This dichotomous approach to understanding Southeast Asia regional security Strategic is problematic, as neither a straightforward realist nor an exclusively liberal interpretation is sufficient to account for the security thinking and practices in this region. On the one hand, these regional security Strategies do not conform to the range of realist predictions. According to Kenneth Weltz’s pure power calculation, Southeast Asia states, as secondary states that are relatively free to choose, ought to “flock to the weaker side” so that they can balance against the dominant power in the system. But Southeast Asia states have not aligned with China specifically to balance against greater U.S. power. To some extent, Stephen Walt’s modified notion of balance of threat does help to explain Southeast Asia states’ reluctance to balance against the United States and their reservations about alignment with China. Whereas the United States is widely perceived to be a benign offshore power, many of these states distrust Chinese intentions for reasons of geographical proximity, historical enmity and interference, contemporary territorial disputes, and rising economic competition. Although Southeast Asia leaders have now banished the “China threat” from their rhetoric, the “China challenge” remains prominent in the regional lexicon, and almost every country’s leaders express worries about the territorial disputes in the South China Sea and about potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan. Yet there is little evidence of direct internal or external balancing against China by states such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, which have the most acute historical, territorial, and political disputes with it. They are severely limited in their capabilities for a serious arms buildup, and they have not undertaken exclusive alliances with other external power or neighbors. Singapore, which has been strengthening its military capabilities, has no any direct military dispute with China and is not targeting China directly. Mean while, all Southeast Asia allies of the United States also maintain strategic partner ships with China.
Part of the problem with applying realist analysis to Southeast Asia strategic preferences rests with realism’s indeterminacy about the behavior of secondary or small states. Decisions by small states about balancing are influenced by a host of other calculations, including the high political and material costs of balancing strategies, threat assessments across issue areas, and cultural or ideational influences. Robert Ross has usefully argued that smaller East Asia states are generally accommodating ti China’s growing economic and especially military prowess, and it is only those that are less directly vulnerable to China’s military power that are strengthening alignment with the United States. Yet, he does not account for the range of strategies to engage with China that these smaller East Asia states adopt alongside alignment with the United States. In contrast, David Kang argues that East Asia’s tradition of hierarchical relations has prevented balancing against China. Working from another realist perspective that holds international politics to be marked by a succession of hierarchies rather than recurrent multi-polar balancing, he points out that prior to the intervention of Western power, states in East Asia were used to an asymmetrical regional order in which Chinese domination meant relatively little intervention by China in their affairs, and so was perceived as a source of stability and benefit. Kang’s implication is that East Asian states are more comfortable with deferring to a strong China than others might think: thus the United States will not succeed in finding support for an outright balancing strategy.