India–Vietnam Axis and China: The Allure of Hedging

Introduction

The rise of China and its impact on regional as well as global power structure has been at the heart of contemporary international politics (Bekkevold, 2014; Ikenberry, 2008; Whyte, 2013). Will its rise be peaceful or will it rupture the international structure has been extensively debated (Mearsheimer, 2006; Toje et al., 2017). Same has been the response of the established power like the US in particular as well as its local neighbours. If the rise of China has put the great power politics back on the table and if it has made the balance of power theory as the cynosure of international relations (IR) (Koga, 2018, p. 633), the dominant ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ dichotomy has faced serious theoretical as well as empirical challenges. The experience of most of its neighbours’ response to a rising giant neighbour has given rise to an anomaly that the existing dichotomy fails to explain. Instead, scholars of international politics have come up with new conceptual constructs to characterise such behaviour. One of the much-debated items has been hedging (Foot, 2006; Goh, 2006; Kuik, 2008; Medeiros, 2005). Most of China’s neighbours find it very hard to press too hard for either end of the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ dichotomy while dealing with an aggressive giant neighbour. Much work is going on the exploration of the hedging strategy in connection with the response of a rising China’s neighbours towards it. Most of the existing studies have employed this strategy to explain the individual state’s response towards a rising China (Kuik, 2016). There seems to be a larger settlement within the international scholar’s community working on hedging that it is the best available theoretical tool to explain the behaviour of most of China’s neighbours towards it.

India and Vietnam are the two most affected neighbours of a rising China. While the former is hailed as the most worthy peer competitor, the latter also qualifies to be a challenger. Despite the disparity in power and influence of New Delhi and Hanoi, both are going through a similar experience vis-à-vis an aggressive and assertive China. If, on the one hand, they are consistently striving to enhance their capabilities by both internal as well as external means, on the other hand, they are cancelling it out by simultaneously engaging China. This article while taking the exploration of the term hedging further contributes to the existing literature in the following ways. First, it engages with the ongoing debate on the exploration of the term hedging. Second, it examines the emerging India–Vietnam axis through the alternative and still under-theorised and underexplored prism than the hitherto dominant ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ dichotomy. Third, it argues that hedging is not only the best available theoretical lens to examine the India–Vietnam axis keeping in view the shared threat posed by a giant neighbour but it further demonstrates that it is also the most alluring option available to them given the complex strategic environment. Even if there has been some work on Vietnam from the perspective of Hedging, the Indian side continues to be dominated by the balancing end of the hitherto dichotomy (Acharya, 2003). Fourth, it simplifies the rationale of a hedging strategy by exploring the driving factors that apply to both India and Vietnam. Fifth, it argues that examining the driving factors cannot uncover the complexities of India–Vietnam relations for the academicians who are expecting too much from the relationship and are mostly critical of their reluctance to openly embrace each other. Finally, this article provides some policy implications that will be instrumental for policymakers of New Delhi and Hanoi to address each other’s concerns by understanding each other’s position. Following this introduction, this article is divided into four sections followed by a conclusion. The next section engages with the extant debate on hedging by unpacking and clarifying the concept that is being understood and employed here. The following section examines the dynamic of India–Vietnam axis and the role of China’s threat, which places it towards the balancing end of the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ spectrum. The next section examines their efforts to cloud the logic of the balancing end of the spectrum and discusses various measures that stretch towards the bandwagoning end. The penultimate section examines the factors that drive their hedging behaviour and also demonstrates explicitly as to why this is the most alluring option for them. The concluding section summarises the main arguments and provides some policy implications for policymakers of both New Delhi and Hanoi.

