We wanted to draw your attention to some interesting articles about the topics of the Regulating for Globalization blog that appeared in the European Foreign Affairs Review Volume 23, Issue 3, 2018, edited by Jörg Monar & Nanette Neuwahl.
Over the past decade, the EU and China have expanded their relations beyond a focus on economic and trade issues into the sphere of security. This is particularly evident when security is seen to encompass a variety of policy domains – from traditional, military security to nontraditional human security. However, this development has not followed an even or linear path: the record of EU–China security cooperation has been varied across different policy domains, with distinct temporal trajectories. This article addresses the question of why security cooperation between the two sides has advanced in certain policy domains while having faltered in others. Based on an expert survey of European and Chinese scholars, we explore both interest-driven and experience-driven explanations. Our analysis identifies a number of key events in the development of EU–China relations that have been critical in terms of initiating and enhancing cooperation in specific domains. Overall, we find that past experience with actual cooperation, rather than declared intentions, best explains the pattern of cooperation over time.
The finalization of the Framework Agreement in 2016 and the opening of free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations in 2018 indicate a period of unparalleled cooperation in EU–Australia relations. Nevertheless, these developments have occurred in the context of Brexit. In analysing the likely impact of Brexit this article will consider past bilateral disputes which negatively impacted on Australia’s engagement with the EU and how it was perceived as an international actor. In recent decades, however, the establishment of the single market and the implementation of the euro have seen a broadening of relations. Significant bilateral agreements have been completed despite the emergence, more recently, of the eurozone crisis as a source of bilateral tension. There is now an opportunity to assess whether relations have matured so that a single issue such as Brexit may not negatively impact on bilateral cooperation.
In less unusual times, the European Union’s Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy would have been received as merely the latest iteration of the main tenets and ambitions of EU external action – this time with an enhanced dose of pragmatism to respond to a more challenging international environment. However, with ‘Brexit’ looming large and one and a half years into the Trump Presidency in the United States, the Global Strategy has acquired a new level of significance. This article argues that while meant to express a largely uncontroversial ‘Western’ consensus, it now needs to be re-contextualized as a distinctive vision in the face of trends of antiglobalism and Euroscepticism. This concerns in particular the Strategy’s emphasis on rules-based global governance. Challenged by both President Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and the British government’s course for a ‘hard Brexit’, the Global Strategy now represents a contested blueprint and rallying point for a continued pursuit of a liberal world order based on the rule of law.
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