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Abstract by the authors: This article examines the role of strategic partnerships in Indian foreign policy and the nature and perceptions of India and the European Union about the strategic partnership. It discusses how both sides look at global governance, normative divergence, and security cooperation. It assesses Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s perceptions and engagement with Europe since coming to power in 2014. It analyses the economic dynamics of the partnership and assesses the reasons for the impasse in the conclusion of a Broad-based Investment and Trade Agreement. It discusses the salient features of EU’s India Strategy (2018). In conclusion, the article argues that in a more volatile world, India is re-engaging Europe with greater vigour and that both sides seek to build and consolidate the strategic partnership on commonalities.
Abstract by the author: This paper explores the evolution of the policy agenda of the EU-South Korea strategic partnership, based on key pillars of cooperation: politics, security, and economics. In the political arena, the Framework Agreement has provided a major platform for promoting EU-Korea political dialogue and developing a common stance toward a shared global agenda. When it comes to security, the main agenda involves North Korea’s missiles, nuclear program, and the challenge of nonproliferation; the two parties have coordinated sanctions against North Korea. South Korea has enacted a Crisis Management Participation Agreement (FPA) with the EU and begun to participate in the EU common security and defence policy. The changing security environment on the Korean Peninsula, as a consequence of recent inter-Korean and US-North Korea dialogues, may offer the EU new opportunities for constructive engagement. In the economic arena, the EU-Korea FTA has established solid trade and investment relations. While these pillars of the strategic partnership have led to stable and mature bilateral relations, both the EU and South Korea need to find new momentum for an enhanced partnership to deal with the ongoing challenge of global security instability and the backlash against the liberal international order. The EU-South Korea strategic partnership also needs a global agenda that covers climate change, technology, education, and culture. This study assesses the development of each pillar of the strategic partnership, addressing key challenges, tasks, and future diplomatic developments between the EU and South Korea.
Abstract by the author: Faced with the emergence of strategic partnerships (SP), international actors have approached this new phenomenon in the international system through different logics of action. Such logics are tightly associated with the purposes that the SPs are intended to fulfill for the initiating actor. They also tend to reflect the worldview of the initiators as well as their perceptions of the major organizing principles of the international system. In this article, we investigate three different logics: the conventional, the relational, and the functional. These three logics correspond to the strategies of strategic partnering of the United States (US), China, and the European Union (EU) and reflect both the dominant foreign policy orientation of these actors and their self-perceptions as major poles of power in the world. We analyze the construction of these logics by focusing on the relative importance that each of them accords to interests and values when setting up SPs around the world. We contend that an important conceptual gap exists between the major initiators of strategic partnerships, the US and China, which are both to a large extent driven by a self-perception as Great Powers, although the logics with which they seek to fulfill this role diverge substantially. The EU pursues SPs according to a functional logic which in itself also diverge in significant aspects to both the US and China. Taken together, the interests which dictate the necessity of strategic partnerships and the values which condition their feasibility form four distinct patterns of partnering: the homogenous, marriage-of-convenience, come-in-handy, and heterogeneous SPs. These ideal forms of SPs have distinct but contrasting implications for the structure of the international system.
Abstract by the author: In 2007, the European Union (EU) launched a Strategic Partnership (SP) with Brazil despite its long-lasting interregional relationship with the Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR). By singling out Brazil, the EU swung from the EU-MERCOSUR interregional negotiations on an Association Agreement (1999–2004) to bilateralism. In view of the EU’s increasing use of bilateralism, the article analyses why the EU shifted to this SP. Relying on elite interviews, it compares the interregional negotiations (1999–2004) with the bilateral talks with Brazil (since 2007). The EU switched venues from interregional to bilateral because it feared losing Brazil to its American and Chinese competitors. In Europe’s endeavour to prevent this loss, when interregional negotiations seemed fruitless because of MERCOSUR’s increasing fragmentation, the EU privileged Brazil as a strategic partner. Analysing this overlooked SP, the article looks at the – little studied – extra-regional factors that have rendered the EU’s commitment to regional integration vulnerable to bilateralism.
Abstract by the author: Research on the EU-Brazil and EU-Mexico strategic partnerships are still scarce in the academia. In this context, this paper aims to contribute to the academic literature by briefly revisiting the process of establishment of each one of these relationships and assessing the main challenges with which they are currently faced. Moreover, it presents a comparative analysis of both relationships, increasing our understanding of ‘strategic partnership’ as a foreign policy concept, of EU strategic partnerships with Latin America, and of current trends in EU-Mexico and EU-Brazil relations. The paper argues and demonstrates that whereas the EU-Brazil strategic partnership follows a descending path, EU-Mexico relations find themselves in an ascending and promising direction. These opposite trends are not only caused by the different political and economic conjunctures of Brazil and Mexico but are also due to the degree of expectations from the parties when it comes to the outcomes of the partnership.
Abstract by the author: The idea of a ‘strategic partnership’ came to the fore in the lexicon of international relations in the 1990s. This followed considerable geopolitical changes that marked the end of the Cold War, where the concept was increasingly used to signify relations that were not as formal as an alliance (driven by a shared threat or security concern), but represented something deeper than the ad hoc nature of coalitions. Located within the growing discourse on the concept, role and value of strategic partnerships, this special issue of the South African Journal of International Affairs focuses on the particular case of the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership. With 2017 marking the first decade of the strategic partnership, this milestone presents an opportune time for reflection on how the partnership has fared, and more specifically on whether this is indeed a strategic partnership, or a partnership in name only. In the following pages, the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership is assessed through eight articles which present a diverse interpretation of the value and worth of the strategic partnership. In an effort to draw on perceptions from both sides of the partnership, authors from Europe and South Africa were invited to provide analysis of key thematic areas underpinning the strategic partnership: economic relations, political relations, cooperation on peace and security, and the engagement of the two partners in the context of wider multilateral forums. Through this approach the aim is to provide an empirical review of how relations have developed, allowing for a reflection not only on the functioning of the strategic partnership, but also on how it is perceived.
Abstract by the author: This article addresses how two globally critical regions – Europe and East Asia (especially Northeast Asia) – are transforming their relationship as an international system defined by multipolarity emerges from the unraveling of the liberal international order. This transformation includes increased trade, developing strategic partnerships between the EU and selected East Asian states, nascent EU-ASEAN inter-regional cooperation, and more diplomatic through-put among East Asian states and their EU and member state counterparts. This article examines the question of how Europe is performing its own ‘pivot/rebalance’ to East Asia (specifically Northeast Asia) in terms of trade, diplomacy, and security. In turn, the question arises as to how receptive East Asian states have been to this European overture. First we cover the path of how we have arrived at the historical juncture in which the EU is ‘pivoting/rebalancing’ to East Asia (specifically Northeast Asia).
Abstract by the author: Through their designation as strategic partners the EU has given its ties with numerous third countries a special status in its external relations. While the term provides for rhetorical ambition to structure the EU’s ties with these actors the concept has never been clearly defined. The article attempts to analyse the choice and practice of the EU’s strategic partnerships in their regional context through a comparative analysis of the EU’s ties with its two strategic partners in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, as well as those with other countries in the region. It then argues that through the rhetorical choice of the partners artificial in groups and outgroups are created, with some outsiders enjoying closer ties to the EU than one of its strategic partners. This mismatch between the strategic partnerships and practiced external relations put the concept’s overall contribution to the structuring of the EU’s external relations into question.
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