Abstract
This introduction sets the stage for the monograph’s analysis of the EU and Japan’s role in the Indo-Pacific. It starts with identifying both the importance of the Indo-Pacific for each of these actors and the increasing importance of the common ties in the contemporary precarious era marked by increasing geopolitical competition amid the retrenchment of the Liberal International Order. The signature of the Economic and Strategic Partnership in 2018/19 has laid the foundation for fostering ties between the EU and Japan, and the Indo-Pacific, home to critical sea lanes, supply chains, and security tensions, has emerged as one of the key arenas where this cooperation proceeds. While these empirical developments are pregnantly laid out, the Introduction proceeds with clarifying some conceptual grounds on which the monograph is built, revolving around strategic partnerships, geopolitics/geoeconomics, and the ideas of symmetry and asymmetry. Finally, we introduce the chapters of this book and show how they contribute to both the discussions about Japan–EU relations and broader questions on the structuring of International Relations.