The BRI Is What Small States Make of It: Evaluating Kuwait's Engagement with China's Belt and Road Initiative

Kuwait's expanding engagement with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sheds light on its strategies to meet its socioeconomic needs and navigate the Gulf's adversarial politics. The BRI presents a good case study of how the Kuwaiti leadership evaluates the benefits of and dilemmas created by asymmetric structural relationships. This article thus explores how governmental agency in strategically managing massive financial assets complicates our understanding of the vulnerability of so-called small states.