EU relations with China, Japan and North Korea: scope and limits of cooperation and implications for an EU role and engagement in Asian security

Scholars and analysts largely agree that the European Union (EU) will in the years ahead continue to remain reluctant to develop a security profile in Asia in accordance with its business and economic interests and influence in the region.This, as EU policymakers usually point out, is not least due to the fact that the EU institutions’ mandate and authority to implement foreign and security policies on behalf of EU 27 Member States are too limited to “do” more with regards to global security, including in Asia. The nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula and the emerging and recently re- emerging intensifying ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia1) are “reminders” of the “realist” character of Asia’s security environment, and the EU will continue to have a fairly limited role contributing to the resolution of these and other “hard security” conflicts in Asia. To be sure, the EU’s “soft security” policies in Asia are a very different matter even if this sort of engagement does not make it to the front pages of the international press. The EU is the biggest donor of global humanitarian, food and development (providing more than 50% of the total) and the EU’s “capacity-building” policies (e.g. technical assistance, technology and know-how transfers, etc.) in many Asian countries have without a doubt contributed to peace and stability in Asia in recent years and decades