TY - JOUR
AU - Puri,, Samir
AB - Abstract This article examines the hedging strategies of Iran, Russia, and China. It demonstrates how these deeply dissatisfied states have used strategic hedging to pursue status and security: specifically, through local revisionism that does not jeopardize their ability to participate in the international system or trigger interstate war. The case studies show how these states have maintained this balance during three of the biggest interstate crises of the twenty-first century so far: confrontations over Iran's nuclear program, Russia's destabilization of Ukraine, and China's maritime operations. Each case juxtaposes these states΄ regional assertion of power with their efforts to bargain with the system hegemon. The evidence shows that despite ostensibly revisionist maneuvers, none of these states want to fight the US or to break with the global system. Rather, each has executed its revisionist gambits as part of a wider hedging strategy, calibrating their level of aggression to the tolerance of the US. Iran, Russia, China, strategic hedging, polarity, multipolarity This article examines the hedging strategies of Iran, Russia, and China and, in doing so, presents an application of strategic hedging specifically tailored to dissatisfied states: states that have shown a willingness to engage in aggressive revisionist regional moves but wish to avoid large-scale war and continue benefitting from participation in the international system. Hedging occurs when a state pursues multiple options, mixing confrontation and cooperation in order to spread the risks inherent in achieving a single objective. That objective for Iran, Russia, and China is to achieve regional hegemony and the prestige that accompanies it. To hedge effectively with this aim in mind, these states must manage the costs and benefits that arise from both aggressive regional moves and global participatory behavior. These three very different aspiring regional hegemons have pursued their revisionist aims as part of a wider hedging strategy, offsetting the risks they face by calibrating their level of disruptive and aggressive behavior to the tolerance, if not the acceptance, of the United States. Iran, Russia, and China all engage in hedging that mixes forceful regional moves with global engagement—a strategy that carries the potential for grave miscalculation. The risks of such a strategy are not hypothetical. Three of the twenty-first century's biggest interstate crises have involved regional aggression on the part of these states, aggression that has drawn terse reactions from the United States: Iran's nuclear weapons program, Russia's destabilization of Ukraine, and China's assertive maritime operations. Each crisis has carried escalatory potential, bringing these countries to loggerheads with the United States and alarming their neighbors. Interpreting these moves as isolated acts of unilateral aggression or straightforward power plays fails to recognize their context within the wider foreign policies of these countries. Iran, Russia, and China each see their present regional roles as incommensurate with their stature. To redress this imbalance and advance their interests, they face choices: they can work within the existing system, abiding by the norms of its dominant powers and institutions, or they can challenge the status quo. To explain this behavior, I rely on the strategic hedging literature (Tessman and Wolfe 2011; Tessman 2012; Medieros 2004; Goh 2005). Applied to these cases, I focus specifically on revisionist second-tier states. I also develop the logic of hedging further by looking at its execution at both regional and global levels. I explicitly focus on whether revisionist second-tier states can benefit from cooperating at the global level to achieve regional revisionist goals. The case studies present three differently sized states that operate in distinct world regions. Iran is but one regional power among several, Russia is a former superpower, and China a superpower in ascent. Juxtaposing these cases demonstrates how this multilevel hedging works in different contexts by different countries that between them have no sustained coordination, aside from when they may have opportunistically supported each other's positions on certain issues. I begin by discussing strategic hedging in the context of an international system plagued with uncertainty. Next, I develop new strategic logic for hedging behavior by juxtaposing its operation at the global level alongside the regional level. I devote particular attention to the threshold for triggering a blocking response from the global hegemon since states should carefully calibrate their revisionist behavior so as not to cross this threshold. The case studies examine Iranian, Russian, and Chinese responses to the prevailing power balances in their regions. I show how each country exhibits dissatisfaction with the existing order and engages in subsequent revisionism. My analysis then shows how an empirical separation between bargaining at the regional level and bargaining occurring with the global hegemon better explains hedging behavior. Insights from these cases reveal the importance of tailoring the concept of strategic hedging and how the concept can explain the behavior of states that are spreading the risks of their revisionist actions across both regional and global levels. Strategic Hedging in an Uncertain International System Strategic hedging refers to the mix of strategies that states employ in light of an uncertain future. It is, as Tessman and Wolfe argue, distinct from hard and soft balancing (Tessman and Wolfe 2011). Tessman (2012) lists Russia, China, Brazil, and France as “second-tier states” that hedge to “cope with the threats and constraints they are likely to encounter under conditions of unipolarity, while simultaneously preparing them for threats and opportunities that are likely to emerge as the system leader falls into further decay” (Tessman 2012, 203). Tessman distinguishes “type A” hedging, which explicitly seeks to insure against a future conflict with the United States, from “type B” hedging, which seeks a general diversification of where a state looks for security and resources. Other scholars have used hedging to study East Asia's security dilemmas. Goh (2005) studied the hedging of states in the Asia-Pacific as they struck a middle path between overreliance on either the United States or China. Medeiros sees hedging in US-China relations on the part of both countries, which “stress engagement and integration mechanisms” but also “emphasize realist-style balancing” (Medeiros 2004, 145). Hedging builds on a prior literature in the field of international relations on mixed strategies. As Schweller wrote, it is wrong to assume “that a state can either balance, bandwagon, or buckpass but it cannot simultaneously do all three” (Schweller 1999, 17). States often do combine strategies, passing the buck to buy time to balance, for example. Even the ameliorative engagement of a rising or dissatisfied state is seldom an isolated approach—it is often part of a larger policy of balancing (Schweller 1999). The current era is uncertain. Characterizations differ as to the kind of system that is emerging. For neorealists, transitions foreshadow hazard, meaning we should expect a conflictual twenty-first century. Waltz wrote of “multipolarity developing before our eyes” and “emerging in accordance with the balancing imperative” as alliances reconfigure to reflect new power distributions (Waltz 2000, 37). In Mearsheimer's offensive realist view, war is all but inevitable as new powers expand their realms: “Multipolar systems that contain potential hegemons are the most dangerous systems of all” (Mearsheimer 2001, 5). There is, however, no consensus that multipolarity lies ahead. Yan Xuetong (2013) sees an emerging Chinese-US bipolarity. Mahbubani (2009) sees the weight of global power tangibly shifting toward Asia, having been hastened by the global financial crisis, and aided by the United States’ embroilment in Afghanistan and Iraq (Mahbubani 2009). Others contend that US retrenchment is not predetermined. Wohlforth and Brooks (2008) argued that the United States does not face any debilitating constraints as the world's preponderant security actor. Cox (2012) barely discerned a power transition at all. Whatever one's perspective, Europe's multipolarity of a bygone age provides a poor analogy for the present era. Rather than a multipolar system comprising roughly equal peers, Friedberg writes of clusters of states that operate in regional subsystems (Friedberg 1993). For Haas (2008), poles are now less relevant than states accruing meaningful concentrations of power to influence the matters they consider of prime concern. Flockhart (2016, 23) also resists the multipolar characterization, opting instead to describe the evolving system as being “multi-order” because “the primary dynamics are likely to be within and between different orders, rather than between multiple sovereign states.” The slow drift from post–Cold War unipolarity, though, has not opened the floodgates to predatory powers around the world. No empires have collapsed. There are no clear spoils to divide. Rather, there are opportunities for rising or previously contained states to gain more dominant regional roles, even if they cannot directly challenge the system leader. US power remains preponderant, as do institutions that have underpinned the global order for decades. Although potential revisionists still have great incentive to avoid war with the United States, power is diffusing across the globe. No one continent serves as the epicenter of the emerging global system. The United States is not experiencing a sharp decline, but rather increasingly shares the world stage with other powers of varying sizes (Zakaria 2011, 4). For states harboring dissatisfactions, these global-level changes present opportunities. The Hedging Strategies of Dissatisfied and Revisionist States I understand dissatisfaction to emanate from some frustrated aspiration. Dissatisfied states sometimes