EU Responses to Chinese Action in the Indo-Pacific

Black-and-white view of turbulent rapids with white foam

Source: Sebastian Schuster via Unsplash

Essay for the Global Maritime Security Report 2025-2026 for the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, written by Alec Caruana, non-resident research associate, Institute for China-Europe Studies

November 13, 2026

Please access this piece at Huayang Center via:
https://huayangocean.com/researchlist/2478.html

In his essay, Alec Caruana argues that Brussels continues to read the Indo-Pacific through interests closer to home: its economic dependence on China, its concern over the China-Russia relationship, and its uncertainty about the durability of U.S. commitments. The result is calibrated support for Manila and Hanoi and bloc-to-bloc engagement with ASEAN, pursued without binary alignment. Europe is becoming an autonomous actor, he concludes, propelled less by design than by the accumulated pressure of events it did not choose.