Regional security - East Asia vs Europe
Similarities issues :
Both regions has historically been arenas for bloody wars and occupation regimes which have led to millions of victims. Most of the countries in both regions has been affected by the World Wars and for many people, related traumas are still present.
Countries which serve as energy suppliers to countries in both Western Europe and East Asia, and also are viewed as fragile states, are a concern since they are important markets or suppliers.
Similarities context:
Co-operation and co-existence among and between states in the regions.
Fragile states are not an acute problem in neither of the regions.
Organized crime is an issue in both regions, and a similarity is the lack of important border controls, both in internal controls and virtual borders.
Opinion:
Differences security issues:
Lack of unity in transatlantic states and failure in the promised global anti-terror coalition, in comparison to successful cooperation between Asian states.
Differences security context:
In East Asia, it doesn´t yet exist a functioning institutionalized security order, like Europe have, and a regional alliance has not been formed, as EU is in Europe.
The geographic extent of East Asia is several times bigger than of Western Europe, regarding in area and also number of people living there, even though Western Europe hold a higher number of states.
EU has an approach of internal structural institutionalism and a mixture of institution-building and functional neo-realist elements in external security policy. East Asian approach contains, in contrast, of political realism of sovereign states with multilateral regimes.
The system of commonly excepted values in EU has remained intact despite clashing interests. Overarching political values cannot be observed in East Asia.
Sovereignty of states in Western Europe is not longer a debated issue and is not viewed as a matter of concern. Whilst In East Asia, hardly any state is not involved in or affected by disputed over the lines of their borders.
Outcomes of security issues:
There is no existing collective security identity in East Asia, and a common value oriented basis for regional identity is hardly conceivable. Also, unhealed wounds from previous occupations provide a breeding ground for mistrust and spread nationalism.
Positive: EU considers the successful triple of West-binding, integration and governance, a master-plan for internal consolidation and global impact.
Negative: EU has not generated the unity and political will which is necessary to implement its policies against all odds.
Negative: After 9/11, EU became lost in the whirlpool of events, since the members could not present the Union as a strong community acting in unison. The EU policy has shown weakness and their credibility has been damaged because of external democratization strategies.
Negative: EU has suffered from internal dispute about enlargement policies. There was a public rejection of the draft constitution in Frande and the Netherlands, which became a burden to the global reputation of EU.
No, I don´t think that Asian regional security approaches will replicate the European model. This because of deficiency in cooperation and coherence between members in EU and other states in the region. Also, there could probably be more difficulties in uniting the East Asian countries in common values and strategies since these countries has developed their own national methods and strategies to succeed in different areas, like military, political and economical, in comparison to European states which has been members of the EU for a long time.