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Research article
First published online August 21, 2023

Strategic hedgers? Australia and Canada's defence adaptation to the global power transition

Maxandre Fortier [email protected] and Justin Massie https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3255-0026View all authors and affiliations
Volume 78, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/00207020231195633

Abstract

The intensification of rivalries between the US and China, and, in recent years, between the US and Russia, has deeply affected how middle powers relate to these great powers. Scholars have argued that middle powers are increasingly adopting “hedging” strategies to maximize their benefits and limit the consequences of the great power competition for their security and status. This paper revisits the concept of hedging and assesses whether two prominent US allies—Australia and Canada—have resorted to hedging in place of conventional alternatives like bandwagoning and balancing. The paper systematically compares Australia's and Canada's threat perceptions and defence policies to ascertain whether they have shifted their policies in the wake of the US's relative decline. Since our study began, in 2008, we have found instances where the two allies resorted to hedging. However, evidence shows that when pressured to make a choice, Australia and Canada have closed ranks with the US against revisionist powers. Our paper suggests that threat perceptions play a fundamental role in this. Going forward, it would suggest that the US is in a stronger position than commonly assumed. As the competition between Washington and revisionist great powers increases, the former's ability to build credible coalitions is expected to improve as it will rely on more dependable allies.

Introduction

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has raised the prospect of similar Chinese aggression against Taiwan. Beijing is investing in military capabilities and developing plans to take Taiwan by force, ramping up the pressure on Taipei by conducting amphibious assault exercises and deploying aircraft into Taiwan's air defence identification zone. This has led to renewed US support for Taiwan, a debate over the necessity to clarify America's policy of “strategic ambiguity,” and a rising fear of a Sino-American conflict over Taiwan. To prevent this dreadful scenario, some have called for a multinational effort in the Indo-Pacific, akin to the one deployed in Eastern Europe, to contain Russia's military ambitions. However, as Oriana Skylar Mastro has argued, this would require persuading “a large coalition of allies to commit to a coordinated economic, political, and military response,” many of which are “unwilling to risk their economic prospects, let alone a major-power war, to defend a small democratic island.”1
These allies’ hesitancy to support Washington's containment strategy in East Asia can be referred to as hedging, or seeking to avoid exclusive alignments in favour of keeping open all options within the context of great power competition. Hedging is a contested notion, both conceptually and empirically. Its definition, like its empirical reality, remains vividly debated. Some have argued that second-tier powers increasingly are adopting hedging strategies to maximize their benefits and limit the consequences of the great power competition, while others claim the opposite.2 This paper follows a body of work that defines hedging as a security strategy used by states to offset risks. This approach envisions hedging as a falsifiable alternative to balancing and bandwagoning.
As the concluding piece a special issue on AUKUS, this article looks beyond the immediate consequences of the pact and considers a longer-term foreign and defence policy evolution of two democracies, Australia and Canada. Our main objective is to assess the extent to which these two middle powers have engaged in hedging behaviour, as some scholars have argued.3
Starting our study in 2008, we find instances when the two allies resorted to hedging. However, evidence shows that, in the late 2010s, when they were pressured to choose between great power rivals, Australia and Canada both closed ranks with the US against revisionist powers. In this regard, AUKUS exemplifies the shift in Australia's foreign policy from hedging to balancing against China. This suggests that as the competition between Washington and revisionist great powers increases, the former's ability to build credible coalitions will improve, at least among its closest allies. We begin our argument by operationalizing the concept of hedging and discussing at what times it is likely to occur. The following sections proceed with a comparison of Canberra and Ottawa's threat perceptions and defence postures since 2008. We conclude by discussing some policy implications of our findings.

Conceptualizing hedging

The concept of hedging emerged from perceived shortcomings in the existing conceptual tools available to understand strategic behaviour, namely, bandwagoning and balancing. However, since the term's inception, debates have been ongoing about its definition, the conditions that give rise to its occurrence, and the adequate scope of analysis and methodology to ascertain its empirical reality. To understand the concept, we must tackle two main questions: What is hedging, and when is it most likely to occur? We argue that hedging is a security strategy of risk management in which a state combines cooperation and competition in its alignment toward great powers. States choose to hedge to avoid risks turning into threats. However, when the benefits of this strategic ambiguity start to outweigh its costs, that is, when states face clear and potent threats from great power competition, they may set aside hedging in favour of an alternative strategy, whether balancing or bandwagoning.

What is hedging?

