One of the most pressing foreign policy challenges that the ten countries of Southeast Asia (ASEAN-10) face today and in the coming years is how to position themselves between the US and China as the geopolitical rivalry between the two superpowers intensifies. Most in Southeast Asia claim they would prefer not to have to choose between the two superpowers, but that position will become increasingly difficult to maintain as the US and China pressure states in the region to align with them. The seminar  will address four questions related to this strategic dilemma: What is it about the U.S.-China rivalry that predisposes the superpowers to ask others to align with them? What do the strategic alignments of the ASEAN-10 look like today? What explains their alignment choices? And what are the implications of the latter for Southeast Asia, the superpowers, and the region? Yuen Foong Khong will provide preliminary answers to these questions, drawing from a new “Alignment Index” and research papers from his “The Anatomy of Choice: Southeast Asia between the Superpowers” project (supported by a Singapore Social Science Research Thematic Grant, 2021-2025).

About the Speaker: 

Yuen Foong KHONG is Li Ka Shing Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center on Asia and Globalization at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.  He was formerly Professor of International Relations and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1987 and was Assistant/Associate Professor at Harvard University’s Government Department from 1987-1994. His dissertation received Harvard’s Sumner Prize for the best dissertation on war and peace (1988).  His book, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, 1992; sixth printing 2006) was co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s Political Psychology Book Award (1994). He also received the Erik Erikson Award for distinguished early career contribution to political psychology in 1996.  From 1988-2000, he served as Deputy Director and Director of the  Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 

He has held grants from the Social Science Research Council (New York)-MacArthur Foundation Program on Security in a Changing World, the United States Institute of Peace, and the (U.K.) Leverhulme Trust.  A former Vice-President of the International Studies Association (U.S.A), 1999-2000, he has also served on the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Committee on International Peace and Security. His research interests include United States foreign policy, the international relations of the Asia Pacific, and cognitive approaches to international relations. His journal publications include “Power as Prestige in World Politics” (2019) and “How Not to Learn from History” (2022), International Affairs, and “The American Tributary System,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics (2013).  He is the Principal Investigator of The Anatomy of Choice: Southeast Asia between the Superpowers, a multi-year project supported by a Singapore Social Science Research Thematic Grant.