Under the Shadow of China-US Competition: Myanmar and Thailand’s Alignment Choices

With the U.S. and China competing for influence in Southeast Asia, how secondary states in the region make their foreign policy choices has come under more scrutiny. It seems secondary states in the region have exerted strong will and capacity to maintain significant amount of freedom in choosing their foreign policy orientations, rather than being totally dictated by the great powers. This paper presents a detailed paired comparison of Myanmar and Thailand’s alignment policies and their consequences since the end of World War II. The paper argues that international structural factors certainly constrain the options for secondary states, but domestic politics often play a significant role in how political leaders make the alignment choices they do, which is heavily conditioned by how these leaders derive their political legitimacy. Thus, to explain the alignment choices of secondary states in Southeast Asia, we need to pay more attention to the intertwined nature between domestic political contestation and foreign policy making.