Building on Evelyn Goh's seminal work, hedging consists of “a middle position that forestalls or avoids having to choose one side at the obvious expense of another.”4 Despite remaining a contested concept overall, most scholars agree with Goh's definition of hedging as a strategy of maintaining equidistance between great powers to maintain all options. In other words, hedging involves strategic ambiguity over which side a state is on in the great power competition. Defined thusly, it should be relatively straightforward to ascertain hedging. Nevertheless, definitional problems remain given disagreements over its scope relative to its main alternatives—balancing and bandwagoning—which are also disputed concepts.5
According to Randall Schweller, balancing involves “the creation or aggregation of military power through internal mobilization or the forging of alliances to prevent or deter the territorial occupation or political and military domination of the state by a foreign power or coalition.”6 Balancing thus involves military power aggregation against a clearly identified rival. Bandwagoning, on the other hand, consists in siding with a great power, whether for security or profit. Indeed, bandwagoning and balancing are not opposites. While balancing is a rare and costly strategy aimed at self-preservation, Schweller notes that bandwagoning is a cheaper and more typical strategy aimed at preserving and/or obtaining coveted values. It involves cooperation with a great power to benefit from the latter's success, whether willingly or out of resignation to its inexorable force.7
Hedging, for its part, consists of a “portfolio strategy” combining both bandwagoning and balancing behaviours. It seeks to “offset risks by pursuing multiple policy options that are intended to produce mutually counteracting effects.”8 This combination typically includes improving a state's security relations with both the rising and declining powers to mitigate the risks to its security posed by the former's intentions and the consequences of the latter's decline.9 Otherwise put, hedging implies a mixture of cooperation and confrontation with great powers to avoid having to choose one at the expense of the other.
While some consider hedging a multidimensional concept—encompassing security, political, economic, and even energy matters—for the sake of conceptual clarity and distinction from its main alternatives, we consider hedging strictly as a security alignment strategy toward great powers.10 Just as balancing is about security—in the form of increasing one's military capabilities and/or forging external alliances—so, too, is hedging. Hedging is thus not a cost-free strategy such as diversifying trade or engaging states diplomatically.11 The autonomy gained by practicing strategic ambiguity may result in punishment by great powers. As the war in Ukraine illustrates, Ukraine's choice to seek greater autonomy by engaging with NATO and the EU led to severe Russian encroachments of its territorial integrity. In other words, hedging sometimes fails, forcing second-tier states to pay a gruesome price.12
Considering this, two main sets of indicators help to ascertain hedging empirically: murky threat perceptions and an incongruous defence posture. First, hedging manifests itself in a state's perception that the balance of power is ambiguous and risky. A second-tier state can only be a hedger when it perceives neither the rising nor the declining great power as a clear and immediate security threat. State officials should instead emphasize the uncertainty of the balance of power and the complexity of its implications for the middle power's national interests, as well as broad and vague threats.
Second, hedging is discernible in a defence posture that combines cooperation and confrontation with a great power. Second-tier powers should espouse security relations that combine national and international mobilization of military power against a latent security threat, while at the same time cooperating with the latter to mitigate its risk of becoming an immediate danger. In other words, hedging will take the form of an incongruous security strategy, combining cooperation and confrontation with rival great powers. This should be manifest in a state's development of its forces (i.e., the levels of military spending, types of weapons systems and technologies, and sources of military acquisitions), as well as how it employs them (in international military operations and exercises).13 Combining these indicators over time helps to ascertain a state's objectives, and their amplitude and variation. Doing so enables one to better appraise whether a state's defence posture responds to a risk or a threat. Indeed, Yee-Kuang Heng's work shows that risk management is usually prevenient and proactive, while threat is dealt with in a reactive or responsive way.14 These are essential considerations, given that hedging aims to minimize risks.
A final point on measuring hedging is that there must be causal logic between the indicators. Aligning with and mobilizing against a rising or declining power through security policies must be informed by perceptions of threats, rather than risks. As such, risk perceptions represent a necessary but insufficient condition of hedging; these must also be met with incongruous security policies. Perceptions of imminent threats met with ambivalent security policies do not amount to hedging. Inversely, perceptions of risks met exclusively with balancing behaviour suggest that the middle power has undisclosed private information about the target state's aggressive intentions and is thus balancing rather than hedging.

When is hedging likely?

