Asia Europe Journal - Call for Special Issue Papers on 'Europe, Asia, and the Liberal International Order in the Indo-Pacific'
Over the last decade, the economic and military rise of China has prompted widespread intellectual and political discussions and debates on how states can respond to the China challenge, and how they can defend the liberal international order. This exercise is no easy feat, considering the differences in states’ relationships with China as well as their views of the liberal international order. While the liberal international order may not be a contested concept, it is certainly an elusive one. The global order is exceedingly complex and has only become more so since the end of the Cold War and the rise of a multiplex order. [1] Amid these complexities, the notion of liberal order remains underspecified and ambiguous. [2]
Europe and Asia share a striking convergence in their overall perception of the liberal order. [3] Both view the liberal global order as one being ‘rules-based’, rather than pro-democratic, as such a framing can be adversarial and restrictive. Countries in both regions share an aversion to choosing sides in the US-China great power competition and reject the idea of Cold War era binaries. However, such agreements exist largely on the surface.
Gaps persist when it comes to the strategic cultures and national interests, which translate to their geopolitical postures vis-à-vis the Indo-Pacific construct. For example, France and Germany both seek to ‘defend’ or ‘preserve’ the existing liberal (rules-based) international order against an authoritarian China’s attempts to remake it. Viewing the liberal international order as a normative one, the EU considers it to be enshrined in institutions like the United Nations (UN) and norms of multilateralism. [4] On the other hand, several Asian states recognize that the current liberal order is problematic; it does not need to be defended, but reformed and adapted to the realities of today’s multiplexar (or multipolar) world. This includes, in particular, reformation of existing international institutions like the UN and the World Trade Organisation, among others. The gap between the two regions was only highlighted at the 2024 Indo-Pacific ministerial forum in Brussels, where representatives from Sri Lanka and Indonesia called out the EU for its ‘double standards’ on the Ukraine war and the Gaza war.
These differing postures are deep rooted in not only strategic cultures but also historical traditions and cultural values. However, to tackle the challenges facing the liberal international order, Asia and Europe to work to address their strategic differences and enable open and constructive engagement.
To this end, this special issue will bring together papers to highlight the challenges and contestations facing the liberal international order, and the key debates in the EU and Asian states on how to respond to them. It aims to draw out the significance of the Indo-Pacific region to the liberal international order. The papers in the special issue inquire into the foreign policies of the EU and Asian actors and how they approach order building in the Indo-Pacific. In this context, the special issue will make a valuable contribution to the scholarly literatures on the liberal international order, and generate new insights into how it is perceived in Asia and Europe.
The issue will be structured in the following three thematic parts, each containing 2-3 articles:
Politics
The first section of the special issue will focus on if and how the EU and its Asian partners can cooperate to strengthen the liberal international order. As a normative power, the EU is recognised as one of the most (if not the most) important actor to define the future of the liberal international order. Although the EU was initially positioned as a supporter of the US, it has now sought greater strategic autonomy and attempted to position itself as an independent global actor. Its Indo-Pacific strategy and initiatives like the Global Gateway further this notion. However, in light of its willingness-capacity gap, it is vital for the EU to work with Asian partners in its response to the crisis of the liberal international order. What are the differences in how the EU and Asian actors view the emerging global order? What shape can such collaboration take?
Security
Recent trends suggest that the crisis facing the international liberal order, whether by external or internal factors, has forced the EU and Asian states to reconsider their security policies to adopt a more pragmatic, and in some cases a more defensive, approach. In Europe, there has been a resurgence of discourse on a European Army. Even while its practicalities seem insurmountable, Europe’s defence dependencies on the US – which is increasingly perceived as unreliable – makes the proposition attractive. Parallelly, debates on an ‘Asian NATO’ have resurfaced as policy experts question whether such a formation is conceivable or constructive to a stable and secure global order. With a view of these debates, the articles in this section will seek to provide a bi-regional comparison of how the EU and Asia have adapted their approaches to security in the Indo-Pacific and the challenges they face in light of the crisis facing the international order.
Economics
The Indo-Pacific has, over the last decade, come to replace the transatlantic as the centre of gravity for the world economy. With trade being one of the key areas of competition between China and the US, small and middle powers in Asia and Europe have increasingly been forced to review and adapt their economic strategies. China’s alternatives to Bretton Woods institutions, like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) alongside countries like India and Japan, as well as programs like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are seen as a challenge to the international economic order. On the other hand, the US is pushing for a new international economic order based on ideas like de-coupling and friend-shoring and new formats like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). This has forced the EU and Asian states to prepare for geoeconomic fragmentation while factoring disruption of supply chains and growing protectionism. How can the EU and Asian actors like ASEAN, Japan, India, and South Korea defend against such a trend and what tools can these actors use to secure their strategic autonomy?
Manuscript Submission Information:
Authors are requested to submit their original and unpublished works to this Special Issue first to both guest editors for coherence check and pre-submission feedback. The Journal has a rigorous peer-reviewing process and at least two referees will review the submitted papers. All submitted papers must be formatted according to the journal's instructions, which can be found at: https://link.springer.com/journal/10308/submission-guidelines (this opens in a new tab)The guest editors will make their decisions ASAP and invites selected authors to submit their full manuscript through the Journal’s homepage at https://www.springer.com/journal/10308 (this opens in a new tab)
Important Dates
Abstract Submission deadline: 12 April 2024
Full manuscript submission deadline, if selected: 15 July 2024
First-round reviews and decision: 30 August 2024
Revised Submission: 10 October 2024
Publication date: November-December 2024
Guest Editors:
Jagannath P. Panda, Head, Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden
email: jpanda@isdp.eu (this opens in a new tab)
Alfred Gerstl, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic
email: alfred.gerstl@upol.cz (this opens in a new tab)
References:
[1] Amitav Acharya, ‘After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order’, Ethics and International Affairs 31, no. 3 (2017): 271–85, https://doi.org/10.1017/s089267941700020x (this opens in a new tab).
[2] Helene Sjursen, ‘Rethinking Liberal Order: The EU and the Quest for Global Justice’, International Affairs 99, no. 6 (6 November 2023): 2203–20, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad240 (this opens in a new tab).
[3] Hans Kundnani, ‘The Future of the Liberal International Order’, in The Transformation of the Liberal International Order: Evolutions and Limitations, ed. Yuichi Hosoya and Hans Kundnani, SpringerBriefs in International Relations (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2024), 127–32, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4729-4_12 (this opens in a new tab).
[4] G. John Ikenberry, ‘The future of the liberal world order: internationalism after America’, Foreign Affairs 90: 3, 2011, pp. 56–68 at p. 56.