Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow? We know now that the unthinkable is possible

For many Taiwanese there are compelling parallels between Ukraine’s difficulties and their own. Taiwan is threatened by a much larger autocratic neighbour with a sizeable nuclear arsenal that makes historical claims to its territory. With 1.4 billion people, China dwarfs Taiwan’s twenty-three million citizens and spends at least seventeen times more than Taiwan on its military.

Democracy is a foundational pillar of Taiwanese identity and opinion polls suggest that most citizens would fight to defend their hard-earned freedoms. President Tsai Ing-Wen outlined what’s at stake when receiving parliamentarians from Kyiv and Vilnius. Taiwan, she said, like Ukraine and Lithuania, is on the frontline between freedom and expanding autocracy.

But while Ukraine is an internationally recognised UN member state, Taiwan is not. Despite being one of the top 20 economies in the world, the vagaries of history and international affairs have condemned the Taiwanese to live for decades in legal limbo, which magnifies an already pronounced sense of insecurity.

Although Taiwan has not been under Beijing’s control since the nineteenth century, China’s Communist Party makes no secret of its intention to annex the island. Look at how civil liberties have been suppressed in Hong Kong to get a sense of what Beijing has in mind when it promotes its model of “one country, two systems”. The Uighurs and Tibetans also know well what minority rights mean in China.

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Taiwan simultaneously prepares for war while trying to avoid it. The Taiwanese know that if there is a big conflagration it is they – and not Americans or Europeans – who will have to defend their liberties. Taiwan recently got a taste of how a Chinese invasion might begin. Infuriated by Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last August, China retaliated with eleven days of intimidating “war games”. Missiles were fired over Taiwan, drones were launched and Chinese warships encircled the island.

If China invaded, Taiwan would face critical shortages. The island imports two-thirds of its food and almost all its energy. About 95 per cent of high-speed data is transferred through cables that lie on the ocean floor which would be vulnerable to attack. Being an island and some 160km offshore, Taiwan is easier than Ukraine to defend but unlikely to be able to receive supplies of weapons or humanitarian aid once an invasion is under way. There is no Poland to flee to or from where arms can be ferried, which has been vital for Ukraine’s war effort. Consequently, Taiwanese know they need to have as much as possible pre-positioned before an invasion. If we take the maxim that defending forces generally enjoy an advantage of 3:1 over their attackers, China would need a formidable force to take on Taiwan’s 170,000-strong active military personnel, which is backed by some 1.66 million reservists.

Having observed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some Taiwanese military experts are advocating less concentration on conventional hardware (planes, tanks, submarines), although these will remain vital, and more on the “asymmetric capabilities” that are in the arsenal of every David taking on a military Goliath. The slings and stones of the modern age include defensive surface-to-air missiles, anti-naval weapons and stockpiles of small arms and ammunitions that can be quickly disseminated and easily used. In what is sometimes called “the porcupine strategy” this approach aims to render the cost of an invasion prohibitive. Taiwan believes it must influence Beijing’s cost-benefit calculus so that it concludes that invading the island would be unprofitable, if not economically suicidal.

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It’s not inevitable that Beijing will launch a full-scale military invasion. Another possibility, which carries less risks, is that by continuing to isolate and intimidate Taiwan, China makes life there increasingly inhospitable, eroding Taiwanese sovereignty, and making it more difficult to maintain its security, democracy, and way of life. This strategy has been described as “boiling the frog”.

Russia’s war in Ukraine illuminated the vital role Ukraine plays in grain exports. Taiwan plays an even greater role in the international economy. Last year 90 per cent of the world’s largest ships sailed through the Taiwan straits. War would surely block this route in the global supply chain. Far more crucial is Taiwan’s extraordinary dominance in the production of semiconductors. The island makes a staggering 70 per cent of these highly advanced microchips which are needed for everything from smartphones, computers, cars, household appliances, healthcare products, and to operate all kinds of software. Trying to replicate Taiwan’s manufacturing capacity of semiconductors elsewhere would take years and cost hundreds of billions of euros.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine proved that the unthinkable is possible. In terms of global wars, none could be bigger and more lethal than that which draws the USA and China into deadly combat.

Unified and robust messaging to China spelling out the costs and consequences of an invasion of Taiwan could act as a deterrent. The anaemic response to Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 emboldened Vladimir Putin and encouraged him to risk all-out war believing the western response would be slow, divided, and ineffective. A lot too will hinge on the outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If Russia gains territory and unilaterally establishes a new status quo by force it will not only set a dangerous precedent but might signal to the Kremlin’s kindred dictatorship in Beijing that taking Taiwan will incur acceptable costs.

Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University