Beyond the ‘Balancing–Bandwagoning’ Dichotomy: Understanding Hedging

Alliances or, to use much broader term, ‘alignment’ along with balance of power continue to remain the most widely studied and frequently revisited subjects in the scholarly literature on interstate relations (Nexon, 2009; Snyder, 1997; Walt, 1987). This is reasonable because one of the central foreign policy debates in every country centres on the concern of which nation to ally with and for how long. During the late 1970s and up to almost 1990s, due to a rigorous scholarly investigation, the literature produced the dominant ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ debate (Schweller, 1994; Walt, 1987; Waltz, 1979). While allying with others, states either balance or bandwagon. While balancing is defined as allying with other states against the threatening one, bandwagoning is allying with the source of threat (Walt, 1987). There is little doubt to argue that this debate continues to sharpen the argumentation of why and how states align the way they do. However, if, on the one hand, the rise of China has made the balance of power theory a cynosure of IR; on the other hand, the parsimony of this theory had encountered a lot of theoretical as well as empirical challenges (Koga, 2018). The response of most of China’s neighbours demonstrates what Amitav Acharya reckons: the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ dichotomy is too narrow to explain it (Acharya, 2003). The term that better explains the behaviour beyond this dichotomy and which has, in fact, drawn particular policy and scholarly attention in the literature is hedging (Koga, 2018). However, despite being hailed as ‘the rule rather than the exception’ (Goh, 2006) among states and its growing usage as an ‘alternative’ alignment choice in IR literature, hedging still remains an understudied, under-theorised and often taken for granted concept in IR literature (Boon, 2016). While taking it further, Evelyn Goh argues that even among those who attempted to develop the concept in IR by giving it a greater definitional rigour, hedging remains ‘problematic’ (Goh, 2006). Almost after 10 years, another notable scholar, engaging with this concept, Cheng-Chwee Kuik attests that the argument made by Goh still holds true due to the lack of a commonly accepted definition of the term (Kuik, 2016). Before proceeding to explain hedging as it is to be understood here, it is pertinent to mention that the concept is first and foremost a derivative from non-IR fields such as finance, business studies and scenario planning. However, as already hinted above, the term assumed much popularity within the theoretical literature of IR in connection to the response of most of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states caught within the US–China conundrum. To quote Goh, the strategic behaviour of key ASEAN states is best understood through the prism of hedging rather than balancing or bandwagoning. He defines hedging as ‘a set of strategies aimed at avoiding (or planning for contingencies) in a situation in which states cannot decide upon more straightforward alternatives such as balancing, bandwagoning or neutrality’ but rather cultivating a middle position that forestalls or avoids having to choose one side at the obvious expense of another (Goh, 2006). While taking the similar line, Kuik conceives of it as occupying a middle position between pure balancing and pure bandwagoning involving the mixture of ‘risk-contingency’ and ‘risk-maximising’ options. These are two opposite options for Kuik, because the ‘risk-maximising’ options are aimed at maximising economic, diplomatic and political benefits from a positive relationship with a rising power when all is well, whereas the ‘risk-contingency’ measures are designed to minimise and mitigate risks in case things go awry. Furthermore, they are contradictory and counteracting in that while the former pleases a big power (at times by showing deference to it), the latter displeases it (at times by defying it) (Kuik, 2016). A hedger would typically pursue these options concurrently so that their effects would cancel each other out. The essence of these contradictory acts is to project an image of not siding with or against any power to avoid the danger of putting all the eggs in one basket and to keep a fallback position for as long as the power structure remains uncertain.

The concept of hedging within the recent scholarship has been defined in two major ways. For some scholars, it entails the combination of balancing and bandwagoning together to cancel out the risks associated with each action. The aim is not only to get the benefit of buying time to determine whether the state should balance or bandwagon but also to maintain a neutral position in a manner that would maximise autonomy. However, others tend to define it as a third choice in addition to balancing and bandwagoning and as such contribute to hone the balance of power theory by adding a nuanced explanation of state behaviour (Kang, 2007; Tessman & Wolfe, 2011). In this article, hedging is understood in the context of the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ spectrum within the ‘balance of power’ theory, in which hedging is located between balancing and bandwagoning as the state’s third strategic choice. Hedging is defined here as a combination of contradictory policy moves by states to deal with a threatening rising power located in immediate vicinity. States do not possess the luxury to stretch the balancing–bandwagoning spectrum too much to either of the end, rather employ both in limited ways. There would be balancing measures, but there would also be simultaneous limited bandwagoning efforts because pushing harder for either is very risky and has serious uncertain strategic consequences. To avoid those consequences, hedging ensures a much pragmatic and alluring policy option available to states facing an immediate security threat. Keeping this in view, and to demonstrate why it is so, India–Vietnam axis offers an interesting case to explore.

