Security without Exclusivity: Hybrid Alignment under U.S.-China Competition

Abstract This article explores an emerging dynamic in the international system: Countries across the world are engaged in simultaneous security cooperation with both China and the United States. China and the United States, however, do not provide the same types of security goods. The United States primarily offers regional security—assistance that improves partners’ capabilities to deter or deny external threats to their territory. China primarily offers regime security—assistance that builds partners’ capabilities to control their territory and populations, and often, to prevent threats to a regime's hold on power. Many countries benefit from both types of assistance, and neither China nor the United States is in a strong position to demand exclusivity from third countries. As a result, a growing number of countries are developing nonexclusive, differentiated security relationships with both great powers. We call this phenomenon “security hybridization” and demonstrate that it is theoretically and empirically distinct from traditional balancing and omnibalancing. We illustrate this dynamic with two case studies—Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates. Each country engages in defense cooperation with the United States and, simultaneously, pursues increasingly robust internal security cooperation with China. Security hybridization distinguishes today's great power competition from Cold War rivalry and will likely shape patterns of domestic and global security in the years ahead.