*Originally published in 2024. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.
When discussing foreign policy strategies available to medium and small powers, IR experts tend to focus on bandwagoning and balancing – concepts popularized by scholars such as Kenneth Waltz and Randall Schweller. Bandwagoning is considered a strategy of weak states whose hopes of survival, in a system dominated by great powers, can be shored up by closely aligning with a regional hegemon. Balancing is thought to be suitable for medial states who feel confident about counteracting a rising or revisionist power, together with other like-minded, status quo actors. However, there is a middle path not receiving nearly enough attention from academia and practitioners. The approach is called hedging, and it revolves around three central tenets: avoiding explicit association as well as confrontation with great powers; being simultaneously deferent and defiant toward the regional hegemon; and diversifying diplomatic relations and economic cooperation with a wide range of regional and global actors, with the goal of averting dependency from any single power.
An excellent example of a successful hedging strategy is Vietnam. As a country sharing a land and sea border with the People’s Republic of China – including an ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea – Vietnam was expected (along with other countries in Southeast Asia) to join a U.S.-led balancing coalition that would counteract China’s rise, and ensure a rules-based order in the wider Indo-Pacific region. According to prevailing neo-realist thinking, this would be a rational choice for Hanoi, which has ample evidence from its national history regarding Chinese encroachment. However, there are no signs that Vietnam is pursuing an external balancing strategy towards its big neighbor in the North. The country’s leadership remains steadfast regarding the “Four No’s” defense policy. These are: 1. no partaking in military alliances, 2. no siding with one country to act against another, 3. no foreign military bases on Vietnamese territory or using Vietnam as leverage to counteract other countries, and 4. no using force or threatening to use force in international relations. As long as the “Four No’s” remain integral to CPV’s party line, Hanoi’s membership in AUKUS, QUAD or any similar security partnership is out of the question.
When it comes to strengthening one’s own defense capabilities, Vietnam is doing what it can to modernize its heavily Soviet/Russian-based military systems and sustain a credible deterrent force. According to GlobalData, Vietnam’s total defense budget is expected to grow from $ 6.5 billion in 2020 to $ 10.2 billion by the end of the decade. Although this represents a noticeable increase, it is still a far cry from China’s defense budget for 2024, worth $ 231.4 billion. Moreover, Hanoi’s boost of defense spending corresponds to Vietnam’s overall economic growth and is consistent with the country’s official foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralization and diversification; particularly the first two points. In other words, it would be farfetched 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. There are several reasons for this strategic decision. First and foremost, Vietnam doesn’t perceive China as an existential threat; the long-standing feud over territorial waters and exclusive economic zones in the South China Sea is simply not as severe as Western observers thought or hoped it would be. Secondly, up to this point China hasn’t given Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries strong enough incentives to create or join an anti-Chinese coalition. However, this could change easily should Beijing opt for coercive reunification with Taiwan. The third and fourth reasons aren’t related to China at all, but its chief competitor – the United States. Hanoi is weary of Washington’s persistent democracy versus autocracy narrative and suspects “hostile forces” of contemplating a regime change in Vietnam, if not in the short or medium term, then certainly in the long run. Additionally, Vietnam’s leaders are not persuaded by the U.S.’ powerful presence in the Indo-Pacific, fearing possible abandonment should Washington embark on an isolationist course under a reelected Donald Trump or a like-minded presidential administration 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 which are dominated by the respective great powers, leaving very little (if any) room for the maneuvering of lesser states. In short, by refusing to balance China, Vietnam is protecting its autonomy in international affairs.
Too big (a country of 100 million inhabitants) and too self-confident (a nation that has prevailed against Japanese, French and American armies) to choose bandwagoning, Vietnam has opted for the hedging strategy. As explained in the introduction, hedging involves equidistance to the major centers of power. Additionally, due to their Taoist-Confucian cultural base, the 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 all other international actors for that matter, are simultaneously perceived as friends and foes, as potential partners and possible threats. Consequently, Hanoi is careful not to provoke Beijing by getting too intimate with Washington, while at the same time it is deepening its economic and cultural ties with the U.S. and other liberal-democratic states such as South Korea, Japan and Australia. Similarly, the Vietnamese leadership tacitly approves U.S.’ engagement in keeping the Indo-Pacific “free and open”, while resisting American overtures for tighter security cooperation. The Vietnamese variant of strategic ambiguity has ensured that Hanoi is courted by all and threatened by none; at least not in the way that Ukraine’s very existence is threatened by Russia.