progress to revision, taking action in some way to achieve redress. There is no novelty in arguing that such quarrels can create discord and have done so historically. As Wohlforth observes, “Conflict emerges from a complex interaction between power and dissatisfaction with the status quo” (Wohlforth 2009, 28). The focus here is to understand why a dissatisfied state, as it seeks revisionist outcomes on certain issues, will use a different sort of hedging strategy. The criterion offered here involves the juxtaposition of disruptive and conciliatory behaviors, resulting in contrasting, perhaps even contradictory moves at different levels, but which bring the hedging country steadily toward its objective: regional dominance and the accompanying prestige. The unilateral military character of the regional assertion of power is essential to inclusion in this subset of dissatisfied power. Iran's sponsoring of proxy wars while developing nuclear weapons, Russia's wars in Georgia and Ukraine, and China's naval expansion in the South China Sea have allowed these countries to project regional hegemonic prowess. They engage in such behaviors, however, while responding to the overtures of the United States and the wider international system on other matters. This strategic juggling act calls for great balance and creates the potential for escalation through miscalculation. For a dissatisfied state willing to force revisions, hedging involves maneuvering, often in unfavorable circumstances, to advance its interests without triggering a decisive response from its regional cohabitants backed by the hegemon—in this case, the United States. Mixed strategies of this nature will inevitably lead to making the most of mixed outcomes, which in turn will hinge on whether and how the United States decides to become involved in blocking the assertive regional move. The United States will likely face fraught decisions over which regional challenges to resist. Facing its own high stakes and wishing to avoid war, the United States may only be able to partially stymie a revisionist move in the hope of forestalling a domino effect of successive challenges (Werner 2000). While the United States is keen to prevent the reshaping of regional dynamics by aspirant regional hegemons, it may well fall short of threatening war to do so. As the case studies will show, this is illustrated by the importance sanctions have come to play in punishing Iranian and Russian revisionist moves—they are nonlethal, can be made issue specific, and utilize Western dominance of global finance and the US dollar's role as the global reserve currency to bolster coercive diplomacy (Wheatley 2013). The United States also reassures its local allies and positions its armed forces accordingly, whether in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or the Asia-Pacific. Facing these responses, a revisionist hedging strategy will accept some pressure and some loss of global standing, but will seek to preserve as many of the benefits arising from integration in global networks of diplomacy, trade and finance that it can, and to restore these benefits over time. Importantly, this places Iran, Russia, and China in a different category than North Korea, which forgoes participation in much of the global system and embraces its pariah status. The three case studies examined below illustrate the different ways in which the logic of revisionist hedging can unfold. Each case study features states that are involved in such quests for status. The pursuit of status can be driven by domestic political compulsions that encourage the adoption of a hard-line stance on regional issues that relate to a perceived historical grievance. Along their journey from dissatisfaction to revision, each of these states has experienced extensive internal bargaining among national actors. In Iran, the hard-liners quarrel and contest elections with the moderates. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin faces a harried opposition. And in China, the Chinese Communist Party houses a range of opinions over foreign policy direction. Hard-line opinion in these countries has tended to favor greater unilateral challenge to the United States, which is consistent with the behavior of a state that seeks to improve its status. Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth (2014) explain that status is subjective and “socially scarce in that it cannot be enjoyed by everyone.” Also, they write, “Status cannot be attained unilaterally; it must be recognized by others…[notably when] higher status actors acknowledge the state's enhanced responsibilities, privileges or rights” (9–11). Driven by desires for increased regional authority and autonomy, and reflecting the domestic clout of hard-line political forces, Iran, Russia, and China have sought status to avoid being rendered passive players in their own neighborhoods. States naturally seek advantage, not marginalization, in their own regions, and are exploiting global power shifts to enhance their local space to maneuver and their status. The logic of revisionist hedging lends itself to a multilevel analysis. Dissatisfied states seeking revision may push for change more aggressively in their immediate neighborhoods, where they may discern a greater sense of right or privilege, while still seeking to benefit from their bilateral and multilateral international relationships. For most states, what happens locally differs in magnitude of importance and immediacy than what unfolds several continents away. Moreover, because a global system-level power shift can involve slow-burning trends, its impact may well be refracted more tangibly within regional security dynamics. Next, I will explain how the logic of multilevel hedging can help to explain how dissatisfied states seeking revision maneuver regionally in a changing international context. The Logic of Multilevel Hedging I look particularly at regional versus global hedging. The global level involves the interplay between the dissatisfied state and the United States, which remains the overall system hegemon, and the alliances and institutions that it dominates, whereas the regional level involves the interplay between states in its locality. In this article, these levels of analysis will be distinguished by using the notion of regional security complexes. It should be noted that this concept is distinct from regionalism, which pertains to the common identity of regions, and the institutions and cooperation springing from this. Regionalism as a concept can be relevant to when states moderate their revisionism and instead cooperate. Consider the European Union, for example, where formerly warring European states now comprise a unified bloc. However, other regions are not nearly as peaceable and are riven by rivalries and feature delicate power balances. As Buzan and Weaver argue, the global order should be understood as consisting of strong regions. They distinguish “regional security complexes” from the “system level interplay of global powers” (Buzan and Weaver 2003, 4). Regions are durable substructures within the international system. They “may well be extensively penetrated by global powers, but regional dynamics have substantial degrees of autonomy from the patterns set by global powers” (4). The most extreme penetration would see regional dynamics completely ensconced by global powers (as happened to some regions in the Cold War)—but “the regional level will always be operative and sometimes dominant” (52). This resonates with the notion of an emerging multipolarity that comprises several centers of regional power, with each region containing states that can set the pace and tone of security affairs in their neighborhoods, even if they cannot do so globally. For this reason, shifts in the power balance at the global level can cascade down and impact power balances within regions. The nub of the matter is the relationship between the regional and global levels. As Hurrell writes, “Regional powers cannot be understood unless they are viewed in a global context…. [The global system will] shape the kinds of power resources available to putative regional powers [since their] utility is contingent on the broader character of the global order…. [Moreover,] all regions are socially constructed and hence politically contested” (Hurrell 2010, 15–17). Rival claims to regional leadership sometimes coincide with differing visions as to how to demarcate the outline of a region. What an aspiring regional hegemon sees as its sphere of influence may not correspond to how the region should be delineated in the minds of other states. For these reasons, as Hurrell concludes, It is precisely the shifting relationship between the one world of the global system and the many regional worlds that help us to make sense of the ideas, the interests and the resources available to regional powers as well as the scope, domain and character of their regional playgrounds…. You are far more likely to maintain stable regional control if you can persuade other powers in the world to accept the legitimacy of your regional predominance. (Hurrell 2010, 17, 20, italics in original) Doing this without attracting the censure of the system leader is tough. Censure may follow if a disruptive regional move restricts access to resources upon which states outside the region depend or sets precedents that undermine norms elsewhere in the world. But the state making a forceful regional move might calculate that, as its gambit unfolds, it can steel itself against punishment and over time restore its international standing with minimal concessions. An emphasis on the relative autonomy of regions, and the opportunities for aspirant hegemons from within regions to influence local security dynamics, runs contrary to the argument advanced by Peter Katzenstein (2005). He argued that “a world of regions” can be understood within the framework of US hegemony and that “regions are made porous by links to the American imperium” (Katzenstein 2005, 2). This argument, of US hegemonic influence over regions, spurred by the US role in the post-1945 