서강대학교

초록/요약

This research primarily attempts to explore the hedging strategy of Southeast Asia in dealing with the risks arising from great power competition in the region with a special focus on the nuances between hedging behaviors of mainland and maritime Southeast Asia. It then proposes to foresee Southeast Asia’s choice of strategy in the near future and contends that it will continue the hedging strategy and include minilateralism as a tool and the European Union (EU) as a source of favorable options to facilitate hedging. The findings indicate that the main source of nuances between the hedging behaviors in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia is the different core issues in the connection between the hedger and the great power(s). In the near future, Southeast Asia is expected to continue hedging and is likely to include minilateralism into its toolkit. Meanwhile, by providing a variety of projects and initiatives, EU has the potential to offer Southeast Asia with new options and prove itself a trustworthy and valuable alternative in facilitating Southeast Asia’s hedging strategy. Besides examining and redefining hedging, this research is different from other studies on Southeast Asia’s hedging strategy in two aspects. First, it compares the hedging behaviors in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia while most comparative studies on hedging in Southeast Asia focus on the differences between individual Southeast Asian states. Second, it contends that minilateralism can be a tool of hedging, which is different from the studies treating minilateralism and hedging as parallel approaches of Southeast Asia to offset the risks created by great power rivalry in the region.