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Regional Security

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The European Union’s Security Relations with Asian Partners

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Abstract

This chapter explores how the EU and Southeast Asia, despite marked differences in their understanding and perception of security threats and in their respective approaches to managing such threats, can nonetheless cooperate in regional security. It argues, in the light of growing common concerns over the global impact of non-traditional security challenges, that the EU and Southeast Asia can effectively collaborate in applying preventive diplomacy (PD) to humanitarian emergencies, counterterrorism, and maritime security challenges in the Asia-Pacific region. While the EU has enjoyed relative success as a PD actor in specific Southeast Asian settings, it could do even more in the conduct of PD in the wider Asia-Pacific region, especially in partnership with Southeast Asia, ASEAN and other regional powers, including through multilateral platforms such as the ARF and especially the ADMM-Plus.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Association of five major national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

  2. 2.

    Yet it could also be argued that it has been through such accommodations that Southeast Asians are, in their own fashion, exercising a form of sovereign responsibility (or, if preferred, responsible sovereignty) towards one another—a regional brand of hospitality which they have sought to extend to the wider Asia-Pacific region through the very ASEAN-centric platforms discussed below (Tan 2019).

  3. 3.

    The membership of the ARF includes the 10 ASEAN member states (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), the 10 ASEAN dialogue partners (Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the US), one ASEAN observer (Papua New Guinea), as well as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

  4. 4.

    These include the ten ASEAN states and eight of its dialogue partners, namely, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.

  5. 5.

    Arguably, the EU’s successful application of its PDinstruments such as PESCO (discussed earlier) and the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence could furnish important lessons on strengthening their weaker Asia-Pacific ‘equivalents’—the ‘ASEAN minus X’and the ARF’s Annual Security Outlook, respectively.

  6. 6.

    As Diez has shown, the EU suffers from the problem, inter alia, of inconsistent behaviour as a result of competing and contested norms (Diez 2013).

  7. 7.

    In this respect, it is noteworthy that when introducing the initiative back in October 2017, Indonesian Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu felt the need to defend OEI as having “nothing to do with politics” but would “purely [be] an initiative to fight the existence of terrorist groups and maintain peace in our region” (Straits Times 2017).

  8. 8.

    The EU’s counterterrorism strategy, issued on 30 November 2005, aims to (1) prevent radicalisation and recruitment, (2) protect citizens and infrastructure from attack, (3) pursue, investigate and interdict terrorists, and (4) enhance social resilience following terror incidents (Council of the EU 2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RSIS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    See Seng Tan

  2. University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Thomas Diez

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  1. See Seng Tan
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Correspondence to See Seng Tan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Luiss University, Rome, Italy

    Thomas Christiansen

  2. Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Emil Kirchner

  3. S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    See Seng Tan

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Tan, S.S., Diez, T. (2021). Regional Security. In: Christiansen, T., Kirchner, E., Tan, S.S. (eds) The European Union’s Security Relations with Asian Partners. The European Union in International Affairs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69966-6_4

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