reconstruction of Japan and Germany, the collapse of the USSR, and by globalization and internationalization, is open to challenge in light of likely changing patterns in global power. This theme of the penetrability of regions to US influence will be re-examined in the conclusion. Using the global and regional levels of analysis can add clarity to the study of hedging strategies, but there is also a need to reflect on the interplay between these levels. Although the proximate cause of a crisis is likely to be rooted in unresolved regional issues, the underlying cause of dissatisfaction may in fact reside in the nature of the global order. The undesirability of war with the United States can leave dissatisfied states lacking other options to unilaterally increase their status other than through regional assertiveness. This is the second theme that will be reflected on in the conclusion: whether a broader discontent with the global order can find sufficient expression through disruptive behavior at the regional level. There is some irony in states strategically using the global order to elevate their regional position. Today's rising or previously contained states trace some of their principal dissatisfaction to the Western architects of the global system. The “West” is a notion best expressed in cultural and historical rather than geographic terms, including states rooted in ancient Greco-Roman civilization, and spread by later colonial emigration (Gress 1998). The United States, Canada, and the European Union are synonymous with the West, as are the closely aligned countries of Australia and New Zealand. The West does not necessarily act in concert, breaking ranks over the 2003 Iraq invasion, for example, or over Great Britain's decision to leave the European Union. Who is and is not “Western” can be contentious, as shown by Turkey's tortured attempts to ingratiate itself with the European Union. Western states dominate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance (NATO), the European Union (an economic bloc), and the international monetary fund (IMF) and World Bank (key international financial institutions). Given the clout it presently enjoys, the emphasis the West puts on defending existing arrangements is understandable as is its propensity to act as gatekeepers, passing judgment over who to admit to the community of norm-abiding states. The notion of the “West versus the rest” is too simplistic to explain the origin of Iranian, Russian, and Chinese dissatisfaction, though. Rather, their dissatisfaction also arises from the management of the global system by Western states. As Zarakol (2011, 6) explains, major powers like Russia and China have joined “a system of states with very specific cultural origins” and have had to adjust to norms they did not create regarding what counts as permissible behavior vis-à-vis the exertion of influence. Nevertheless, there are benefits to be had from complying with the global system. Consider the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). While each may be irked by privileges enjoyed by Western states in the current system, they routinely attempt to advance their positions through existing global forums (Narlikar 2010). Working within the bounds of the existing system pays dividends. India, for example, was feted by the United States with a civilian nuclear technology deal, with UK support for a permanent seat in a reformulated future UN Security Council (Cameron 2015). The West would rather see an emerging or resurgent power “play by the rules” in staking out its regional and global roles, even if its actions seek to adjust the status quo. Conversely, antagonistically revisionist powers make for easy “bad guys.” The West censures states that engage in norm-breaking adventurism and that upset existing power balances. The Munich analogy of 1938 illustrates how the West believes aggression, especially forcible land grabs, should be checked. Other examples exist, as well. Iraq's annexation of Kuwait in 1990 was ended by a US-led, UN-mandated war targeting a potential regional hegemon. The 1991 Gulf War even earned acquiescence from China and Russia in the UN Security Council. Since the early 1990s, the West has also engaged in its own brand of revisionism—regime change. Whereas the overthrow of regimes in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan may have appeared in the Western foreign policy calculus as the virtuous eviction of human rights–abusing, terrorist-sponsoring regimes, after the European colonial era of past centuries, such flexing of Western muscle creates resentment and suspicion. To its critics, the West seeks to install pliant regimes supportive of its agenda and unfairly tips the rules of the international game in its favor (Mishra 2012, 280; Mahbubani 2009; Said 2003). It should be clear by now that whether a rule is broken, or the status quo revised, depends on who makes the rules. Aspiring regional hegemons (including the ones examined in this article) do not see themselves as revisionist or, for that matter, aggressive. Rather, they see their actions as just and necessary to reclaim their rightful position in the international system. The logic of multilevel hedging recognizes these dynamics. Next, to provide empirical substance to my theory, I present three case studies that demonstrate the progression from dissatisfaction to revisionist moves. I also make explicit the distinction between regional bargaining and the bargaining taking place with the system leader. Iran On July 14, 2015, the P5+1 group of states (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China) signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Given the range of world powers working to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program, it appeared at first glance that this multipolar effort had promise to successfully contain Iran's regional ambitions. In reality, the JCPOA opened a new chapter in Iran's quest for regional influence commensurate with its size and relative stability in the region. President Hassan Rouhani, after praising the six powers involved in the deal, implored them “to play a positive role in the creation of a nuclear weapons-free Middle East and not to allow the Zionist regime to remain the only impediment in the way of realizing this initiative” (Rouhani 2015). Iran's regional foes, Israel and Saudi Arabia, were furious about the JCPOA, concerned that it had relieved Iran from global pressure and afforded it greater space for regional aggression through proxy wars. It is intellectually rewarding to step into Iran's shoes and to interpret its past choices and prospects through the lens of strategic hedging. Iran ultimately decided to dispense with the deception around its nuclear program as it became unsustainable. In exchange, Iran sought a path toward participation in the global economy. Nevertheless, Iran's backing of armed groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon has allowed it to continue to act regionally. In a region engulfed by war, and riven by endemic rivalries, how is one to interpret the regional role Iran envisions? What are Iran's prospects for breaking out of the straightjacket of international isolation while continuing to advance its regional interests using aggressive unilateral tactics? The case study explains Iran's dissatisfaction, then examines its regional versus its global bargaining postures. Iran's Dissatisfaction and Isolation The Middle East is a multipolar region with no natural hegemon. History has seen several pretenders to this throne, as well as habitual involvement by external powers seeking access to its resources (Beck 2014). Home to a population close to 80 million, Iran is heir to a civilization that predates Islam by two millennia. With the Persian Safavid Empire in mind, Parsi writes that “regional primacy has been the norm rather than the exception in Iran's three thousand year history” (2007, 39). In recent decades, though, Iran has faced regional isolation. A majority Persian and Shia state, Iran sits on one side of Islam's Sunni-Shia faultline. The overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi's monarchy in 1979 heralded theocratic rule under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Panic spread among Arab states that Iran might export its revolution. Khomeini's rule also spurred an enduring antipathy toward the United States, cemented after its embassy was stormed amidst revolutionary fervor based on perceived US patronage of the Shah (Walt 1996). According to Parsi, Iran has consistently aimed to “[achieve] and [sustain] a position of pre-eminence in the Persian Gulf—based on [its] inclusion in all decisions of relevance to the region” (2007, 88–89). Before 1979, Iran was poised to advance its regional prominence thanks to Cold War superpower patronage provided by the United States, which filled the vacuum left by Britain. After 1979, though, Iran saw its space to maneuver narrow (Parsi 2007, 6). By 1989, ten years after its revolution, its international and regional positions were weak. A decade of war with Iraq left its mark. After Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, it took two years for the UN Security Council to demand Iraq's withdrawal. Western countries aided Iraq in this war, as did Russia, thinking it a lesser evil than theocratic Iran. Iran duly concluded that, if facing mortal danger, it could rely only on itself (Parsi 2007, 6). This sense of abandonment was compounded in the 1990s when US bilateral security arrangements with the Gulf States froze Iran out of the regional security architecture, and as the US Dual Containment policy sought to keep both Iran and Iraq isolated. After 9/11, Iran offered to help defeat the Taliban, having backed the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan's civil war. The United States talked to Iranian officials, but no enduring partnership arose (Dobbins 2008, 72; Parsi 2007, 225–237). In January 2002, the United States included Iran in President George W. Bush's “Axis of Evil” speech, a move that emphasized Iran's global isolation (Bush 2002). Thus, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 left Iran conflicted: a bitter regional foe had been deposed, but by a system power that treated Iran as a pariah. Iran duly sought influence in Iraq by backing its majority Shia, ascendant after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime (Nasr 2007). Iran's Qods Force (a covert wing of its Revolutionary Guard) backed Iraq's Shia militias, which were fighting US and UK forces. This solidified Iran's reputation as a regional power broker but confirmed Western accusations of Iran's support for terrorists and destabilizing presence in the region. Iran's position worsened markedly in a US-centric global order, compounded by Israel and Saudi Arabia's status as Washington's key regional allies. Too many powers, international and regional, saw value in containing Iran. Iran, the Global Complier and Regional Agitator It is instructive to note how hedging has helped Iran to withstand, at least temporarily, this predicament. Iran has used the concern raised by its nuclear weapons program as a fulcrum, situated between its regional quest for security and influence and its engagement with the wider world. Indeed, as part of its hedging strategy, Iran seeks to improve its leverage with the United States (Tessman and Wolfe 2011, 219). However, Iran has also persisted with regional proxy wars, thus demonstrating its willingness to fight its rivals and assert its power. Managing the contradictions inherent in this stance has been a challenge for Iranian statecraft, for its regional rivals, and for world powers. Initially, the nuclear issue contributed to Iran's pariah status. In 2002, it became publicly known that Iran had built the Natanz enrichment and Arak heavy water facilities. International pressure was applied as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sought access to the sites. The West's response involved carrots and sticks. In 2003, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom began talks with Iran as the EU-3. At the same time, Iran felt pressure from the US military placement of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and from Israel's dire warnings that Iran's nascent nuclear ability must be destroyed. President Khatami (1997–2005) offered transparency, arguing the program to be purely for civilian energy. Iran's position then hardened under President Ahmadinejad (2005–13). His rhetoric against Israel accentuated the apocalyptic associations around Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. The West's position similarly hardened. Increasingly harsh sanctions on oil and other exports strangled Iran's economy. Located between the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea (two large oil and gas reserves), Iran's economy suffered under this blockade. The rial lost value as Iran's access to international markets was cut (Wheatly 2013). The P5+1 came together in 2006. The potential economic benefits for Moscow and Beijing drove those countries to join the West's efforts to pursue a deal. If Iran complied with the JCPOA, it would become a more valuable trade partner for China, a buyer of Iranian oil. Iran would also become a lucrative market for Russia, a potential supplier to Iran of civilian nuclear technology and military equipment. Russia played a key role in the talks leading to signing of the JCPOA. It hosted negotiation sessions and coordinated among parties to advance proposals. In June 2013, Rouhani, more moderate compared with Ahmadinejad, became Iran's president. His tenure coincided with that of President Obama, who was more moderate than Bush. Political space in Washington and Tehran opened for a deal as the bite of sanctions pushed Iran toward a compromise. The negotiators of the JCPOA put aside any discussion of the wider matter of Iran's regional role in favor of a narrow, transactional agenda: slowing uranium enrichment and increasing transparency of the nuclear program in return for sanctions relief (Kaye 2014). This logic bore fruit with an interim deal in November 2013, before the JCPOA was finalized in July 2015. Iran traded the unilateral power that it could have acquired with nuclear weapons for sanctions relief, potential foreign investment, and being gradually welcomed back into the international system. Hedging helps to explain the deep contradiction embodied by the JCPOA deal. Iran had not surrendered its desire for a greater regional role. While the JCPOA opened the way to for Iran to recast itself as a rule-abider, other facets of its behavior remained troubling for its regional rivals. Iran used the protracted nuclear talks to attract global attention to its grievances, casting its nuclear program as a quest for security, influence, and respect. Israel and Saudi Arabia saw instead a future in which Iran could push its regional agenda under a nuclear umbrella. Riyadh has held contempt for Iran since the 1979 revolution installed an antimonarchical, theocratic Shia regime. This change exacerbated sectarian rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia's monarchs, who manage the Sunni holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Iran also periodically undercut Saudi Arabia's regional clout, appealing to Arab popular opinion by taking a tough stance on the Palestinian issue (Wehrey 2009). Iranian-Israeli enmity was also acute, particularly over Iran's backing of Hezbollah (Bergman 2008). From the Levant to the Persian Gulf, these regional powers cajoled the United States into blocking and balancing against Iranian moves on the basis of their fear that the JCPOA would embolden Iran—arguments that have found greater traction with US President Donald Trump. Regional reactions to Iran's efforts call into question the sustainability of Iran's return to the global system. Iran's signing of the JCPOA meets the criteria for hedging: it built leverage with the system leader, bolstering President Obama's prioritization of nonproliferation over relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, implementation of the JCPOA could maximize Iran's gains in a less unipolar global system, if it could leverage Russian and Chinese support to balance the US role in the region. The depth of historic US antipathy toward Iran renders their rapprochement fragile. While the JCPOA has alleviated some US hostility, Iran's position could worsen if the United States comes to see Iran as improving its global standing without sacrificing its regional aspirations. The rise of the Islamic State (IS) in 2014 recast Iran as a potential regional stabilizer in US eyes. Tehran's influence over Baghdad's Shia politicians was made evident when Iran withdrew its support for Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki in 2014 over his ineffectual response to IS and supported a transition to his successor, Haider al-Abadi (Borger 2014). Even if common cause over IS was to be found between Iran and the United States, no consensus was forthcoming over Syria's civil war. Iran allied with the Alawite regime of Hafiz and Bashar al-Assad, seeking to balance Israeli, Saudi, and US influence (Goodrazi 2009). Just as Tehran and Riyadh had perceived Iraq's civil war in zero-sum terms, so they did in Syria. Iran ordered Hezbollah to fight for Assad's regime, while the Gulf States funded the Sunni resistance against Assad. Overall, Iran's involvement in these wars in the form of military support to a multitude of local allies comprises part of an arc of regional influence spanning Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut. The regional and global stances taken by Iran contradict one another. Implementation of the JCPOA, crucial to facilitating the rehabilitation of Iran's international standing, displaces attention from the fact that even without nuclear weapons Iran will push for a greater role in regional affairs. In a region so riven by wars and shifting alliances and so penetrated by outside interference, Iran's best chance to carve out regional influence rests at the global level, where it can gain sanction to act more freely regionally. There are limits to what Iran can achieve in this regard. Iran's aspiration for regional hegemony is likely to remain just this—aspiration. Too large to innocuously inhabit the Middle East, but too small to dominate its neighbors and too different to attract them, Iran will always be but one of several regional players. By hedging between regional agitation and global cooperation on the nuclear issue, Iran has positioned itself to seek the advantages of a changing international system, while forcefully asserting its regional role amidst the unpredictability of the Middle East. Russia Of the cases examined here, Russia has exhibited the most aggressive revisionist behavior. Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 while supporting insurgents in eastern Ukraine. Russia's move caught Western powers on the back foot. Preferring to be feared rather than admired, Russia redrew a sovereign border by force, thereby breaking a key global norm. Suddenly, the post–Cold War order in Europe appeared uncertain. Subsequent Western reassurances to Eastern Europe's NATO members served as a first indication of how far the United States would go to stymie similar Russian power plays elsewhere. To understand this crisis, it is instructive to frame Russia's regional moves in terms of hedging that is informed not only by dissatisfaction and opportunism, but by an interpretation of a changing global order. