Multipolar Competition and the Rules-based Order: Probing the Limits of EU Foreign and Security Policy in the South China Sea

ABSTRACT

Deepening multipolar competition has imposed constraints on European Union foreign and security policy (EUFSP). In the South China Sea (SCS), the European Union (EU) faces a complex foreign policy terrain for three reasons. First, the EU’s geographic distance from – and relatively limited capabilities in – the region may lend itself to a de minimis mitigating strategy, especially when considered against the backdrop of the broader imperative to mitigate the impact of multipolar competition on its foreign policy more generally. Second, multipolarity can be compatible with the preservation of a rules-based international order (RBIO) if the latter term is interpreted less stringently. And third, rather than being a factor purely to mitigate, multipolar competition in the wider Indo-Pacific theatre offers the EU certain opportunities – albeit not without risks – to strengthen the character of its foreign and security policy by actively participating in a competitive dynamic. Together, these facts should encourage us to rethink whether ‘mitigation’ always captures the entire essence of the EU’s response to multipolar competition.

KEYWORDS:

• South China Sea
• Indo-Pacific
• rules-based international order
• European Union
• EU foreign policy
• multipolarity

In recent years, the world’s leading powers have begun to define their national interests towards one another in increasingly competitive – even antagonistic – terms. This development is the by-product not only of an apparent trend toward multipolarity at the global level, but also the espousal of contrasting visions of international order (Allison 2013; Rozman 2014; Lo 2015; Kaczmarski 2019; Dandashly et al. 2021).

This new and disorderly state of affairs is often said to threaten the status quo ‘rules-based international order’ (RBIO), which has benefited European integration and security for several decades (Leonard 2020). In this context, the European Union (EU) faces pressure to mitigate the constraints that this deepening ‘multipolar competition’ imposes on its foreign and security policy (EUFSP) – defined as the policies and initiatives in the realm of external action adopted by the EU as a collective actor, as well as those actions of a collection of member states aimed at advancing EU goals (Rieker and Giske 2021). However, within this general picture, various degrees of nuance exist. For one, the emerging global multipolar competition may play out differently from region to region, not only with respect to which actors are involved but also the normative dynamics that shape their interaction (Buzan 2012, 37; Goh 2014, 186-7; Stubbs 2018). Moreover, far from invariably threatening the RBIO, multipolarity in at least some respects can buttress its foundations. These considerations are particularly noteworthy when it comes to the South China Sea (SCS), one of the principal theatres in which multipolar competition is playing out and which has now become subsumed within the wider ‘Indo-Pacific’ construct. When combined with the various constraints that the EU faces in addressing the challenge of deepening competition in a distant region, it raises the question of whether ‘mitigation’ is always the correct frame of reference to understand EUFSP’s evolution in a multipolar world.

Drawing on theoretical and empirical sources, this article begins by exploring the compatibility between multipolarity and rules-based interstate interaction, exploring multipolarity from a normative rather than purely material perspective. This will provide a broader understanding of the ‘rules’ which underpin the RBIO and the contemporary international order more generally. It will also help to explain why mitigating competition – or its effects – is not always the appropriate response to the advent of multipolarity. The article then proceeds to outline some of the characteristics of multipolar competition in the SCS, charting the ways in which intra-regional behaviours and governance mechanisms provide a foundation for the preservation of something approaching an RBIO, even as an increasingly binary great power standoff threatens to undermine it. This, in turn, will provide the necessary context for characterising EUFSP in the SCS region and its environs to date. Specifically, while ‘mitigation’ may be the frame of reference undertaken in the SCS, the EU is too distant and relatively uninfluential an actor to make a considerable difference. At the same time, in the wider and increasingly salient ‘Indo-Pacific’ theatre, ‘mitigation’ of multipolar competition does not fully grasp the nature and context of the EU’s chosen approach – not only because the EU has, to a degree, embraced competition there, but also because competition in this new regional construct is in many respects aimed not at undermining rules but rather at writing them.

Multipolar competition and the ‘rules-based international order’

Given the EU’s reliance on the existing RBIO (Dworkin and Leonard 2018) and the impact that deepening multipolar competition threatens to have on this order, a discussion of the relationship between multipolarity and ‘rules-based order’ is warranted to contextualise better the nature of the EU’s response to the constraints that multipolar competition is imposing.¹

Major developments of recent decades including the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Great Recession of 2008, and the failure of the United States' (US) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led many to conclude that the world is becoming increasingly multipolar. Some disagree, asserting that the US faces no veritable peer and therefore that the world remains largely unipolar (Monteiro 2021, 340-1; Brooks and Wohlforth 2023). Others contend that there are only two poles in today’s world, with other competitors lagging far behind the US and the PRC (Tunsjø 2018; Bekkevold 2023).

