4    Actorness and theoretical divides

4.1.  The evolving EU international actorness

In order to fully evaluate the significance of the comprehensive Japanese–European security question, and particularly the ways in which the EU’s international identity is constructed and projected outside its borders, as well as perceived in East Asia, the process of building European actorness should be taken into consideration. In this perspective, the emerging debate about the EU’s credibility on the international scene with regard to its ability to ensure the security of its member states and contribute to global stability is highly significant. Can the EU be defined as a security-provider? In this regard, the position occupied by the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is crucial and should be seen in the broader context of the EU’s role in global affairs.

That said, it would be wise to avoid engaging in long debates on the attempt to place the EU within a specific political category. One need only consider that the level of European integration and the range of tools and political skills that set it apart make any comparison with other regional organizations such as the NAFTA unnecessary. It is more appropriate to focus on the process of constructing the qualities that converge to determine its actorness.

Bretherton and Vogler described the concept of actorness using the notions of ‘presence’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘capability’.¹ The ‘presence’, which is the logical assumption of the actorness, conceptualizes the EU’s ability to exert influence beyond its borders. The term ‘opportunities’ refers to the external factors (ideas, events) that restrict or allow the EU to deploy its potential actorness. The notion of ‘capability’, conversely, concerns the availability of adequate technical–political tools, as well as the EU’s willingness to use them in response to the ‘opportunities’ or in order to exploit the ‘presence’.² Moreover, according to Jupille and Caporaso, four factors stand behind the EU’s international actorness, which are substantiated in the authority and in the legitimacy of internal decision making and of foreign policy priorities, in line with the values shared by EU members.³ They fall respectively under the recognition of the EU as a global player by the international community, and the autonomy of its actions with respect to individual interests and national identities.⁴

The difficulty in analysing the results achieved in these areas merges in the divergent views that animate the debate over the effectiveness or the latency of alleged European international actorness. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the process of building the EU’s actorness is still incomplete and that its impact on international relations is limited. For these analysts, European foreign policy is nothing more than the sum of the foreign policies of the member states, or rather of what states are willing to delegate to the supranational sphere. This means that the lack of unity of the polity determines the disappearance of the added value, which is instead identified by some scholars in the holistic approach traditionally used by the EU to define its foreign policy. According to these authors, the EU’s activities in the several spheres in which it operates as a monolithic actor are significant for its external image and for its self-identification.⁵

4.1.1 Frames of the EU security paradigm

The development of the ESDP fits into a global strategic scenario that was ‘shocked’ by the emergence of new challenges to international security, which were very different from those that characterized the Cold War. This probably caused greater complexity in the global geostrategic landscape, but it also induced the EU to consider the benefits of assuming a greater role as a security-provider.

It goes without saying that it is impossible to overestimate the link between globalization and security, nor the relation existing between the centrifugal pressures operated by globalization and the dynamics of international security. One of the consequences of the internationalization of security issues has been the questioning of the realist paradigm in international relations theory. In the late 1990s some scholars, including Krause and Williams, highlighted the inadequacy of the neorealist theoretical approach to preserving a nation’s core values against external threats. What was being questioned was the object of the security, the final recipient and the nature of the threat. In addition, the increasing integration of the global economic system revealed the interdependence of economic issues and the global security architecture, as demonstrated by the recent global economic crisis. It is clear from what follows that the American economic system is now heavily influenced by the policies of many other countries.⁶

However, the end of the bipolar rivalry resulted in the need to update the global security agenda. The ideological confrontation of the Cold War was not replaced by ‘a new international order’, but by territorial and asymmetrical threats such as international terrorism, whereas geopolitical considerations anchored to a state-centred dimension of the security have little relevance today. In fact, the latter not only does not take the centrifugal forces of globalization into account, but even disregards the centripetal forces of fragmentation, which can lead to secessions, migration, intra-state wars and conflicts of a religious nature, with a consequent ‘radicalization of identity processes based on ethnicity and on religion’, rather than the universalization of Western values.⁷

As argued by Foradori, the end of the Cold War ushered in new spaces for ‘previously neglected issues’, prompting scholars and analysts to ‘broaden’ and ‘deepen’ their fields of research beyond the scope of the war and diplomatic relations between states.⁸ The term ‘broaden’ refers to the interest in non-military threats as part of an extended vision of the concept of security, including migration fluxes as well as global warming and energy security issues. The term ‘deepen’ indicates the recipient of the security policies, which is no longer the state, but rather the people living within it, their physical integrity and moral dignity.⁹ ‘Expanding’ the meaning of security to cover the protection of the individual makes the intervention of the international community, or of a supranational organization such as the EU, almost essential for dealing with issues that would otherwise remain exclusively under the states’ jurisdiction. The need to protect the personal safety of individuals can also provide justification for actions aimed at preventing regional conflicts, or at least alleviating their effects, as well as to providing assistance to the victims of environmental disasters.

It obviously follows that security and global peace cannot be maintained in the long term without resorting to a comprehensive approach, or without a human security agenda. Some members of the Copenhagen School, such as Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, developed a holistic concept of security that places the groups and individuals targeted by the threats in a central position, in the wake of the human security doctrine.¹⁰ These scholars use the concept of securitization to refer to how a certain event is interpreted and politically transformed by an actor in relation to a safety issue, and therefore is an existential problem. This would imply that insecurity is not the mere equivalent of a threat, but ‘a self-referential practice because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a security issue – not necessarily because a real existential threat exists’.¹¹

Traditionally, security was synonymous with the declaration of a state of emergency by a representative of a state that allowed it to claim the right to use all means necessary to block any possible negative development of this threat. The deepening of the notion of security has now made the concept of a ‘threat’ more complex. It must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, depending on the referent object in question.¹² The object of the threat is extremely variable. Within the military sphere, it may involve the integrity of the state, and other entities, such as the armed forces, may be elevated to the status of the referent object. In the political field, ‘existential threats’ usually coincided with the danger of erosion of sovereignty, ideology or of the state itself, while the supra-referent objects gained increasing importance.¹³ The existential threats to which the EU could be vulnerable are particularly determined by events with the potential to damage or reverse the integration process. Even international regimes and international society as a whole are susceptible to situations that may delegitimize the rules, norms and institutions at the base of those schemes. The same applies to the current regimes in the economic sector and the rules governing the international economic market, although the rise or decline of national economies cannot be seen as a threat unless people’s lives are at stake.

Within the social sector, the large-scale collective identities that operate independently from the state, such as nations and religions, serve as the referent object. In this case, the openness of the collective identity holders can determine the extent to which they may feel threatened. At the environmental level, then, there is a very wide variety of targets identifiable on a spectrum ranging from maximum concreteness (such as the survival of individual animals or human species) and becoming increasingly blurred as it is interpreted on a large scale (the maintenance of the biosphere and the global climate). The interaction between these objects and their ‘securitization’ is, as in the economic sector, immensely complicated.¹⁴

In any case, the securitization process may also affect the occurrence of situations in which these dimensions, or contexts, are interrelated, as is the case of the war in Iraq in 2003. While, on the one hand, the conflict was considered ‘securitized’ by military means – as the ground invasion was justified by the presumed existence of WMDs – on the other, it was also ‘secured’ in corporate terms, as it was invoked by the violation of human rights as a further reason motivating the military intervention. It appears clear, at this point, that a corollary of the Copenhagen School’s theory is that a ‘securitized threat’ may justify the use of extraordinary means and measures.¹⁵

