Toward Futurist Approach of Hedging Strategy in Southeast Asia: Anticipations and Strategic Decision-Making in a Taiwan Contingency

Pak Nung Wong^*

• University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom

In midst of China's rise and intensifying China-U.S. competition in the Indo-Pacific region, it is widely consented among international scholars that a key strategy in Southeast Asia's statecraft and geopolitics is the adoption of 'hedging' against the great powers, for maximizing economic gains and mitigating security risks. For more than two decades, academic, strategic and policy studies of Southeast Asia's hedging strategies have contributed a wealth of diverse scholarships, which also increasingly influence the academic, strategic and policy debates among the emerging powers, and small-and-medium-sized littoral states in the Indo-Pacific region. This paper will review the literature and identify the key theoretical developments and research gaps. In response to ta consented conceptual-methodological gap for effectively addressing, capturing and mitigating the structural uncertainties and security risks arising from the great power rivalry, this paper will outline an futurist approach of anticipatory methodology. Using a Taiwan contingency for scenario planning in which the U.S. and China would engage in an armed conflict over Taiwan for anticipations, it will imagine the possible, plausible, probable and preferable scenarios, the corresponding policy options, and identify the limits and strategic scenarios that South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam would likely consider and probably encounter. This paper will conclude that in order to preserve a suitable external security environment for hedging for maximizing economic gains and minimizing security risks, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would need to work closely not just with the ASEAN member-states, but also with the partners to proactively prevent a Taiwan contingency from happening.