Irrespective of the distribution of material power, actors such as Russia and the PRC have become more willing to challenge the US directly, as Washington’s global influence appears (at least in some respects) to be in relative decline. The more assertive strategies of Moscow and Beijing today differ significantly from their approach in the 1990s, when they were focused on more limited and often inward-looking goals to navigate a time of sharp global change (Rozman 2014, 197; Hill 2018, 105). While shifts in the material balance of power can alter the ability of states to advance their normative visions, the choices that they make in the latter regard remain key, as Alexander Wendt (1992) persuasively argued more than 30 years ago. This raises a question: under what conditions does multipolarity pose a threat to what has become known as the RBIO? First, however, it is important to clarify the scope of this order.

It has been common to assert that the US effectively created the post-World War II international order, comprising the United Nations and its numerous agencies, as well as the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, along with what would later become the World Trade Organisation) – and therefore to conflate US hegemony with the present-day international order writ large (Kagan 2013; Alcaro 2018). This impression only grew larger after the Cold War, as no alternative normative pole remained to resist the increasingly universal scope of Western-dominated international institutions. This perspective reflexively views the advent of multipolarity as a challenge to the established order, especially given the increasingly competitive (if not hostile) dynamic that has become entrenched between Washington and its great power rivals. However, this interpretation is belied by other facts. Most importantly, multipolarity can be seen as more of a structural feature of interstate orders than a bug. If one interprets the present-day order as having gradually evolved alongside the centuries-long processes of state formation and civilisational exchange rather than being founded in 1945 or 1991, then one may view multipolarity as an inherited element or practice from previous eras of history (Watson 2006, 54).

Put differently, multipolarity can be seen as more than just a particular distribution of material resources to three or more centres of power, providing each with the ability to check the influence of the others. The balance of power, along with the special role claimed by great powers in upholding and managing international order, can in fact be conceptualised as established norms (or “fundamental institutions”) of interstate relations (Bull 2002, 68-71). The same can be said for other long-present features of interstate interaction such as international law, suggesting that the balance of power and rules-based multilateralism can be seen as coexisting and even mutually reinforcing forces (Clark 2011, 36).

In fact, the continued appeal (among some states) of norms such as the balance of power and great power management reveals the extent to which the RBIO, even when defined broadly, is not entirely coterminous with global order today. Although liberal norms, preferences and practices may have left an imprint on the character of interstate relations, they have not become universally accepted enough to become completely synonymous with international order (Sakwa 2017, 42; Paikin 2021). And while Western hegemony and multipolarity are naturally incompatible, there is little reason to believe that the latter cannot be reconciled in some fashion with multilateralism (Tocci 2018; Acharya 2018, 76). Indeed, although the term RBIO has come to be seen as synonymous specifically with the current international order rooted in “thick” international bodies, all international orders require some common understanding of the rules of the game (Bull 2002, 64-8).² A nominal emphasis on common rules and principles is particularly manifest in today’s RBIO, but previous historical international orders also featured a “moral consensus” rooted in “a shared set of ideas about legitimate sovereignty” (Mead 2020) or “shared values and assumptions” developed within a common “cultural framework” (Watson 1992, 318).

To account for the unique features of the contemporary international context, the present-day RBIO can therefore be interpreted more as a general commitment to multilateralism (even if fragmented or competitive), to respecting international borders and to resolving disputes peacefully. As such, so long as there is agreement on these fundamental rules of the game, multipolarity need not necessarily have a deleterious impact on international order (Biscop 2023). Such an outcome can occur in interstate systems which lack conformity of values or domestic political systems, such as the 19th-century Concert of Europe which brought together both liberal and conservative powers (Haass 2018). Even limited forms of normative contestation can help to identify gaps in global governance and potentially engender a form of renewal of the international order (Wiener 2014, 50; Reus-Smit and Dunne 2017, 36; Korosteleva and Flockhart 2020). In such cases, where the threat to order writ large is less than it may seem, the situation lends itself to more detached, limited or ‘functional’ mitigating strategies, as will be detailed below.

