Abstract This article develops the theory of damage limitation, a wedge strategy that great powers employ when a high-value target is slipping away from them but is not yet irrevocably aligned with a rival. Under such conditions, divider great powers pursue modest ends, relying primarily on prudent, reward-heavy strategies, and engage in selective, issue-specific wedging rather than ambitious efforts to reshape their targets' overall alignment. The theory highlights how a target's alignment trajectory shapes a divider's evolving objectives, instruments and scope of action, portraying wedge strategy as a Clausewitzian, dialectical and adaptive process of move and counter-move. To probe its plausibility, we examine how China and Russia adjusted their strategies toward the European Union and its major member states in 2016–2024 and 2014–2022 respectively. This analysis shows that shifts in the target's trajectory—from hedging to distancing to becoming an irrevocably ‘lost cause’—produce corresponding shifts in the divider's wedge strategy, while also illuminating the conditions under which coercion emerges, how wedging relates to broader balancing behaviour, and when substate influence efforts become more prominent. The article advances a more granular understanding of wedge strategies and contributes to wider debates on Chinese and Russian grand strategy.
Simón et al. (Wed,) studied this question.