Southeast Asia deepens hedging amid Trump 2.0 turbulence
Southeast Asia deepens hedging amid Trump 2.0 turbulence
WRITTEN BY HUNTER MARSTON
1 July 2025
Reeling from US President Donald Trump's sudden announcement of unilateral tariffs and their equally swift reversal, Southeast Asian countries are scrambling to respond to heightened uncertainty in global markets, as well as the ongoing US-China rivalry. Regional states have exhibited an array of tactics to safeguard their interests.
It is too early to predict whether the next four years will prompt Southeast Asia to align more closely with China as a result of an increasingly unpredictable and divided United States. But early moves suggest that rather than making stark choices between the two superpowers, Southeast Asian states are deepening their hedging strategies.
Four elements of hedging distinguish this archetype of strategic behaviour from other forms of alignment, such as bandwagoning (aligning with a threat), balancing (aligning with a third party to oppose a threat) or neutrality across Southeast Asia — blunting, broadening, boosting, and binding.
Southeast Asian anxieties with the Trump administration’s turn toward protectionist trade policies were evident in the May 2025 ASEAN Summit, when the regional bloc expressed ‘deep concern’ with US tariffs.
Blunting refers to a state’s efforts to enhance its domestic military capabilities to deter external threats. Blunting may also be referred to as indirect balancing, which is consistent with hedging’s ‘opposite, mutually counteracting measures’ when pursued alongside cooperative behaviour (binding).
Blunting may include military modernisation programs, as seen in Singapore’s acquisition of two German invincible-class submarines to add to its fleet, announced in early 2025. Singapore also purchased eight F-35 jets from the United States to upgrade the Singapore Air Force in 2024, with the jets scheduled to arrive beginning in 2026. While the decision preceded the second Trump term, Singaporean strategists, no doubt confirmed their intent to acquire the new fleet with full knowledge that the former US president would return to power.
In mid-April 2025, Vietnam agreed to purchase at least 24 F-16 fighter jets from the United States, despite — or because of — the threat of tariffs and ongoing uncertainty in the US–Vietnam partnership stemming from Trump’s unpredictability. The Trump administration shocked Vietnamese observers when it announced a 46 per cent tariff rate applied to Vietnam, one of the highest in the region.
The second aspect of hedging that sets it apart from more clear-cut types of alignment is broadening, or diversification of a state’s strategic partners. In March 2025, Vietnam upgraded its partnerships with Indonesia and Singapore to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership. Vietnam has added nine new comprehensive strategic partnerships in the past three years, including with Australia, the United States, Japan and South Korea. Broadening its network of strategic partnerships reflects Hanoi’s foreign policy doctrine of diversification and multilateralisation, known in Vietnamese as da dang hoa, da phuong hoa.
Vietnam is not the only country diversifying security ties in Southeast Asia. After the Philippines upgraded nine of its military bases as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States, the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration began negotiating visiting forces agreements with New Zealand, Canada and France. This adds to its list of existing visiting forces agreements with Australia and the United States.
Even Cambodia, frequently pilloried as a Chinese client state, has hosted Japanese Self-Defense Force vessels at Ream Naval Base on its southern coast. Ream has attracted international attention since The Wall Street Journal published a story in 2019 alleging that Phnom Penh had signed a secret deal giving Beijing exclusive access to the base.
The third component of hedging is boosting, which refers to the amplification of a state’s interests by internationalising a dispute or speaking up on a particular issue in multilateral forums, where small states are better able to leverage their concerns. The annual Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by Singapore, has become the preeminent security forum where defence officials from across the region, including the United States and China, come together. Singapore has often used the occasion to urge the great powers to exercise restraint.
The annual ASEAN summit is another forum for regional leaders to voice collective concerns. Southeast Asian anxieties with the Trump administration’s turn toward protectionist trade policies were evident in the May 2025 ASEAN Summit, when the regional bloc expressed ‘deep concern’ with US tariffs.
The final aspect, binding, refers to a hedger deepening ties with a potential security threat — such as China or the United States — in order to bind the larger power to its interests and signal cooperative intent. Binding is distinct from bandwagoning, as a smaller power may utilise binding alongside blunting or internal balancing. Hanoi uses binding via close party-to-party links to ensure a degree of stability in bilateral relations with Beijing and maintain a channel of communication to manage disputes. Vietnam and China have repeatedly relied on direct communication channels to de-escalate tensions in the South China Sea.
Malaysia has also practised binding to mitigate regional tensions and signal its willingness to embrace China’s expanding influence. During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit in April 2025, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim vowed that his country stood ‘with the Chinese government, for the well-being of our people and for our national economic interests, as well as the overall development and stability of our country’. However, Malaysia simultaneously engages in close security cooperation with the United States as part of its overall hedging strategy.
The four ‘Bs’ of blunting, broadening, boosting and binding are useful to identify hedging and illustrate how it is distinct from balancing or bandwagoning. Given heightened uncertainty and instability associated with an erratic United States and ongoing rivalry between Washington and Beijing, Southeast Asian states are utilising the four Bs to deepen their hedging strategies. While hedging is a suboptimal strategy compared to pure balancing for less powerful states, it is a prudent choice that maximises their flexibility in foreign relations for the foreseeable future.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Hunter Marston has a PhD in International Relations from the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University. He is a Southeast Asia Associate at 9DASHLINE and an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe University. Image credit: Philippines Department of National Defence.