Securitization does not depend only on the success of a ‘discursive act’, but also on the external environment, as well as a public that may be more aware of some issues than of others. This means that the reality, or awareness, of non-linguistic domains such as terrorism can facilitate the securitization processes. The terrorist attacks in London and Madrid of recent years increased the impact of the material, political and symbolic significance of this threat, and this is also the reason why terrorism has been ‘securitized’ so easily, whereas the EU has paid less attention to global warming, for instance, or to the security issues related to the cycles of crisis in East Asia – perceived as ‘too far away’ by both Brussels and European public opinion. This helps us to understand how ordinary policies can be put aside in favour of ‘securitized speeches’ relating to strong public impact threats such as terrorism. Within the EU, unlike the US, this can be seen as a ‘formative moment’, as situations may occur in which new types of rules and arrangements could be established and legitimized.¹⁷

Encouragement of the debate on European security significantly contributed to the wars in the Balkans as an expression of concrete threats with a high symbolic value because of the danger that it represented in the same process of European integration. The new course not only helped to develop Europe’s, albeit limited, military capabilities, but it also stimulated the EU’s sense of responsibility in terms of peace and security maintenance, fostering the ESDP process. Brussels continued to emphasize its own image as a civilian power in various speeches, although many called for a new approach to military engagement.¹⁸

Putting aside the perspective of the EU as a military actor, the ineffectiveness of a security approach aimed exclusively at territorial defence became more and more apparent. The shift from national security issues to those related to global security forced the EU member states to reconsider their own cooperation strategies, the means at their disposal and how these could be combined and used on the international stage under a common operational framework. One such approach is essentially multilateral and – as outlined in the ESS of 2003 – should not be limited to issues relating to the use of the armed forces, but should take all possible aspects of European foreign policy into account. According to Biscop, although the expression ‘human security’ was not used in the 2003 document, it was implicitly present:

Although the use of force is the extrema ratio, resorting to the use of soft power could be decisive, as the EU, as a civilian power, could increase its international legitimacy. The question remains: could soft power alone overcome the obvious limitations of a hard approach? According to Nye, who maintains that soft power has an ability to persuade that is not coercive and that, on account of its attractive force, induces the other actors to align their positions to the same policies and priorities.²⁰ Hard power is conversely concerned with coercion, as is well known. Although it clearly continues to prefer the use of soft tools (diplomatic, political, commercial), the EU’s willingness to conduct vigorous diplomacy at an international level in the security field obligates it to bear the related responsibilities. It should be considered that, when the EU is active on the international scene, outside the continent, its distinctive features make it a concrete ‘model of peace’: its support for multilateralism and the rules of international law, and its primacy in providing development assistance still identify the EU as a soft power. Brussels diplomacy achieved huge success in this way, as evinced by the Union’s enlargement to twenty-seven members and the unprecedented level of peace and stability on the continent. Soft power is also the key to strengthening alliances with China, India and emerging markets. It is thus essential in shaping the international system in the near future.^{21 22} If an actor is able to determine the political agenda of other actors, or at least if it exerts some form of influence in shaping their priorities, a ‘carrot and stick’ policy will be less expensive, but cannot replace it. New strategies need to be rescheduled according to an ‘intelligence coefficient’, hence the origin of the term ‘smart power’, which designates an ideal combination of both soft and hard power tools.

The fact that the EU’s foreign policy is centred on soft power does not therefore mean that it rejects the use of hard power, as the two are not mutually exclusive. Former European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Politics, Ferrero-Waldner, argued that the EU’s actions in recent years are in themselves proof of the affirmation of a ‘smart approach’ to security and global stability:

A comprehensive view of security is based on the recognition of the interdependence of all the dimensions comprising it – i.e. political, socioeconomic, cultural, ecological and military – and that implies the need to formulate integrated strategies, taking into account different but intertwined contexts. Although NATO remains the reference actor for hard power matters, in recent years, the EU has shown a growing interest in this direction.²⁴

4.2.  Metaphors of European security and defence

The establishment of the ESDP should be considered a further fulfilment of the European integration project, whose initial assumption was the need to build a community for European security. In reality, this project had been in the making for more than a century, as evidenced by Bevin and Bidault’s schemes for the 1947 Western Union and all the other failed attempts at making Europe independent in terms of security; these range from the European Defence Community (ECD) of the 1950s, through European Political Cooperation (EPC) in the 1990s and the revival of the Western European Union (WEU) in the 1980s, culminating in the inauguration of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in Maastricht.²⁵ The defence option had been on the margins of the integration plans until the 1990s, and its re-emergence in the European debate was down to a number of factors. The first of these was the reduction in the strategic importance of the EU following the dissolution of the Soviet threat and the unsustainability of a European model in which economic integration proceeded rapidly, while developments in its foreign policy were scarce, as in the security and defence fields.

Finally, the Balkan wars represented an important test for EU credibility, highlighting the inadequacy of the European defence capability. It was agreed that the revision of the European approach to security and defence was no longer to be postponed. As long as the Cold War geopolitical order had somewhat curbed the autonomy of the states participating in the European integration movement, the development of a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) was prevented, or at least not encouraged. Within a decade, from 1990 to 1999, various initiatives were taken under the auspices of NATO and WEU in support of the ESDI, starting the process that, since 1999, has marked the path towards the ESDP.²⁶

The first significant result of the debate that followed was the St Malo Treaty, signed by France and the UK in December 1998, which marked a turning point in the EU security dilemma. An urgent need was felt to equip the EU with the appropriate facilities to allow it to acquire the capacity for autonomous initiatives supported by credible military forces, and also to contribute to the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance. The underlying logic of St Malo was the need to engage in an institutional mechanism to develop and implement European direct actions to be conducted independently. A corollary of that was the formation of the ESDP within the CFSP, which was formally launched by the European Council in June 1999, and further refined late in 1999 when the Primary Objective of Helsinki was processed with the aim of providing the Union with a military apparatus able to intervene in distant theatres of war by the year 2003, carrying out humanitarian operations as well as activities in crisis management and peace-making fields.²⁷ The final agreement was reached one year later, and since 2007, the European Rapid Reaction Forces have been operating with 60,000 men, deployable up to 4,000 kilometres from Brussels.

In 2004 the Headline Goal 2010 was established, the basic idea behind which was ‘battle groups’:

Criticisms of the ESDP’s deficiencies in the key areas of modern warfare have not yet ceased. They are mainly rooted in the failure to reform and modernize the national armed forces in some countries, with a knock-on effect on the quotas in terms of interoperability and deployability, in the lack of resources required for the strategic lifting of troops, the inadequacy of the technological apparatus with which the European forces are equipped and the scarcity of the financial resources allocated for defence.²⁹

As is known, the Lisbon Treaty transformed the ESDP into the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The Treaty also intervened in the context of ESDP, which has so far largely developed outside a specific institutional framework, making some very relevant innovations. Of these, we should consider the possibility of establishing forms of cooperation with variable geometry by instituting a permanent structured interaction between the countries that decide to pursue closer integration, strengthening solidarity ties between the EU countries (with the introduction of two collective defence and solidarity clauses), and by providing a wide range of missions that the EU may implement.

