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Lithuanian Lawmaker Urges Taiwan to Put Defense Budget First

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Ex-Lithuanian defense chief Dovile Sakaliene told a Helsinki gathering of Taiwanese groups that Taipei must fund its own security against China.

Former Lithuanian defense minister Dovile Sakaliene told a gathering of Taiwanese groups in Helsinki over the weekend that Taiwan should place its defense budget above other spending, arguing that a country's safety cannot be traded away for competing policy goals. She spoke during the Joint Annual Meeting of the World Federation of Taiwanese Associations and the European Federation of Taiwanese Associations, held from Friday through Sunday.

The meeting ran under the banner "Democratic Resilience and Trusted Democracy" and brought together more than 330 people, among them politicians and human rights campaigners from Taiwan, Finland, Lithuania, Poland and the United Kingdom. Discussions centered on how open societies can withstand legal, diplomatic and military pressure from authoritarian governments.

Sakaliene tied Taiwan's position directly to Ukraine's. "Taiwan and Ukraine are the structural safety pins of global stability. Pull them and the whole transatlantic system unzips," she wrote on social media. In a separate post she added, "Vilnius and Taipei are not two separate stories. Russia and China are one problem working two fronts, and whichever of us folds first makes taking the other one cheaper."

Her message carried personal weight. Sakaliene led Lithuania's defense ministry from December 2024 until October, when she left the post amid disagreements over raising military spending. At the Helsinki event she delivered a talk titled "Resilience Under Pressure: Lessons from Lithuania and NATO's Eastern Flank" and joined a panel called "Frontline Democracies - Geopolitical Resilience in an Era of Authoritarian Pressure."

Taiwan, she said, needs to commit enough money to sustain its ability to defend itself, given that Chinese warplanes and drills near the island have settled into a routine. She framed the choice starkly: if a nation cannot keep itself safe, no one is left to enjoy the schools that public money builds. Governments that skimp on their own forces, she added, only hand strength to their adversaries. With China, Russia, Iran and North Korea drawing closer together, she said Taiwan now confronts the same kind of threat as Europe.

Resilience built day by day

Atte Harjanne, a member of the Finnish parliament and First Vice Chair of its Taiwan Friendship Group, said there is no quick route to a resilient democracy. It is assembled gradually, he said, by deepening trust across society, keeping armed forces ready and making sure democratic institutions keep working when a crisis hits.

Hsu Chia-ching, minister of the Overseas Community Affairs Council, pointed to a new legal risk. Since China put its Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress into effect in July, she said, worries have mounted that Beijing may try to enforce its domestic statutes on people beyond its borders, leaving Taiwan with reason to stay especially watchful. She named Taiwanese officials, civil servants, people engaged in religious exchanges and technology workers who handle sensitive material as those most exposed when they enter China.

Beijing's reach across borders

Luke de Pulford, cofounder and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, described a steady campaign of interference against his group since it was founded. Members have been sanctioned or refused visas, had their identities faked and been targeted with sexually explicit images produced by artificial intelligence, he said. Ahead of the alliance's summit in Taipei, he said, Beijing acquired the roster of delegates and leaned on lawmakers from 11 countries to keep them away.

Trade between Taiwan and Finland also featured on the agenda. Finnish legislator Ville Kaunisto said Finland's shipments to Taiwan climbed 67 percent in the first half of this year against the same stretch of last year, reaching 150 million euros, or about US$173 million. Finland, he said, bought roughly 724 million euros of Taiwanese goods over the same period. Should that momentum hold, he estimated two-way trade could touch 1.8 billion euros by year's end.

The weekend program combined the security warnings with these commercial figures, presenting economic ties and defense readiness as parts of the same effort to shore up democratic partners facing pressure from Beijing and Moscow.

Taiwan defense spending, Dovile Sakaliene, Lithuania Taiwan, Finland Taiwan trade, IPAC, China coercion, Taiwanese associations Helsinki, democratic resilience

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