Regarding the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, Vietnam remains neutral in line with its policy of not publicly opposing great powers. It has abstained on four UNGA resolutions condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Expectedly, it has equally refrained from recognizing Russia’s illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory. Hanoi was Moscow’s ally during the Cold War and Russia remains Vietnam’s biggest supplier of weapons. However, the analogies between Sino-Vietnamese and Russo-Ukrainian relations are hard to miss. In both cases there is a vast asymmetry of power, as well as a long history of political domination and cultural influence by the larger state. How is it then, that China and Vietnam successfully avoid escalation despite a protracted maritime dispute, whereas the Russia and Ukraine got embroiled in the worst armed conflict on European soil since the end of World War II?
From a Vietnamese perspective, it could be argued that Ukraine had miscalculated when it chose to balance Russia by aligning with the West in the aftermath of the 2004 Orange revolution (yet another reason for Vietnam’s ruling communist party to fear regime change in Hanoi). The drive towards membership in the European Union and NATO under presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko was a clear signal that Ukraine wanted to steer clear of 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 actor) and an equivalent loss for Moscow. In comparison, Hanoi always makes sure that any rapprochement between Vietnam and a Western or liberal-democratic country is not perceived as detrimental to Beijing. For example, a U.S. aircraft carrier can make a port call in Da Nang, but the United States Navy shouldn’t expect to gain permission to use it as its permanent base in the South China Sea. Every move Hanoi makes, or doesn’t make, is intended to serve Vietnam’s national interests without upsetting the regional status quo.
Since 2004, the tumultuous Ukrainian democracy has produced three openly pro-Western presidents (Yushchenko, Poroshenko and Zelenskyy) who sought to balance Russia, and one unabashedly pro-Russia head of state (Yanukovych), who bandwagoned with the Eastern side. According to the Vietnamese philosophy of foreign policy, both approaches have been wrong. Instead, Kiev should have opted for the hedging strategy and should have treated Moscow ambivalently, as both a partner and a threat. Perhaps, by studying China-Vietnam relations and maintaining a policy of equidistance vis-à-vis Russia and the U.S., Ukraine could have averted an all-out war. The different outcomes – peace between China and Vietnam, war between Russia and Ukraine – of these otherwise most similar cases point to a strategic rethinking of foreign policy at large. That is, to carefully assess the pros and cons of strategies available to medium and small powers in light of their relations with revisionist states and rising powers. It might just be that balancing is not the appropriate reaction to every (potential) hegemon.
Janko Bekić, PhD, is an analyst at the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Croatia, and a lecturer at the Dr. Franjo Tuđman Croatian Military Academy.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Croatia or the Croatian Military Academy.
This article makes an important contribution to the debate on small and medium powers by drawing attention to a strategy that is often positioned between the conventional categories of balancing and bandwagoning: hedging.
The Vietnamese case is particularly valuable because it demonstrates that strategic autonomy does not necessarily require neutrality in the absolute sense. A state can deepen economic, diplomatic, technological, and even defense relationships with multiple major powers while deliberately avoiding dependence on any single strategic bloc. In this sense, hedging is not simply indecision. Under certain conditions, it can be a deliberate strategy for preserving room for maneuver.
However, the comparison between Vietnam and Ukraine requires an important qualification.
The existence of asymmetry between two states does not automatically make their strategic circumstances comparable. Vietnam and China have a long history of conflict and political interaction, but their contemporary relationship operates within a particular Southeast Asian regional environment in which Hanoi has developed multiple channels for managing competition, economic interdependence, diplomatic signaling, and maritime disputes. Ukraine's relationship with Russia evolved within a fundamentally different post-imperial, post-Soviet, European security environment, involving territorial sovereignty, competing political orientations, unresolved security guarantees, and ultimately direct interstate warfare.
Therefore, the crucial question is not simply whether Ukraine should have hedged rather than balanced.
The deeper question is: under what conditions does hedging actually preserve strategic autonomy, and under what conditions can it merely postpone a confrontation whose underlying structural causes remain unresolved?
This distinction is particularly important for international relations theory.