The EU’s decision to acquire military capabilities is not only justified but also, to some extent, inevitable given that it clearly aspires to become a credible international actor. As has been pointed out by many, the Union will thereby gain the necessary credibility to exert an effective influence on the international stage, will be able to implement any kind of international action and will be equipped with the full range of instruments of coercion necessary for that purpose. The achievement of full international legitimacy appears to be more and more subordinated to the EU’s ability to play a significant role in emergency and crisis management.³⁰ However, if for some this tendency towards the development of a formal military apparatus of the Union represents evidence of a movement towards the creation of a European military power, others argue that these functions are not yet beyond the skills of a civilian power, as matters of defence and nuclear capacity are still one of NATO’s prerogatives.³¹ The development of the Union’s defensive capabilities has received considerable criticism, as some have interpreted this process as a weakening of the European ‘distinct profile’ as the result of having a civil identity internationally, whereas scholars such as Smith have reiterated that the acquisition of military tools would represent the culmination of a state-building project. In this case, the integration would have replicated the state on a larger scale.³²

4.3.  Theoretical divides in Japan–EU diplomatic dialogue

Although several years have elapsed since the enunciation of the European Security Strategy (ESS), the debate on the EU’s international identity is still open. Alongside the notion of ‘civilian power’, the EU has increasingly been recognized as a ‘normative power’. We cannot say, however, that the interest of the analysts in the first connotation of the EU has receded at all, as it is the conceptual framework on which the dominant discourse tending to construct the European international actorness during the 1990s was established.³³

In view of the new EU framework that clearly shows its global aspirations, it would be problematic to evaluate how the notion of civilian power can be still feasible. While that image could be now questioned, prominent scholars such as Maull, referring to Germany’s participation in the Kosovo war in 1999, argue that the recourse to the military instrument did not, in that case, invalidate the notion of Europe as a civilian power.³⁴ According to him, the ESS clearly stated that this was compatible with the EU’s interests and security priorities, which must be safeguarded in the face of global threats through the pursuit of strategic goals (including the construction of a safe environment). The main trends found within the debate on the EU’s international profile converge mostly on its potential to exercise power worldwide by promoting democracy and development through trade, foreign aid and peacekeeping operations.³⁵ This view goes beyond the traditional dichotomy between civil and military power. Although there is wide scientific consensus that the EU’s historical experience as a colonial power dissuades it from any hegemonic approaches, it is less clear whether the rejection of the classical models of power politics produce a distinctive vision of international relations. At any rate, the assistance measures and trade conditions at the base of the ESS and the use of military force as a last resort unambiguously demonstrate the EU’s inclination to soft approaches in the sphere of global politics.

The notion of normative power plays an important role in the debate on the EU’s international identity and on its external perception. The theoretical foundations of the CSDP and of the ESDP, for example, are regulatory as well as constitutive rules, as they seek to create a European identity for collective actions. These frameworks provide new institutional and normative ground in order to put the EU’s global presence into practice.³⁶ Some authors, however, acknowledged more than a single European identity as a result of its international projection. They also suggest that the application of the constructivist approach could help to explain how the perception of European identity is socially constructed in East Asia. According to this approach, the reciprocal beliefs and expectations of the states determine the character of international life. They are the product of social rather than material structures, largely constructed by the people’s ideas. The existence of social realities depends on the interweaving of the concepts, theories and beliefs expressed by the actors. The sharing of ideas, or the culture of an anarchic system, represents its structure, or at least an important part of it.

In his theory of social constructivism, Wendt does not neutralize the importance of power and material interests as explanatory and constitutive factors in the reality, but he asserts that their meanings and effects depend on the system’s social structure. As is well known, this requires the identification of the ideas and norms that have a constitutive function in determining the means, the purpose and the nature of the game in which the states are involved, which can be conflictive, competitive or cooperative. This is exactly what Wendt called the ‘dominant cultural structure of the international system’, which may be predominantly Hobbesian, Lockean or Kantian. Each of these cultures is included in a context of anarchy, but it does not exhaust all the possible forms the anarchy may take. When the Hobbesian culture is dominant in a system, it is considered a kind of ‘war of all against all’. The central idea, however, is that the state of war is formed on the basis of shared ideas, rather than caused by the state of anarchy, or by human nature in itself. Enmity is the consequence of security as a zero-sum game, and the resulting security dilemma leads the states to act as if their ultimate goal is to maximize power. The representative type of practice produced by the enemy is the Realpolitik, which tends to build a selfish vision of the Other.

Lockean culture, in contrast, is framed around a rivalry that is tied to the right to sovereignty. A weak state may have its own territorial sovereignty if the other states recognize it as a right. The state actors are not enemies but rivals, according to the Hobbesian principle of ‘live and let live’. As is obvious, the subjective beliefs regarding the Self and the Other at the base of Lockean logic are not immutable, and this allows us to presuppose that the rivalry may also change. At the macro level, however, the rivalry forms part of a collective representation of shared knowledge that overcomes the ideas of individual states. By combining these phenomena, we arrive at the idea that the war is, at the same time, accepted and contained, for example. While Lockean culture has been dominant over the last three centuries, ‘Hobbesian disputes’, such as World War II, have undermined the status quo, or at least attempted to.

Kantian culture, lastly, is structured around the role of friendship. It can be composed of rivals and friends, or just of friends. Two rules of friendship are shared by the states: the refusal of the use of force in conflict resolutions, and mutual aid between states when a state’s security is threatened by a third actor.

According to Mazzei, a fourth culture can be considered, as proposed by Zhao Tingyang, currently the leading figure among Chinese intellectuals, and based on the cardinal Confucian values of ‘harmony’ and ‘universal cooperation’. Zhao shuns the Western notion of conflict, reputed to be ethnocentric, and tries to adopt a win–win approach to maximize the cooperation, minimizing the conflicts.³⁷ The more a culture is interiorized by a set of actors, the greater their identification will be as part of a group that represents a collective or social identity. This instils in the actors a collective interest towards the preservation of their own culture, which will tend to defend itself in case of external threats.

The discourse on the identity, or rather on the identities, of the EU may offer an explanation, in the constructivist sense, for its political weakness in East Asia, and its inability to play a role in the local resolution of hard issues without the support of both Japan and China.

4.3.1 On the ‘relational rationality’

As we have seen, the EU is integrated into two of the most important political and security networks in Asia, the ASEM and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). The Union is also in the privileged position of being able to convert its economic influence into soft power, which affords it greater power to affect regional political developments. However, despite its cooperation with East Asian countries in economic and cultural terms, the EU has been excluded from high political discourse in the region, such as the Taiwan issue and the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. In other words, although the EU is formally involved in East Asia’s political structure and security, in reality, it has little impact on hard security matters. Thus, the theme of political influence becomes closely related to the constructivist concepts of identity and perception.³⁸

The European collective identity is interiorized to such an extent as to be projected in East Asia without taking into consideration the cultural and political implications of its compatibility and understandability by third actors. Taking into account factors such as identity allows us to gain a better idea of how the conduct of a state is perceived by other states in different ways, depending on the actor with which it interfaces and the manner in which its actions are implemented. The history of Japanese–European political and diplomatic relations since the Cold War years has been marked by a clear misevaluation of their respective identities. This has impeded a proper understanding of the dynamics that have produced indifference or have led to conflicts. Emphasizing the importance of the role of identity in the history of Japanese-European political and diplomatic relations certainly does not imply a lack of focus on other equally important factors, such as the nature of the international system, the distribution of power and interdependence. However, the identity discourse remains an underestimated aspect in this field of study that has undoubtedly contributed to complicating the various attempts aimed at resolving conflicts when they have occurred.

As stated by historians such Akira Iriye, ‘viewing a nation as a culturally defined entity enables diplomatic historians to broaden their inquiries by raising serious questions about one country’s behaviour and attitudes toward others’; thus, ‘the question of mutual understanding or antagonism among nations cannot be fully examined so long as one focuses exclusively on security or trade issues; one will also have to consider the mind-sets of leaders and peoples’.³⁹ International relations, as well as international history, take place within a world that is understood not only as geopolitical interplays or in terms of economics, but also on the basis of normative structures as the most profound cultural expression of the individual states or civilizations, and it would perhaps be parochial to ignore this. According to Iriye, ‘at certain times and in certain circumstances, ideas and assumptions are crucial’, and then ‘the study of those times and circumstances may provide a fascinating area of inquiry for diplomatic historians’.⁴⁰

The term ‘identity’ is inherently multidimensional, as it includes a wide range of elements: civilization, ethics, culture, emotional aspects, etc. In this analysis, the identity discourse will be limited, especially in the Japanese case, to the country’s normative beliefs relating to its orientation towards the Other, as it may be clearly explained by some aspects of its own politico-philosophical culture. However, we deemed it appropriate to start with a brief digression about Zhao’s theoretical perspective – which we term here ‘relational rationality’ – which aims, without compromising the overall coherence of our analysis, to serve as an introduction to the discourse on the ‘relational coexistence’, properly concerning Japan. On careful reading, in fact, the two dimensions have considerable political and philosophical similarities, and they merge into a unique theoretical framework that may relate to some extent to both Japan and East Asia, which, in the analysis of EU policies, it may sometimes be misleading to consider as fully separated entities.

