Asian and European Connectivity Initiatives: Intersecting Geopolitical Strategies

Abstract

Connectivity, although not a new phenomenon, has recently begun to be addressed in International Relations and Area Studies scholarship from a more complicated perspective, including, among others, geopolitical calculations, economic initiatives, and institutional strategies. While the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), the EU, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been three fundamental platforms for connectivity to flourish between Asia and Europe, they have also played crucial roles for countries to develop their own initiatives. Considering their economic rise, Asian states like China and India, an already developed economy like Japan, and Asian regional organizations such as ASEAN have been pursuing a more structured way of establishing their connectivity agendas sometimes in collaboration with their European counterparts. Likewise, the EU has its own path for connectivity. These actors have initiated their peculiar connectivity initiatives in the last couple of decades. The selected cases from Asia and Europe examined in this study are the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), and the Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity and Quality Infrastructure between Japan and the European Union. Within this context, this paper aims to shed light on Asian and European connectivity initiatives by addressing the geopolitical landscape within which the initiatives are discussed based on their goals, potential, challenges, and limitations utilizing the document analysis method. The main research question of this study is whether these initiatives create any geopolitical tensions by virtue of their aims, methods, and their ideological and normative discourses. The article concludes that different connectivity initiatives are best understood as geopolitically oriented strategies rather than exclusively technical, infrastructure and/or trade-focused projects.

Keywords

• Connectivity
• ASEM
• EU
• ASEAN
• geopolitics

References

1. References are indicated in the article.