By contrast, if competition grows to the point where key norms are considered illegitimate by some actors, while still clung to by others, then the impact on international order is likely to be more considerable (Paikin 2022).³ In the post-Cold War context, for example, contested interpretations of what constitutes legitimate great power behaviour – from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – have helped to fragment the international order. This can be witnessed in the recent shift in Washington’s approach to exercising international hegemony, from a more inclusive form of global governance initially to a form of coalitional hegemony centred on alliances under the Biden administration (Clark 2011, 66). The pressures of more unrestrained competition, which forces parties to pick sides, encourage a more ‘coalitional’ approach to mitigation.

With competition between the US and PRC intensifying, owing both to international factors (for example, power transition) and domestic ones (for example, political polarisation in the US and the ideological rejuvenation of the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping), the EU and its member states therefore face not only the reality of competing pressures from Washington and Beijing, but also the risk that the RBIO on which Brussels depends will be eroded. As such, in order to assess and characterise the EU’s supposed mitigating strategies, there is a need to investigate in greater detail how multipolar competition plays out today in the SCS. Does it occur largely within or outside the confines of commonly accepted rules?

Multipolar competition in the South China Sea

The SCS dispute centres on overlapping territorial claims, the result of the decolonisation process of the mid-20th century which failed to demarcate maritime borders adequately. This has led to a semi-lawless situation in which claimant states have competed with one another to occupy various areas and territories in the SCS. Rival claims centre on disputed archipelagos such as the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands and Scarborough Shoal, with the PRC’s ‘nine-dash’ line encompassing most of the sea being the best-known embodiment of Beijing’s extensive maritime claims (Tønnesson 2008). The PRC’s rise has provided the territorial disputes in the SCS with added salience, layering them within the deepening competition between the PRC on the one hand and the US and its various partners on the other.

The SCS is of crucial importance to regional shipping routes, being home to the Strait of Malacca through which a substantial proportion of global trade passes. As such, in geoeconomic terms, one could argue that the SCS lies at the heart of what is increasingly called the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region, connecting East and South Asia to each other and to other markets. Geopolitically, the significance for the US of the ‘first island chain’ – which includes much of the SCS – as a barrier through which the PRC would have to ‘break out’ to become a truly global power (Kaplan 2011) underlines the central position of the SCS in the Indo-Pacific theatre.⁴ Although nominally descriptive of the region’s geographic terrain and therefore inclusive of all regional actors, the fact that the ‘Indo-Pacific’ nomenclature emerged in response to the PRC’s rise suggests that it embodies an effort on the part of the US and other actors to mitigate the impact of Beijing’s growing influence, thereby imbuing regional interstate relations with a competitive dynamic.

Faced with the PRC’s ambitions and capabilities, Southeast Asian states have adopted a dual-track approach. By seeking closer ties with the US and (more recently) the EU, Southeast Asian claimant states – most notably the Philippines and Vietnam – have sought to improve their capacity to deter future Chinese encroachments. However, by continuing to engage with the PRC, they have also hoped to mitigate the chances of their disputes spilling over into full-blown conflict. Several institutions and groupings now bring the region’s actors together, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ASEAN Regional Forum or ARF), the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and ASEAN Plus Six and its associated East Asia Summit. The favoured approach of most Southeast Asian states has therefore featured a form of hedging or refusing to choose sides, alongside a preference for process over results, in accordance with ASEAN’s traditional emphasis on resisting great power encroachment while insisting on its own regional ‘centrality’ (Kausikan 2021; Jackson 2023). That said, there are limits to how far such collective efforts can go, given that threat perceptions of the PRC within the organisation differ substantially and not all of its members are coastal states.

In the SCS territorial dispute, in which arbitration has been sought under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), international law occupies a central place in the tapestry of regional rules. However, while Beijing has voiced its support for an international order based on international law, multilateralism and the UN Charter (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC 2021), it has rejected the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which adjudicated a case brought by the Philippines. The PRC and ASEAN have therefore relied on a 2002 non-binding Declaration of Conduct regarding their interactions in the SCS. While gradual efforts have been undertaken to replace this with a binding Code of Conduct dispute resolution mechanism, uncertainty over the length and outcome of this process has helped to encourage individual Southeast Asian states to develop their own coast guard capabilities (Parameswaran 2019; Strangio 2023). This highlights the continued risk of clashes between Beijing and its Southeast Asian neighbours, even as they adopt a process-oriented (rather than results-oriented) approach to relations with one another (Paikin et al. 2023).

