Small-State Strategy in an Era of Great Power Rivalry: Thailand between the U.S. and China

Abstract

The growing competition between great powers, the United States and China, has put more pressure on small states to align with extraordinary powers. This article interrogates the dominant small-state literature that casts small states as passive or structurally constrained by investigating Thailand’s strategic actions and words under the Biden administration. Guided by small-state theory, realism, and strategic hedging, this article employs a qualitative, empirical case study to examine Thailand’s foreign policy behavior. The empirical case study assesses Thailand’s diplomatic activity and economic engagement while also analyzing Thailand’s policy responses to external pressures to demonstrate a nuanced neutrality strategy shaped by the joint forces of geostrategic constraints and domestic agency. It finds that Thailand can maintain its autonomy as a small state by being engaged pragmatically and economically adaptable, using multi-vector diplomatic relations without openly aligning with Washington or Beijing. The study contributes to broader debates on small-state strategies for engagement and the changing international order by providing evidence that secondary powers use engaged strategic tools and calibrated strategies as a part of their agency that rejects binary alignments. It recontextualizes hedging as a deliberate, strategic tool intentionally pursued by small states engaging with much more powerful states in an increasingly multipolar world.