According to Zhao, the US has a Kantian culture when they interact with the Anglophone allies, a Lockean culture towards Europe and a Hobbesian approach with other countries, especially towards the ‘rogue states’ and the ‘failed nation-states’.⁴¹ The EU would rather show itself to have a Kantian culture within itself and a Lockean approach towards the outside world, and this would result in great difficulty in asserting itself in cultural contexts that are specular in many respects, as in the case of Asia. Ontologically, the Lockean approach arises in opposite terms if related to Zhao’s position. Even the Kantian identity fails to converge towards forms of communitarianism going beyond mere cooperation if we consider that this last does not necessarily imply the mutual improvement of the actors involved. As a direct result, the entire West is imbued with a vision that Zhao believes is anchored to principles that have been overcome by the globalized world. In the eyes of the Chinese philosopher, the West is still embedded in the Westphalian model of international relations, based on the state dimension and without any supranational institution that could ensure stability at the global level.

The perspective in which Zhao’s political philosophy of Tian-xia (‘everything that is under heaven’) must be framed is indeed placed on a global level.⁴² It should exceed the nation-state’s threshold, which is by now invalidated by the globalization process, in order to conduct a wide-ranging reflection on world politics. As stated by Zhao, throughout human history the various and vain attempts to unify the world have often followed one another through the construction of world empires and state alliances. Their failure is mainly due to the absence of a stable model of cooperation, which relied on the Kantian idea of ‘perpetual peace’ or on the notion of ‘universal harmony’ between people of Chinese origin. This implies that the world system should be framed within the Tian-xia theoretical system, which is conceptually open, even if this does not imply its automatic and timeless extensibility.⁴³ It is an open network focused on a sort of world government and on a large number of sub-state entities that are extremely divergent in geographical and cultural terms. The world government presides over the universal institutions, the laws and the global order, but it may lose its own legitimacy if it betrays the justice it is supposed to uphold, or if it abuses its powers. In both these cases, it would be reasonable to expect a revolution by the people and the revocation of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’.⁴⁴ Long-term cooperation is ensured by a sort of institutionalized balance, which relies on the world government’s control over armed forces, which is proportionally increasing compared with the military power of the sub-state entities.

As it has been conceived by Zhao, there are three senses in which the Tian-xia can be understood: the earth and all the lands under heaven; a common choice made by all the peoples of the world, or a universal agreement in the ‘hearts’ of the individuals; a political world system that includes a universal institution aimed at maintaining order at every level. The world would therefore consist of three notions: the physical world (the earth), the psychological world (people’s feelings) and the institutional world (global institution).⁴⁵ Political governance must be transferable in descending order from ‘All-under-Heaven’ to the nation-states and to families – and never in the opposite direction. However, the political legitimacy of a universal institution must be provided by its ethical justice. Then, unlike the political transposition, the ethical transposition should be developed according to an ascending order that goes from families to the states, up to ‘All-under-Heaven’, because it is assumed that the ethics is rooted in the true essence of humanity.⁴⁶

Ultimately, the combination of the political transposition – channelled by the Tian-xia’s theory towards the states and the families – and the ethics turns into a relationship of mutual justification. The essence of harmony, a world without enemies, becomes possible. Yet the concept of harmony is a principle of coexistence that presupposes the existence and, in turn, produces it. This is because, in Zhao’s words, ‘nothing can be defined if not in terms of “relations”’.⁴⁷ This philosophical logic is extremely important to understanding the concept of harmony as the principle that substantiates the relations between things. This ‘fourth culture’ results in a win–win approach, which is hard to find out in the Western tradition where the win–lose approach, based on the idea of strenuous opposition, has to prevail. In a first approximation, this could describe the cultural and identity context in order to understand the EU’s disinterest towards East Asian security issues. As stressed by Wendt, in fact, both these cultures may clash with egoistic-type identities.

In Lockean culture, states identify with each other’s survival, so that ‘death threats’ to one are seen as threats to all, but this does not extend to identification with each other’s security more generally because, in many respects, it is still a self-help culture. In the Kantian culture, the scope for identification is broader and as such should generate collective action in response to any military threat, not just death threats. [ … ] even within a relationship and issue covered by a collective identity, it will often be in tension with egoistic identities. [ . ] the fact that internalizing a culture involves the formation of a collective identity should not blind us to the possibility that egoistic identities may still be important. The picture here is one of ‘concentric circles’ of identification, in which the nature and effects of collective identity vary from case to case, not one of altruism across the board.⁴⁸

Zhao’s theory of Tian-xia found a sort of further systematization or a gradual deepening in its formulation of the idea of ‘relational rationality’.⁴⁹ In the philosopher’s words, ‘the Chinese philosophy considers that [ . ] the variability of the facts is a better premise than the certainty of things’ as committing an act involves introducing a form of relation between individuals.⁵⁰ In other words, human existence would be continuously reconstituted and redefined through the relationships that people entertain with regard to one another.

A very significant piece of his essay helps to explain the exact terms of this discourse:

Relational rationality is conceived in dichotomous terms if compared with modern individualism, which is founded on the assumption of an absolute individuality, and ‘exalts the personal interests defined and calculated by an individual point of view’.⁵² The conceptual framework that underlies the discourse on relationality directly introduces the crucial question of ‘coexistence’, which makes the classic debate on ontological existence unnecessary, or even out-dated. This is because ‘the coexistence precedes the existence’.⁵³

Zhao identifies three principles underlying the coexistence aimed at maximizing cooperation and minimizing conflicts, namely the inclusion of all peoples, the universal benefit and the absence of negative reward. The first insists on the need for a world free from discrimination or of ‘exclusions of other cultures’, implying a politics that rejects the category of the ‘enemy’. According to the second principle, instead, the universally accepted ‘relations of coexistence’ must provide advantages from which all mankind may benefit. The third is based on the assumption that an action or a strategy which entails no negative reward is a ‘representation of the universal values’. Military competition, trade protectionism and the war of markets are highly dangerous strategies. Similarly, individualism is questionable as it is based on selfishness, which produces isolation and hostility.⁵⁴

4.3.2 On the ‘relational coexistence’

The relational rationality theory bears a remarkable similarity and a commonality of principles to Japanese relational ethics, the maître-à-penser of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960), the pioneer of modern ethics in Japan. It could be argued that, in the Japanese case, Zhao’s theory of Tian-xia is expressed in terms of a ‘relational coexistence’, which bases its ontological sources on the central concept of ningen aidagara, intended as a ‘human inter-relationality’, which was presented analytically in a work published in 1935 and entitled Ningengaku toshite no rinrigaku (‘The significance of ethics as the study of Man’).⁵⁵

