Europe Can Play a Role in a Conflict Over Taiwan. Will It?

In early February, France revealed that one of its nuclear-powered attack submarines had completed a mission in the South China Sea. The rare announcement, two years after the passage of the frigate Vendemiaire through the Taiwan Strait, was a clear signal of a growing French, but also European, interest in the sensitive region.

European awareness of its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific is a slow train coming. Even for France and the U.K.—which, as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and nuclear powers with a tradition of power projection, have long been interested in East Asia—there has been a quantum leap in recent years in their appetite for involvement in the region.

France has spearheaded the recent upsurge in interest, driven by its numerous overseas territories in the Pacific that are home to almost 2 million French citizens and comprise 80 percent of its maritime exclusive economic zones. Paris has signed significant weapons contracts with India and Australia, and is party to bilateral, trilateral as well as multilateral security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. In 2008, the Defense and Security White Paper for the first time acknowledged the importance of the region for Europe in general, and France in particular. Since then, the French Defense Ministry has regularly published an Asia-Pacific strategy document, which became an Indo-Pacific security strategy in 2019.

In the aftermath of Brexit, the U.K. is also sending strong signals of a renewed interest in the region. In its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy issued on March 16, London announced it would maintain a permanent naval presence in the Indo-Pacific. Bilateral security cooperation with Japan, in particular, is booming, with the two sides recently agreeing to a Maritime Security Arrangement. A deployment of a carrier strike group to patrol in regional waters and drill with the Japanese self-defense forces is set to take place in the coming weeks.

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Πηγή: worldpoliticsreview.com