By default Confluence doesn't have the option to force external links to open in a new window. I know there are solutions like this:
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Confluence-hyperlink-which-open-a-new-tab-or-a-new-window/qaq-p/406092
But didn't understand why the developers are not willing to implent this.
Found this Answer (so there is no hope for implenting this feature anymore):
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your ongoing feedback on this issue. On behalf of the Confluence team I would like to apologize for the changing status of this request. After many hours of discussion with design and product management, and after some engineering prototyping and testing, we have decided to close this issue as we do not plan to release this feature.
We aim to make our users' experience as friction-free as possible, and although being able to control the ways of opening links would be useful to many of you, it could easily lead to an inconsistent experience for users.
If your use of Confluence is in fact enhanced by opening particular links in a new window/tab then please consider using one of the existing solutions from our Marketplace (unfortunately they're not available for Cloud instances):
Cheers,
Adam Barnes
Confluence Product Manager