Former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin said yesterday that the international community could find it “much more complicated” to respond to Chinese coercion against Taiwan than to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of the “one China” policy.
During a Q&A; session after her keynote speech at the 10th Ketagalan Forum in Taipei, Marin said Europe had responded with unity to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the situation across the Taiwan Strait poses additional complications for governments.
Marin, who led the Nordic country from December 2019 to June 2023, said the “one China” policy could affect how the international community responds to developments involving Taiwan.
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“I think this might be – I hope it won’t – but it might be much more complicated for different countries internationally to respond,” she said.
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Marin also said the challenges facing Taiwan do not necessarily have to take the form of “tanks, missiles or drones,” pointing instead to gray-zone actions that are more difficult for the international community to confront.
On how to respond to such actions, she said the international community should remain strong and defend its “values and principles,” warning that democracies should not make themselves appear “weaker” in the eyes of aggressors or authoritarian regimes.
In her keynote speech, Marin said Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was “only the tip of the iceberg” in a much wider battle of values linking the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the rest of the world.
“We need to understand that the matter of Ukraine, just like the matter of Taiwan, isn’t an issue of a single country,” she said.
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“If we let countries like Russia attack an independent sovereign nation without serious and long-lasting consequences, it will set an example for others to use aggression to get what they want,” she added.
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Drawing on Finland’s experience, Marin said the country – which borders Russia and has fought multiple wars with its larger neighbor – took a different approach when many European countries cut military spending following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Finland retained mandatory military service and continued investing in its defense capabilities because memories of past wars remained deeply embedded in the public consciousness, she said.
Marin said almost 80 percent of Finns in a survey conducted last year indicated that they were “willing to defend” the country and believed Finland should defend itself with arms if attacked.
In Taiwan, 58.7 percent of respondents to an Academia Sinica survey conducted in January said they would “resist” a Chinese invasion even without U.S. military support.
Backing Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) earlier remarks, Marin said, “To build lasting peace, we need strength and deterrence of our own.”
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In a related comment, Karel Lannoo, the head of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) recently argues that the EU should bend the One China policy,
There isn’t one China, but de facto two, and both are now very different countries, with some common cultural traits from a shared distant past … The EU shouldn’t so easily shy away from trying to bend the One China policy a little, by making moves to include Taiwan amongst its growing partnerships in the region.
Yet, the status quo is that the ROC (Taiwan) has not declared its independence from China or the PRC and thus, formally, the PRC ROC conflict is an inner domestic conflict for which different rules apply for foreign states to intervene.
That is kind of it. As soon as China goes to war with Taiwan, the main reason not to declare independence will be gone. So declaring independence is extremely likely.
We also saw interventions in civil wars. It is honestly pretty normal and especially in this case also very likely. Especially from a European point of view it nearly does not matter, as any help would need some time to arrive.