EU’s Indo-Pacific Strategy: Treading a Tightrope Between Geopolitics, Geoeconomics and Question of Normativity.

The European Union’s Indo-Pacific strategy was released in September 2021, putting to rest questions about what Europe thinks of the region. While all major powers have come up with their own Indo-Pacific strategy, what makes the EU’s strategy different is a question this paper attempts to answer. The paper is based on the premise of the EU as a ‘normative’ power built on the strong foundation of institutional checks and balances with democracy at its core. Indo-Pacific is a playground for new geopolitics shaped by the contours of geoeconomics. All this makes the EU’s IndoPacific strategy an interesting case to study and identify the shift in the EU’s approach (with limited hard power at its disposal) to normativity and geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]