The Belt-and-Road Initiative as a paradigm change for European Union-China security cooperation? The case of Central Asia

Security cooperation has increasingly come to prominence in the realm of relations between the European Union (EU) and China as a policy area primed for fostering deeper bilateral strategic convergence. Where leaders on both sides have talked up security cooperation particularly by pointing to recent successes (on counter-piracy, Iran), EU-China scholars have largely qualified these as exceptions to the rule. The rule being that the gulf between Brussels and Beijing continues to be too wide on norms, geopolitics and trust for them to live up to their ambitious rhetoric on security cooperation. Taking this into consideration, this paper sets out to examine whether the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) — given its magnitude and high stakes — can change the dynamics of bilateral security cooperation. Looking at this through the lens of three distinct theories applicable to the study of EU-China relations, it would appear that even bilateral security overlap pertaining to the BRI cannot reverse these deeply entrenched behavioural patterns.