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, “The world has entered a transitional period and the signs are that this is not just another historical swing, but a change in era. We see a global rebalancing of forces and the emergence of a new polycentric world order” (Lavrov 2014). In such a world, Russia's ability to hedge is considerable. Russia is not a country that can be readily ignored or coerced. Territorially vast, with nuclear weapons and a permanent UN Security Council seat, it has sought revision due to its interpreted belittling by Europe's post–Cold War order. Will Russia's prospects for restoring the regional power it once wielded improve in a “polycentric” system? This case explains Russia's move from dissatisfaction to issue-specific revision. Then, I use the concept of hedging to explain the contradiction inherent in its aggressive regional moves and its wider foreign policy. Russia's Post–Cold War Dissatisfaction and Move to Revision It is important to take seriously Russia's dissatisfaction, albeit without ceding to Vladimir Putin's narrative. Russia has maneuvered at the dawn of the multipolar age with the intention of regaining lost influence. In 1991, the newly constituted Russian Federation was in no position to challenge the United States. The end of the bipolar system and collapse of the USSR served a severe blow to Russian power. But, when placed against a time scale of centuries, within which Russian power has periodically ascended and declined, 1991 did not mark the end of history, but rather the start of an era of shrunken Russian power. Moscow suddenly ruled a populace halved by the dismemberment of the USSR. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) underpinned a new military reality, limiting the number of Russian and NATO forces and restricting their areas of operation. After its ratification in 1992, Russia complained that the CFE unfairly limited its ability to move equipment on its own territory (Sharp 2006). Putin called the CFE “colonial” (Buckley 2007). Whereas Boris Yeltsin was preoccupied with managing the chaos of postcommunist Russia, Putin concerned himself with warding off Russia's decline, seeing “the collapse of the Soviet Union [as] a major geopolitical disaster of the century” (Putin 2005). Putin's rhetoric certainly catered to domestic consumption, but it also reflected the geopolitical realities facing Russia. NATO and European Union expansion put Russia on the back foot, much as Russia's annexation of Crimea did for the West in later years. Russia's reaction to NATO and European Union expansion makes sense given the geopolitical scene. Art (2004) uses strategic hedging to explain that the West retained NATO after 1991 as an insurance policy against Russia. However, later expansions gave Russia the impression that NATO was not simply a defensive mechanism. In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO, as did Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic states in 2004. Then, the same states joined the EU in two tranches of expansion in 2004 and 2007. Russia perceives these moves as encroachments on its sphere of influence, which includes the former Warsaw Pact area. Moreover, expansion seemed inexorable as NATO and the European Union encouraged Georgia and Ukraine to seek membership in those organizations, after Western-leaning political movements came to power following Georgia's Rose Revolution (2003) and Ukraine's Orange Revolution (2004). At the same time, Russian relations with the United States cooled. In 2002, the United States abrogated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty to pursue Strategic Missile Defense, a technology that Russia interpreted as destabilizing for the balance between the two countries. US perceptions of Russia had seemingly changed from seeing Russia as a peer rival during the Cold War to now seeing it as a passive actor. Robert Gates, a former CIA Director and Defense Department Secretary, admitted, “The West, particularly the US, badly underestimated the magnitude of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR…. Moving so quickly after the collapse of the Soviet Union to incorporate so many of its formerly subjugated states into NATO was a mistake” (Gates 2014, 157–158). The deterioration of its relations with the United States left Russia with less to lose in mounting a challenge to Europe's post–Cold War order, an imperative that intensified as the West attempted to pluck Ukraine and Georgia from Russia's sphere of influence. Russia's Regional Aggression and its Global Positioning The very notion of hedging—managing risk by pursuing multiple options—is well-suited for describing recent Russian foreign policy. Duplicity as a form of statecraft has suited Putin. His KGB service acquainted him with tactics that he later employed as a statesman. One illustrative tactic is the construction of deniability for Russian security operations by putting in place several degrees of separation between those devising and those executing such operations (Hill and Gaddy 2013). Such tactics comprise part of Putin's hedging strategy. Achieving deniability allows Putin to maintain global legitimacy, which he needs to build alternative partnerships. Russia has used the norm of self-determination as a pretext for intervention. The casus belli in Georgia was South Ossetia and Abkhazia's struggle for autonomy from Georgian rule. Fighting broke out in the 1990s between these regions and Tbilisi's forces, and it was only ended by Russian-negotiated ceasefires that were backed by Russia's military. The matter of Tbilisi's authority over these regions again flared into war in 2008, at a time when NATO was courting Georgia for membership. This provoked Putin's ire, but it was not until Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili tried to impose control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008 that Russia could paint Georgia as the aggressor. Russia responded militarily, ostensibly in defense of the contested regions, and inflicted a severe enough defeat upon Georgian forces so as to convey to other Soviet successor states the perils of asserting their authority contrary to Russian interests. Saakashvili had gambled on Western help that was not forthcoming. For his part, Putin had asserted geopolitical red lines in a short military campaign, superficially cloaked in the guise of crisis response in support of self-determination. Russia used a variation of this strategy in Ukraine in 2014. In the decade after the 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukraine's geopolitical destiny became the object of a tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Russia manufactured a dispute with Ukraine over contractual arrangements for gas sales, and in January 2009 Gazprom (owned by the Russian state) stopped selling gas to Ukraine. Betraying the real basis for this conflict, then-President Dmitri Medvedev complained of “Ukraine's anti-Russian stance in connection with the brutal attack on South Ossetia by Saakashvili's regime [and its] incessant attempts to complicate the activities of Russia's Black Sea Fleet [in Crimea]” (US State Department 2009). The crisis came to a head as the West and Russia tried to outbid each other in parallel appeals to Ukraine. The EU Eastern Partnership, launched in 2009, offered a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area to six post-Soviet states including Ukraine and Georgia. Russia's Eurasian Economic Union offered its own benefits (Charap and Troitskiy 2013). Upset by negotiations between Brussels and Kiev (albeit inconclusive), Russia issued customs restrictions on Ukrainian goods in 2013. Then, President Yanukovich's refusal to sign a deal with Brussels prompted protests in Kiev's Maidan Square in late 2013, which elicited a brutal crackdown. As the crisis intensified, Yanukovich fled to Russia. Moscow hardened its line that Ukraine's elected president had been illegally deposed. The crisis gave Russia the pretext it needed to flex its regional muscle. It annexed Crimea in March 2014, securing a base for its Black Sea Fleet. And Russia stoked insurgencies in east Ukraine's Donbas region. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics would, with Russian support, withstand Ukrainian military attempts to reassert Kiev's control. Despite evidence substantiating Russia's involvement, Putin publicly maintained the Donbas war was beyond his control. As the narrative went, the conflict was being perpetuated only by Ukrainian separatists and patriotic Russian soldiers who had volunteered to fight while on leave. As the Donbas war simmered along an active front line, it drew global attention away from Russia's fait accompli in Crimea. At first glance, Putin appeared willing to sacrifice Russia's international credibility for these aggressive regional moves. Upon closer inspection, though, Russia's assertiveness has demonstrated opportunism and deception housed within a wider hedging strategy. The evidence for this resides first in how Russia has combined its disruptive actions with other moves it can present as conciliatory toward certain Western interests and, second, in how Russia has looked for associations outside the West. All of this has been predicated on a third factor, which has been Russia's confidence in being able to steel itself against Western punishment. The sharpness of the contrast between Russia as a regional belligerent and Russia as the key to progress on a plethora of global issues has complicated Western responses. Aggrieved at the changing of a European border by force, the West stopped short of threatening war. Instead it has relied on sanctions, diplomacy, and monitoring by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to manage the Ukraine war, while restating its commitments to NATO's easternmost members, Poland and the Baltic states. But where would the West draw a red line and enact more militaristic responses to Russia's aggression? The answer has been complicated by Russia's position as an indispensable player in various Middle Eastern crises, where so many of America's pressing security woes sit. In Syria, Russia opposed any attempts at regime change and depicted Assad's regime as a bulwark against IS. Russia's support for al-Assad reflects its lingering antipathy, rooted in feeling misled by the West over the 2011 war in Libya. Russia endorsed the corresponding UN Security Council resolution, which led to regime change against its wishes (Allison 2013). Russia has mixed its obstructionism toward the United States with cooperation on two key counterproliferation issues. Russia worked with the United States to remove the al-Assad regime's stock chemical weapons, despite