This open access book aims to emphasize the potential for Japan Europe and Indo-Pacific
countries including the US to respond to shared domestic and international challenges on
finding joint ways to uphold and develop the liberal international order (LIO) in the Asian
Pacific region and the world. It explores how these countries and the region (the EU) can work
together to promote solidarity and cooperation to advance democratic standards and rules-based
norms globally. The US understands the LIO in a political sense and centers its focus on
democracy aiming to build a coalition of democracies opposed to China and Russia which
represent a kind of authoritarian axis. The US aims both to defend the LIO and respond to the
China challenge and to build a coalition of countries that will do both. In contrast European
countries aim at defending the rules-based order-a term preferred because they fear that the
concept of the LIO might alienate or antagonize non-democratic countries. They face a dilemma
between working with China to reform the LIO or in seeking to defend it from China excluding
China. Germany and France differ regarding whether to play a passive or active role in the
Indo-Pacific the former choosing to preserve peace and stability for continued exports and
until recently doing little to contribute to security. Its views echo those of the ASEAN
countries which are unable or unwilling to take an active role in protecting the LIO. On the
contrary France along with the UK actively carries out presence operations in the
Indo-Pacific. Rather than upholding US dominance France supports a multipolar order that will
also reduce China's influence in the region with France acting as a balancing power and
offering an alternative to the choice between China and the United States. Japan and India show
interest in European views with the former leaning more toward its allies the US and AUKUS
and the latter seeing Europe less as an alternative to the status quo and more as a complement
of QUAD. This book concludes that the US needs to build coalitions rather than forcing allies
and neighbors to choose sides while Japan Asian countries and Europeans should more actively
reform the LIO.
