Indonesia's 'Flexible Hedging' on China moves

I would argue that Indonesia is currently employing a specific variant of hedging, which I dub "flexible hedging." This strategy stands in contrast with most ASEAN countries, whose hedging strategy is more constrained by their entanglement with the United States or China. Flexible hedging is normally deployed under the following conditions: (1) the secondary state views the emerging power's (China's) activities as growing concerns, but they do not yet pose a direct or fundamental threat to the secondary state's interests; (2) the secondary state benefits from moderate economic and/or military engagement with the emerging power; and (3) the emerging power formulates at least part of its policies towards the secondary state within the context of its competition with the status-quo power (the United States). In other words, flexible hedging comes into play when secondary states are not willing to trade off their strategic autonomy for the potential benefits of closely engaging the status-quo power or the emerging power. The main purpose of resorting to flexible hedging would be to maximize a state's range of options against uncertainty over major power rivalries.

​http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/indonesias-china-strategy-flexible-hedging-15843