(with Roger C. Liu) ‘Returning to the Indian Ocean: Maritime Opportunities Arising from Taiwan’s New Ties with Somaliland’, National Maritime Foundation, 22 July 2020.
Since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-Independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) acceded to the presidency in Taiwan in 2016, the country has been under severe diplomatic pressure from China that claims the island as a ‘renegade province’. Beijing’s “chequebook diplomacy” has seen Taiwan continually lose diplomatic allies across wide geographies — Panama in 2017 and São Tomé and Príncipe in 2016, for instance — with the result that Taiwan has been left with only 15 States in the world that officially accord it diplomatic recognition.
Indeed, China under President Xi Jinping has been engaged in a steady strategy of trying to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and constrain its international space. The latest instance came in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Beijing absolutely refused to allow Taiwan any formal representation or participation at the World Health Assembly or in the World Health Organisation. It has, thus, in unequivocal terms declared its unwillingness to seek any form of accommodation with Taiwan under Tsai Ing-wen, or perhaps, a lack of belief in any possibility of forward movement as long as she is in power.
Against this background, and just a few months after being sworn-in for a second term, Tsai managed something of a diplomatic coup by entering into formal diplomatic ties with another country that remains unrecognised by most of the world, namely, Somaliland. Situated in East Africa, Somaliland had declared independence in 1991 after a civil war in Somalia. Taipei has shown that not only does it lose diplomatic allies but that it can also gain them, and was quick to dismiss criticism by the Chinese foreign ministry over the move, calling it “pragmatic diplomacy” and underlining its own sovereignty and its right to take such a decision.
The successful establishment of ties with Somaliland thus has remarkable strategic symbolism in the context of Tsai Ing-wen’s second term and growing diplomatic offensives and military pressure from China.
The strategic geographical location of Somaliland signifies a potential for Taiwan to establish a “forward base” either for diplomatic or strategic purposes. The port of Berbera in Somaliland, which is about just 250 km southeast of Djibouti, by sea, has attracted international investments from countries like the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia. With an abundance of experience in port-management and operation, Taiwan could use its capacity a fulcrum to further its relations with Somaliland, whose location serves Taipei, as well as other friendly forces in monitoring Chinese activities and military presence in neighbouring Djibouti.
Tsai can already justifiably take credit for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic at home. As she pointed out in her second inaugural address, “Taiwan’s name has appeared in headlines around the world, thanks to our successful containment of the coronavirus outbreak.”
The decision of Taiwan and Somaliland to exchange representative offices doubtless kept Taiwan in the headlines for a bit longer. As Tsai also pointed out in her address,
“The coronavirus has profoundly affected our world. It has changed the global political and economic order…It has even changed the way the international community views Taiwan and developments in the surrounding region. These changes present us with both challenges and opportunities.”
In other words, Tsai and her advisers have been alive to the possibilities that the crisis offered, and the move involving Somaliland must be counted as a positive result. If China has used the pandemic situation to further its aggressive territorial claims from the South China Sea to South Asia, Taiwan, too, has used the opportunity to expand its international space in the Indo-Pacific, albeit within the bounds of widely-accepted international norms of good behaviour.
For more, Visit https://maritimeindia.org/taiwan_somaliland/