The European Union and an “Indo-Pacific” Alignment

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is deepening its political and security engagement in the so-called Indo-Pacific mega-region. Aside from alluring economic drivers, this article argues that growing suspicion vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been accompanied by a multilayered set of ententes with “like-minded” Asia-Pacific partners, starting with the United States of America (US), all the way to Japan, South Korea, and Australia. This effort has been facilitated and hastened by US policy under the Biden administration and Russia’s war in Ukraine. On the basis of first-hand elite interviews over the course of many years of fieldwork, as well as documentary evidence, including those in the Japanese language, the article argues that the EU and major member states have recalibrated earlier aspirations for effective multilateralism and strategic autonomy to more forcefully align with a concert of Indo-Pacific counterparts, led by the United States. The case of the EU-Japan strategic partnership is indicative of such trends, as it covers traditional and non-traditional security domains.