A tension will also exist between regional actors’ genuine support for international law and their partial aversion to the RBIO as a term, given that the latter can be both opaque in meaning and inadvertently interpreted as synonymous with the status quo feature of US hegemony (Beinart 2021). Nonetheless, the institutional mechanisms outlined above, combined with local actors’ commitment to process and dialogue in the face of rising tensions, provide an example of the region’s conformity to the basic tenets of an RBIO, even if challenges are mounted to the application of international law. Indeed, as Vincent Keating and Amelie Theussen (2022, 216) note, international law remains resilient “if it continues to provide the frame of reference for the contestation of individual legal rules”. It is therefore not a negligible phenomenon that states often attempt to provide legal justifications – or pursue their agenda partly within multilateral institutions – even in instances when they violate international law. With that in mind, the fact that international law and a broad conception of an RBIO are not synonymous helps to explain how some of the EU’s chosen mitigating strategies vis-à-vis the SCS are partial or ‘functional’ in nature, as illustrated in greater detail below.

The PRC’s goals in the region and beyond are a matter of considerable debate. Some scholars have posited that Beijing seeks regional – and even global – domination in some form (Sullivan and Brands 2020; Doshi 2021). Others offer a different perspective, recalling how Beijing has been a major beneficiary of the international status quo, which has allowed it to grow and modernise its economy. As such, while the PRC may be dissatisfied with certain aspects of the present-day international order, it may not seek to overthrow it in its entirety (Zhang 1999, 126; Moore 2005, 145; Heer 2021; Werner 2023). Although it has become more assertive today than in decades past, Chinese foreign policy has often been “risk-averse and narrowly self-interested” (Shambaugh 2013, 309). Even in instances where Beijing has challenged Washington’s dominance of the international order, it has occasionally done so through multilateral means, founding the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and aiming for leadership roles in international peacekeeping, as well as other aspects of the UN system including international standards setting (Teleanu 2021; Gowan 2022). As Sven Biscop (2023) puts it, Beijing is not a “revisionist power that aims to undo the current world order”, but rather “is acquiring more power within the current world order, in which it is a major stakeholder, so that it can co-shape the rules”.

In today’s multipolar competition, which now features a hot war between Russia and a Western-backed Ukraine, the PRC’s reluctance to engage in high-level and risky endeavours has manifested itself through what one analyst calls the “Beijing straddle”, in which the PRC leans toward Russia but not to an extent that it cuts off its access to Western markets (Feigenbaum and Szubin 2023). However, while multipolarity per se need not pose a challenge to the survival of a broadly defined RBIO and Beijing’s overall foreign policy may not be aimed at the wholesale overthrow of the existing international order, this nonetheless raises the question of whether the PRC’s behaviour can always be interpreted as compatible with a rules-based order. Specifically, in the case of the war in Ukraine, one could point to Beijing’s rhetorical defence of Moscow’s supposedly legitimate security concerns (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC 2023), which appear at odds with the RBIO’s principle concerning respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.

That said, the Charter of Paris, which marked the birth of the post-Cold War European security order, also contained similarly opposing principles. These include the “freedom of States to choose their own security arrangements” and the principle that “the security of every participating State is inseparably linked to that of all the others” (OSCE 1990). The former notion suggests that sovereign states have an inviolable right to pursue membership in any military alliance, whereas the latter posits (inter alia) that no state should increase its security at the perceived expense of another. Normative ambiguity was also visible in the Helsinki Final Act, which posited the importance of both sovereignty and human rights and thus led to conflicting interpretations by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Warsaw Pact members (Morgan 2018, 139-40). States may make reference to competing principles and be selective in their application of international law – and great powers, both Western and non-Western, have on numerous occasions violated international norms and rules. But, based on the definition of a rules-based order outlined above, states can operate within these contradictions without being fully opposed to the notion of a rules-based order. And given that the RBIO is itself not entirely synonymous with today’s international order writ large, actions which may serve to undermine the RBIO should not be considered on their own to be revisionist in nature.

In many respects, the question of the PRC’s regional domination is moot when it comes to gauging the impact of Chinese actions and policies on the international order. In the SCS, Beijing has already created facts on the ground (for example, the construction of artificial islands) to secure its regional position, whereas the historically multipolar balance of power across Asia (now solidified by the nuclear arsenals of the PRC, Pakistan, India and the US) renders Chinese domination of the space beyond the SCS unlikely (Khanna 2019). But irrespective of whether any one country can achieve unchallenged hegemony in Asia, competition between the US and the PRC has intensified over a number of issues pertaining to Beijing’s perceived core interests and geographic surroundings. These include the status of Taiwan, democracy in Hong Kong and human rights abuses in Xinjiang, in addition to maritime claims in the SCS.