As great power competition becomes more acute, the likelihood of hedging increases.15 The waning of the US's relative power makes hedging an attractive strategy for states facing an uncertain future and hoping to maximize their autonomy. However, in recent years, the global power shift towards China as well as Russia's military resurgence have intensified the balance of power competition, leaving second-tier states with less room to maneuver. Indeed, the costs of hedging soar as second-tier states are pressured to choose between great power rivals. As a result, hedging's viability starts to fade when competition outpaces uncertainty.
Hedging can also be a strategy of choice for smaller powers that may be uncertain of the reliability of protection of their great power patron. Most notably, fears of being abandoned by a declining US unable to provide public security goods amidst rising Chinese and Russian revisionism is said to have created an environment conducive to hedging.16 Otherwise put, it is more likely that American allies will exhibit hedging behaviour as the US retrenches from its security commitments to adjust to its relative decline.
The intensification of great power rivalry by itself does not make hedging less likely. As neoclassical realism postulates, unit-level perception filters systemic-level factors.17 Hedging depends on state leaders’ perceptions of how great power competition is playing out. While a global power shift encourages latent risks to develop into imminent threats, especially as revisionist states face fewer costs to challenging the declining power's hegemony, hedging remains probable if state leaders still perceive distant and vague security risks from the shifting global order. Only when these risks change into clear threats to a middle power's security interests is that state expected to abandon hedging and side with one great power against another. In sum, on the one hand, we should expect to see a gradual abandonment of hedging as tensions between great powers have continued to rise since 2008. On the other hand, we should also expect to see a rise in hedging during the Trump administration, when allies questioned Washington's reliability as a patron.

Second-tier powers’ reactions to the global power shift

This section tests our conceptualization of hedging against the strategic perceptions and behaviour of two mostly similar cases—Australia and Canada—since the 2008 financial crisis. We study these cases through a structured and focused comparison based on the two sets of indicators of hedging outlined above. We find that Australia has moved from a hedging to a balancing strategy against China, while Canada has opted for bandwagoning with the US regarding China, and balancing against Russia.

