The EU Turning Towards Asia

The EU is Turning Towards Asia

The process of reformatting the world order that we can see in progress is a global and comprehensive phenomenon. In particular, it is reflected in the obvious change that is taking place in the relations between the main countries constituting the West. 

The new political game that began after 1991 is different in the leading players, a gradual shift of its geographical focus from Europe and the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific region, deactivation and unavoidable disintegration (in the long term) of the alliances that had been established during the previous game.

The latter trend is becoming increasingly obvious in the exacerbating issues that can be observed in the relations between the 2 main parts of the West, i.e. the EU and the US.

In this respect, the issues in the trade and economic component of the transatlantic relations that are approaching the conflict stage are merely one of the manifestations of the increasingly evident inefficiency of the whole system of connections between the shores of the Atlantic Ocean that were established during the Cold War. As time goes by, each of the shores will progressively focus on its own geopolitical games.

One cannot help reaching that conclusion (at least, regarding the EU) after familiarizing oneself with the Joint Communication published by the EU headquarters on September 19. This document formulated both the shared vision of “Connecting Europe and Asia – Building blocks for an EU Strategy” by the EU governing bodies – and the main blocks which will serve its implementation.

It is stated that the work on designing the aforementioned Strategy is the EU contribution to the preliminary events for holding the regular (12th by count) summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Forum member states that will be held in Brussels on October 18 – 19. The Forum comprises 51 countries of Europe and East Asia that account for 2/3 of the international trade and 60% of the GWP.

The aforementioned EU document provides various (and rather impressive) figures that illustrate the urgency of activating the longstanding reorientation of the EU policy in general towards Asia.