By Dr. Axel Berkofsky
The annual EU-China security dialogue concluded on May 6, 2015. Source: European Parliament’s flickr photostream, used under a creative commons license.
The European Union (EU) and China talk regional security once a year. The near-impossibility of adopting joint security policies in Asia notwithstanding, they have done so since 2010 when Brussels and Beijing set up the EU-China High-level Strategic Dialogue. At the time, Brussels hoped that the dialogue would encourage Beijing to become more transparent about its defense expenditures, military equipment procurement and sales policies. The effort, unsurprisingly, failed. China will surely not make any more information on its arms procurement policies available simply because the EU requests it in a bilateral, informal dialogue without legally-binding character. In contrast to the EU’s broad engagement with China on economic and commercial issues, a dialogue on security and strategy in Asia with China represents a waste of limited bandwidth that the EU should devote to other efforts.
The most recent edition of the dialogue took place in Beijing on May 5-6 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of EU-China diplomatic relations. The talks between the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini and Chinese state councilor Yang Jiechi were reportedly ‘fruitful’, with Brussels and Beijing praising EU-China coordination on the Iranian nuclear issue, the ongoing Ukraine crisis anti-terrorism and a few other issues from a long shopping-list of ongoing and unsolved international issues. Just as in the past no plans on actual joint security policies emerged from the talks during which Brussels and Beijing announced they made progress of the so-called ‘EU-China Partnership for Peace.’ While any details of what such a partnership will entail have yet to be spelled out, Brussels and Beijing have confirmed their commitment to make progress towards the adoption of an bilateral investment treaty.
When confronted with the criticism of entertaining an annual window-dressing event as opposed to a security dialogue that produces tangible results, let alone joint policies related to Asian security, EU policymakers usually insist that the dialogue’s objective is not the adoption of joint policies but rather the creation of a platform to informally consult with each other on Asian security issues. Fair enough, but the raison d’être of such a dialogue is nonetheless debatable, if e.g. European advice on Chinese regional security policy conduct such as Beijing’s assertive policies related to territorial claims in the East and South China Seas is dismissed as irrelevant or worse referred to as ‘unwanted interference’ in Beijing. In fact, Brussels has over recent years more than once received ‘advice’ from Beijing to mind its own business when — at least for Beijing’s taste — getting too interested in what Beijing refers to as its ‘core interests’ – the Taiwan and Tibet ‘questions’ as well as Chinese ‘territorial integrity’ in Asia’s disputed waters. If European views and advice on Chinese security policies in Asia are only endorsed during official encounters as opposed to in the real world, then the dialogue on Asian security with China is not just an inefficient use of limited EU resources and political capital: rather it is arguably a waste of time.
Until the provision of evidence to the contrary, i.e. a measurable impact of EU input into Chinese regional security policies, cooperating on security with a country with whom Brussels neither shares values nor approaches towards international politics or security will continue to remain a case of wishful-thinking. EU policymakers, however, continue to have none of that pessimism. The EU-China 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation adopted in 2013 promises to “Raise the level of EU-China dialogue and cooperation on defense and security, advancing towards more practical cooperation.” While this sounds good on paper, the move towards more (or indeed any) practical security cooperation will remain very unlikely as Brussels and Beijing have very different positions on most current issues on the regional and international security agendas, be it the crisis in Ukraine, Iran or Syria, and the so-called ‘rogue regimes’ in North Korea or Sudan. This is hardly the basis for moving towards practical cooperation on security in Asia or anywhere else.
China denying others the right to ‘interfere’ in any of what China refers to as its ‘internal affairs’ is deeply embedded in Chinese foreign and security policy thinking and Beijing will continue to take on board only the kind of advice on its foreign and security policies that comes nowhere near to resembling ‘interference.’ Indeed, since China’s leadership transition in 2012, Chinese policymakers as well as Chinese scholars interacting with European counterparts tend to become defensive quickly when sensing anything that might be in any way interpreted as ‘interference’ in Chinese domestic affairs.
Four years of the EU-China High-level Strategic Dialogue have shown that talking about cooperating in regional security is one thing, but actually adopting joint security policies in the region quite another. To be clear, the dialogue has in the past produced joint statements on regional security and EU policymakers like to point to EU-China anti-piracy cooperation in the Gulf of Aden as a result of their bilateral security dialogue. However, EU-China anti-piracy cooperation in the Gulf of Aden is not a bilateral EU-Chinese mission but instead a multilateral one sanctioned by the United Nations in the framework of a mission where even the Chinese and Japanese navies cooperate with each other. In reality, European input into increasingly assertive Chinese regional security policies in general and issues of the above-mentioned ‘core interests’ will continue to be ignored. Nice-sounding bilateral statements do not change anything about that.
Consequently, EU policymakers and officials probably do not do themselves and their credibility any favors continuing to insist that Beijing is interested in European security policy advice and input. The EU should devote its limited bandwidth and resources elsewhere. Strengthening security cooperation with fellow democracies in the region and countries which actually share EU approaches towards regional security would be a strong start. Japan and South Korea come to mind as two places where the utility of this approach could pay immediate dividends.
Dr. Axel Berkofsky is Professor, University of Pavia, Italy, and Senior Associate Research Fellow, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), Milan, Italy.
The reason why China keeps on demanding to be treated on the basis of equality and mutual respect is that they do not want others judging China on what it claims to be internal affairs. Problem with the EU for China is that the EU is full of governments who, much more so than the Americans, love to engage in making judgments about others and are not shy about it either. This is a wonderful security dialogue. The fact that it has not produced any meaningful outcome stands testimony to how cheap talk is when there is not a coming together of minds.
Ultimately this is also about a clash of civilizations and civil behavior towards neighbors. The Europeans have learned the lessons of not dealing with each other well, and their evolution into mostly liberal democratic polities with similar values is something that goes to the identity of Europe itself in contemporary times even if it is imperfect. There is probably no greater clash with these European norms than that which is found in China or possibly the Middle East.
Let reality reign over rhetoric even without reining in a dialogue in which the entry fee is low and is worth doing for show.