ranged on the east side. According to Vietnamese foreign policy philosophy, both approaches are wrong. Instead, kyiv should have opted for a hedging strategy and treated Moscow ambivalently, both as a partner and as a threat. Perhaps by studying Sino-Vietnamese relations and maintaining a policy of equidistance toward Russia and the United States, Ukraine could have avoided all-out war. The different outcomes – peace between China and Vietnam, war between Russia and Ukraine – of these otherwise very similar cases suggest a strategic overhaul of foreign policy as a whole. That is, carefully evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the strategies available to middle and small powers in light of their relationships with revisionist states and emerging powers. It could simply be that equilibrium is not the appropriate response to any (potential) hegemon.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Croatia or the Croatian Military Academy.
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