Hedging works best when the major powers involved have sufficient incentives to tolerate the smaller state's strategic ambiguity. Vietnam benefits from maintaining relationships with multiple external actors precisely because its partners have reasons to preserve access to Vietnam rather than force Hanoi into an exclusive alignment. The strategy therefore depends not only on what the smaller state wants, but also on the tolerance of the surrounding great powers.
Once a major power begins to interpret another state's autonomy as strategically unacceptable, the space for hedging can contract dramatically.
This is where Ukraine presents a difficult case.
It is tempting to argue retrospectively that Ukraine should simply have remained equidistant between Russia and the West. But such an argument risks treating strategic alignment as a unilateral choice while underestimating the agency of the larger power. Ukraine's foreign-policy orientation was not created in a vacuum. It was shaped by domestic political developments, historical memory, perceptions of security, Russian policy, European institutions, NATO's evolution, and the changing regional balance of power.
A state's attempt to preserve strategic autonomy can itself become a source of insecurity when competing great powers interpret that autonomy through opposing strategic lenses.
There is also a significant distinction between “hedging” and “strategic ambiguity.”
A successful hedging strategy requires credible deterrence, diversified relationships, economic resilience, diplomatic flexibility, and sufficient military capability to make coercion costly. Without these foundations, ambiguity may not create autonomy; it may instead create uncertainty about the state's intentions without providing adequate protection against coercion.
This lesson has direct relevance beyond Vietnam and Ukraine.
Afghanistan offers another perspective on the problem of strategic autonomy. For decades, Afghanistan attempted—under very different governments and historical circumstances—to maneuver among competing external powers. Yet the country repeatedly became vulnerable when external actors acquired disproportionate influence over its political, economic, military, or security structures. The central lesson is not that Afghanistan should have adopted one particular alignment. It is that sovereignty becomes fragile when a state's survival depends too heavily on external strategic guarantees while its internal political institutions remain insufficiently resilient.
This suggests that the most important variable in hedging may actually be domestic capacity.
A state cannot successfully hedge between competing powers merely by maintaining diplomatic distance. It needs institutional resilience, political cohesion, economic diversification, credible defense capabilities, and a sufficiently coherent national strategy. Otherwise, external balancing and bandwagoning can become substitutes for capabilities that the state has failed to develop internally.
The Vietnamese experience is therefore especially interesting not simply because Hanoi avoids choosing sides, but because Vietnam has built enough national capacity to make strategic flexibility meaningful.
That is a much more demanding proposition than neutrality.
The article also raises an important theoretical challenge to structural realism. If balancing were always the rational response to the rise of a neighboring great power, Vietnam should look very different today. Its behavior suggests that states do not respond mechanically to changes in relative power. Historical experience, domestic political institutions, economic interdependence, geographic conditions, perceptions of threat, leadership calculations, and expectations about future great-power behavior all influence strategic choice.
In that sense, hedging deserves to be treated not as a third universal strategy between balancing and bandwagoning, but as a conditional strategy whose success depends heavily on context.
The strongest lesson from the Vietnam-Ukraine comparison may therefore be more general than the author's counterfactual conclusion.
Small and medium powers should preserve strategic options whenever possible. They should diversify partnerships rather than create unnecessary dependency, strengthen their own capabilities rather than outsource security entirely, maintain communication with competing powers, and avoid allowing external actors to define their strategic choices completely.
But strategic autonomy also requires recognizing the limits of autonomy.
A smaller state cannot always control how a neighboring great power interprets its choices. Nor can diplomatic ambiguity substitute indefinitely for deterrence, institutional resilience, or a coherent national strategy.
The real strategic objective of hedging, therefore, should not be “equidistance” for its own sake.
It should be the preservation of decision-making autonomy.
That distinction matters greatly. A state may be geographically close to one power, economically connected to another, militarily cooperating with a third, and diplomatically engaged with all of them without necessarily becoming a satellite of any. The objective is not to avoid relationships; it is to prevent any single relationship from becoming so dominant that it eliminates strategic choice.
Vietnam's experience demonstrates that this can be possible.
Ukraine's tragedy demonstrates how difficult it can become once the strategic environment no longer permits it.
For international relations scholarship, that makes hedging less a formula to be copied and more a strategic condition to be understood: autonomy exists only when a state possesses both the capacity and the external space to exercise it.
— Wahidullah Noorzai
Former Senior ANCOP/ANP Officer | Field Strategist & Regional Security Analyst
NOPGC — Noorzai Operational Police Generation Center