East Asia’s Geopolitics Still Favours the Benefits of Globalisation

Title: East Asia’s Geopolitics Still Favours the Benefits of Globalisation
Writer: EAF Editors (East Asia Forum Editorial Board, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University)
Published in: East Asia Forum
Date of publication: 19 October 2026

Speeches Say Decouple, Trade Says Stay: Polyalignment and the Quiet Endurance of Globalisation

Listen to the speeches of world leaders in the 2020s and a clear story emerges. Globalisation, the deep integration of national economies through trade, investment and supply chains, is said to be in retreat. Governments talk of “resilience”, “de-risking” and “decoupling”, and economic ties are expected to follow political loyalties. Look at the actual patterns of trade and investment, however, and a different story appears. Countries keep deep economic links with rival powers at the same time, and most have no intention of cutting them. The gap between these two stories may reflect policy ambition rather than policy reality. A new concept, polyalignment, tries to explain why.

1. The Story Officials Tell

For roughly three decades after the Cold War, states accepted a basic bargain. They gave up some control over their economic policy in exchange for the efficiency gains of open markets: cheaper goods, foreign investment and access to global supply chains.

As rivalry between the United States and its strategic competitors, chiefly China (and, for Europe, Russia), intensified during the 2010s, that bargain came under attack. Governments began to argue that economic ties should match security alliances, and that dependence on rivals was a danger to be reduced. The common assumption became that security now outranks economics.

2. The Story Trade Tells

The reality has proved stickier. Geopolitical alignments remain shaped by economic ties formed through market integration, even when official rhetoric suggests otherwise.

A key reason lies in how those ties were built. During the period of US hegemony after the Cold War, economic links were largely forged by private firms, often with little coordination or strategic direction from governments. States had largely handed over influence on trade and investment flows to markets. Once factories, supply chains and investment partnerships exist, they create jobs, profits and powerful interest groups that do not disappear because a government changes its speeches.

3. What Polyalignment Means

Polyalignment is defined as the cultivation and maintenance of engagements with multiple external partners and networks.

It is often confused with hedging, the familiar strategy in which a state avoids committing fully to one great power and keeps options open with several. The difference is important:

• Hedging is a deliberate foreign policy choice, a posture adopted by governments.

• Polyalignment is more than a diplomatic posture. It is an outcome of how economies have developed under globalisation, built into trade patterns, investment and business networks.

In other words, polyalignment is closer to a necessity arising from globalised development than a strategic choice. A country may not decide to be polyaligned; its economic structure makes it so.

4. Why Containment Coalitions Are Hard to Build

This has a direct consequence for great-power competition. If Washington wants to build a broad coalition to contain China, it must persuade other countries to reduce their economic links with Beijing. Polyalignment explains why this is so difficult. Even close Western allies feel its pull, because their firms, workers and consumers are tied into Chinese markets and supply chains. The United States will always face a major struggle to broaden such coalitions.

5. Southeast Asia: Ground Zero

East and Southeast Asia offer the clearest example of these forces at work. Where a country sits in the international economy strongly shapes how its economic ties affect its alignment. Many states in the region are small, open, late-developing economies that trade with both the United States and China and depend on investment from many sources. Southeast Asia is described as global ground zero for polyalignment.

Two cases show different sides of the picture:

• Vietnam: its polyalignment flows from the structure of its economy and a whole-of-state approach that ties foreign policy closely to industrialisation goals. Engagement with many partners serves its development plan.

• Indonesia: downstreaming in the minerals sector, a policy of processing raw minerals at home rather than exporting them unprocessed, has been pursued largely with Chinese partners. This has created elite networks that push the government towards accommodating China. The risk is that powerful societal interests benefiting from cross-border networks may derail national foreign policy strategies.

Both countries have no intention of severing these links.

6. The Exceptions That Prove the Rule

Not every state follows economic logic. Australia and Japan both have deep economic interdependence with China, but for strategic reasons they lean firmly into their alliances with the United States, while engaging only cautiously in regional economic integration that includes China. These cases show that economic ties shape alignment strongly but do not determine it completely; security concerns can override them.

7. Whose Interests Count?

Economic interests influence strategy, but the nature of the state decides whose interests prevail. Two very different outcomes are possible:

• National economic interests, such as growth, jobs and infrastructure, guide policy.

• Narrow private commercial interests, held by well-connected firms or elites, capture policy for their own gain.

This makes government autonomy from vested interests essential, especially as state capitalism, in which the state actively directs economic activity, and corporatism, close partnership between the state and major business groups, return to fashion. A state that cannot separate the national interest from the interests of powerful firms risks having its foreign policy written in corporate boardrooms.

8. Development as Security

The framework has its limits, and its explanatory power is debated. It still corrects two common errors: ignoring economic forces in foreign policy, and treating trade as something that must always be traded off against security.

East Asian leaders have long seen it differently. For them, economic development is itself a foundation of national security. Economic ties support what the region calls comprehensive security, a broad idea that includes economic stability alongside military defence, and they provide ballast to difficult relationships where security disputes cause friction. Seen this way, polyalignment is less a constraint on sound national security strategy than a useful foundation for it. The speeches about decoupling may continue, but the trade routes, factories and investment flows suggest that globalisation has bent rather than broken.

Exam Essentials

1. Key Facts and Figures

• Polyalignment: engagement with multiple external partners and networks, arising from globalised development

• Economic ties of the post-Cold War era were largely forged by private firms with little state direction

• Southeast Asia described as global ground zero for polyalignment

• Vietnam: whole-of-state approach linking foreign policy to industrialisation

• Indonesia: mineral downstreaming with Chinese partners creating pro-China elite networks

• Australia and Japan: lean towards the US alliance despite economic ties with China

• Lead study published in a Third World Quarterly special issue (vol. 47, issue 13)

2. Key Terms

• Globalisation: integration of national economies through trade, investment and supply chains

• Polyalignment: sustained engagement with many partners rooted in economic structure

• Hedging: a deliberate strategy of avoiding full commitment to one great power

• Decoupling: deliberately cutting economic ties with a rival country

• De-risking: reducing dependence on a rival without full separation

• Containment: a strategy to limit a rival power’s influence

• Downstreaming: processing raw materials domestically before export

• Comprehensive security: security that includes economic and social stability, not only military defence

• State capitalism: an economy in which the state directs major economic activity

3. Related Subjects

• International Relations: alignment, hedging, great-power competition

• International Political Economy: globalisation, interdependence, supply chains

• Asia-Pacific Affairs: ASEAN, US-China rivalry in Southeast Asia

• Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: balancing relations with the US and China

• Development Studies: industrialisation and export-led growth

4. Useful Arguments

• Economic interdependence limits how far states can follow security-driven decoupling.

• Polyalignment is often a structural outcome rather than a chosen strategy.

• Great powers struggle to build containment coalitions among economically connected states.

• Development can be a source of national security, not a trade-off against it.

• State autonomy from vested interests determines whether economic ties serve the nation.

• Security concerns can still override economic logic, as in the cases of Australia and Japan.

5. Probable Questions

1. “Globalisation has bent, not broken.” Discuss in the context of US-China rivalry.

2. Distinguish between hedging and polyalignment. How do small and middle powers manage great-power competition?

3. How can Pakistan balance its economic and strategic relations with the United States and China? Discuss with reference to the experience of Southeast Asian states.

6. One Quotable Line

“Governments may change their speeches overnight, but supply chains change their loyalties slowly.”

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