Australia: From hedging to balancing

Australian security assessments evolved markedly from 2009 to 2020, shifting from risk to threat perceptions. In its 2009 white paper, Canberra did not consider any great power as a threat. Instead, it described China, Russia, and India as rising players with growing influence in international affairs. Australia recognized that “there is a small but still concerning possibility of growing confrontation between some of these powers.”18 The speed and scale of the Chinese armed forces’ modernization raised the possibility of Australia having “to contend with major power adversaries” in its region, a risk “not so remote as to be beyond contemplation.”19 There was thus an acknowledgment of China as a potential future threat.
With Julia Gillard taking the reins of the Labor Party and becoming Prime Minister in 2010 came a discursive change towards China: a rejection of the tone and pessimism underpinning the 2009 white paper. Over the following years, Australia showed growing confidence that China would become a responsible stakeholder. In its 2012 and 2013 white papers, Australia explicitly stated that it did not “see China as an adversary,” deeming its rise “welcomed” and its militarization legitimate.20 The Australian government saw the future as one of both cooperation and confrontation between the US and China and inferred that, as a result, Australia did not need to choose between them.21
Starting in 2016, the explicit perception of risks over threats began to fade, but China was not yet perceived as an immediate security threat. Canberra expected that “cooperation, not conflict,” would dominate its relationship with Bejing. Furthermore, the international liberal order, deemed necessary to Australia's security, was perceived as being challenged by states using “measures short of war” in the global commons, hinting at China without naming it.22
The 2020 Defence Strategic Update marked a decided shift in security perceptions. It acknowledged that the “strategic environment has deteriorated more rapidly than anticipated,” especially in the strategic competition between the US and China.23 “This competition,” the Update read, “is playing out across the Indo-Pacific and increasingly in our immediate region.” What was perceived as having changed since 2016 was “China's active pursuit of greater influence in the Indo-Pacific,” including the establishment of military bases in the region, a significant concern to Australia.24 As a result, the prospect of a high-intensity conflict between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific, “while still unlikely … is less remote.”25 This signaled an unambiguous shift from the perception of China as a risk to a threat. Further, while previous defense planning assumed a ten-year warning time for a conventional attack against Australia, the Update recognized that it was no longer the case. Australia can no longer assume it will have time to gradually adjust its military capability in response to emerging challenges.
Australia's defence posture evolved consistently with its shift in perception, where China is no longer viewed as a distant security risk but, increasingly, an immediate threat. The late 2000s were marked by a period of strategic ambiguity. In 2008, Kevin Rudd's Labor government created the annual Australia-China Strategic Dialogue, a forum between the secretaries of defence and chiefs of defence forces. Also in 2008, it decided to pull out of the Quad, a move seen as accommodation toward Beijing. Cooperation continued in 2013 and 2014, when both countries signed a strategic partnership and a comprehensive strategic partnership. Simultaneously, Beijing and Canberra launched two annual joint military exercises. The first, in 2014, brought together American, Chinese, and Australian troops. The second bilateral exercise took place in China in 2015. The fact that both were canceled in 2019 amid the US-China trade war reflects the abandonment of any pretense of hedging.
With the US's pivot to Asia, the security cooperation between Canberra and Washington deepened. For instance, the allies agreed on a rotational deployment of 2,500 USMC troops in Darwin. In terms of force structure, Australia designed its army as an expeditionary force between 2009 and 2019. However, since its strategic update in 2020, Canberra shifted towards a balancing strategy against China. Its armed forces are expected to focus primarily on their ability to act in the country's immediate region rather than taking part in international coalitions worldwide.
Although Australia recognizes that only its American patron is capable of defending it against nuclear threats, the update indicates the government's intent to “take greater responsibility for [its] own security” by developing self-reliant capabilities, such as longer-range strike weapons, cyber capabilities, and area-denial systems.26 These capabilities are deemed necessary to prevent China's coercive and grey-zone attacks from escalating to conventional conflict against Australia.
Following the 2020 strategic update, it became apparent to Morrison's coalition government that conventional submarines were unsuited to Australia's operational needs. As a result, Canberra ditched its deal with the French shipbuilder Naval Group and sought London's help to secure access to American nuclear technology. The future AUKUS agreement was discussed between the leaders at the June 2021 G7 summit in Britain and announced in September during a joint press conference. While never mentioned during its launch, the pact is aimed at countering the rise of China, as the three allies describe AUKUS as a way to “help sustain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific” and “to protect our shared values and promote security and prosperity.”27
Concretely, AUKUS entails a new architecture of meetings among senior defence and foreign policy officials to share perspectives and align views. However, the agreement is mainly about deepening interoperability and collaboration on the development of joint capabilities across many areas: cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, hypersonic and long-range striking capabilities, and nuclear submarines. These collaborations are expected to provide Australia with long-range land-attack and maritime strike capabilities, increasing its ability to project power over considerable distances. In addition, they are expected to provide Australia with enhanced A2/AD deterrence capabilities, enabling its capacity to deter and defend against Chinese aggression in its immense economic exclusive zone. Similarly, Australia's navy will be better equipped to hit targets from afar in contested zones, like the South China Sea.
However, the most significant portion of AUKUS involves Washington sharing its nuclear propulsion technology, something it has done only with Britain in the past. The goal is for Australia to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered SSNs to replace their current conventional and aging Collins class, an enterprise that could cost as much as A$171 billion (US$112 billion).28 By abandoning its US$90 billion 2016 deal with France to acquire conventional submarines in favour of SSNs, Canberra clearly expressed new strategic priorities, namely the desire for the Australian navy to operate farther from its coasts, including in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. It also keeps with the US's “integrated deterrence” strategy, which consists of collaborating with allies to build “a combat credible force across all domains and across the full spectrum of conflict to deter aggression in the face of the pacing threat from China and the acute threat from Russia.”29
While it waits for its new SSN attack class to be commissioned, Australia has considered buying and/or leasing off-the-shelf vessels from its partners to avoid a capability gap. To ensure a deterrent force, American and British submarines are also expected to have an increased presence in Australian waters in addition to a surge of US troops rotating through northern Australia, more bilateral military exercises, and new US military bases in Australia. The joint communiqué of the 2021 Australia-US ministerial meeting confirmed this last point, promising to increase the “logistics and sustainment capabilities of US surface and subsurface vessels in Australia.”30 Whatever the choice, it seems Australia has accepted being more dependent on its allies for its own security over the short to medium term, despite its vows to develop self-reliant capabilities.
Thus, the Australian decision to go the AUKUS way is not just a choice between American and French-made technology. It is a conscious decision to significantly deepen and consolidate its alignment with the US against China. As such, in terms of its defence posture, Australia has shifted towards a balancing strategy, an action consistent with its perception of the growing threat posed by China's revisionism. In that vein, Canberra has also taken part in numerous freedom-of-navigation operations and naval exercises in the Indo-Pacific, although it never has entered within the twelve nautical miles around China's artificial islets, despite increasing pressure from Washington to do so.31 This shift is consistent with the objectives, stated in Australia's strategic update, to enhance its maritime deterrence and long-range strike capabilities. Taking on a balancing strategy allows Canberra to reaffirm and deepen its alliance with Washington and London, its two historical security patrons. The deep-rooted Anglospheric trope became the given answer at a time when Australia once again faced an emerging Chinese threat in its region.

