Regional Futures in the EU and Indo-Pacific

As the post-Cold War assumptions of reliable multilateral institutions and uncontested great-power primacy give way to a more contested international order, both the European Union and the Indo-Pacific region are being compelled to rethink their external engagement. This panel examines how actors across these two regions are recalibrating economic, technological, and security policies in response to intensifying great-power competition and the accelerating securitization of critical technologies and strategic infrastructures. Bringing together perspectives on China, Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, and the EU among others, the panel explores how these actors navigate a shared dilemma: how to preserve the benefits of openness and interdependence while building resilience against coercion and dependency. Attention is paid to the tension between cooperation and competition that runs through contemporary economic security policy, from export controls and supply-chain diversification to technology-standard-setting and coalition-building among like-minded partners. The panel also asks whether the resulting patterns of engagement among actors amount to a coherent, alternative regional order, or a more fragmented and improvised set of overlapping partnerships and minilateral loose frameworks—and what this means for states seeking to shape, rather than simply adapt to, the future of the international system. Both theoretical and empirical contributions are welcome, including single-country case studies, comparative analyses, and conceptual or theory-building papers.