When combined with the US struggle to retain its regional primacy (Jackson 2023; Wertheim 2023), the growing US-PRC gap on this range of issues imbues the Sino-American relationship with a zero-sum dynamic – in other words, fundamental contestation over the rules of the regional game. Thus, when it comes to the local manifestation of global multipolar competition, we increasingly witness a sensitive bipolar standoff in which one party (the US) is determined to frustrate the efforts of the other party (PRC) to exclude it from the area, making it increasingly difficult to envision a scenario in which Washington and Beijing agree to share regional power.⁵ As such, especially in a world where it is not always clear who is the status quo actor and who is the revisionist (Chan et al. 2019), it is less the policies of any one actor but rather their combination – the relational aspect of international relations – which primarily informs whether a shared commitment to agreed-upon rules-based cooperation exists, and therefore whether the RBIO is likely to remain resilient in some form. This fact provides some conceptual context for the EU’s employment of a ‘coalitional’ mitigating strategy in the Indo-Pacific theatre, as detailed in the section below.

US efforts at keeping the PRC at bay in the SCS and beyond thus far have a mixed record. While Washington is investing more political and diplomatic capital in the SCS and the Indo-Pacific in general, it is falling short on trade. The now-bipartisan consensus in the US against participation in regional free-trade blocs, with the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) failing to include a focus on market access or tariff elimination (Smith 2022), is a severe obstacle to the long-term success of its China strategy.

Washington now finds itself outside the region’s two principal trade groupings: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).⁶ When combined with the security-centric focus of the Quad – comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia – and Washington’s recent efforts to reinforce its regional military presence (Cooper and Sayers 2023), the US’s approach undoubtedly comes across as focused on geopolitics over geoeconomics, leaving it out of step with the priorities of some regional actors, especially ASEAN (Mahbubani 2021). The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific – representing that body’s attempt to engage with and shape a concept whose origins lie in Washington, Tokyo and Canberra – represents a rejection of the Indo-Pacific paradigm in all but name, given that the concept serves to embrace rather than attenuate what ASEAN states perceive as adverse multipolar competition (Reeves 2020).

The developments outlined above presage the (at least partial) fragmentation of the SCS and its environs in both economic and normative terms, due to disagreements over how to construct regional order and the desire of many states to hedge their bets. When combined with the process-centric approach that Southeast Asian states often adopt towards the PRC, this highlights the extent to which international law does not encompass the entirety of the region’s normative fabric. This, in turn, has consequences for how we should interpret and contextualise the EU’s mitigating strategies in the SCS and the surrounding region, including with respect to the EU’s attempts to buttress the efforts of local actors to resist the pressures imposed by an assertive PRC and a deepening Sino-American competition.

EUFSP: How much mitigation?

The EU has been slow – perhaps even reluctant – to respond to the new realities of multipolar competition (Raik et al. 2023). In part, this is because the advent of multipolar competition has been a gradual phenomenon. Russia-West relations encountered several roadblocks (for example, the ‘colour revolutions’ in 2003-4 and the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, wedged between controversial Western interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011) during the post-Cold War period (Allison 2013; Hill 2019). Even after the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2013-14, it took an additional eight years for the international tensions that the Crimean annexation and Donbas conflict had deepened to culminate in full-scale war. The collapse of Sino-American ties into full-blown rivalry is even more recent, dating to the Trump administration, although certain irritants in the relationship had already begun to accumulate in the context of the Obama administration’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ (Lebow 2018, 167).

