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Since the mid-1990s, the European Union has defined the Asia-Pacific as one of its key strategic targets on its ambitious road towards global power. The EU has ever since made consistent efforts to implement strategies, policies and activities in the Asia-Pacific. Over the past decades, big changes have taken place on both sides and the wider world. It is high time to evaluate the EU’s performance in its Asian policy. In fact, the EU is at crossroads with its Asia Pacific policy. On several aspects, the EU is compelled to redefine its interests and roles, and rethink its strategies and policies towards the dynamic and ever-important Asia-Pacific region of the contemporary world. This volume addresses this theme, by elaborating the general context, major issues and countries in the EU’s Asia-Pacific policy. It covers issues and areas of traditional security, economy and trade, public diplomacy, and human security and focuses on the EU’s relations with China, Japan, the ASEAN countries and Australasia.
This book addresses some of the neglected problems, people and vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region. It talks about emancipation, human security, 'security politics', language and threat-construction. The book is divided into three sections: agents; strategies and contexts; and futures. The first section outlines a range of possible agents or actors potentially capable of redressing individual suffering and vulnerability in the region. It examines East Asian regional institutions and dynamics of regionalism as potential sources of 'progressive' security discourses and practices. There is focus on the progressive security potential of regional institutions and regionalism has become increasingly prominent in literature on security in the Asia-Pacific. Two common interpretations of the role of epistemic communities in the construction of security are contested: that they are either passive sources of governmental legitimacy, or autonomous agents with the capacity of constructing or creating state interests. The second section reviews strategies and contexts, outlining a range of different sites of insecurity in the region, the ways in which dominant security discourses and practices emerge, and the extent to which such discourses are contested in different contexts. Indonesian government's approach to minority groups and separatism, the issue of civil unrest and human rights abuses in Burma, and the Australian government's attitude towards refugees and asylum-seekers are discussed. The third section deals with security futures, specifically discussing the question of what alternative security discourses and practices might look like. Finally, the book outlines a feminist critical security discourse and examines its applicability to the Asia-Pacific region.
, Russia and the US, all of which possess sizable arsenals and which show every indication that they will retain these indefinitely. While this book’s focus has been on a more limited designation of what constitutes the Asia-Pacific geographically, the current chapter broadens these geographic parameters to look also at US and Russian nuclear issues. This is done so in the belief
3 European Union security policy and initiatives in the Asia-Pacific Fulvio Attinà The national security policies of the states and the collective and multilateral management of international security problems in regions like the European and the Asian region have gone through a remarkable process of transformation passing from the past to the contemporary world system. The traditional instruments for providing security to the state like hi-tech armaments and well-trained armies, and also the ways of building security in geographically limited international
4 Assessing the European Union’s economic relations with the Asia-Pacific Miguel Otero-Iglesias Introduction Over the past decade a number of factors have increased the interest of the European Union (EU) and its member states in the Asia-Pacific region: the global financial crisis initiated in the US in 2007–8, which showed the weaknesses of US-led financial capitalism; the Eurozone crisis in 2010–12, which demonstrated the structural flaws of the single currency and the sclerotic state of the Old Continent; Obama’s 2011 “pivot” to Asia, which confirmed that
A NY SURVEY OF THE processes, dynamics or futures of security in the Asia-Pacific would clearly be incomplete without engagement with the role played by the United States. Indeed, US hegemony 1 has been the defining feature of East Asian security architecture and interaction since the Second World War. And according to traditional accounts, particularly
1 The European Union in the Asia-Pacific: strategic reflections Michael Reiterer Introduction Although the EU maintains four (China, Japan, Republic of Korea, India) out of its ten strategic partnerships with Asian partners (Reiterer, 2013a) and is contemplating adding a fifth (with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN), doubts are harboured in Asia whether the EU can be a genuine strategic partner. Perceptions may not match: the EU has over the years developed policy papers dealing with Asia in general (Europe and Asia: A Strategic Framework for
Introduction The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report confirmed that climate change is already affecting every region on earth and the changes are expected to be widespread, rapid and intensifying ( IPCC, 2021 ). For the Asia Pacific region, climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of disasters ( UNESCAP, 2017 ). The Philippines, ranked as the third most disaster-prone country in the world, regularly experiences hazards such as typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions ( CFE-DM, 2018 ). The
Constable , P. ( 2019 ), ‘ Pakistan Had All but Eliminated Polio. Then Things Went Badly Wrong ’, Washington Post , 10 May , www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pakistan-had-all-but-eliminated-polio-then-things-went-badly-wrong/2019/05/10/87f328e8-711c-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html (accessed 10 November 2021
victimisation of adult men are currently unavailable, although one cross-sectional study found that, across six countries in the Asia Pacific, the prevalence of rape of men by men ranged from 1.5 per cent to 7.7 per cent ( Jewkes et al. , 2013 ). During armed conflict, social and structural protections break down and vulnerability to sexual violence – including by family and community members – increases. Yet men and boys, like women and girls ( Stark et al. , 2017 ), may