Canada: Bandwagoning with the US, balancing against Russia

Since 2008, Canada's security assessment has followed a similar pattern to Australia's, evolving from risk to threat perceptions, at least with regards to Russia. In the 2008 defence strategy, neither Russia nor China was mentioned by name. The former was ignored even as a remote security risk, while the closest reference to the latter stated that the “ongoing buildup of conventional forces in Asia-Pacific countries is another trend that may have a significant impact on international stability in coming years.”32
Following the 2014 Ukraine crisis, it took some time for Canada to shift from risk to threat perceptions. A 2015 parliamentary report on the existing, emerging, and potential threats to Canadian security recognized that “global power shifts continue to strain international relationships, undermine stability, and threaten world peace.” However, the report stated that Canada faced no state-based military threats. While China and Russia may “become threats in the future … these two powers, despite their actions and rhetoric on the world stage, presently pose no direct threat to North America.”33 But in a 2016 report, the parliamentary committee switched gear, acknowledging that “conflicts and disputes overseas do have reverberations on the security of Canada and North America, either directly or indirectly, as rising tensions with Russia since 2014 over the Ukraine crisis can attest.”34 The report emphasized the specific threats posed by the modernization of Russia's nuclear arsenal and delivery systems, most notably long-range military aircraft, the proliferation of ballistic missiles, and advanced cruise-missile technology. In contrast to Russia, however, China continued to be perceived as a distant security risk.
It remained so in Canada's most recent defence strategy, published in 2017. While it portrays the United States as “unquestionably the only superpower,” the strategy notes an “evolving balance of power” and the return of “major power competition.” This is exemplified by “Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea,” as well as China's “rising economic power with an increasing ability to project influence globally.”35 However, the Canadian government proposed a very different strategy towards the two great powers. Russia's “ability to project force from its Arctic territory into the North Atlantic” will be met by Canada's determination to deter and defend “sea lines of communication and maritime approaches to Allied territory in the North Atlantic.” In sharp contrast, the 2017 defence strategy proposed to “seek to develop stronger relationships with other countries in the [Asia-Pacific] region, particularly China.”36
The perception of China as a threat has only recently began to emerge publicly. In its 2020 report, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service stated that China and Russia conduct hostile espionage and foreign interference activities that “constitute a threat to Canada's sovereignty and to the safety of Canadians.”37 The deputy minister of national defence, for her part, declared in March 2021 that China represented a growing threat to Canadian interests in the Arctic.38 While official reviews of Canada's foreign policy and defense strategy are still underway, these shifting views regarding China were first officially couched in Canada's Indo-Pacific Strategy. The latter labels China “an increasingly disruptive global power,” notably because of its “advancement of unilateral claims, foreign interference, and increasingly coercive treatment of other countries.” The strategy notably vows to “oppose unilateral actions that threaten the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”39 In short, China has now been recognized as a threat to Canadian interests, with regards to foreign interference and economic and cyber security on the domestic front, as well as China's wider and aggressive contestation of the rules-based international order.
In concrete terms, however, Canada's Indo-Pacific Strategy commits meagre additional resources. With an annual budget increase of about C$144 million (US$107.5 million), it vows to expand the number of frigates deployed annually in the region from two to three, and commits to enhance existing military capacity-building initiatives and launch new training programs with regional partners, including in the cyber domain. This is consistent with a pattern of bandwagoning with the US.40 Canada has two major alliance commitments that shape its force development and employment. The first is NORAD, the Canada-US binational command responsible for North American aerospace warning and control and maritime warning. Notably, its Tri-Command Framework outlines how the two countries would cooperate to defend North America against high-intensity asymmetrical attacks and “strategic attacks from near-peer nation states.”41 Canada and the US are furthermore in the process of modernizing NORAD to field new capabilities, including “next-generation over-the-horizon radar systems,” all-domain command and control systems, and capabilities to deter and defeat advanced aerospace threats to North America, including hypersonic weapons.42
Canada's second alliance commitment, to NATO, considerably shapes its force employment, but increasingly towards balancing Russia. Canada's most sizable military interventions since 2008 have been conducted under NATO command (in Afghanistan, Libya, Latvia, and Iraq), in addition to the regular deployment of a frigate under NATO Maritime Command and an air task force under NATO air-policing missions since 2014. In particular, Canada's leadership role in commanding a battle group as part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia is explicitly aimed at deterring Russia and defending allied territory against Russian agression. Furthermore, Canada is the fourth most important provider of assistance to Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression, and takes part in training Ukrainian military forces in the United Kingdom.43 Ottawa could do more to help Ukraine by providing more of the heavy weapons requested by Kyiv, but there is no doubt that Canada's defence posture consists in balancing Moscow's revisionism through providing assistance to Kyiv.
Canada is currently in the process of replacing its aging fleet of combat aircraft and ships, and both of these undertakings are shaped by operational requirements that allude to a Canadian strategy of bandwagoning with the US, and some balancing capabilities. The request for proposals for eighty-eight new combat aircraft demonstrates the prioritization of missions such as intercepting a foreign aircraft carrying a cruise missile, detecting and attacking foreign aircraft, and conducting first-strike strategic attacks against a foreign country. According to the assistant deputy minister in charge of procurement, “[eighty] percent of the technical requirements are related to NORAD and NATO operations, while the rest are needed to be able to respond to government missions in hot spots around the world.”44 The withdrawal of Dassault and Airbus before the official launch of the competition was indeed partly linked to the requirement of integrating the new aircraft into the NORAD system.45 The selection of the F-35 as Canada's new fighter jet can be understood in this logic of furthering Canada's interoperability with the United States and enhancing its status as a faithful ally.46
As for Canada's future combat ships, Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems won the contract with a design based on the British Type 26 frigate. The fifteen new destroyer-like ships are expected to perform air defence, and surface and anti-submarine warfare, in high-end conflict scenarios. Notably, they are expected to be equipped with long-range air defence capabilities to defeat hypersonic and supersonic cruise missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.47 These showcase the paramount importance of interoperability with the US in Canadian force development.
Finally, regarding the Indo-Pacific region, Canada's military activity mainly consists of multilateral exercises, the largest being the US-led biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC). Canada also contributes to the multinational effort to support UN sanctions against North Korea, and provides military training and capacity building in peace support operations with thirteen Asia-Pacific countries.48 In 2013, Canadian and Chinese defence ministers signed a cooperation agreement to enhance bilateral engagements on various levels, from academic exchanges, cooperation on maritime security, and reciprocal visits of government and military officials, to annual Defence Cooperation Dialogues (DCD) involving Canada's strategic joint staff. Defence engagement was put on hold in 2019, following the arrest of Meng Wanzhou and the arbitrary retributive detention of two Canadians. DCD, port visits, and bilateral military training exercises were ended. It was revealed that the US had pressed the Canadian military to cease the training exercises, which Canada's foreign affairs ministry disapproved of, due to fears that the cancellation could “damage Canada's long-term defence and security relationship with China.”49
Canada has tended to oppose to unilateral actions and land reclamation for military projects in the South China Sea, but rarely mentions China explicitly.50 While Canada regularly deploys a frigate through the South China Sea, including the Taiwan Strait, which it considers international waters, it has tended to downplay these deployments, officially referring to them as “presence patrols” rather than freedom of navigation operations.51 This language seems to have been abandoned in favour of much more forceful tone in Canada's Indo-Pacific Strategy. There should be no doubt that hedging has given way to bandwagoning with the US in the Indo-Pacific.