How to mitigate the impact of this emerging multipolar competition, while remaining faithful to the nominal principles of both EUFSP and the contemporary international order such as rules-based multilateralism and open trade, has become a central question confronting the EU (Dandashly et al. 2021). In the context of the SCS, constraining the dynamics of the Sino-American competition offers – in principle – the most natural pathway toward mitigating the impact of the latter on EUFSP. However, Europe’s geographic distance from the theatre in question, the superior ability of the US and intra-regional actors to shape events, and the limited degree to which a multipolar balance of power can be reached in the SCS, together suggest that a de minimis EU approach is the only realistic one. This reality is reinforced by the fact that the success of EUFSP in the SCS requires a degree of diplomatic detachment from the US due to the desire of local actors to hedge, even as the EU’s dependence on Washington has increased and EU member states face additional pressure to securitise their relationship with the PRC.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further highlighted the reality of the EU’s dependence on the US for managing European security (Bergmann and Besch 2023). Given that the US has provided significant leadership and assistance in addressing a primarily European security problem in Ukraine, EU member states will likely face growing pressure to reciprocate by addressing Washington’s security concerns in the area of its primary preoccupation, namely the PRC (Paikin et al. 2022). In this context, it is not accidental that the most recent Strategic Concept of NATO includes a substantial focus on the PRC for the first time (NATO 2022). All this erodes the notion that the EU can be an effective and independent actor capable of buttressing a ‘third way’ and exhibiting impartiality in theatres such as the SCS, where it faces the general desire of Southeast Asian states not to choose definitively between Washington and Beijing – with even formal US treaty allies such as the Philippines occasionally pursuing a form of hedging (Kausikan 2021; Mahbubani 2023).

The EU has nonetheless attempted to constrain the deteriorating effects of global multipolar competition on regional security in the SCS through three principal means. First, it has aimed to enhance the hard-power capabilities of Southeast Asian states, while also deepening cooperation with ASEAN on other issues (Pugliese 2023). On this front, the EU has expanded its CRIMARIO maritime initiative from the Gulf of Aden into Southeast Asia. This maritime domain awareness mission focuses on enhancing information and crisis management and on strengthening inter-agency cooperation in maritime judicial matters (CRIMARIO 2023). Further scope may exist for a delineated EU hard-power role in the region on issues beyond maritime security, including cybersecurity, counterterrorism, the supply of defence equipment, fishing rights, and combatting human trafficking and transnational crime.⁷ While these forms of capacity-building cannot appreciably push the region’s bipolar standoff towards a more multipolar equilibrium, they may give local actors a greater ability to defend against Beijing’s encroachment, thereby providing them with a degree of hard-power backing in their efforts to uphold international law.

Brussels has complemented its hard-power engagement with a soft-power approach aimed at deepening relations with ASEAN and nudging the region toward a more balanced multipolar equilibrium. This has included, for example, the adoption of the world’s first bloc-to-bloc air transport accord – the Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement (CATA) – signed in the autumn of 2022 (Council EU 2022). It also comprises projects in the SCS region and its environs focused on biodiversity, energy security, green cities, the circular economy, climate action and resilience, and the sustainable management of fisheries (Pajon 2022). The latter include efforts such as the Green Initiative in South-East Asia and the Green Blue Alliance for the Pacific, both of which are ‘Team Europe Initiatives’ that feature coordinated action between EU institutions and member states, illustrating how EUFSP can be advanced not merely at the EU level (Rieker and Giske 2021).

The initiatives and policies listed above may at first seem to be diplomatic mitigation measures, although they may be better understood as functional mitigation measures of competition (Alcaro and Dijkstra 2024, this Special Issue). This is because the EU and ASEAN do not position themselves vis-à-vis the PRC in the same fashion: ASEAN is committed to remaining non-aligned in today’s multipolar competition whereas the EU is not. Attempts to deepen ties with ASEAN can therefore be interpreted as a strategy of selective engagement in the multipolar game, especially when viewed in tandem with other functional measures that the EU plans to undertake with respect to the PRC such as purported economic ‘de-risking’ (Brzozowski 2023).

Second, and relatedly, the EU has insisted on respect for international law in the SCS.⁸ This may do little to reverse the fact that the PRC is established on the ground (such as the construction of artificial bases on which military assets have been deployed) or to resolve ongoing disputes between Beijing and Southeast Asian littoral claimants. Still, it partly mitigates the impact of multipolar competition on EUFSP by allowing the EU to claim that it is acting in defence of the existing international order. That said, as outlined above, the sum-total of inherited normative content in the SCS goes beyond just international law. And, as was mentioned earlier, regional actors aim to manage the pressures of multipolar competition through a process-driven approach to relations with the PRC (Paikin et al. 2023). This may not guarantee conflict resolution and could allow Beijing to continue to ‘peel off’ individual ASEAN member states bilaterally.

Taken together, there is therefore an apparent limit to which insistence on international law alone can constitute an effective mitigating strategy in the face of both normative contestation and organically evolving interstate practices. While the EU’s overall approach is complemented by the various measures outlined above, the comparatively limited influence that Brussels boasts in the region in comparison with Washington and Beijing reveals the relatively de minimis character of this particular mitigating strategy. The de minimis aspect of this facet of EU regional involvement places it firmly in the category of functional mitigation measures.