Watsuji’s work fits into a very complex scenario within Japanese history, such as the rise of militarism in the country, and his scientific production was subject to controversial interpretations in the post-war period. A long and slow process of historiographical revisionism finally allowed his scientific production to be placed in a new epistemological framework. Today, it is possible to state not only that Watsuji’s ontological stance, rather than being imbued with cultural determinism, anticipated the current of social constructivism, but also that some aspects of his ontological analysis are still so topical as to reflect, to some extent, the attitude that Japan has taken in its foreign policy more generally. In an essay published in 2003, Jones tried to highlight this relationship, suggesting a theoretical path leading towards a transposition of the central assumptions in Watsuji’s thought from the domestic to the international level.⁵⁶ In the author’s words, ‘in the real world of everyday international politics, Watsuji recognised that the “ethic of human trust and sincerity”, inherent in the realisation of human being qua interman, was absent’.⁵⁷

Here, it will be sufficient to briefly present the basic concept of ningen aidagara – already proposed in the English translation as ‘interman/inbetweenness’ – which reflects the normative dimension of some aspects of Japan’s conduct towards the outside world. As can be read from the first pages of Rinrigaku:

Watsuji wished to clarify, from the very beginning, the social character (shakaiteki) that his ethics assumes. The use of the term ningen is especially meaningful: in it, the philosopher places the dialectical dimension of the relation that exists between the individual actor and its social sphere. From an etymological perspective, the two characters that compose this term – nin and gen – indicate, respectively, the ‘person/human being’ and the ‘space’ between the single individuals.⁵⁹ The ‘space’ between the actors is thus explicit in the concept of ningen itself, which separates one individual from another by placing them, at the same time, in a state of ‘mutual relatedness’. The nin cannot exist within itself, but is necessarily determined in reference to the ‘Other’. As the ‘Other’ is once again mediated by another ‘Other’, the process needs to rely on a triadic perspective, composed of the Self, ‘the Other’ and the social sphere.⁶⁰ The term ningen covers three separate, but interrelated, meanings: the human being understood as a single individual; the human being socially involved in the vast network of social relations; and the ‘space’ where these relations are deployed.

The nin and the gen share a dialectical structure, within which each of them denies and, at the same time, integrates with the other. The prerogative of individuality implies the need to ignore the sharing of common goals, whereas the participatory process within a community requires the sacrifice of the individual’s needs. This is a dynamic that does not necessarily arise in terms of conflict: the individual only finds himself clashing with the community to which he belongs when the pursuit of his interest undermines the ‘public good’. In contrast, however, the community is only entitled to trample on the private interests of its members when they may reflect negatively on the welfare of the group.

The need to achieve the harmony between the nin and the gen, between the private and the public, stands as a very specific need, as a marked propensity of the individual towards his own interests would inevitably lead to neglecting the ‘Other’. In addition, being overly attentive and responsive to the interests of the group could lead to ‘neglect’ of the sphere of individual rights. In its projection into an ethical harmony, the ningen is subjected to a double negation: the community denies the individual and leads him to respect certain rules, while the individual contradicts this denial and re-emerges as an individual as such. Behind this dynamic is the shift from a radical (conforming to the Western concepts of anthropos and of Mensch) to a contextualized individuality.⁶¹ The authenticity of the ‘Self’ lies in the context of the social relations, or in the aidagara. This is perhaps one of Watsuji’s most original insights: the morality does not lie in the individual actor, but in the ‘space’ existing between the agents, and between an agent and the world. The notion of aida is thus expressed in the ‘social space’ (yo no naka, or seken) in which the individuals find themselves.

The Western philosophical tradition, which is mainly rooted in Aristotelian and Cartesian thought, has indeed conceived a hopelessly anthropocentric social ethic. The concept of ningen aidagara aims to offer a new reading of it, which seeks to embrace the Western idea of the ‘Self’ with the Japanese (or more generally Confucian) ‘Self’ as ‘inter-being’. In reality, the reasons that must be ascribed to this fundamental cultural divergence are inscribed in the frame of a deeper and more complex diversity of cultural contexts: an anthropocentric West and a communitarian East. Watsuji’s relational ethics are clearly a result of the Confucian universe. The sense of communitarianism in which the ‘group consciousness’ realizes itself through the ningen aidagara contrasts with the traditional sense of Western individualism (kojinshugi), for which ‘Man is the measure of all things’ (homo mensura, according to Protagoras’ theory).⁶² It is anyway clear that, as noted by Wu in this regard, different historical realities cannot be understood and interpreted by a common and universal logic.⁶³ The problem of ethics is not a matter of individual conscience, but it affects relations between humans and their ‘inter-being’. Any kind of ethical analysis can only succeed if it considers the history of human existence through a proper understanding of its own expressions. This path requires a method aimed at understanding historical patterns through an hermeneutic interpretation of the various ‘human expressions’, as historical, cultural and political forces may drive each actor’s action and reactions in subtle but influential ways.

The whole course of Japan–EU diplomatic history, as we have seen in the first two chapters, is inscribed within this discourse. The several diplomatic efforts made by the Japanese governments since the previous phase of détente have been impeded, or simply ignored, by Brussels. This, as highlighted previously, occurred through a superposition of causes and contributing factors. Pardo’s contribution focused on the EU’s political weakness in East Asia, and the author links the social identity constructed by the EU in relation to Japan (for the purposes of our analysis) with the latter’s perception of the Union. This perception appears to be based on a three-fold categorization as follows: perception of the EU as belonging to a different civilization; as a partner in dialogue on political affairs; and as a relevant economic and cultural partner.⁶⁴

On the basis of the specific studies and empirical research conducted by scholars such as Chaban, Kauffmann, Tanaka, Fukui and Bain – and on which Pardo’s work has been extensively grounded – it could be stated that Japan perceives the EU ‘as a dialogue partner with which to hold discussions on a range of political, economic and cultural issues’, thus ‘excluding it from involvement in any decision-making process.⁶⁵ Yet, according to Pardo, by doing so, Japan undermines one of the pillars of the identity selfconstructed by the EU, which aspires to assume the status of power that will enable it to successfully contribute to shaping the international system through its multilateral efforts. As we have seen, Tokyo recognizes in the EU an important player with shared political and economic values, but at the same time, it acknowledges the Union as a ‘different civilisation which should not intervene in East Asian affairs’.⁶⁶ This certainly helps to explain the current absence of the EU as an external actor dealing with ‘high politics’ issues in the East Asian region and, to a greater extent, the failure of the efforts made in order to strengthen the Japan–Europe diplomatic dialogue during the Cold War years, when Japan was perceived by Europeans as a ‘peril’, and then as a ‘participant’ mainly on the basis of its conduct in the economic and trade fields.

In Pardo’s words, ‘Tokyo acknowledges that it shares [the EU’s] values but does not claim their universality or seek to extend them’.⁶⁷ Japanese official statements expressed the difference in civilizations through the use of terms such as ‘East’ and ‘West’. Tokyo further considers ASEM a forum where members ‘have disparate social, cultural and historical backgrounds’ and where they can ‘deepen their [ … ] understanding of each other’.⁶⁸ As noted by Mazzei, the tendency of the Japanese to consider themselves ‘different’ sometimes merged into extreme cultural forms such as the cultural-ism (bunkashugi) of the 1930s, then the nihonjinron literature of the 1960s and the cultural exceptionalism of the 1980s.⁶⁹ In some phases of Japanese history, this trend produced an ‘encirclement syndrome ‘ and, conversely, at other times it developed into a certain aggressiveness towards the outside world: one need only think of the militaristic experience of the 1930s and World War II , as well as the opportunistic neomercantilism of the second half of the last century. According to Mazzei, it can be argued that, from a historical-anthropological perspective, this complex attitude resulted in a particularistic culture, as opposed to Western universalism, and in geopolitical terms, in a marked tendency to adapt itself to changing external situations.⁷⁰ Precisely because of its cultural particularism, Japan could be considered the mirror opposite of the West, and in fact it was perceived as such as early as the sixteenth century by the Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, who took the country to be ‘a world the reverse of Europe’.⁷¹