India–Vietnam Axis and China: The Elephant in the Room

Before analysing the response from India and Vietnam towards a rising and assertive China, it makes good sense to first provide a brief overview of the threat perceptions of both regarding China. A rising China is perceived as a topmost security threat by both India and Vietnam, and this argument is supported by various reasons. Apart from a similar experience of past Chinese aggressions in 1962 and 1979, respectively, both states have engaged in various limited skirmishes and stand-offs with China along their disputed borders. This conflictual history continues to shape their perception of China as a confrontationist and belligerent state (Boon, 2016; Hiep, 2013). The ‘power asymmetry’ and ‘tyranny of geography’ also contributes to their perception of China as a threat (Hiep, 2011; Scott, 2008; Thayer, 2011). Based on the logic of geography, China’s huge economic and military power along with the willingness to use force, as evidenced by its growing assertiveness in recent years, further explains their threat perception. From South China Sea to Dokhlam and the latest Galwan clashes, China had reaffirmed its long-standing perception as an assertive and expansionist northern neighbour. Besides differences on territorial issues, China’s disrespect to rule-based international order and its growing nuclear arsenal is also buttressing their threat perceptions regarding their giant neighbour. Furthermore, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, backing of Pakistan, its growing footprints in South Asia along with Indian Ocean is fuelling Indian threat perceptions of China (Boon, 2016). This shared concern of an aggressive China is pushing both India and Vietnam to pursue both internal as well as external balancing towards it. Internally, they are building up their military strength. Both are going through massive military modernisation programmes enhancing their comprehensive power. Their internal balancing strategy seeks to ensure that the overall balance of power does not tilt in China’s favour; however, the huge power imbalance and the lack of sufficient resources puts serious limitations on their internal balancing measures. Both look at each other as part of their external balancing mechanism to tackle the China threat. Keeping in view the scope of this article, India–Vietnam axis and the role of China threat will be dealt with more elaborately.

For Vietnam, to quote Murray Hiebert, deputy director of the Southeast Asia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, ‘which knows it can never stand up to China on its own but, it figures it can inflict more damage to and perhaps even restrict Beijing’s unilateral forays in the SCS, if its weapons hardware was bolstered a bit more and India appears a very willing partner’ (Panda, 2017a). Similarly, for India, Vietnam being the ‘diamond on the South China Sea’ serves as a blockade to Chinese domination of the South China Sea, from where Beijing would be able to project power up through the Strait of Malacca into the Indian Ocean (Brewster, 2013). Many experts on India’s policy response to China reckon that Vietnam can be an important strategic heft to put pressure on China’s southern flanks, thereby giving it a two-front challenge. For them, India’s ‘Vietnam card’ against China in the South China Sea serves as an equivalent to China’s ‘Pakistan Card’ against India in the Indian Ocean (Brewster, 2013; Karnad, 2014). This proposition, argues Bharat Karnad, is based on a sound geopolitical logic based on New Delhi’s unwillingness and insufficient capabilities and, therefore, is a very cost-effective means of diminishing India’s primary security threat and military challenge and will also ensure paying Beijing back in its own coin (Karnad, 2014). This is classic balancing, and as the proceeding discussion will demonstrate, India–Vietnam axis is, however, an archetype of hedging. With China certainly as the ‘elephant in the room’, India and Vietnam had witnessed a tremendous upward trajectory of their bilateral relationship in the recent past as Beijing has been pushing for more assertive and aggressive territorial claims. Since both India and Vietnam, due to their geographical location, lie at the heart of the emerging Indo-Pacific construct, they play an important role in this strategic space, which is becoming the main theatre for great power politics. This gets exemplified further as both India and Vietnam have strived for maintaining peace, stability, growth and prosperity in the region. For instance, both nations have accentuated the importance of maintaining peace and stability and peaceful resolutions of disputes, based on international law, comprising the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Regarding the South China Sea issue, both states have stressed the need to fully and effectually implement the Declaration on the Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the East Vietnam Sea and the establishment of a Code of Conduct (COC) (Ao, 2020). The growing India–Vietnam axis has witnessed a significant upward trajectory under the Modi administration with a ‘pivot’ (Karnad, 2014) to Hanoi on the part of New Delhi, leaving an ‘axis’ (Patil, 2014) that is now covertly Beijing-centric. The strategic partnership with its military and strategic dimension was upgraded to a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ during PM Modi’s visit to Vietnam in September 2016, 15 years after former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit in 2001, further underscoring the importance of Vietnam (Chakravorty, 2018).

