BOOK PRESENTATION - The Hedgers: How the Global South Navigates the Sino-American Competition
hosted by Professor
Renaud Dehousse
Zaki Laïdi
Senior Research Fellow, CEVIPOF-Sciences Po; Special Adviser to The HRVP High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Union
The extreme instability caused by the interminable war in Ukraine, Sino-American tensions, and Trump's return to power raises an essential question: How can the states of the Global South – particularly those endowed with significant resources and full of ambition – navigate this current global turbulence? Are they succumbing to the logic of bipolarity, or are they escaping from it by amplifying their hedging power, and, in the process, making the international system more multipolar? To answer these key questions, we analyze the strategic behavior of eight states: India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, South Africa, and Brazil. Their selection is based on eight precise metrics. It is these eight key states that we call the Hedgers. They are among the countries of the Global South that have good opportunities to navigate – with some challenges – the troubled environment of what is increasingly difficult to call the 'world order.'
Zaki Laïdi
Zaki Laïdi is a Senior Research Fellow at CEVIPOF-Sciences Po and holds a HDR (a French qualification authorising the holder to supervise academic research). He is Senior Adviser to the High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security and Vice President of the Commission.
Among his recent publications:
The Hedgers. How the Global South Navigates Sino American Competition?, with Y. Tiberghien, Cambridge Elements, 2026.
His research focuses on the political dimension of globalization, transformations of the international system (structure, ideas) and more particularly the role of Europe within that system.
He has been a visiting researcher at several universities: Johns Hopkins - Bologna, Montreal, Geneva, College of Bruges, Ann Arbor University, Northwestern University, LUISS - Rome, and at the School of Governance and Economics in Rabat. He also founded the Telos review and is a columnist for
Project Syndicate.
