Europe and Asia have never been so close. Our economies are interconnected, our cultures are interconnected and our security is connected. We face the same challenges, we confront similar threats and we share an interest in preserving peace in our regions and international cooperation on a global scale.
On Monday, the foreign ministers of the EU’s 28 member states decided that we must enhance our security engagement in Asia and with Asia, as part of a more comprehensive EU-Asia strategy(http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35456/st09265-re01-en18.pdf). The time when Europeans and Asians could consider themselves distant friends is over. To preserve and strengthen our economic exchanges, we must also work together on global security.
In Asia, as elsewhere, the economic face of Europe is the one that people are most familiar with. It is linked to our role as the world’s biggest trading block, as well as our being the No. 1 or No. 2 investor in most Asian nations and by far the world’s biggest donor of development assistance.
However, it is striking how joint work on security has become the biggest area of growth in terms of our expanding cooperation with Asian partners. This increased engagement on security matters reflects two changes.
First, our partners in Asia increasingly look to the EU to be present and engaged in the region. Our added value stems from, in particular, our experience with cooperative security and regional approaches to crisis management: This kind of expertise is in high demand.
Second, the EU itself has taken ambitious steps to strengthen our own capacities in the field of defense. We are not only a reliable trade partner, not only a pillar of multilateralism — the EU is a security actor in its own right.
The EU has 16 civilian and military missions around the world. We train the armed forces in Mali; we advise the Ukrainian and Iraqi authorities on reform of their civilian security sectors; we fight piracy in the Indian Ocean.
Recently, together with EU member states, we launched a “Permanent Structured Cooperation” on security and defense. We are joining forces to become an even more credible and reliable security provider. Our member states have committed to investing together on practical projects — from rapid response against cyberattacks to innovative systems for maritime security, to a European training center for our troops who intervene in case of natural disasters.
I have also proposed to set up a new fund, outside the EU budget, to help strengthen our partners’ security capabilities.
Collectively, the EU and its member states have the second-largest defense budget in the world. The potential of greater European cooperation on defense matters is immense. We have taken big, important steps over the past year, reflecting the fact that European citizens, as well as people across the world, increasingly count on an EU that protects — and this will continue.
Since our first engagement to accompany the Aceh peace process in Indonesia almost 15 years ago, we have expanded our security cooperation in Asia and with Asia to a great extent. We are working together on cybersecurity, counterterrorism, nonproliferation, as well as in support of peace processes across the region, from Afghanistan to Mindanao to Myanmar.
We have had concrete contributions from several Asian partners to tackle piracy off the coast of Somalia. In the context of the ASEAN Regional Forum, we are working together with Vietnam and Australia on maritime security.
We also have increasing military contacts with nations in Asia. For example, the chief of the EU Military Committee has had discussions with his counterparts in Beijing, Islamabad and Seoul, to name only a few. We have posted security experts to several EU embassies across Asia.
However, perhaps the most pressing matter for EU-Asia security cooperation at this time is denuclearization. We share an interest to save the Iran nuclear deal and to support denuclearization talks in the Korean Peninsula.
This is why the EU is already fully engaged with Asian partners on both of these pressing issues.
China is a signatory of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, while it is also key to global efforts to bring about the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Likewise, Japan, the Republic of Korea and others all have a major stake in making sure that the nuclear deal with Iran is preserved, and that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized. We all do. Global peace requires a global effort.
Going forward, as EU foreign ministers emphasized, we need to move to new actions. The EU will expand its cooperation with Asian partners into areas such as capacity building, training programs — including on UN peacekeeping — and joint exercises.
As the EU, we have realized, after centuries of conflicts that ripped our continent apart, that cooperation is essential for peace, and that peace brings prosperity. However, in today’s world, unilateral instincts too often prevail over the search for common ground. Too many players seek confrontation to achieve their short-term goals, instead of building sustainable solutions through mediation.
Against this background, those who believe in a multilateral global order have an interest and a duty to join forces. Europe and Asia, together, can be the engine of a more cooperative approach to world politics.
Federica Mogherini is EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and a European Commission vice president.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS