SEPTEMBER 10 — For years, one of the most common descriptions of Southeast Asian foreign policy has been “hedging.”
Asean member states, according to this interpretation, hedge between the United States and China.
They cooperate economically with Beijing while maintaining security relationships with Washington.
They avoid choosing sides because the strategic outcome of great-power competition remains uncertain.
There is some truth to this interpretation. But “hedging” has become too narrow a concept to describe what Asean states are actually doing.
They are not merely hedging their bets. They are spreading and deepening their options. A better word for this behaviour may be polytropous.
Derived from the Greek polytropos, meaning “many-turned” or “of many ways,” the term is famously associated with Odysseus: the figure capable of adapting, manoeuvring and finding different routes through difficult circumstances.
The strategic environment confronting Asean increasingly requires precisely this quality.
Hedging is fundamentally a concept derived from risk management. One protects oneself against an adverse outcome by maintaining positions on different sides.
But Asean diplomacy has become more sophisticated than this.
Indonesia does not maintain relations with China, the United States, Japan, India, Australia, the European Union, Russia and the Gulf states merely because Jakarta cannot decide which great power will prevail.
Neither does Malaysia. Nor do Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand or the Philippines conduct diversified foreign relations simply because they are afraid of making choices.
They are deliberately expanding the number of choices available to them.
This distinction matters. A hedge is essentially defensive. Polytropous diplomacy is active. It involves creating diplomatic, economic, technological and strategic pathways before they become urgently necessary. When one pathway becomes difficult, another remains available.
When relations with one major power become strained, other relationships can absorb some of the pressure.
When geopolitical rivalry closes one door, Asean states attempt to ensure that several others remain open.
The tendency to frame Southeast Asia exclusively through US-China competition also misunderstands the region.
Asean does not inhabit a geopolitical universe containing only Washington and Beijing.
Japan remains one of Southeast Asia’s most important economic and technological partners.
South Korea has developed extensive commercial and industrial relationships across the region. India is becoming increasingly consequential economically and strategically. Australia remains deeply engaged with Southeast Asian security.
The European Union is an important market, investor and regulatory power.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other Gulf economies are becoming increasingly significant sources of investment and capital.
Asean itself continues developing relationships through Asean Plus Three, the East Asia Summit, the Asean Regional Forum and the Asean Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus. The result is not neutrality in the classical sense.
It is a deliberate multiplication of relationships.
The objective is straightforward: never allow the region’s strategic future to depend excessively on one external power. Spreading Is Not Enough
Yet merely accumulating partners is insufficient. Asean countries must also deepen these relationships. Having diplomatic relations with ten major partners means little if eight of them remain superficial.
A genuinely polytropous strategy therefore requires several layers of engagement.
China may remain central to trade and manufacturing supply chains.
The United States may remain indispensable in technology, finance and security. Japan can provide infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and long-term industrial investment. South Korea contributes technology and industrial ecosystems. India offers another enormous economic and strategic horizon.
The Gulf states increasingly provide capital, energy partnerships and investment.
Europe offers markets, technology, education and regulatory cooperation.
These relationships do not have to be identical. Indeed, they should not be.
The purpose of polytropous diplomacy is precisely to develop different relationships for different strategic functions.
This is where ASEAN’s much-discussed strategic autonomy actually comes from. Autonomy does not arise from isolation.
Nor does it come from refusing partnerships. Paradoxically, strategic autonomy can be strengthened by having more relationships rather than fewer, provided none becomes overwhelmingly dominant.
An Asean state deeply connected to only one great power possesses limited room for manoeuvre.
An Asean state connected simultaneously to multiple centres of economic, technological and diplomatic power has considerably more options.
This is why Asean’s diplomatic architecture often appears excessively crowded to outsiders.
There are Asean Plus One arrangements, Asean Plus Three, the East Asia Summit, the Asean Regional Forum, ADMM-Plus and numerous strategic partnerships.
Yet this institutional density serves an important purpose. It creates overlapping networks.
And overlapping networks generate strategic options.
There is sometimes a temptation to describe Asean’s external relations as a form of geopolitical “polyamory”: maintaining several relationships simultaneously without committing exclusively to one.
The metaphor captures something important about Southeast Asian diplomacy. But polytropous goes further.
Polyamory describes the existence of multiple relationships. Polytropous strategy describes the ability to navigate among them intelligently.
It requires judgement about when to lean towards one partner, when to strengthen another, when to resist pressure and when to create an entirely new diplomatic pathway. This is not opportunism. Neither is it strategic promiscuity.
It is the foreign policy behaviour of states that understand the limitations imposed by geography and asymmetrical power.
The South China Sea Demonstrates Why Nowhere is this clearer than in the South China Sea.
Asean claimant states cannot simply disengage from China. Geography makes China a permanent neighbour. Economic interdependence makes complete separation unrealistic.
Yet accepting Chinese predominance would equally constrain their sovereignty.
The logical response is not a binary choice. It is to widen the strategic field.
Economic engagement with China can coexist with maritime cooperation with the United States, infrastructure partnerships with Japan, defence cooperation with Australia, strategic dialogue with India and diplomatic engagement through Asean. Different relationships perform different functions.
This is polytropous statecraft in practice. Asean’s Middle Indo-Pacific Way The emerging world order will make such adaptability increasingly necessary.
The international system is becoming simultaneously more multipolar and more fragmented.
The United States remains extraordinarily powerful. China continues expanding its economic and technological capabilities. India is rising.
Japan is strengthening its strategic role. Europe seeks greater autonomy. West Asian powers are becoming more internationally ambitious, even as the struggle in the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea.
Technology, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy security, critical minerals and supply chains are creating additional layers of geopolitical competition.
Asean cannot afford to organise its foreign policy around a single axis.
Its advantage lies precisely in occupying the middle Indo-Pacific space where multiple powers intersect. But being in the middle must never mean being passive.
The middle can become strategically valuable only when Asean continuously creates options around itself.
Polytropous Asean The vocabulary used to describe Asean matters because vocabulary shapes how its behaviour is understood.
“Hedging” portrays Southeast Asian countries as waiting nervously to discover which great power will eventually dominate. That is increasingly inaccurate.
Asean states are doing something more deliberate.
They are expanding diplomatic relationships, diversifying economic partnerships, building new technological connections, cultivating middle powers and strengthening ties with emerging centres of capital and influence. They are not simply avoiding choices. They are creating choices.
The distinction is fundamental. The most successful Asean states in the coming decades will therefore not necessarily be those that align most closely with the strongest power.
They will be those capable of maintaining the greatest strategic room for manoeuvre while preserving their sovereignty and national interests.
In an increasingly uncertain international system, Asean member states do not merely hedge.
They spread. They deepen. They diversify. And, increasingly, they must become polytropous.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies, and director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views ofMalay Mail.