The fact that the EU is far from being a leading term-setting and event-determining actor in the SCS highlights its relative impotence in the face of one increasingly sensitive, albeit longstanding flashpoint. Tensions over Taiwan have grown significantly over recent years, threatening to engulf the security dynamics of the entire SCS region in the event that military conflict erupts. The December 2022 EU-ASEAN Commemorative Summit excluded the issue of Taiwan from its lengthy joint leaders’ statement, suggesting that EU-ASEAN cooperation can proceed apace without reference to thorny issues in the PRC-West relationship (European Council 2022). The EU – geographically distant and with relatively limited hard-power capabilities – can do very little to prevent the outbreak of war in a region where the US and the PRC are the most powerful actors. Given this relative disparity of power, the EU has adopted a third, more coalitional or diplomatic mitigating strategy by enlarging the contested terrain from the SCS to the wider Indo-Pacific – from a space in which the EU is a small actor in a bipolar order to one in which it may become one of several actors in a multipolar order.

EU interests in the Indo-Pacific are significant, given that it is a theatre through which 40 per cent of EU trade passes (EEAS 2021). As the region has become one of the central focal points of competition between major powers and other leading actors, the EU has pursued a raft of free trade, digital partnership, and partnership and cooperation agreements with countries such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. These measures have been complemented by the adoption of an EU Indo-Pacific strategy which contains security and defence as one of its pillars. Taken together, this suggests that the fledgling EU approach to the Indo-Pacific acknowledges the reality of a competitive and contested multipolar space and that the EU seeks to play a role in shaping it to reflect its interests and normative preferences (Ang 2021). And while there remains potential for continued division among member states regarding how to approach the region, as some prioritise the need to keep Washington invested in European security due to the Russian threat above all else, there has been considerable success in preserving momentum for the Europeanisation of the Indo-Pacific file, in particular thanks to efforts of member state capitals that have not traditionally prioritised the region.⁹ For example, the Czech presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2022 maintained the file as one of its priorities despite the ongoing war in Ukraine (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the CR 2023).

By aiming to contribute to the shaping of an Indo-Pacific regional framework based on commonly accepted rules, the EU hopes to mitigate the consequences of multipolar competition by helping to avoid the fragmentation of the Indo-Pacific space into normatively distinct spaces. The expansion of the contested terrain from the SCS (where the EU has little influence) to the Indo-Pacific has offered the EU a pathway to achieve this, albeit only partly due to the embrace of competition that is inherent in pursuing this strategy. Nonetheless, it remains possible that the further consolidation and development of EUFSP that this approach engenders could produce diplomatic opportunities, assets and partnerships that can be deployed beyond the Indo-Pacific, enhancing the EU’s capacity to resist the pressures of multipolar competition more generally.

Given that the US umbrella and transatlantic alliance now serve as a key enabling factor underpinning unity among EU member states and the further development of EUFSP, especially following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, efforts undertaken to increase the EU’s profile in the wider Indo-Pacific theatre may come at the expense of EU influence in the SCS specifically, where Southeast Asian states have by-and-large adopted a hedging strategy. This inherent trade-off further illustrates the necessarily de minimis character of the EU’s engagement in the SCS. The EU has compensated for the perception of its excessive proximity to the US in its Indo-Pacific strategy by highlighting ‘softer’ policy issues such as sustainable and inclusive prosperity, the green transition, ocean governance, digital governance and partnerships, and connectivity, all ahead of security and defence (European Commission and HRVP 2021). Yet in any event, given the coalitional nature of this mitigating strategy, whether the EU’s approach will ultimately succeed in forging a more stable Indo-Pacific space depends on the behavioural patterns of other actors and not the EU alone.

Conclusion

Given that multipolarity is not inherently threatening to the forms of rules-based interaction on which the EU depends, EUFSP faces pressure to sustain a careful equilibrium that does not work against the emergence of a more cooperative (or at least inclusive) form of multipolarity at the global level. Recent polling data have illustrated the extent to which geopolitical fault lines are viewed fundamentally differently in the Global South than they are in the West, including as it relates to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Garton Ash et al. 2023). This shows that while certain EU strategies and policies may be best suited to respond to great power competition in some contexts (for example, enhancing the EU’s ‘geopolitical actorness’ in the context of the war in Ukraine), these same approaches may exacerbate the deleterious effects of such competition elsewhere (for example, damaging the EU’s image beyond the European continent).