disagreeing over the viability of the regime. And Russia played a facilitative role in the P5+1 talks with Iran, adroitly using its UN Security Council seat to straddle the line between breaking and defending global norms. Russia has also looked to China to insure itself against Western censure, thus reflecting a hedging strategy where states diversify their dependencies to “reduce vulnerability to embargos and blockades” (Tessman 2012, 204). The West's punishment of Russia has involved sanctions that have eroded the rouble's value. This, combined with falling oil prices in 2014, has caused Russia's economy to contract. However, given the scale of EU-Russian trade, Russia has calculated that it will not remain an economic pariah forever. Moreover, Russia concluded a thirty-year gas deal with China, known as the Power of Siberia agreement, which shows the West that it can turn elsewhere in the geopolitical marketplace (Hornby 2014). Attributing Russia's destabilizing behavior only to the maladies of authoritarian politics and a kleptocratic economy conceals the role of hedging in Russia's efforts. The geopolitical opportunities presented by a less obviously unipolar age, mixed with a lingering sense of injured Russian pride, could bequeath to whoever replaces Putin more opportunities to define and advance Russian interests in sophisticated ways. Presently, Russia does not offer Eastern Europe a vision of positive leadership. In the future, Russia's strategies may evolve beyond exploiting regional discord to leveraging favorable alliances to buttress future power plays. As both a European and Asian-facing power, Russia can naturally look in several directions to find components for its hedging strategies. Russia during the Tsarist and Soviet era engaged in expansionism by playing off rivals in a multipolar system. Today, Russia's global bargaining has expedited its regional moves, although the sustainability of this strategy in its present form remains unclear. China The impact of China's global role on its prospects for hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region comprises a pivotal matter of geopolitical uncertainty. The case of China offers an interesting permutation of hedging given its strategy of reinforcing global norms and contributing to global forums contemporaneous to its exertions of regional assertiveness. Below, I will empirically demonstrate the sharp bifurcation in behavior between China's global and regional behavior. At the global level, China has come a long way in shedding its pariah status as an isolated revolutionary power (notably so from the US perspective). At the regional level, it has staked out a defensive maritime perimeter, building artificial islands in the South China Sea and challenging the Philippines over island ownership, as it has done with Japan over islands in the East China Sea. Hedging can help make sense of the contrast between China's status as a pillar of this century's global system and its flexing of regional muscle. China's Rise: A Responsible Global Player with Lingering Dissatisfactions Given its meteoric economic rise, the West has shown a willingness to engage in commerce with China, while encouraging it to uphold the norms of the prevailing international system. Chinese leaders have been receptive to this offer, proclaiming on the global stage that China is concerned with economic and not territorial expansion. At the UN General Assembly in 2005, Premier Hu Jintao elaborated his vision of a “harmonious world,” explaining that China's exceptionalism would be based on seeking to coexist with other nations, rather than imposing its vision on them. Tension lies in the fact, however, that China has risen in a global system that it did not design—a system it associates with its subjugation by foreign powers. This mismatch has imbued China with lingering dissatisfactions that, while not definitive of its overall foreign policy orientation, have translated into selective regional revisionist moves (Shambaugh 2013; Foot 2013). Imperial China's long history spans 221 BCE to 1911, during which its fortunes have varied dramatically. Once a center of regional power and an expansive inland empire, China suffered a precipitous decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries due to nefarious colonial incursions in the form of the Opium Wars and Japanese occupation. The restoration of China's international standing as a world power began slowly during the Maoist era (1949–1976). As Kissinger writes, “From the outset, Mao had no intention to accept an international system in the design of which China had no voice” (Kissinger 2011, 132). After Communist China defeated the nationalist Kuomintang in 1949, China's foreign policy became concerned with avoiding encirclement. In wars and crises over Korea (1950–53), the Taiwan Strait (1954–58), a Sino-Soviet border war (1969–71), and a Sino-Vietnam war (1979), China did not seek outright victories. Rather, it sought to tilt these confrontations in its favor, maneuvering with both its regional and international ambitions in its mind. Early in the Cold War, the United States discerned a grave threat from China's potential to export its revolution. Over time, however, China would pragmatically rehabilitate itself with the United States through a gradual détente. In response to Kissinger and President Nixon's overture, Mao realigned China away from the USSR. This eased China's integration into various global bodies and agreements. In 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced Taiwan at the United Nations. Since then, China's participation in international agreements and forums has grown. In 1992, China signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in 2011 China joined the World Trade Organization. China is anything but a rejectionist power. As Holsag explains, “China has been a revisionist power in a status quo guise” (Holslag 2014, 104). Revisionism does not equate to aggression and war, even if, “in essence, revisionism is a desire to change the international order … China's rise has been revisionism at its best: assiduous and efficient instead of noisy and antagonistic” (Holslag 2014, 106).1 The sustainability of this approach given the prospects of miscalculation alone should raise concern. Accordingly, there is a growing literature on whether China can rise peacefully. Skeptics like Mearsheimer (2006) write of China's “Unpeaceful Rise” and a likely clash with the United States. Song Xiaojun writes that “China is unhappy [since] countless facts have already proven that the West will never abandon its treasured technique of ‘commerce at bayonet point,’ which it has refined over several hundred years” (cited in Kissinger 2011, 505). Song's words reflect the hard-line view that China should not be timid; it should capitalize on the power shift in Sino-Western affairs and avoid becoming entangled by the global governance responsibilities thrust upon it by the West. Instead, China should use its strength to accrue independent advantage and not be bound by the existing global system. Taking the opposite stance, Johnston (2008) concludes that China has become socialized into the global system and will seek to advance its interests within the norms of that system. For the United States, this is the optimal scenario, and there is indeed evidence that shows China's habituation within the global system. However, China has also hedged by differentiating its global and regional behavior. Managing the contradictions entailed by its mixed behavior ranks among the principal challenges for Chinese statecraft. China's Assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific and Its Global Ascent China's assertiveness has been most apparent in the maritime domain. A dispute emerged with Japan in the East China Sea over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in 2010. The fight started when Japanese coast guards detained a Chinese fishing boat close to the islands. Nationalism ignited on both sides. China believed that as a great power it no longer had to abide by Japan's will. Conversely, Japan's President Shinzo Abe took issue with Chinese attempted domination of the islands. In 2013, China delineated an Air Defense Identification Zone over waters that include the disputed islands. That year in the South China Sea, a dispute broke out between China and Vietnam when a state-owned Chinese firm placed an oil rig in water claimed by Vietnam. China has intensified its building of artificial islets around the Spratly Islands, moving ocean floor sediment onto reefs to provide a foundation for airstrips, ports, and military bases (Watkins 2015). The evidence points to a series of ostensibly defense-minded moves that conceal China's vision of maritime dominance. A growing mercantilist power, China has demonstrated a willingness to challenge the existing regional order in open water. Multilateral efforts to mediate these disputes have proven weak or absent. In 2016, China refused to abide by a UN ruling against its claims over the Spratly Islands, which it issued after the Philippines brought the dispute to international arbitration. With various overlapping historic enmities and interests involved, security of the South China Sea has played out as a high-stakes competition (The Economist 2014b; Hayton 2014; Raine and Le Miere 2013). As Goh (2005) has documented, tension between China and global powers has forced many states in the region to hedge. The region features two hegemonic challengers, one indigenous (China) and the other projecting its power into the region from afar (United States). States in the region will find it no simple matter to choose categorically between the United States and China. Indeed, forcing regional players into a mutually exclusive choice would increase the chances of miscalculation and conflict through the potential creation of rival blocs. That said, while smaller states may want to avoid actively bandwagoning with or balancing against China, they may feel the pressure to choose increase over time (Goh 2005; Kang 2007). There is a sharp contrast between China's