Conclusion

How have Australian and Canadian foreign and defence policies reacted to the return of geopolitical rivalries? Rather than tracing the inside-outside dynamics of AUKUS, the objective of this study was to assess whether these two core US allies have mostly abandoned hedging, as expected by second-tier powers when they perceive distant security risks related to the polarization of the global power distribution. As the confrontation between great powers increases, hedging will become more challenging and is expected to give way to alternate strategies, namely, bandwagoning and balancing. Indeed, we argued that Australia abandoned hedging for a balancing strategy against China, while Canada recently moved from hedging to bandwagoning with the US over China, and after 2014, engaged in a strategy of balancing against Russia.
What does all that entail? Our paper suggests that the US's calls for future coalition efforts against China and Russia will not be met uniformly. Threat perceptions will indeed play a fundamental role in charting the path taken by US allies. While China's assertiveness quickly instilled fear in Australia, it took some time for Canada to share these views. Although some US allies might be hedging or avoiding strong security alignments on Washington, the likelihood of hedging remaining a viable strategy is growing thin, and they are expected to ultimately align with the US towards China. Beijing continuing on its path of increasingly assertive foreign policy should only reinforce this trend. However, until China is seen as a clear and immediate threat, it should still be able to create wedges between Washington and its allies.
While other scholars52 have found a relationship between the years of Trump's presidency and the adoption of strategic hedging by Australia and Canada, we have found the opposite. This leads us to believe that ultimately, the perception of China as a threat will be a more important driver in the strategic choices of American allies than the perceived reliability of the US's security commitment. Going forward, this would suggest that the US is probably in a stronger position than what is commonly assumed. As the competition between Washington and revisionist great powers increases, the former's ability to build credible coalitions is expected to improve as it will rely on more dependable allies. However, what is now may not always be. It remains to be seen how core US allies would react to a potential new Trumpist presidency combined with an increasingly aggressive China. Even in this event, pursuing strategic autonomy while collaborating with the US and other like-minded partners appears to be more plausible than a realignment towards China and/or Russia.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Footnotes

