Brussels Indo-Pacific Dialogue 2024

“The Indo-Pacific region is where the future will be decided”. In his opening remarks at the first Brussels Indo-Pacific Dialogue, EU High Representative Josep Borrell highlighted the Indo-Pacific region’s newfound centrality in international politics, and the need for Europeans to grapple with this new reality. Two years later, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the shadow of conflict in Taiwan or elsewhere in the first island chain, appear to be catalising the consolidation of two sets of adversarial geopolitical alignments. One includes a series of interlocking strategic partnerships binding together China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The other is characterised by growing coordination between the United States (US), Europe and key like-minded partners in the Indo-Pacific, notably Japan, Australia, South Korea or New Zealand, but also Taiwan. The consolidation of such adversarial geopolitical alignments threatens to amplify economic, technological and strategic divides, and undermine the future of the rules-based international order. However, it also co-exists – and clashes – with ongoing efforts to preserve multilateralism, and with numerous other international actors who reject a grammar of geopolitical rivalry, alignments or blocs, not least in the Indo-Pacific itself.

Can Europe, the US and their like-minded Indo-Pacific partners sustain the level of cooperation they have achieved in recent years? How can they deal more effectively with the challenge posed by growing Sino-Russian coordination?  How aligned are China and Russia in reality? And what kind of challenges does the consolidation of adversarial geopolitical alignments pose for international order and for other actors, both in the Indo-Pacific and beyond? The third edition of the “Brussels Indo-Pacific Dialogue” will address such critical questions, and seek to bring a European perspectives to debates on the future of the Indo-Pacific and global orders. The Brussels Indo-Pacific Dialogue brings together high-level experts and policymakers from Asia, Europe and America, and has become a landmark event for Indo-Pacific security debates in Brussels, Europe and beyond.