Europe’s Strategic Moment in the Taiwan Strait: Legitimacy, Deterrence, and the Politics of Peace
As Europe reassesses its strategic role in a shifting global order, the Taiwan Strait presents not only a security dilemma but a question of political legitimacy. By linking cross-Strait peace to democratic conditionality rather than deterrence alone, Europe could exercise distinctive normative leverage in shaping long-term stability in East Asia.
Europe may be approaching a strategic inflection point. Recent debates at the Munich Security Conference and renewed calls in Berlin, Paris, and Brussels for a more autonomous European role suggest that the continent is no longer content to merely adapt to geopolitical turbulence. The question is not simply how Europe should respond to shifting power balances, but whether it can shape the normative foundations of the emerging order.
In East Asia’s most volatile flashpoint—the Taiwan Strait—Europe’s influence is unlikely to be measured in military assets. Its leverage, if it exists, lies elsewhere: in the capacity to frame peace not solely as a function of deterrence, but as a question of political legitimacy and institutional design.
Beyond Deterrence
The instability of the Taiwan Strait lies less in immediate military imbalance than in unresolved questions of political legitimacy. For decades, cross-Strait relations have been framed as a binary choice between unification under authoritarian rule and permanent separation under the shadow of deterrence. Both paths are inherently unstable. Authoritarian unification would destroy Taiwan’s democratic system; formal independence would institutionalize confrontation and risk escalation between major powers.
A sustainable settlement requires reframing the issue from one of sovereignty alone to one of legitimacy and institutional design. The core dilemma is not whether unification or independence prevails, but under what political conditions any form of unity could command genuine consent.
A phased and reversible framework offers one possible answer. In an initial stage, both sides would institutionalize restraint: Taipei would renounce unilateral moves toward independence, and Beijing would renounce the use or threat of force. A confederative arrangement grounded in sovereign equality could preserve Taiwan’s political system, fiscal autonomy, and security structures, while establishing mechanisms for coordination in external representation and cross-Strait policy.
Deeper integration would be explicitly linked to political reform on the mainland. Economic convergence—through regulatory alignment, open capital flows, and common market mechanisms—could precede institutional pooling. Political harmonization would occur only alongside measurable progress toward democratic governance. Crucially, the process would be reversible. Should reform stall or regress, integration could be suspended. Unity would emerge not from inevitability, but from reciprocal evolution grounded in consent.
Europe as a Norm Guarantor
What role, if any, can Europe play in such a scenario?
Europe’s comparative advantage does not lie in hard power projection in East Asia. Nor is it positioned to act as a formal mediator between Beijing and Taipei. Its distinctive contribution is institutional: the experience of transforming rivalry into structured cooperation through conditional integration.
The Helsinki process of 1975 demonstrated that security and political liberalization could be linked within a single diplomatic architecture. The subsequent evolution of the European Union illustrated how sovereignty can be pooled incrementally, under legal safeguards and mutual oversight, without coercion. Enlargement policy further embedded democratic conditionality as a gateway to deeper integration.
These precedents do not provide a template for East Asia. But they do offer a conceptual resource: the idea that political integration depends on legitimacy, and that legitimacy can be cultivated through structured incentives rather than imposed through force.
Importantly, Europe and China do not stand in a direct geopolitical confrontation comparable to Cold War rivalries. Europe’s long-term strategic interest is not containment, but stability. A more politically legitimate and internally secure China would be better positioned to sustain cooperative multipolarity, manage regional tensions responsibly, and participate constructively in global governance. In this sense, the emergence of a more accountable and institutionally grounded Chinese political order would not represent a loss for Europe, but a structural gain for global stability.
This structural absence of direct geopolitical confrontation creates a distinct strategic space. Europe, therefore, could function as a norm guarantor rather than a security guarantor. It could articulate and diplomatically reinforce the principle that any durable cross-Strait settlement must rest on democratic consent and institutional reciprocity. Such an approach would not constitute intervention in China’s internal affairs. Rather, it would align Europe’s external engagement with its own declared commitment to rule-based order and political legitimacy. If Europe seeks strategic autonomy, that autonomy must include the ability to define the normative parameters of its partnerships.
Complementing Deterrence
The United States has long relied on deterrence to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait. In the short term, deterrence can reduce the likelihood of unilateral military action. Yet deterrence addresses only the military dimension of the dispute; it does not resolve the underlying legitimacy deficit.
Security-heavy approaches also carry structural risks. Persistent military signaling can intensify threat perceptions and narrow political space for compromise. In polarized environments, such as Taiwan’s, external security guarantees may inadvertently deepen internal divisions, complicating the formation of domestic consensus on long-term constitutional arrangements. If political fragmentation intensifies, even credible security commitments can become harder to translate into sustainable stability.
Europe’s potential contribution lies in addressing a different layer of the problem. Normative leverage does not substitute for security guarantees; rather, it operates on the political foundations beneath them. By linking questions of unity to principles of consent, reform, and institutional reciprocity, Europe could help shift the discourse from coercion versus deterrence toward legitimacy versus instability. Such a shift would not eliminate strategic competition, but it could reduce the structural incentives for escalation.
Moreover, security frameworks are ultimately contingent on domestic political cycles and shifting strategic priorities. Changes in leadership or recalibrations in major powers’ external commitments—however incremental—can introduce new uncertainties into an already fragile equilibrium. This underscores the limits of relying solely on deterrence for long-term stability and reinforces the need to address the underlying political legitimacy at the heart of the cross-Strait question—an area where Europe’s normative leverage may prove particularly relevant.
A Window of Strategic Fluidity
The current international environment is marked by unusual fluidity. The war in Ukraine has disrupted long-standing assumptions about European security and reshaped diplomatic alignments, while shifts in global signaling suggest that major powers remain responsive to evolving geopolitical incentives.
In such an environment, rigid binaries—democracy versus autocracy, containment versus accommodation—offer diminishing explanatory power. What may matter more is whether institutional pathways exist that allow adjustment without humiliation or coercion.
For Beijing, linking national unity to political reform could transform unification from a test of resolve into a demonstration of confidence. For Taiwan, a conditional and reversible framework would anchor security in legitimacy rather than deterrence alone. For Europe, supporting such a framework would reinforce its identity as a rule-based actor capable of shaping norms beyond its immediate neighborhood.
Europe’s Choice
Europe faces a strategic choice. It can continue to treat the Taiwan Strait primarily as a distant security concern mediated through transatlantic coordination. Or it can recognize that the question touches directly on its own experience: how sovereignty disputes are transformed into institutionalized cooperation, and how legitimacy conditions durable peace.
The emerging international order will not be defined solely by shifts in material power, but by the capacity of actors to construct credible mechanisms for peaceful change. Europe’s historical experience suggests that sovereignty need not be absolute to be respected, and that integration need not erase identity to be meaningful.
If Europe wishes to exercise strategic agency in a post-hegemonic world, it must move beyond reactive positioning and articulate where its normative leverage can matter. In the Taiwan Strait, that leverage lies not in military balance, but in the politics of legitimacy.
The question is whether Europe is prepared to use it.
Jianyong Yue is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and previously taught Chinese politics and development at King’s College and LSE. He is the author of China’s Rise in the Age of Globalization: Myth or Reality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and Crony Comprador Capitalism: The Institutional Origins of China’s Rise and Decline (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
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