In a globalised multipolar competition, the different theatres in which EUFSP operates are connected. In certain theatres, such as the SCS, the most useful approach may be a de minimis one, not only due to the limited nature of EU interests and capabilities, but also to avoid worsening the EU’s room for manoeuvre in combatting constraints in regions where it has greater interests. For example, given the deepening of the Sino-Russian entente over recent years (Lukin 2018, 62-5; Gabuev 2023), maintaining a working relationship with Beijing may prove useful in maximising the array of policy options available to EU leaders when it comes to settling the war in Ukraine.

Given the constraints imposed – and opportunities presented – by the reinvigorated transatlantic alliance, functional measures have been selected to dampen the effects of competition in the bipolar SCS, while coalitional ones have been employed in the Indo-Pacific as an opportunity to nourish the further development of EUFSP actorness. The inherent trade-offs present in these two approaches – especially given Europe’s increasingly evident dependence on the US – suggests that these strategies will have only limited effect, a fact reinforced by the reality that the advent of a multipolar equilibrium in the SCS remains a distant prospect.¹⁰ In the case of the functional measures applied in the SCS context, their de minimis and targeted nature suggests that they are aimed more at insulating the EU from some of the impact of multipolar competition rather than at attenuating multipolar competition itself. In the Indo-Pacific, the coalitional approach is one which seeks to chart new rules in a contested spatial imaginary, rather than purely preserve existing ones. In both cases, then, whether one can truly speak of an EUFSP focused on ‘mitigation’ remains uncertain – a fact rendered even clearer by the competing policy imperatives of the two geographic theatres.

Moreover, while the EU may contribute to conceptualising and fostering the multipolar foundations of the Indo-Pacific space, the mitigating strategies that Brussels has pursued in the SCS and the recent unveiling of an EU Indo-Pacific strategy do not offer a substitute for addressing the specific dynamics of the EU’s relationship with the PRC. Given the de minimis character of EU engagement in the SCS (and the Indo-Pacific), the extent to which EU-PRC relations harden or thaw may go a long way in determining whether the EU can limit the impact of multipolar competition on its foreign and security policy across the board.

Acknowledgments

This article is an adapted version of a report published within the JOINT project to which Gilang Kembara, Andrew Mantong and Steven Blockmans contributed. JOINT has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 959143 (www.jointproject.eu). This publication reflects only the view of the author and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. The author would also like to thank Riccardo Alcaro and Hylke Dijkstra for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

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Zachary Paikin

Zachary Paikin is a Senior Researcher at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), Geneva, Switzerland. He is also a Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington, DC and Senior Fellow with the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, Ottawa, Canada.

Notes

1 While regional fragmentation in the SCS and intra-EU divisions both help to shape the nature and context of the EU’s regional engagement, for purposes of conceptual and methodological clarity, this article focuses largely on the dynamic of multipolar competition.

2 Sakwa (2023) goes so far as to note that the official norms and institutions of an international order provide merely the structures in which a more free-flowing and competitive realm of international politics unfolds.

3 For more on how zero-sum competition – including between actors who hold divergent ideological or teleological viewpoints – affects the foundations of international order, see Little (2009, 26).

4 The ‘island chain strategy’ is a US strategic doctrine conceived during the Cold War, concerned with the containment of Soviet influence in the Far East. In the post-Cold War era, American and Chinese analysts have repurposed it to make sense of Beijing’s possible strategic encirclement or the strength of Washington’s forward presence in East Asia. The concept references first, second and third ‘island chains’, with the first of these being the most geographically proximate to the PRC’s shores.

5 For more on how the US approaches the question of sharing regional power with the PRC, see White (2013).

6 India also finds itself outside these two trade blocs, raising further doubts over Washington’s ability to shape a wider Indo-Pacific order in which the leading Indian Ocean power (India) and Pacific power (the US) do not fully participate in regional dynamics. See Feigenbaum (2022). The CPTPP currently consists of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, with the United Kingdom also set to join. RCEP signatories include all ten members of ASEAN, in addition to the PRC, Japan, South Korea, Austria and New Zealand.

7 See, for example, European Commission (2023).

8 See, for example, Council of the EU (2016).

9 Europeanisation here is defined not as the pursuit of institutional integration but rather the increasing decision to address and pursue a policy file at the European level.

10 For an illustration of how the EU may struggle to manage this equilibrium, see Lau (2023).