1. Oriana Skylar Mastro, “The Taiwan temptation: Why Beijing might resort to force,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 4 (2021): 67.
2. See, inter alia, Cleo Paskal, “Indo-Pacific strategies, perceptions and partnerships,” Chatham House 23 (2021): 53p.; Li López i Vidal and Àngels Pelegrín, “Hedging against China: Japanese strategy towards a rising power,” Asian Security 14, no. 2 (2018): 193–211; Kei Koga, “The concept of “hedging” revisited: The case of Japan's foreign policy strategy in East Asia's power shift,” International Studies Review 20, no. 4 (2018): 663–660.
3. See, for instance, Nick Bisley, “Flawed assumptions: Australia's incrementalist hedging in a fractured order,” East Asia Forum Quarterly 12, no. 1 (2020): 13–14; Tsuyoshi Kawasaki, “Hedging against China: Formulating Canada's new strategy in the era of power politics,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 27, no. 2 (2021): 175–193.
4. Evelyn Goh, “Meeting the China challenge: The US in southeast Asian regional security strategies,” Policy Studies 16 (Washington, DC: East-West Center, 2005), viii.
5. Adam P. Liff, “Whither the balancers? The case for a methodological reset,” Security Studies 25, no. 3 (2016): 420–459.
6. Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for profit: Bringing the revisionist state back in,” International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 72.
7. Ibid., 74, 81, and 93.
8. Cheng-Chwee Kuik, “The essence of hedging: Malaysia and Singapore's response to a rising China,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 30, no. 2 (2008): 168.
9. Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper, “Reassessing hedging: The logic of alignment in East Asia,” Security Studies 24, no. 4 (2015): 699.
10. Jürgen Haacke, “The concept of hedging and its application to Southeast Asia: A critique and a proposal for a modified conceptual and methodological framework,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 19, no. 3 (2019): 378.
11. Lim and Cooper, “Reassessing hedging,” 696–727.
12. Nicholas Ross Smith, “When hedging goes wrong: Lessons from Ukraine's failed hedge of the EU and Russia,” Global Policy 11, no. 5 (2020): 588–597.
13. Liff, “Whither the balancers?”
14. Yee-Kuang Heng, War as Risk Management: Strategy and Conflict in an Age of Globalised Risks (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).
15. Alexander Korolev, “Shrinking room for hedging: System-unit dynamics and behavior of smaller powers,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 19, no. 3 (2019): 419–452.
16. Zachary Selden, “Balancing against or balancing with? The spectrum of alignment and the endurance of American hegemony,” Security Studies 22, no. 2 (2013): 330–364; Jasen J. Castillo and Alexander B. Downes, “Loyalty, hedging, or exit: How weaker alliance partners respond to the rise of new threats,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2020): 1–42.; Jens Ringsmose and Mark Webber, “Hedging their bets? The case for a European pillar in NATO,” Defence Studies 20, no. 4 (2020): 295–317.
17. Steven E. Lobell, “Threat assessment, the state, and foreign policy: A neoclassical realist model,” in Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, and Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, eds., Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 42–74.
18. “Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific century: Defence white paper 2009,” Department of Defence, Canberra, 2009, 33.
19. Ibid., 65.
20. “2013 Defence white paper,” Department of Defence, Camberra, 2013, 11; “Australia in the Asian century white paper,” Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Camberra, 2012, 228; 234.
21. “2013 Defence white paper,” 9.
22. “2016 Defence white paper,” Department of Defence, Canberra, 2016, 46.
23. “2020 Defence strategic update,” Department of Defence, Canberra, 2020, 3.
24. Ibid., 11.
25. Ibid., 14.
26. Ibid., 27.
27. The White House, “Joint leaders statement on AUKUS,” 15 September 2001, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/09/15/joint-leaders-statement-on-aukus/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
28. Andrew Nicholls, Jackson Dowie, and Marcus Hellyer, “Implementing Australia's nuclear submarine program,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 14 December 2021, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/implementing-australias-nuclear-submarine-program (accessed 13 January 2023).
29. David Vergun, “Official says integrated deterrence key to national defense strategy,” US Department of Defense, 6 December 2022, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3237769/official-says-integrated-deterrence-key-to-national-defense-strategy/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
30. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “Joint statement Australia-US ministerial consultations (AUSMIN) 2021,” Australian Government, https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/united-states-of-america/ausmin/joint-statement-australia-us-ministerial-consultations-ausmin-2021 (accessed 13 January 2023).
