French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday last week signed France’s largest defense budget increase in 50 years into law. In the same legislation, France pledges to safeguard freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait.
The French Parliament passed the bill last month, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggressive stance in Asia. It grants a 413 billion euro (US$453.3 billion) defense budget for the next seven years to push the country’s military spending to more than 2 percent of GDP by 2025.
The legislation says that France has an obligation to defend freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as an Indo-Pacific power.
Due to Macron’s controversial comment in April calling for Europe not to follow the US’ lead and to steer clean of a potential Taiwan conflict, some skeptical Taiwanese politicians have asked whether the legislation is focused only on protecting the country’s freedom of movement, not necessarily the Taiwan Strait or Taiwan.
However, French Senator Olivier Cadic, one of those who proposed the legislation, made it clear during deliberations that Beijing’s predatory acts were what pushed France to contribute to protecting freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region. These acts include attempts to claim international seas as its own, harassment of legal fishing operations, the construction of military bases and incursions into other nations’ sovereign waters, as well as China’s ever-growing military power.
China has not only turned a deaf ear to the rulings of international courts with regard to its claims in the South China Sea, but it also claims the Taiwan Strait, posing a direct threat to global trade, maritime transportation and the international order, Cadic said. A military confrontation in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea would have a major effect on global trade and traffic.
The French legislation indicates that protecting peace in Taiwan Strait aligns with France’s strategic national interests, and is essential to a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific region. This kind of recognition is growing in international society. The global alliance of democracies has agreed that peace must be maintained in the Taiwan Strait, as regional turmoil would reverberate around the world.
Not only has Washington increased US Navy and Coast Guard transits through the Taiwan Strait; since French frigate the Vendemiaire passed through the waterway in 2019, the French Navy has continued transits about once a year. Other democracies such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands have conducted similar operations.
This is a sign that democratic allies are increasingly asserting their right to freedom of navigation in international waters near China, showing that they are looking at China not only purely in terms of trade, but from a geopolitical military standpoint as well.
As the world’s democracies join forces to face the aggressive actions of China, Russia and North Korea — which are beginning to look like a new “axis of evil” — the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan will inevitably become a crucial strategic channel that they cannot afford to lose.
Taiwan must surely go all-out to defend itself against aggression from across the Strait. It should work with France and other like-minded nations to defend the rules-based international order and the rights of all countries to freely navigate the region’s seas in the region, which in turn would safeguard Taiwan.
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