Thu, Apr 30, 2026 page8

• Eswatini a diplomatic wake-up call

  • By Marcin Jerzewski
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  Taiwan should reject two flawed answers to the Eswatini controversy: that diplomatic allies no longer matter, or that they must be preserved at any cost. The sustainable answer is to maintain formal diplomatic relations while redesigning development relationships around transparency, local ownership and democratic accountability.

  President William Lai’s (賴清德) canceled trip to Eswatini has elicited two predictable reactions in Taiwan. One camp has argued that the episode proves Taiwan must double down on support for every remaining diplomatic ally, because Beijing is tightening the screws, and formal recognition is too scarce to risk. The other says the opposite: If maintaining controversial allies requires too many resources, too much reputational compromise and too little public benefit, perhaps Taipei should stop trying. Both reactions are understandable. Neither is sufficient.

  The trip to Eswatini should be understood for what it was: both a warning about Beijing’s growing willingness to weaponize third countries’ airspace and a warning about the limits of Taiwan’s diplomatic playbook. China’s reported role in blocking the visit was coercive and unacceptable. Yet if Taipei draws only the external lesson — that it must redouble support for remaining allies at any cost — it would miss the internal lesson entirely. The Eswatini controversy should push Taiwan to modernize its development cooperation practices.

  Formal allies still matter; international law does not reduce neatly to a single theory. Under a declaratory understanding of statehood, Taiwan already meets the objective criteria for statehood, and recognition merely acknowledges that fact. However, under a constitutive view, recognition by other states carries greater weight, because it helps constitute sovereign status in practice. In the real world, both logics matter. Taiwan’s allies are therefore not decorative relics; they remain part of Taipei’s argument that it enters international relations on its own terms and not as a subordinate of the People’s Republic of China.

  At the same time, the critics are not wrong to ask harder questions about Eswatini. Human-rights reporting on Africa’s last absolute monarchy remains grim. Political parties remain banned, civil liberties are severely restricted, and governance remains starkly out of step with Taiwan’s liberal democratic identity. Nor is this merely an external criticism. Within Taiwan, the Eswatini debate increasingly overlaps with a broader public frustration about whether scarce diplomatic resources are being used strategically, effectively and ethically. If Taiwan’s diplomacy is to retain domestic legitimacy, it cannot continue to rely on the assumption that international survival automatically overrides all other concerns.

  Government officials are right to push back when criticism becomes sloppy. Not all criticism is equally sound, and not every development project in a flawed country is itself flawed.

  However, rebuttals alone do not solve the strategic problem. The “status quo” remains too vulnerable to two accusations at once: From Beijing, that Taiwan is diplomatically isolated; and from Taiwan’s own critics, that it still practices a refined version of checkbook diplomacy. Taipei needs a framework that can answer both charges simultaneously. The old language of loyalty and friendship is no longer enough. Taiwan needs a development model that is visibly principled, practically useful and politically defensible at home.

  The EU’s Global Gateway reflects a similar shift toward more accountable, partnership-based cooperation. The model is far from perfect and has often struggled to translate ambition into practice. Yet its core premise is instructive: Interests and values need not be traded off; they can be aligned through clearer standards and shared responsibility. This is a direction Taiwan can pursue in its approach.

  This convergence is also reflected in European political signaling. In 2022 and again this year, the European Parliament called for closer connectivity cooperation with Taiwan, including potential joint investment under Global Gateway. These signals position Taiwan not only as a security partner and semiconductor supplier, but also as a contributor to standards-based development. However, progress has been limited. Engagement remains heavy on dialogue and light on projects — leaving space for Taiwan to be more proactive.

  Taiwan should use that gap to its advantage. First, the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) should introduce public governance benchmarks for aid projects with diplomatic allies — covering procurement transparency, labor protections, community consultation and publication of independent evaluations. The point is not to moralize from afar, but to create a rules-based standard that applies to Taiwan’s own development practice. Taiwan ICDF already presents governance as a strategic priority and says it works for humanity, sustainable development and economic progress. It should operationalize those principles more visibly.

  Second, Taipei should mobilize the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) far more seriously with its diplomatic allies. TFD exists to build partnerships with civil society, link Taiwan to the global democratic network and strengthen democratic resilience. Yet Taipei’s formal diplomacy too often stops at a state-to-state ceremony. Capacity-building support for local media, parliamentary monitoring training, exchanges focused on gender mainstreaming and labor rights and small-grants programs for civil-society organizations in allied countries would better align Taiwan’s external relationships with its democratic identity. The incorporation of such programs in a broader development cooperation strategy would also effectively reflect the European “360-degree approach” in the implementation of Global Gateway, which focuses on regulatory connectivity and good governance.

  Third, Taipei should move from headline politics to pilot politics. Where appropriate, Taiwan could also pursue selective investment with partners, such as the EU, in line with the spirit of Global Gateway, using platforms, such as the Trade and Investment Dialogue and digital-economy cooperation. Taiwan can pursue a comparable shift to the launch of the Global Gateway paradigm and reform its own approach to development cooperation through engaging with the EU through project-pipeline exchanges, annual consultations, observer or advisory access in Global Gateway settings, regulatory cooperation, and public-private participation by Taiwanese firms. A modest, but credible pilot is more valuable than another vague declaration of shared values.

  Taiwan’s dilemma is not whether to choose between principles and pragmatism. The real question is whether it can practice pragmatism in a way that better reflects its core principles. Beijing wants Taiwan boxed into a narrative of diplomatic desperation. Taipei’s answer should be to become the kind of partner that is harder to caricature: less patron, more collaborator; less transaction, more accountability; less symbolic recognition alone, more democratic connectivity that others can see.

  Marcin Jerzewski is head of the Taiwan office of the European Values Center for Security Policy and a fellow at Visegrad Insight.
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