The outcome of the war in Ukraine could have consequences for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region, Lithuanian Minister of National Defense Dovile Sakaliene said at the Shangri-La Dialogue yesterday, echoing statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron advocating for greater European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
North Korea has sent troops to fight on the front lines in Ukraine, and China has supported Russia economically and technologically while opposing international sanctions.
The Lithuanian minister told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue — Asia’s premier defense forum — that if Ukraine were to fall, it would have a ripple effect in Asia and could embolden China, which has been making territorial claims over Taiwan and virtually the entire South China Sea.
Photo: Bloomberg
“If Russia prevails in Ukraine, it’s not about Europe. It’s not about one region,” she said. “It will send a very clear signal to smaller states here in Indo-Pacific that anyone can ignore their borders, that any fabricated excuse can justify invasion.”
Macron had on Friday urged the international community to reject “double standards” in addressing global conflicts.
As part of a broader address on the risks of division between China and the US, Macron emphasized the importance of maintaining a consistent rules-based international order, drawing parallels between Russia’s war in Ukraine and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.
“If we consider that Russia could be allowed to take a part of the territory of Ukraine without any restriction ... how would you phrase what could happen in Taiwan? What would you do the day something happened in the Philippines?” Macron said.
He called for rejecting double standards in responding to conflicts across regions, saying that inconsistent support for territorial integrity would undermine the credibility of democratic nations worldwide.
“There is no several global orders by definition if we stick to our principles; this is true in Europe and this is true elsewhere,” he said.
Macron reaffirmed France’s alliance with the US while underscoring the need for his country and Europe to maintain “strategic autonomy” and seek cooperation with Asian partners.
European and Asian countries face similar challenges, and those challenges are “increasingly intertwined,” Macron said, implicitly referencing coercive actions taken by Russia and China “from the fringe of Europe to the archipelagos in the South China Sea.”
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Saturday said that European countries should focus their efforts in defending their region and leave the Indo-Pacific region more to the US, but Sakaliene said the regions were clearly intertwined.
“It’s not a secret that when we talk about the main perpetrators in cybersecurity against Japan, it’s China, Russia and North Korea,” she said. “When we talk about main cybersecurity perpetrators against Lithuania it’s Russia, China and Belarus — two out of the three are absolutely the same.”
“The convergence of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea into an increasingly coordinated authoritarian axis” demands a unified response, Sakaliene said, adding that Iran has been a key supplier of attack drones to Russia for its war effort.
“In this context, the United States’ strategic focus on Indo-Pacific is both justified and necessary, but this is not America’s responsibility alone,” she said.
Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said on the sidelines of the event that his main takeaway from the conference was the “real intent in the way in which European countries have engaged” in the debates.
“It reflects the sense of connection, interconnectedness ... between the Indo-Pacific on the one hand and the North Atlantic on the other,” he said.
China this year sent a lower-level delegation from its National Defense University to the conference, which ended yesterday.
China’s embassy in Singapore on Saturday wrote on Facebook that comparing the Taiwan issue with the Ukraine issue is “unacceptable.”
“The two are different in nature and not comparable at all,” the post said, adding that Taiwan was entirely an internal affair for China.
“If one tries to denounce a ‘double standard’ with a double standard, the only result we can get is still a double standard,” it said.
The post did not mention Macron directly, but it was accompanied by a photo of him talking at the event.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday responded to comments from Hegseth that Beijing was destabilizing the region and was possibly preparing to seize Taiwan by force.
“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, who is also the primary factor undermining the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” it said, while reiterating its stance that the Taiwan issue was an internal Chinese matter.
“The US must never play with fire on this question,” the ministry said.
The government rejects China’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwanese can decide their future.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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