The EU’s Comprehensive Approach to Security in Asia

Abstract:

This article aims at demonstrating through examples that the EU's longstanding engagement in Asia with ASEAN and Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in addition to bilateral relations progressively and in line with the new understanding of the EU as a comprehensive political actor in international relations extends beyond trade and economics, e.g., security matters. This growing engagement predates the US pivot but seeks to complement US efforts and tries to carve out a niche for EU policies in the rearrangement of power-relations and the emerging institutional architecture of the region. It links up with the special EFAR issue on a European Approach to Comprehensive Security in highlighting the EU's comprehensive approach to security, focusing on experience in non-traditional security threats and drawing on its historic experience of trust and confidence building, conflict prevention and management, all public goods in short supply in the region. If the EU acts coherently it could have a higher degree of credibility in supplying these goods than other players in the region (China, Japan, US) thereby countering through concrete initiatives the narrative that the EU is neither present in nor relevant for Asia.