The pragmatism stemming from the tendency to adapt itself to current circumstances, giving more importance to the particularities of the specific case, and assessing contingent situations as and when they occur (in Japanese: sono ba sono ba), is a further aspect characterizing Japanese social, cultural and economic behaviour, and more generally that of East Asian peoples. This leads to the assumption of an attitude that is more intuitive than deductive, more contextual than rational, and more relativist than absolutist. Whereas in the West, an ethics based on the Kantian categorical imperative prevails, Japanese ethics is atomized, as it is composed of a variety of rules governing how to act at a given time. If, since the distant past, the Western dialectic has continued to be structured on the Cartesian dichotomy of res cogitans/res extensa, in Confucian Asia, this was offset by the yin/yang, namely by the dialectic between complementary forces (good/ evil; light/dark; day/night), which alternate and counterbalance each other. On this basis, the dialectical efficacy of the Greek logos has no raison d’être, leaving space for that of relationality. It is exactly within this dialectical relationship that one may find the concept of ontological ‘monism’: the nondual dimension between body and mind, the individual and society, or in other words, the overcoming of the subject/object opposition which is inherent in the ningen aidagara-based relational coexistence. Conversely, the EU’s corporate identity is widely shaped around the sharing of individual and political human rights, on democracy and the rule of law. Hence, it appears clear that the EU ‘strongly identifies with these principles by considering itself their source and by conferring upon them the attribute of universality’.⁷²

4.3.3 On the expectations deficit

The self-image that the EU tends to project in East Asia is thus similar to its domestic identity. Simultaneously, the Japanese perception of the EU still further hampered European involvement in its political affairs and those of other countries in the region. The EU is identified as the ‘Other’ in the context of ASEM, whose different values must be respected but not necessarily extended. Tokyo especially perceives the EU’s role in the forum in this sense. The EU belongs to a different civilization that should not act in East Asian affairs. In short, while recognizing the importance of the EU as an economic and cultural partner, at the same time, Japan suggests the limits within which the EU should contain its own initiatives.⁷³ As regards the political and strategic dimension of Japan–EU relations in particular, it has already been pointed out how it seems to be undermined by the low expectations that Tokyo has shown towards the EU’s foreign policy, as well as by the ostentatious European indifference towards Japan. Despite overcoming the various problems that have historically influenced Japan–EU relations, the situation has not experienced real qualitative changes in terms of a hard security dialogue since the early 1990s. According to Tsuruoka, that resulted in a mutual ‘deficit of expectations’ between the two actors, a sort of ‘capability-expectations gap’ (CEG).⁷⁴

However, as mentioned above, since the end of the Cold War, the Japanese–European partnership has certainly undergone a change in terms of global security. It has embraced a wide range of activities, and it has frequently been centred on the promotion of multilateralism, which is somehow related to the maintenance of peace and security in both Asia and eastern Europe. As argued by Cooper, the EU should be seen as a post-modern actor that removed the borders between foreign and domestic politics, and an area in which states are abandoning the classical ‘monopoly of force’, while internal boundaries become increasingly irrelevant.⁷⁵ As stressed by the author, the EU and Japan belong to the post-modern world, as opposed to the pre-modern world, in which the members fail to achieve their objectives, and the modern world, which is still dominated by the Westphalian paradigm of the balance of power, state sovereignty and the separation between foreign and domestic affairs. Cooper’s post-modern world seems similar to Wendt’s third culture, as it is essentially based on cooperation and multilateralism more than on the balance of power. Whereas the EU is the main actor in this new political order, Japan is the only country in Asia that appears to belong to the post-modern world. Such common ground could be an important starting point for improving the Japanese–European partnership on a global scale.⁷⁶

As noted by the Japanese ambassador to the UN, Kawamura Takekazu, Japan today is no longer a miracle, nor a threat, for Europeans, but rather it has become a global partner of the Union. Both have proven that they understand the benefits of multilateralism and share core values such as democracy, market economy and human rights. As global partners, the EU and Japan have worked together to manage several challenges and global issues over the last decade, starting from similar assumptions and aiming towards common goals. As evidence of all this, the increased influence of the Brussels-Tokyo partnership can be found in areas of great importance, such as intellectual property rights, energy and climate change.⁷⁷

We may wonder, then, what Japan’s reluctance to involve the EU in the regional hard politics issues might generate in this case. As the expectations related to the EU as a global actor are the most important stimulus for further implementing its external policies, their absence or inadequacy slow down the development of its foreign policy. Moreover, the EU’s willingness and ability to play at a global level cannot be fully exploited if there are only a few states who consider the Union as a strategic partner. The cost of being underrated as a security provider should be taken into account to the same extent as it is by European diplomats when it relates to the Union as a global economic player. In the Japanese case, it seems that Tokyo’s expectations of the EU are lower than they should be. The problem seems structural and not cyclical, as the expectations deficit cannot be interpreted as a phase of disillusionment preceded by excessive expectations. If China’s expectations of the EU are actually higher than before, it is above all because Beijing believes that Brussels can counterbalance US unilateralism in order to promote a multipolar international system.⁷⁸ According to the EU, the set of values that it tries to promote at the global level are also shared by Japan. None the less, the commonality of purposes is not sufficient by itself to increase the effectiveness of their partnership, which can be described as ‘comprehensive’ but still weak. Once again, it is the difference in perceptions and interpretations between the actors involved that makes the difference. In Wetterqvist’s words:

Although it has often been assumed that the portrayal of the EU in the Japanese media is primarily dominated by economic issues, some studies carried out on the main Japanese media have revealed that the EU is often portrayed as a political power able to act both within and outside its own borders. This is partly because of the European enlargement process, which shed a positive light on the EU’s political potentialities. It can be said that the Japanese media’s assessments of the EU’s political actions oscillate between positive and neutral tones. This does not mean, however, that perceptions of the EU vary between the various levels of Japanese society. It must be stressed that, despite the recognition of the EU as a supranational political entity in official speeches and in political rhetoric, the Japanese bureaucracy is known for its traditional, country-focused approach on the individual EU members. At a political level, the EU is, in Japanese eyes, an actor with whom dialogue is possible and desirable, given the shared values and commonality of respective intents. From an economic and cultural point of view, there is a belief that the EU is a partner of strategic importance with which it is essential to cooperate. The need for a European political commitment in East Asia security affairs is rather less desirable, especially as Tokyo’s privileged interlocutors on this matter are the US and other rising Asian powers.⁸⁰

The EU’s approach to Japan should take into account three elements whose lack of development is presumably at the base of its exclusion from the management of regional security issues, namely coherence, effectiveness and recognition.⁸¹ These parameters help to understand both how the EU is acting towards Japan and how it is perceived more generally in the East Asian region. There is no doubt, in fact, that the EU is an influential trading bloc at the international level. However, its political and economic agenda, as well as that of the individual member states, appears unclear and inconsistent. Above all, the EU is perceived as an actor unable to speak with one voice, and that produces problems of political incoherence. The introduction of ESDP has not led the EU to be a key player in the field of hard security. Some scholars have argued that the relative American decline in East Asia has left room for the possibility of a more resolute expression of European soft power in the region. In fact, Japan’s gradual ‘return to Asia’ should be understood in a broader sense than that which refers only to the Japan–US alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been more and more difficult for Japan to deal with a concept of the ‘West’ outlined in increasingly civilizational terms.⁸²

This turn towards the East could result in a more distant attitude from the US and the West in its entirety. However, it should be considered that the security discourse in the Asia-Pacific region is still largely seen in terms of hard security, for which the US remains the main reference power. The increased visibility of the EU in East Asia in some sectors of cooperation has not extended to other areas.⁸³ This is perhaps surprising given the success of policies in the fields of development aid, humanitarian assistance and the monitoring of peace agreements between the two regions. Moreover, the ‘invisibility’ of the EU in local security matters subtracts coherence from the whole of Brussels’ approach towards Tokyo.

