The EU-ASEAN relationship : cooperation on non-traditional security threats between discourse and practice

Abstract

It is a common view among foreign policy analysts and practitioners that trade and investment have long stood at the center of interregional relations between the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Yeo 2010; Umbach 2008). However, a changed post-Cold War security landscape compounded by the spread of globalization and the advent of more diverse, less visible and unpredictable threats is driving a redefinition of the EU– ASEAN dialogue and agenda. As the contemporary world system has turned into a ‘world risk society’ (Beck 2002), which has left states more exposed to new transnational security threats that no single country is able to tackle entirely on its own, there has been a growing tendency towards finding solutions beyond the national level. Thus, regional and interregional cooperation have increasingly become a practical necessity to deal with these new sources of insecurity, generally defined as non-traditional security (NTS) challenges. [Excerpt from the Introduction]