An additional Line of Credit of USD 500 million for defence industry cooperation was also announced during the visit. Modi considered Vietnam an important and strong pillar of his Act East policy (Ministry of External Affairs, 2016). Likewise, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind said that Vietnam was ‘pivotal to India’s ‘Act East’ policy’ (Ministry of External Affairs, 2018b), and during his visit to Vietnam in May 2019, Vice President Mr M. Venkaiah Naidu reiterated its importance to India as a civilisational friend, a trusted partner and a strategic pillar of India’s Act East policy (Ao, 2020). The growing importance of Vietnam as a lynchpin of India’s ‘Act East’ and ‘Indo–Pacific’ policy got reiterated by the progress in the bilateral defence cooperation that included exchange of high-level visits from both sides. From the side of Vietnam, Hanoi’s response to New Delhi’s outreach was on expected lines, and engaging India now as a comprehensive strategic partner, a sort of relationship with only Russia and China, clearly indicates that both nations value this critical partnership. This closeness of strategic cooperation and seemingly ‘natural allies’, India–Vietnam have developed their relation to the extent that Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong’s characterises them ‘as pure as cloudless sky’ (Panda, 2017). Notwithstanding these developments, however, India–Vietnam axis lacks momentum since no notable outcomes have materialised vis-à-vis the sales of the BrahMos cruise missiles and Akash surface-to-air missiles. This lack of momentum clearly indicates the limitations that for how long they can go in their embrace of each other (Rajagopalan, 2018). Like most of the other neighbours of China, India and Vietnam find it very difficult to push balancing strategies too hard to avoid being seen as ‘ganging-up’ against China. To avoid the wrath of an aggressive giant neighbour, India and Vietnam have stretched the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ spectrum towards the bandwagoning end. In the next section, I examine the policy measures employed by India and Vietnam to cancel out the risks of either of these two straightforward choices, hence pursuing a middle position of hedging.

Avoiding the Dragon’s Wrath: India, Vietnam and the Middle Position

To counteract the above-discussed balancing behaviour, which neither Vietnam nor India can afford or put simply to avoid the wrath of Chinese dragon, both India and Vietnam had pursued a simultaneous counteracting policy measures. Three important policy measures are particularly employed by Hanoi and New Delhi: bilateral economic cooperation with Beijing, institutional binding and explicit reassurance of not engaging in any anti-China gang up.

Bilateral Economic Cooperation

Both India and Vietnam had strong bilateral relations with China. For Vietnam, China stands on the top of its list of 16 strategic partnerships as it is designated as a ‘comprehensive strategic partner’, the only one to hold that honour. If anything, this designation signals on Vietnam’s part is its willingness to engage comprehensively with its northern neighbour (Thayer, 2017). One of the very crucial elements of their comprehensive engagement is the annual joint-Border Defense Friendship Exchange programme, initiated in March 2014. Hanoi and Beijing are also carrying out joint border patrols, and by 2017, 23 of such joint patrols have been conducted, and in recent years, they have carried out two patrols each year (China Military Online, 2017). The China–Vietnam Land Border Joint Committee jointly manages border stability and maintenance, and in 2018, they carried out their first provincial-level joint patrol of the land border (People’s Army Newspaper, 2017). Hanoi is also allured by Beijing’s economic miracle and as such owing to shared political ideology looks at China as an economic and political model to follow (Tran, 2018). The increasingly improved bilateral commercial ties are reflected by the fact that while China stands as the largest trading partner of Vietnam, the latter is also China’s largest trading partner in the ASEAN region (Vinh, 2020). Since 2014, Vietnam’s experts to China more than doubled and in return Chinese foreign direct investment to Vietnam also witnessed a significant increase, and by 2018, it stood around USD400 million as compared to USD75 million in 2014 (Vietnam Briefing, 2019). It is in this context that David Kang and Xinru Ma argued that despite the increasing tensions, the ‘overall frequency of high-level exchanges between these two countries is far higher than most countries’ (Kuik, 2020). India from its part has also sought to engage China bilaterally. Modi himself sought to cultivate a strong bilateral economic partnership with China as it is not only the second largest trade partner but also the only country after the US which he has visited many times since coming to power. The bilateral commercial relations have witnessed a significant progress, and both India and China have also cooperated on various economic forums and institutions. Modi’s refrain from making adverse remarks against China during the Dokhlam stand-off and the subsequent Wuhan Summit along with the informal summit at Mamallapuram in October 2019 further indicates that New Delhi was driven by the hope to reduce the competitive elements in its relations with China and move towards a more cooperative relationship (Kaura, 2020). Furthermore, even if their militaries following the deadly Galwan clashes remain deployed in large numbers at frontline positions, their military and diplomatic officials continue to engage in dialogue.