Some authors have highlighted the confusion arising from parallel actions taken by the EU and its member states. This is an important issue, in that the coexistence of EU policies with those of the single states is likely to have an adverse affect on the overall European impact. It may prove essential for Brussels to expand its public diplomacy channels on a pro-active basis. As stressed by Twigg: ‘Historically, the European Union institutions have been reluctant to employ the term “public diplomacy” – and have been equally reluctant to be seen to be too pro-active in the way they communicate with people outside the Union’.⁸⁴ He further stated that: ‘For the Union to prosper, it must project a positive image of itself to opinion formers and to the “man in the street” both within and beyond its borders’.⁸⁵

In 2007 former German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer did not conceal the danger that the EU could gradually disappear from the club of great powers, especially in relation to the rise of China and India.⁸⁶ It is clear that the EU now faces a challenge of global relevance. The unique features that characterize it (consensus rule, soft power, rule of law and regionalism) are often difficult to interpret and evaluate properly from the outside world, as too often they have been synonymous with complexity, not to mention inefficiency and delays. It is also true that it is only in the last decade that the EU has begun to reflect seriously on how its image is perceived from the outside and what the consequences of the projection of its international identity might be.⁸⁷

As mentioned above, the EU’s negotiation approach is complex and unclear because of its combination of regionalism, inter-regionalism, bilateralism and multilateralism practices. On the one hand, the EU seems to rely increasingly on its soft power to match US hard power. On the other hand, some members of the European Commission believe that the EU is trying to propose a normative agenda, as well as a security one, through its commitment to ASEAN. The EU–ASEAN international mission monitoring the Aceh peace process could be seen as proof that the Union is trying to become something more than a security partner. The image that the EU presents of itself in Japan is that of a globalization manager, of the world’s largest aid donor and trading partner, a model of good governance and trade integration. The problem, however, is that its counterparts tend to see the EU as a group of individual states, which presents both a challenge and consistent visibility. Moreover, not only do the Japanese have different perceptions of the EU, but there are also different views about what the EU does and what it should do in Japan between civil society and political and financial elites.⁸⁸

Although the volume of investment flows between the two actors is likely to increase, it is possible that they will not be interested in each other’s security issues and that the US will remain their most important global partners.⁸⁹ What is certain is that Europeans must learn to live with the contradiction of a non-European world in which their influence is diminishing and where their model nevertheless continues to be relevant thanks to a combination of ‘soft factors’. The principles characterizing EU external action, such as democratic conditionality, the rhetoric of multilateralism and the promotion of the European integration model in other regions and global forums, in some ways correspond to its external actions. It is clear, though, as observed above, that a ‘projection strategy’ of this kind clashes with the inherent limitations of a Hobbesian system, ranging from the nontransferability of the European model and of the internal forms of protest, to the lack of internal and external consistency, to the tension between the means and purposes, up to the inherent contradiction in promoting democracy through forms of conditionality that are per se coercive.

The most radical critics of the EU’s global democratic agenda believe that the idea of promoting democracy or of a European model of governance, imbued as it is with imperialist echoes, is imperfect. At this point, the question should be: what are the conditions in which the EU may overcome this tension, releasing its approach to global governance from Eurocentric restraints? It is legitimate to assume that the on-going dialogue between the two actors could increase the understanding of their different perspectives and produce new areas of interaction. Bakhtin’s thesis relies, in this respect, on the concept of ‘dialogism’, which denotes a privileged form of inter-subjectivity tending to establish productive interactions with the Otherness.⁹⁰ Conceptually, dialogism refers to reports of involuntary receptivity that are generated through discourse. It can also be understood as a preferred strategy aimed at establishing productive inter-subjective relations between individuals, social groups and cultures. In this sense, the ultimate goal of this process is to achieve understanding as an ‘active response’. Exceeding the dialogue itself, and in opposition to a dialectical approach, it would result in a sort of active and responsible interaction with the Otherness, which had not historically committed to a form of attempt at assimilation.⁹¹

Notes

1  C. Bretherton and J. Vogler, The European Union as A Global Actor, London: Routledge, 2006.

2  Bretherton and Vogler, op. cit., p. 2.

3  J. Jupille and J.A. Caporaso, ‘States, Agency and Rules. The European Union in Global Environmental Politics’, in C. Rhodes (ed.), The European Union in the World Community, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998, pp. 213–229.

4  Jupille and Caporaso, op. cit.

5  P. Foradori, La Politica Europea di Sicurezza e Difesa: L’Unione Europea nel Nuovo Ordine Globale, Roma: Carocci, 2010, pp. 18–19.

6  P. Foradori, ‘Sfide Globali e Risposte Nazionali: Le Trasformazioni della Sicurezza nell’Era dell’Interdipendenza’, in P. Foradori and R. Scartezzini (eds), Globalizzazione e Processi di Integrazione Sovranazionale: L’Europa, il Mondo, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006, pp. 181–184.

7  F. Mazzei, World Politics. Appunti e Riflessioni sulla Politica Mondiale, Napoli: L’Orientale Editrice, 2010b, p. 37.

8  Foradori, op. cit., pp. 185–186.

9  F. Schimmelfennig and B. Rittberger, ‘Theories of European Integration: Assumptions and Hypotheses’, in J. Richardson (ed.), European Union: Power and Policy-Making, London: Routledge, 2010, p. 74.

10  B. McSweeney, ‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 1996, pp. 81–93.

11  B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998, p. 24.

12  E.A. Page and M. Redclift, Human Security and the Environment. International Comparisons, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002, p. 184.

13  B. Buzan, ‘Rethinking Security After the Cold War’, Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 32, no. 1, 1997, pp. 5–28.

14  Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, op. cit., pp. 21–23.

15  G. McGillivray, ‘Casus Belli. Fear, Rhetoric and Securitization of the War in Iraq’ (August 2006): http://rgmcgillivray.com/images/Casus_Belli.pdf, pp. 1–44 (accessed 6 December 2012).

16  Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, op. cit., p. 204.

17  Ibidem.

18  H. Larsen, ‘The Discourse on the EU’s Role in the World’, in B. Hansen, B. Heurlin (eds), The New World Order: Contrasting Theories, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, p. 217.

19  S. Biscop, ‘The European Security Strategy: Now Do It’, in S. Biscop, J. Howorth and B. Giegerich (eds), Europe: A Time for Strategy, Brussels: Academia Press for Egmont-The Royal Institute for International Relations, January 2009, p. 6.

20  J.S. Nye, ‘Get Smart, Combining Hard Power and Soft Power’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 4, July/August 2009, p. 160.

21  J. Kotsopoulos, ‘A Human Security Agenda for the EU?’, EPC Issue Paper, no. 48, June 2006, p.14.

22  B. Ferrero-Waldner, ‘The European Union and the World: A Hard Look at Soft Power’, Speech at the Columbia University, New York, 24 September 2007: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/07/576&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en (accessed 6 December 2012).

23  Ferrero-Waldner, op. cit., p. 3.

24  Kotsopoulos, op. cit., p. 14.

25  J. Howorth and J.T.S. Keeler, Defending Europe: The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 6.

26  L.C. Berg, The European Union’s Human Security Doctrine: A Critical Analysis, Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School, 2009, p. 23.

27  Howorth and Keeler, op. cit., p. 10.

28  Council of the European Union, Headline Goal 2010: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/2010%20Headline%20Goal.pdf (accessed 06 December 2012).

29  Foradori, La Politica, p. 74.

30  M. Telò, Europe: A Civilian Power?: European Union, Global Governance, World Order, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005, p. 207.

