Europe and East Asia in the history of international relations

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

Join Grace Ballor and James T. Lee as they delve into the intersection of political science and history, reflecting on its implications for contemporary public policy.

From geopolitics to geoeconomics, recent developments in international relations have been a cause for concern. They have also raised questions about the origins of the current moment:

Why is there no NATO in Asia?

How have the EU and its predecessors revolved previous international economic conflicts?

This panel brings together scholars of international relations history to discuss what the past can tell us about the present.

James Lee is a scholar of U.S. foreign policy, and will present his work on alliance politics in Europe and East Asia after WWII to illuminate why the United States opted for strikingly different alliance systems in the two regions.

Grace Ballor is a historian of European political economy and will discuss how the European Economic Community (EEC) addressed competition with Japan in the context of its Single Market Program, and what this episode can tell us about the new industrial and competition policies in Europe today. 

These two papers adopt interdisciplinary and cross-regional approaches to the study of international relations. They examine questions at the intersection of political science and history and reflect on their implications for contemporary public policy. The papers examine the historical connections between Europe and East Asia: direct connections (in the case of Grace Ballor’s paper) and indirect connections (in the case of James Lee’s paper) through the hegemonic project of postwar U.S. foreign policy. Ballor’s paper examines how pressure to compete with Japan shaped the European Community’s Common Market Policy over a thirty-year period (1970-1999). Examining the early postwar period, Lee’s paper investigates how pressure to reassure European and Asian allies shaped the United States’ strategy toward the design of alliances in the two regions. The authors argue that these historical events have left an indelible mark on politics and governance in both regions.