31. Stephen Dziedzic and Andrew Greene, “Pressure mounts on Australia to participate in US South China Sea navigation operations,” ABC News, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-27/australia-pressured-to-participate-in-south-china-sea-operation/12496326 (accessed 13 January 2023).
32. “Canada first defence strategy,” Department of National Defence, Ottawa, 2008, 6.
33. “Canada and the defence of North America,” House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence, Ottawa, 2015, 5–7.
34. “Canada and the defence of North America: NORAD and aerial readiness,” House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence, Ottawa, 2016, 6.
35. “Strong, secure, engage: Canada's defence policy,” Department of National Defence, Ottawa, 2017, 50.
36. Ibid., 92.
37. “CSIS public report 2020,” Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Ottawa, 2021, 22–23.
38. Robert Fife and Steven Chase, “Top defence official says China is a threat to Canadian Arctic,” The Globe and Mail, 11 March 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-top-defence-official-says-china-is-a-threat-to-canadian-arctic/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
39. “Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy,” Global Affairs Canada, Ottawa, 2022, 3; 7; 9.
40. See Justin Massie and Manuel Dorion-Soulié, “Canada's China policy in a (declining?) unipolar world: Engagement, containment, or indifference?,” in Michael K. Hawes and Christopher J. Kirkey, eds., Canadian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2016), 132–156; Justin Massie, “Toward greater opportunism: Balancing and bandwagoning in Canada-US relations,” in Jonathan Paquin and Patrick James, eds., Game Changer: The Impact of 9/11 on North American Security (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014), 49–64.
41. “Framework for enhanced military cooperation among North American Aerospace Defense Command, United States Northern Command, and Canada Command,” Canada Command, Ottawa, September 2009, 32p.
42. Department of National Defence, “Joint statement on NORAD modernization,” 14 August 2021, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2021/08/joint-statement-on-norad-modernization.html (accessed 13 January 2023).
43. Kiel Institute for the World Economy, “Ukraine support tracker,” 20 November 2022, https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/?cookieLevel=not-set (accessed 13 January 2023).
44. Daniel Leblanc, “Canada puts premium on fighter jets’ ability to conduct attacks on foreign soil,” The Globe and Mail, 10 June 2019, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-puts-premium-on-fighter-jets-ability-to-conduct-attacks-on/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
45. David Pugliese, “Will other firms withdraw from fighter jet competition leaving F-35 last plane standing?,” Ottawa Citizen, 25 September 2019, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/will-other-firms-withdraw-from-fighter-jet-competition-leaving-f-35-last-plane-standing (accessed 13 January 2023).
46. Justin Massie, “Bandwagoning for status: Canada's need of the F-35,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 17, no. 3 (2011): 251–264.
47. Tim Choi, “What can we expect from the new Canadian surface combatant?,” CDA Institute, 26 May 2021, https://cdainstitute.ca/timothy-choi-what-can-we-expect-from-the-new-csc-combat-ships/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
48. Department of National Defence, “Key issues—Canada-China defence relations,” Government of Canada, 9 August 2021, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/proactive-disclosure/cacn-national-security-dimensions-canada-china-relations-12-april-2021/key-issues.html (accessed 13 January 2023).
49. Robert Fife and Steven Chase, “Global Affairs objected to Canadian military decision to cancel training with China's People's Liberation Army,” The Globe and Mail, 9 December 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-global-affairs-objected-to-canadian-military-decision-to-cancel/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
50. Lee Berthiaume, “Sajjan targets Chinese claims in South China Sea, battles Tories over Beijing ties,” National Post, 12 April 2021, https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/sajjan-targets-chinese-claims-in-south-china-sea-battles-tories-over-beijing-ties (accessed 13 January 2023).
51. Irfan Yar, “Why should Canada care about the South China Sea?,” Macdonald-Laurier Institute, 9 April 2019, https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/canada-care-south-china-sea-irfan-yar-inside-policy/ (accessed 13 January 2023).
52. Castillo and Downes, “Loyalty, hedging, or exit.” Lindsey Ford and Zack Cooper, “America's alliances after Trump: Lessons from the summer of ’69,” Texas National Security Review 4, no. 2 (2021): 99–119; Srdjan Vucetic, “China and its region: An assessment of hegemonic prospects,” Journal of Regional Security 16, no. 2 (2022): 127–150.

Biographies

Maxandre Fortier is a graduate of the Department of Political Science of the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Justin Massie is a full professor in the Department of Political Science of the Université du Québec à Montréal.

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