From the Suez Canal to the City of Shanghai

Today, the paper I worked on during my time at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris was published. Entitled From Suez to Shanghai: the European Union and Eurasian maritime security, it provides an initial foray into the emerging geopolitical situation in the Eurasian coastal zone, and concentrates on the geostrategic activities of China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. This comes at a time when geopolitics has been largely neglected at the European level: the geographic dimension of European foreign and security policy has remained heavily entwined with the security and prosperity of the European Neighbourhood—and parts of Africa.

While the European Neighbourhood, particularly, should not be neglected, I argue that Europeans will have to develop and pursue a far more assertive and integrated grand strategy in the years ahead. My paper has therefore identified the coastal zone stretching from the Suez Canal to the city of Shanghai—and, perhaps, as far as Seoul—as the most likely region to experience great power competition and general disorder over the coming decades. What is more, this coastal zone is of critical importance to the European Union, not least because it is Europeans’ most important shipping route for manufactured goods and energy supplies.

I begin by examining the established and nascent maritime geostrategies of the Eurasian great powers, and the potential consequences the new geopolitics might have for the European Union. I then look at European interests in the Suez to Shanghai zone, and focus on the role of geography in the region. I also emphasise the likely challenges emanating from Chinese, Indian, Russian and American maritime competition, which intensified further only last week.

In the final section, I argue that as the relative balance of power between Europeans and other Eurasian powers shifts over the coming decades, the European Union should provide a strong vehicle for the realisation of common European objectives, ranging from the maintenance of the peace to building up European naval, logistical and geopolitical capabilities. More specifically, I suggest that the European Union needs integrated maritime forces, permanent overseas naval stations, and a system of alliances and partnerships with particular countries in the Eurasian coastal zone, in order to protect European interests and guard a peace that favours European values.

• Please click here to read the paper.