Research On EU East Asia Security Policy

Since the end of the Cold War, the European Union gradually enhanced its attentionand investment to Asia, when the international power structure and internationalsituation evolved over time. The EU successively published variety of policydocuments with regard to economy, politics and security of East Asia, leading to theimprovement of cooperation with nations from East Asia in bilateral and multilateralspheres. Therefore, the EU has developed a relatively comprehensive security policyin East Asia. Viewing from causes of EU’s enhancing involvement in East AsianSecurity affairs, economic interest is defined the most important driving force. Withthe increasing economic interdependence between EU and East Asia, the East Asianeconomic stable growth and its vitality are providing significant opportunities for EUagainst its economic downturn. However, when the East Asian security situation hasbeen deteriorated since2010, including worsening confrontation and fiercecompetition between China and America and the conflicts caused by regional hotspotissues, the EU’s economic interests are probably damaged.Thus the priority of EU’s East Asian security policy is to preventing from theescalation of regional conflicts, maintain regional security and stability and uphold itseconomic interests in East Asia.Currently, the EU’s East Asian security policy has three main features: first, EUemphasizes combining multilateralism with soft power to participant actively inmultilateral security mechanisms, and gives great support ASEAN’s core role inpeaceful resolutions of regional security issues and conflicts; second, The EUincreasingly promotes bilateral diplomacy to strengthen security dialogue andcooperation with regional great powers; third, the EU increasingly improves itsstrategic interaction with great powers and has becoming more and more involving insecurity issues relating to high politics, such as maritime territorial disputes. It attemptto play a “pivot” or a strategic balancing power in East Asia through utilizing itsedges in soft power and experiences in building multilateral institutions and so-called“the European model”, so that it could mediate the security situation and maintain itseconomic interests.However, in the future, the EU still faces many restraining factors in conducting theEast Asian security policy, like lack of hard power, the inconsistence of EFSP,different development models and conflicts in interregional values. The EU mustovercome these main restraints, or it will be hard to live up to its expectations.