31  K.E. Smith, ‘The End of Civilian Power EU: A Welcome Demise or Cause for Concern?’, The International Spectator, vol. XXXV, no. 2, April–June 2000, pp. 1–18.

32  I. Manners, ‘Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 40, no. 2, 2002, p. 237.

33  R. Whitman, ‘Road Map for a Route March? (De-)civilianizing through the EU’s Security Strategy’, European Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 11, 2006, pp. 1–20.

34  H. Maull, ‘Germany and the Use of Force: Still A “Civilian Power?”‘, Survival, vol. 42, no. 2, 2000, pp. 56–80.

35  A. Moravcsik, ‘The Quiet Superpower’, Newsweek, 17 June 2002, p. 27.

36  A. Chebakova, ‘Theorizing the EU As A Global Actor: A Constructivist Approach’, ECSA-Canada Biennial Conference, The Maturing European Union, Edmonton (Alberta), 25–27 September 2008, pp. 2–14.

37  Mazzei, World Politics, op. cit., p. 16.

38  Pardo, op. cit., pp. 265–280.

39  A. Iriye, ‘Culture’, The Journal of American History, vol. 77, no. 1, June 1990, p. 101.

40  Iriye, op. cit., pp. 101–102.

41  T. Zhao, ‘A Political World Philosophy in Terms of All-under-Heaven (Tianxia)’, Diogène, no. 221, March 2009a; T. Zhao, ‘Rethinking Empire from A Chinese Concept “All-under-Heaven” (Tian-xia)’, Social Identities, vol. 12, no. 1, 2006, pp. 29–41.

42  W.A. Callahan, ‘Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-hegemonic or A New Hegemony?’, International Studies Review, vol. 10, no. 4, December 2008, p. 749.

43  Zhao, ‘A Political’, op. cit., p. 5.

44  Y. Gao, ‘China’s World View and World Historical Studies’, Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica, vol. 1, 2008, p. 256.

45  Zhao, ‘A Political’, op. cit., p. 9.

46  T. Zhao, ‘Understanding and Acceptance’, Les assises de la Connaissance, Transcultura International Institute, 2003, p. 4: http://transcultura.jura.uni-saarland.de/english/publications.html (accessed 19 February 2012).

47  Zhao, ‘A Political’, op. cit., p. 10.

48  A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 337–338.

49  T. Zhao, ‘Ontologie de la Coexistence: Du Cogito au Facio’, Diogène, no. 288, October 2009b, pp. 35–49.

50  Zhao, ‘Ontologie’, op. cit., p. 43.

51  Zhao, ‘Ontologie’, op. cit., p. 43.

52  Zhao, ‘Ontologie’, op. cit., p. 44.

53  Zhao, ‘Ontologie’, op. cit., p. 45.

54  Zhao, ‘Ontologie’, op. cit., pp. 45–46.

55  T. Watsuji, Ningen no gaku toshite no rinrigaku, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1997, p. 9.

56  C.S. Jones, ‘Interman and the Inter in International Relations: Watsuji Tetsuro and the Ethics of the Inbetween’, Global Society, vol. 17, no. 2, April 2003, pp. 135–150.

57  Jones, op. cit., p. 148.

58  Watsuji, op. cit., p. 9.

59  Watsuji, op. cit., p. 12.

60  R.E. Carter, Encounter with Enlightenment [A Study of Japanese Ethics], Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001, p. 126.

61  M. Sakabe, Watsuji Tetsurō. Ibunka kyōsei no katachi, Tokyo: Iwanami, 2000, pp. 70–71.

62  F. Mazzei, Japanese Particularism and the Crisis of Western Modernity, Venezia: Università Cà Foscari, 1999, p. 39.

63  J. Wu, ‘The Philosophy of As-Is: The Ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō’, Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, vol. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 98–99.

64  Pardo, op. cit., p. 277.

65  Pardo, op. cit., p. 274. See also N. Chaban and M. Kauffmann, ‘“East is East, and West is West”? Survey of EU Images in Japan’s Public Discourses’, European Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 12, no. 3, 2007; T. Tanaka, E. Fukui and J. Bain, ‘Cast in America’s Shadow: Perceptions of the EU in Japan’, in M. Holland et al. (eds), The EU Through the Eyes of Asia: Media, Public and Elite Perceptions in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Thailand, Singapore: World Scientific, 2007.

66  Pardo, op. cit., p. 275.

67  Pardo, op. cit., p. 276.

68  Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, ‘The Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM). Introduction’ (December 2012): www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/asem/introduction.html (accessed 21 December 2012).

69  F. Mazzei and V. Volpi, Asia al Centro, Milano: UBE, 2006, p. 81.

70  Mazzei and Volpi, op. cit., p. 82.

71  Quoted in M. Cooper, ‘The Early Europeans and Tea’, in P. Varley and I. Kumamura (eds), Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989, p. 103. See also Mazzei and Volpi, op. cit., p. 64. Although, in recent decades, this debate has already undergone periods of intense academic reflection, its enduring relevance is demonstrated, not least, by the works of the Japanese community of sociologists. See, for example, Y. Sato, ‘Are Asian Sociologies Possible? Universalism versus Particularism’, in M. Burawoy et al. (eds), Facing An Unequal World: Challenges for A Global Sociology, Taipei: Institute of Sociology – Academia Sinica, 2010.

72  Pardo, op. cit., p. 270. For an analysis that takes into account the theoretical positions of the analysts who have devoted their attention to the EU’s ethical power discourse, see pp. 270–271.

73  Pardo, op. cit., p. 265.

74  M. Tsuruoka, ‘“Expectations Deficit” in EU-Japan Relation: Why the Relationship Cannot Flourish’, Current Politics and Economics of Asia, vol. 17, no. 1, 2008, pp. 107–126.

75  R. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, London: Atlantic Books, 2003.

76  T. Ueta and E. Remacle (eds), Tokyo–Brussels Partnership. Security, Development and Knowledge-Based Society, Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008, p. 10.

77  T. Kawamura, ‘The EU and Japan As Strategic Partners’, in Ueta and Remacle (eds), op. cit., p. 265.

78  Tsuruoka, op. cit., pp. 111–113.

79  I. Wetterqvist, Democracy in Development. Global Consultations on the EU’s Role in Democracy Building, Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2009.

80  Chaban and Kauffmann, op. cit., pp. 363–384.

81  P. Murray, A. Berryman and M. Matera, Coherence, Effectiveness and Recognition in EU–East Asia Relations, Melbourne-Brussels: Contemporary Europe Research Centre (University of Melbourne), European Institute of Asian Studies, 2008.

82  P.J. Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium, New York: Cornell University Press, 2005; Mazzei, Volpi, op. cit.

83  S. Lucarelli and L. Fioramonti, External Perceptions of the European Union as a Global Actor, London: Routledge, 2010.

84  S. Twigg, ‘Preface’ in P. Fiske de Gouveia and H. Plumridge (eds), European Infopolitik: Developing EU Public Strategy, London: The Foreign Policy Centre, November 2005, pp. VI-VII.

85  Ibidem.

86  U. Rippert, ‘Joschka Fischer Calls for European Great Power Politics Under German Leadership’, World Socialist Web Site (23 March 2007): www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/fisc-m23.shtml (accessed 6 December 2012).

87  N. Chaban and M. Holland (eds), ‘The EU in the Eyes of Asia: Motivation and Methodology’, Asia–Europe Journal, vol. 8, 2010.

88  M. Reiterer, ‘Japan–EU Relations after EU Enlargement’, Asia–Europe Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 2004a, pp. 33–42.

89  Murray, Berryman and Matera, op. cit., pp. 11–17.

90  M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

91  E. Peeren, ‘Vocal Alterities: Voice-Over, Voice-Off and the Cultural Addressee’, in S. Horstkotte, E. Peeren (eds), The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities, Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2007, p. 79.