Regional Perspectives on the EU's Indo-Pacific Strategy (Rethinking Asia and International Relations)

This edited volume examines how elite policymakers in key Indo-Pacific locations - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand - view the European Union’s (EU's) strategy in the region.

Centred on gauging the opinions of key people involved in the foreign policy making process in each location, the expert international contributors find that while the EU has strong bilateral ties with all the locations, few conceive of it as being a credible and relevant Indo-Pacific actor. The results point to the EU’s potential relevancy in areas like ocean governance, green transition, and sustainable and inclusive prosperity but show that there remains a mixture of caution and scepticism. Furthermore, there is diversity across the countries of the Indo-Pacific as to how they understand the EU.

A clear policy-focus offers feedback and recommendations for practitioners from the EU alongside rigorous research that provides food for thought and Indo-Pacific actors as well as scholars of international relations and European and Asian studies.

Nicholas Ross Smith is a senior lecturer of international relations at the University of Waikato. His research coalesces around the regional implications of great power competition with a particular interest in the foreign policies of relatively smaller states that find themselves caught in the middle. His research has appeared in leading journals such as International Affairs, Review of International Studies, Global Policy, and The Pacific Review.

Martin Holland holds a Jean Monnet Chair ad personam and is the founding director of National Centre for Research on Europe at Canterbury. He is internationally recognised for his work on EU Development policy, CFSP and Perceptions of the EU. In 2002, he initiated the “EU External Perceptions Project”, which has been recognised as one of the top 20 “Jean Monnet Success Stories”.