“Hedging” and “Context Analysis” in Malaysian Foreign Relations

The idea of “hedging” is employed increasingly as a critical international relations (IR) tool, especially for understanding current interaction between ASEAN states and China. In certain circumstances, it does have explanatory advantages; but “hedging” is sometimes employed in unconvincing ways, and—like related concepts of rational-strategic calculus, such as balancing and bandwagoning—its ready use can lead to the neglect of other factors driving international relations decision-making. It is argued here that IR analyses can be enriched by a greater emphasis on what might be termed “context analysis”—that is, an approach that is concerned not with developing universally-applicable tools or laws, but with the investigation of local dynamics, including the role of country-specific (often historically-embedded) values and concepts, as well as material factors. This paper, which is more a conversation with IR than an exercise in IR—and welcomes growing interest in historical investigation in such areas of IR as Foreign Policy Analysis and Neoclassical Realism—resists the continued universalizing that much IR writing entails, partly on practical grounds. The assumption that all countries operate within a common rational-strategic framework not only sidelines other drivers, including non-Western perspectives—it can also sharpen rather than soften interstate tensions. Especially with this in mind, the present essay argues a case that is significant for policymakers as well as academic analysts.