regional assertiveness and its otherwise rules-based expansion of regional influence. China belongs to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and has a free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). These multilateral ventures facilitate rules-based influence building. Through them, China can use its status as a major trading partner to draw states in the Asia-Pacific into its political orbit, and into a web of regional economic interdependence with China in the center. However, given China's size, even a peaceful rise may alarm great powers and neighbors alike. China has shown itself loath to alienate other states, choosing to compete for influence in the Asia-Pacific through the construction of alliances based on favorable trade and security deals. Much of this behavior accords with a broad conception of rules-based competition. Nevertheless, a competitive struggle between China and the United States is underway in which both parties seek rule-setting power in the Asia-Pacific. The United States has tried to build a concert of Asian powers. It has long been immersed in the region through post-WWII alliances with Japan and South Korea, and its war in Vietnam. More recently, the United States had pursued the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a global trade deal involving twelve countries that border the Pacific Ocean that excludes China. In a protectionist turn, President Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP in 2017, ceding to China an opportunity to form its own bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that included the ASEAN states. The Sino-US regional rivalry is underpinned by a narrative battle. The United States claims to have freed the region from Japan's past imperialism and from Chinese Communism's spread. Conversely, China points to its history as a regional center of gravity and to its lack of territorially expansionist ambitions. It depicts its naval operations as necessary to establish a defensive maritime perimeter (Friedberg 2014). More concretely, both China and the United States seek relative advantage in missile, maritime, and aviation technologies. China's anger regarding the US Ballistic Missile Defense program reflected its fear that such a program would afford the United States a destabilizing advantage in the military balance between the countries (Li and He 2012). But this arms race is a symptom, not a cause, of rivalry. The United States seeks to balance against China using military means to deter and diplomatic channels to reassure US allies in the region. For its part, China criticizes America for creating alarm about its intentions in the region. The threshold at which China will act unilaterally to secure regional hegemony remains unclear. Given this, lingering contention between China, the United States, and smaller regional powers should make scholars and statesmen both uneasy. A primary potential flashpoint lies in the Taiwan Strait. China covets control of Taiwan and has made a moral case for it—that of righting a historic wrong. Such an appeal perhaps has more traction than seizing Taiwan militarily, which could provoke direct conflict with the United States (Tsang 2006, 1). Since the vanquished Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan after the Communist victory in 1949, the United States has tried to strike an impossible balance providing security guarantees to Taipei and normalizing relations with Beijing (Kissinger 2011). In 1996, the United States sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region in response to a Chinese military build-up around Taiwan, asserting US regional primacy in response to Chinese missile tests. This is not an option the United States may have in the future as China seeks to consolidate its regional maritime position and project power and influence over the region and to establish a regional sphere of influence less vulnerable to US pressure. China would prefer greater regional autonomy and will be likely in coming years to use its growing global stature to further this goal. Concerns also abound in relation to North Korea and the insular government of Kim Jong Un, which comprises a second flashpoint. China remains the regime's key backer but is wary of being embroiled in a war with (most likely) South Korea, instigated by the rashness of Kim Jong Un. China also has reason to fear the chaos that could be generated by a potential North Korean collapse and has thus far resisted the US insistence that it constrain the North Korean regime. The issue of North Korea could allow China to burnish its cooperative credentials with the United States, but the contrast between China's regional and global postures has complicated its own response to the crisis. A focus on China's global rise should not distract from the fact that it remains influential and interdependent upon the countries in its immediate sphere. This is why binding China into the global system may not in fact attenuate its regional ambitions and may fail to impose sufficient costs on China for regional aggression. For these reasons, Glaser (2015) has argued that the optimal US strategy would consist of seeking the following comprise: The United States would offer limited accommodation of China's growing regional role, while addressing its grievance relating to the US security guarantee to Taiwan. China, for its part, would agree to negotiate an end to its regional disputes. While this sounds like appeasement, it ameliorates a potentially serious problem: China's perception that its global role constrains it from acting in its own environs. One must not rule out China hedging under the umbrella of its enhanced global role in a way that makes it too costly for the United States to impose costs short of threatening war, and of China threating to limit its contribution to global governance undertakings in response to perceived encroachments into its regional sphere. Conceptualizing Revisionist Hedging This article has argued that strategic hedging is a useful concept to characterize the behavior of states that pursue regional revisions to remedy their dissatisfaction with some aspect of the global order. These revisions have comprised risky unilateral moves, which were the result of calculations that have allowed these powers to provoke the West, but ultimately emerge unscathed and possibly advantaged. This provides an alternative take on “hedging” from Tessman (2012), which puts at the center of the concept the diversification of alliance options and sources of support. As Tessman writes, states hedge in this manner to insure themselves against a militarized dispute with the system leader (“Type A” hedging) (2012, 230–31). Purposefully increasing the risks of conflict with the United States is a path that only certain states would willingly take, and in certain circumstances. Such states include dissatisfied revisionists (as opposed to rejectionists), which do not seek to opt out of the system or even to replace the system leader, but are willing to run risks to expand their regional positions. To grasp this dynamic, this article has argued for a focus on regional arenas. It can be rewarding to interpret a changing international system through the lens of regional dynamics. Juxtaposing regional-level gains and global-level costs can help to explain the lengths to which dissatisfied powers might persist with their disruptive behaviors. Beyond this general conceptualization, the three case studies show what this means in practice. The cases share two fundamental similarities. First, the sustainability of these countries’ mixed policies in embedding lasting adjustments in their regional positions is yet to be seen. The outcomes of the statecraft employed by Iran, Russia, and China have thus far proved ambiguous, at best, and remain works in progress. Second, for all three countries, pretext remains an important qualifier to the use or threat of force. Each has couched their featured crisis or dispute in terms of deeper discontentment over historic divisions of lands, or over humiliations accrued from the wars or empires of a bygone age, leading them to engage in revisionist behavior in relation to specific issues. Putting similarities aside, below I offer an additional set of concluding observations particular to each of these countries’ chosen portfolio of behavior. China has used its global clout to revise and advantage its regional maritime arrangements. China's sound global standing allows it unique maneuvering space to challenge access and ownership rights to disputed island territories in the Asia-Pacific region. China may succeed in maintaining its balance between engagement and provocation given its size and capabilities. This set of contradictory behaviors appears sustainable, given the gap between China's immense global standing and, relative to this, because it tends to imply rather than use force. On the other hand, the greater the extent to which China becomes integrated into the world order, the costlier it becomes for it to subvert global norms. China has sought to exploit its intensifying economic competitiveness to outbid the United States for local allies, accompanied by episodic displays of regional assertiveness that fall short of war. Russia, by contrast, has been aggressively revisionist with respect to regional issues it deems core to its interests, while acting in concert with the West over such issues as the P5+1 Iran talks. The highly disruptive approach of subverting and waging war on countries within its former sphere of influence has provoked Western sanctions and a reassertion of the NATO alliance through the NATO Enchanted Forward Presence, which seems likely to deter further adventurism. While Russia is no longer a superpower, its global clout has been substantial enough to ward off a definitive Western response. Indeed, having declared the annexation to be illegal, the West looks highly unlikely to ever force a Russian rollback from Crimea. Iran is a sizeable regional power that stands to gain from diversifying its alliance options in a less unipolar system, having