Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia

AbstractWith the United States and China competing for influence in Southeast Asia, how weaker states in the region make their foreign policy choices has come under more scrutiny in recent years. The conventional International Relations literature tends to focus on how great powers influence or even dictate weaker states’ domestic politics and foreign policies, yet pays little attention to the weaker states’ agency. There has not been enough study focusing on what conditions enable weaker states to maximize their own national interest. Why are some weaker states more capable of resisting demands made on them by the great powers? Why can some weaker states get more aid than others even though they are located within one geographic region? To explain how weaker states achieve their national interest, this paper offers a theoretical framework to analyze how the interplay between level of international competition and weaker states’ foreign policy choices can explain weaker states’ ability to realize their national interest. The paper then offers three paired comparisons of two weaker states in Southeast Asia ─ Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) ─ in their relations with the U.S. and China throughout the Cold War and post-Cold War periods to illustrate the logic of the theoretical framework.

Quotes from the Paper
“If we assume weaker states have their own national security interests, then how can they achieve those interests amid competition among great powers? Why are some weaker states more capable of resisting great powers’ demands on them while others capitulate more easily? Why can some weaker states get more aid than others even though they are located within the same geographic region? Why do some weaker states get more security protection than others from great powers? How can we explain such variations in foreign policy choices and their consequences for weaker states’ security interests?”

“......we can conceptualize that there are three main foreign policy choices for a weaker state, assuming there are mainly two great powers competing for influence in a specific region. The first is to seek alliance with only one great power, no matter whether it is balancing against or bandwagoning with a particular one. The other two options are to stay overall neutral but differentiate in levels of openness. One is to stay isolationist, without engaging either great powers. The other is to engage with both great powers, aiming for open and active engagement that balances the one against the other.”

“The paper makes the following contributions. Theoretically it sets out a rather parsimonious framework of the conditions under which weaker states’ foreign policies can have what kind of implications for their national security interest. It thus provides a general guideline for scholars and policy makers to analyze and evaluate weaker states’ foreign policy choices under different circumstances of great power competition.”

“Empirically, the findings of the paper can also shed light on how we should appraise contemporary regional alignment situation in Southeast Asia. In the current environment of Sino-U.S. competition in Southeast Asia, as long as the competition remains moderate, it seems the weaker states in the region have generally taken up the foreign policy position in active engagement with both great powers, barring perhaps the Philippines and Vietnam, where a direct conflict of interests with China in their territorial disputes in the South China Sea has pushed them to seek closer alliance with the United States.”

Author
Dr. Enze Han is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London. His research interests include ethnic politics in China, China’s relations with Southeast Asia, especially with Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand, and the politics of state formation in the borderland area between China, Myanmar and Thailand. His recent publications include Contestation and Adapation: The Politics of National Identity in China (OUP, 2013), and with various articles appearing in The Journal of Contemporary China, The China Quarterly, Nationalities Papers, Security Studies, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, among others. Previously, Dr. Han was a postdoctoral fellow in the China and the World Program, Princeton University. He received a Ph.D in Political Science from the George Washington University. He is currently a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. His research has also been supported by the Leverhulme Research Fellowship.