Institutional Binding

India and Vietnam are also binding China to constrain its aggressive behaviour through various institutions. ASEAN is one such institution that has been considered by some analysts as a central piece of Hanoi’s foreign policy and in particular can prove very useful in addressing the security dilemma with China (Collin, 2013). Through ASEAN, Hanoi has been internationalising the bilateral dispute with Beijing by invoking multilateralism (Emmers, 2014) to avoid the catastrophe of dealing with China all by itself. It provides Vietnam an important institutional platform to bind China by constraining its aggressive behaviour. The 2002 DOC of Parties was agreed on by the foreign ministers of ASEAN countries, and China has arguably been the most tangible outcome of Vietnam’s efforts to constrain China through the institutional mechanism (Hiep, 2013). Even if the DOC is not binding, however, it continues to subject China to certain normative limitations, thus limiting its freedom of action and providing Vietnam with appropriate grounds to condemn its aggressive and illegal activities in the sea. The DOC is frequently cited as a basis for Vietnam’s diplomatic protests against Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. Furthermore, Vietnam together with its ASEAN partners has begun consultations with China on a more ‘substantive and effective’ legally binding COC to replace the DOC. For Vietnam, being the top priority, the COC would provide a more binding code to constrain China. Although yet in the negotiation phase, there are speculations that Hanoi may use its current chairmanship of ASEAN to accelerate the COC negotiations (Hiep, 2019, p. 7). Not only does Vietnam appreciate the possibility of ASEAN transforming China through constructivist processes to partake in ASEAN norms, but it also promotes the inclusion of regional powers like India into the ASEAN community. The ASEAN Regional Forum by virtue of inclusion of non-ASEAN states like India gives additional leverage to Vietnam to ‘entangle, enmesh or engage’ China through norm-based interactions and socialisation to foster trust and mutual security (Acharya & Layug, 2012). Apart from ASEAN, which also forms a central piece of India’s policy responses to China, New Delhi also uses various institutional forums to constrain Beijing’s aggressive and assertive behaviour. India continues to participate in various plurilaterals involving China such as the Russia–India–China (RIC) trilateral, the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO; Madan, 2020, p. 8) as a way of binding it. The RIC has in fact been an important forum for India to engage China even amid the LAC clashes. India, even after the deadly Galwan clashes, participated in the RIC’s foreign ministers meet on 23 June 2020. The statement by India’s Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, that ‘leading voices should act in an exemplary manner by respecting international law and recognising the interests of partners’ is a subtle reference to China which further underscores New Delhi’s institutional binding of Beijing (Bhaduri, 2020). Based on the logic of let us talk, not fight, the RIC provides India a platform to cooperate with the giant neighbour along with Russia, which gives an additional opportunity to balance out one grouping with another and places it at a neutral stance when it comes to taking sides and supporting a country (Bandi, 2020). Similarly, India’s participation in SCO, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and BRICS, apart from serving its own interests (Rajagopalan, 2020, p. 90), also underscores its policy of binding institutional engagement of China. Besides, India has also taken common positions with China on international issues including climate change, freer international trade and the threats of international terrorism.

Reassuring the Dragon

To avoid the wrath of an assertive giant neighbour, both India and Vietnam had employed various reassurance measures to avoid being seen as part of any anti-China gang. Vietnam continuously reassures China that it is ‘ready, willing and able’ to cooperate (Thayer, 2011), and Hanoi’s officials have repeatedly stated that their country’s strengthened defence ties with regional partners like India are not directed against any third country. In particular, these officials have underlined the much cited ‘three-nos principle’, based on no military alliance, no relationship with one country targeted against a third country and no foreign base will be allowed on Vietnams soil. The elements of these ‘three-nos’ have been explicitly stated in the Defense White Papers released since 1998. The latest white paper of 2019 advocates,

Vietnam consistently advocates neither joining any military alliances, siding with one country against another, giving any other countries consent to set up military bases or use its territory to carry out military activities against other countries nor using force or threatening to use force in international relations. (Hanoi Times, 2019)

Similarly, Indian government in particular has been loathed to admit that China is the main driver of its Indo–Pacific policy and indeed actively discourages any such idea. New Delhi has made direct and repeated declarations that India has no interest in becoming party to any anti-China containment strategy (Rajagopalan, 2020).

For example, in his speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018, Prime Minister Modi explicitly stated that the Indo-Pacific was not an exclusive grouping, that it was not ‘directed against any country’ and that India’s ‘friendships are not alliances of containment’ (Ministry of External Affairs, 2018a). Some months later, India’s ambassador to China explained that his country will work with all powers, including China, and that the only side it took was its own (Economic Times, 2018). The explicit reassuring of China by India and Vietnam is visible in their reluctance of openly embracing the Quadrilateral Security Initiative (Quad). Even though the Quad is generally seen as a balancing mechanism to contain China (Paul, 2018), India and Vietnam’s tardiness in moving forward with it can be seen as their reassurance measures towards China.

The Allure of Hedging Prong in India–Vietnam’s Response to China

The above analysis of India and Vietnam’s individual as well as collaborative response to a Chinese threat clouds the logic of either pure balancing or bandwagoning as the hitherto dominant state behaviours. Therefore, the rise of an aggressive and assertive China presents a situation for them that neither of these dominant behaviours seem to meet their security requirement. Consequently, hedging becomes a much more pragmatic choice to meet their shared China challenge. In other words, it is a better explanation of India and Vietnam’s response to China. To demonstrate as to why hedging is an alluring choice to pursue vis-a-vis China, this section shall examine the factors that drive India and Vietnam to employ this strategy. Examining the driving factors will also help in making a case for as to why hedging serves India and Vietnam’s national interest and why they should continue with it. Additionally, it will also help both India and Vietnam to understand each other’s security predicaments, and hence, they can clear various misgivings regarding the potential of India–Vietnam axis. There are three important factors that shall be discussed here to suffice the argument: asymmetric capabilities, geographical proximity and strategic culture. However, taken independently, none of these factors can be much convincing, but when taken interdependently and mutually reinforcing, the case for hedging becomes much more alluring.

Growing Asymmetry in Capabilities

As discussed in the section on threat perceptions of a rising China, both India and Vietnam are worried about their growing asymmetry with China. The sense of inferiority in dealing with a mighty neighbour has serious consequences for how both India and Vietnam respond to it. In essence, it creates a ‘behavioural dilemma’, on the one side, as a compelling force to balance this asymmetry, while, on the other side, the lack of sufficient wherewithal constrains any such balancing move. China is, for example, 29 times larger than Vietnam, and despite being the 15th biggest populous country in the world, Vietnam is just an equivalent to a mid-sized Chinese province (Thayer, 2011). Its Gross National Product and military budget is 3% of China’s and less than 1% of China respectively (Tran, 2020). Clearly, China is more powerful as well as important than Vietnam, as the latter is structurally more exposed to former in terms of both risk and opportunity. Similarly, even being a rising global player, India has sharply plunged in its relative power to China. For example, India’s economy is a midget compared with China, whose GDP is roughly USD14 trillion, whereas India’s is less than USD2.7 trillion, making China’s GDP about five times higher (Ganguly & Pardesi, 2020). In 2019, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China’s defence budget stood as USD261 billion compared to India’s USD71.1 billion (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2020). Therefore, China’s decisive pull ahead of India just over the past decade makes it more accurate to talk about the imbalance of power between them (Saran, 2019). This growing power mismatch at an alarming rate is, on the one side, compelling both India and Vietnam to look for external alignments and, on the other side, realise an equally important pull for forging stronger economic ties with China. The economic asymmetry is further clouding the logic of balancing as both are looking at Beijing’s economic rise as a principal source of economic opportunities. Consequently, both India and Vietnam are enjoying strong economic and commercial ties with China to maximise economic benefits through higher levels of trade and investment. This is underscored by the level of their economic relationship. However, this asymmetric economic engagement with China is also making them nervous about what they consider as an overdependence on China. Therefore, the growing asymmetry in military and economic capabilities between India, Vietnam and China is creating a complex situation for the former to look beyond the balancing–bandwagoning dichotomy.

The Tyranny of Geography

Along with their growing asymmetry, living next to the giant dragon as neighbours further complicates their policy response to China. Both states share borders with China and are also bearing the brunt of its recent assertive territorial reclamation drive along with its past aggressions. Their ‘geographical proximity’ along with active territorial disputes with China has placed India and Vietnam to live under what is famously referred to as the ‘tyranny of geography’ (Thayer, 2011, 2020). The term was originally coined by Thayer in the context of Vietnam; however, given the similar experience of India, it can be applied to New Delhi’s case well. Being a neighbour, neither India nor Vietnam can escape China and, hence, the strings attached to its assertive behaviour. They have to live with this reality. Furthermore, being the weaker parties, this ‘tyranny of geography’ dictates a judicious balance for Hanoi and New Delhi within the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ spectrum. If, on the one side, the logic of geography is turning China an immediate and a more direct threat for India and Vietnam, on the other side, being adjacent and economically vibrant ensures its allure as an economic opportunity. India and Vietnam have compelling reasons to strive for symmetry in their engagement with China through both internal as well as external means. There is, however, a worry not to being at the receiving end of their giant neighbour’s overbearing attitude. In addition, apart from the concern of economic overdependence, they would also be constrained to think of any bandwagoning push towards China keeping in view that it would relegate their status to junior partners. To ‘jump for profit’ (Schweller, 1994) does not make it a dishonourable choice on its face, but being a junior partner comes with clear disadvantages including, most obviously, the reality that Beijing’s interests would be put ahead of either of the two. As discussed above, India and Vietnam have compelling logic to be unsure about the future intentions of a rising China. So, the policymakers of India and Vietnam are worried that if it grows more powerful in the future, it will increasingly dictate the terms of engagement in its favour particularly in the border dispute. Additionally, the rising nationalism with increasingly anti-China sentiments in both the states would make this choice domestically unpalatable.

Strategic Culture

Strategic culture is another important factor that explains the limitations of balancing–bandwagoning dichotomy and an allure of a hedging strategy in India–Vietnam’s response to China. The term strategic culture was coined by Jack Snyder, who defined it as a ‘body of attitudes and beliefs that guides and circumscribes thought on strategic questions, influences the way strategic issues are formulated, and sets the vocabulary and the perceptual parameters of strategic debate’ (Snyder, 1977, p. 9). These attitudes and belief patterns are largely based on leaders understanding of their nation’s historical experiences, which significantly shape national strategies and foreign policies. Both India and Vietnam’s strategic culture drives their quest for strategic autonomy and independence and underpins their policy of renouncing joining any alliance. As neither of them would get any external substantial support during their wars with China, this shared experience gave them a lesson to not trust in alliances and also a wake-up call to not depend considerably on any external power. Pursuing foreign relations short of any formal commitments including with a threatening China simultaneously ensures India and Vietnam autonomy and independence. The much famous ‘three-nos’ policy exists on the principle of non-alignment and informs much of Vietnam’s response to the giant neighbour. According to Andrew Butterfield, ‘Vietnam’s strategic culture continues to be marked by sometimes contradictory desires concerning China; to seek and receive help from China, but also to repel excessive Chinese influence or domination’ (Butterfield, 1996, p. 18). For Le Hong Hiep, ‘this dual perception persists and finds its manifestation in Hanoi’s hedging strategies vis-à-vis China’. For him, based on the past, Vietnamese leaders today seek harmonious and cooperative relations with China to maintain peace and promote their nation’s economic development, but simultaneously look for measures to ensure their security against a rising China (Hiep, 2013, p. 340). Similarly, various analysts have correctly pointed out the strategic culture in which ‘ideas about an anti-imperialist internationalism and non-alignment continue to inform India’s state-building project and its “over-riding” priority of economic development’ (Chacko, 2014, p. 448). There is no doubt to argue that current Indian foreign policy by displaying the continuities underscores the strength of its tradition and culture (Hall, 2017). The notion of ‘strategic autonomy’ intrinsic to India’s strategic culture has not only become a ‘holy grail’ of Indian security policy (Brewster, 2011, p. 831) but also due to its strong intellectual attachment, one has to ask whether it is the product of a specific historical circumstance or a permanent organising principle of India’s foreign policy. For Indian strategic thinkers apart from ensuring independence and room for manoeuvrability in foreign policymaking, strategic autonomy has also been seen as the sine qua non of great power status. Consequently, any compromise of India’s strategic autonomy is considered as a compromise of its destiny. During the Galwan clashes with China, as there were strong voices supporting a policy shift of completely aligning with the US against China, the government while being more nuanced in its approach has made it crystal clear: India will not join any alliance system (Raghavan, 2020). Hence, ‘strategic culture’ of both India and Vietnam is an important factor that underlines their hedging strategy towards China and, hence, can also prove useful in understanding their tardiness in embracing each other.

Conclusion

This article is engaged with the extant debate in IR regarding the exploration of the term hedging. Due to the inability of the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ dichotomy to explain the behaviour of most of China’s neighbours towards it, hedging has come to be regarded as the better explanation. As the above analysis demonstrated, it is also the best available theoretical tool to explain the dynamics of India and Vietnam’s lonely as well as collective response to a rising and assertive China. Hedging here is understood as a middle position located in between the balancing–bandwagoning spectrum. While exploring the case of India and Vietnam keeping in view the shared concern of a China threat, the above analysis makes it logical for both India and Vietnam to be anxious about their rising giant neighbour. The growing power imbalance along with China’s increasing territorial assertiveness is an important factor driving them for enhancing their domestic military capabilities. But due to their insufficient resources to tackle China alone, they look at each other as important partners to pursue a collective choreography to deal with it. However, China’s growing economic heft and being a geographical contiguous state makes it also an important economic opportunity to be engaged with. But even the growing trade and commercial ties had an important geopolitical string attached; apart from being worried about an economic overdependence, neither Hanoi nor New Delhi would like to be relegated to a junior partner status in any engagement with China. Apart from the economic allure of a rising China, both India and Vietnam due to the ‘tyranny of geography’ find it very unwise to hurt their bilateral engagements and invite their giant and aggressive neighbour’s wrath. Apart from their growing asymmetry both in military as well as economic spheres, their ‘strategic culture’ is also a decisive factor that drives their hedging strategy. Their past experience of unreliability of any external help along with the quest for an independent and autonomous foreign policy further clouds the logic of ‘balancing–bandwagoning dichotomy’. Therefore, given this complex strategic environment coupled with their strategic culture, hedging not only seems as a pragmatic option but also as an alluring one.

From the above analysis, a number of significant implications for policymakers of New Delhi and Hanoi can be discerned. First, even if the future of India–Vietnam axis seems very promising, their ambivalence is irking various experts who instead want to see it as a counterpart of China–Pakistan axis. However, the India–Vietnam axis is very unique and must be evaluated through the prism of hedging. Doing that will help them to better understand each other’s security predicaments and consequently the appeal of hedging prong in their response to a rising China. Second, both New Delhi and Hanoi must enhance their overall comprehensive capabilities to prepare better for the uncertainties of a more powerful China in future while continuing to enjoy better commercial relations with it. This is indeed very pragmatic and logical because it will allow them to manage their tense relations which Beijing while simultaneously reaping the benefits of its economic heft to balance their growing asymmetry with it. Third, and very importantly, both New Delhi and Hanoi require time and insurance to deal with Beijing; hedging provides both. Finally, it provides them the autonomy and independence, which they do not want to compromise especially in dealing with their most immediate security threat. Thus, before making any shift in their response to a rising China towards either end of the ‘balancing–bandwagoning’ spectrum, the policymakers of New Delhi and Hanoi in particular must evaluate the dynamic as analysed in this article before it would be too late for them. After all, neither balancing nor bandwagoning but rather hedging is the best recipe for their current security predicaments and will continue to be an alluring option even for the foreseeable future.