used the nuclear talks to reduce its pariah status and open a path to the economic benefits of greater global participation. Even if the JCPOA deal later falters in its implementation, for Iran to act in the manner of North Korea would not advance its regional goals. Iran sees that reversing its international isolation is crucial to advancing its future regional position. It is in Iran's interest to emphasize a distinction between its regional and global behavior, particularly since the persistence of deep-seated rivalries and the likely persistence of war in the Middle East will continue to demand Iranian response. These cases present three unique permutations of states that present themselves as indispensable to the system leader on some issues, while engaging in disruptive unilateral action on specific regional issues. China and Russia hold UN Security Council permanent seats and have used this privilege accordingly in support of their regional moves. Iran has had far less room for maneuvering, but has also exhibited a comparable dynamic of engaging in contradictory but compensatory behavior. In conceptualizing revisionist hedging, it is worth reflecting on the differing ways in which confrontational and cooperative behaviors have been combined, and on the options for managing the contradictions arising from this mixed behavior. The absence or presence of war as part of the revisionist move is an important qualifier as to the style of revisionist hedging taking place. China has altered its military posture without accompanying uses of violence and has to date been less overtly aggressive. Contrastingly, the use of proxy war has been a feature of both the Iranian and Russian examples. The more disruptive and violent the regional assertion of power is, the trickier it will be to sustain. Whereas in past epochs it was normal for states and empires to forcibly conquer others, when it occurs today, it is atypical and exceptional. If offensive tactics have been used, they have been shrouded in deniability. Iran's patronage of Hezbollah and Russia's support of Ukrainian separatists destabilized regional rivals while circumnavigating overt interstate war, and “subcontracting” the dirty work of fighting to other entities can limit the costs of waging war overtly. It is difficult for Western powers to counteract this approach without being drawn into a proxy war. By contrast, as Iran found, acquiring nuclear weapons elicited an effective Western-led response of coercive diplomacy underpinned by sanctions. A conceptualization of revisionist hedging also links success to sustainability. The likely persistence of regional hegemonic ambition in relation to Iran, Russia, and China means that while the goal may remain relatively fixed, the manner in which these states seek to advance toward it will vary in line with their ability to establish greater regional autonomy. Revisionist hedging may pass through successive phases in which the balance is adjusted between aggressive regional behaviors and participatory international behaviors and risk is distributed between the regional and global levels. However, for a strategy to qualify as revisionist hedging, the essential qualifier remains the presence of unilateral regional action with revisionist intent that is backed by the use or show of force, and which is combined with cooperative behavior at the global level. To conclude, the question of sustainability will be addressed. Conclusion This article has noted the particular logic of strategic hedging relevant to revisionist states and developed this logic in the context of the multiple levels of competition that characterize the contemporary order. Prior to the case studies, two overarching questions were presented. The first question related to the permeability of regions and the extent to which a regional order could be defended by US-led efforts. The second question asked whether discontent with the global order could be satisfied through regional-level adjustments. In relation to the permeability of regions to US influence, this article suggests that the United States will suffer decreased scope for influencing regional security dynamics if it comes up against aspiring regional hegemons that skillfully master the modalities of strategic hedging. The conceptualization of revisionist hedging developed in this article suggests ways in which Iran, Russia, and China can calibrate regional agitation at a level that is tolerated, even if it is not accepted, by the United States and the Western-backed global order. Regarding the sustainability of its outcomes, as the regional arenas literature notes, “You are far more likely to maintain stable regional control if you can persuade other powers in the world to accept the legitimacy of your regional predominance” (Hurrell 2010, 17, 20). Achieving regional predominance involves more than changing facts on the ground, or in the sea, as they relate to military balances and influence. Regional predominance requires a blend of normative and material influence over nearby states. To embed gains, regional power plays need to be followed with recourses to nominal legality or moral argument. These gestures allow revisionist states to stake out a regional hegemonic vision, even if retrospectively justifying acts of assertion. While the ongoing nature of the case study scenarios does not allow a study of embedding gains, they do allow observations on how hedging strategies interact with regional security arenas. My findings on strategies of hedging challenge Katzenstein, questioning the perpetual ability of the US to penetrate the Asian, European, and Middle Eastern regional orders (Katzenstein 2005). The West has attempted to slow the rate of change in regional power distributions around the world by encouraging rising or resurgent powers to join global governance undertakings. Two rising powers of the 1980s and 1990s—Japan and Germany—were indeed tied to such a vision by virtue of post-WWII reconstruction efforts. Similar circumstances do not prevail with regards to Iran, Russia, and China. Domestic accountability is also less of an issue since these are societies with internal media control and effective state-propagated narratives. This need not lead to alarmist conclusions—the triumvirate of countries examined here is hardly akin to Germany, Japan, and Italy in the 1930s. Prior to 1939, these powers had seized Austria and the Ruhr Valley, Manchuria, and Ethiopia respectively, bringing the League of Nations into disrepute and inviting a second global war. Rather, the logic of revisionist hedging implies a more gradual rebalancing of regional security dynamics through a chipping away rather than a sudden termination of US influence within regions. This leads to the second question—whether the desire for status of Iran, Russia, and China can be satisfied at the regional level. The answer is that “it depends.” I find that combining disruptive and participative behaviors can serve a number of purposes for an aspiring regional hegemon. By partially satisfying its desire for status through limited regional adjustments, hedging can express and assuage domestic hard-line opinion, while avoiding major war or squandering its bilateral and multilateral relationships. For the dissatisfied, hedging can also help states to avoid binding obligations, playing along until the “rest” can influence or set the rules. In other words, explicitly regional revisions are sought as consolation prizes to fulfill desires for status and influence in international affairs, partly because of the limited options for shaping the global system. Hedging as a way of escaping binding reflects the fact that no coherent anti-Western bloc of states exists. Take, for example, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): it is not an anti-Western alliance, but it clusters powerful states in a way that increases the normative and material space for maneuvers independent of Western approval (China and Russia are members, and Iran has observer status) (The Economist 2014a; Fedholm 2012). Nor can improvements in bilateral China-Russia relations decisively counterbalance the West because these states continue to bargain independently with the United States while they each seek regional latitude free from Western critique. This article has sought to focus attention on how a bifurcation between global and regional behaviors will continue to be useful in conceptualizing the strategic choices of the “rest” for as long as the West retains global dominance. Revisionist hedging arises precisely because of the continued but changing hegemonic influence of the United States and of the Western-backed international system. It allows status-seeking powers to spread the risks of revisionist moves, but also holds clues as to the prospects for crisis management in such circumstances. This could provide a fruitful area for future research into de-escalation of relevant international crises. When revisionist hedging is the nature of the game that is being played, it is incumbent on all governments involved to limit the escalatory potential of such moves. Doing so requires understanding that hedging can involve concurrent norm-breaking and norm-respecting behaviors and working at both regional and global levels to engage the aspiring regional hegemon. Herein resides the scope for managing these twenty-first century manifestations of the age-old phenomenon of the interstate crisis. 1 " See also Narlikar (2010, 72, 144–57) on China's generally compliant membership of international bodies. References Allison Roy . 2013 . Russia, the West, and Military Intervention . Oxford : Oxford University Press . 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TI - The Strategic Hedging of Iran, Russia, and China: Juxtaposing Participation in the Global System with Regional Revisionism
JF - Journal of Global Security Studies
DO - 10.1093/jogss/ogx015
DA - 2017-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-strategic-hedging-of-iran-russia-and-china-juxtaposing-85C68jWWHk
SP - 307
VL - 2
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -