Mandalas of Multialignment: Hedging Bets in Southeast Asia Grand Strategy Spheres and Foreign and Security Policy Web Weaving

This book generates a new connective approach to analyzing Southeast Asia alignment shifts in grand strategy and foreign and security policy. Drawing on cases across nearly a century – including the Philippines and U.S.-China competition, Vietnam’s multidirectionality after the USSR’s collapse and Thailand’s WWII Japan alliance – it constructs a new Mandalas of Multialignment approach and develops an original Balance of Alignment model rooted in neoclassical realism to explain how states manage alignment challenges. Looking ahead, the book charts out how Southeast Asian states can weave their own alignment webs beyond binaries of great power competition and across spheres of their own influences through a new Connective Alignment Management process.

Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran is a senior columnist with The Diplomat magazine and holds fellowships with the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security and American University. Born and raised in Southeast Asia, he is also an instructor at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and an advisor at the consultancy BowerGroupAsia. His research focuses on Southeast Asia geopolitics and geoeconomics, U.S. Asia policy and foreign and security issues, with projects across all 11 countries in Southeast Asia and over 2,000 published articles. His book Elusive Balances: Shaping U.S. Southeast Asia Strategy, developed an original framework based on neoclassical realism to examine major power commitments.