End of strategic ambiguity? Ukraine war shifts thinking on Taiwan.

While the world watches Ukraine, the Taiwan Strait may be heating up. More than 70 Chinese military aircraft have encroached on Taiwan’s air defense zone this month, including fighter jets and bombers. On Wednesday, China’s military announced a large-scale air and naval combat exercise around the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory. 

The announcement came just two days after President Joe Biden pledged that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense militarily if China attacks. The drills are a “stern warning” against U.S. military “collusion” with armed forces on Taiwan, according to an online statement by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The rising tensions reflect in part how lessons from the Ukraine war are propelling new strategic calculations by China, the U.S., and Taiwan as they seek to prevent – or, if not, prevail in – a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Ukraine offers a reality check as they consider a future war with higher stakes for each on core issues: for Beijing, sovereignty; for Washington, a “free and open” Indo-Pacific; and for Taiwan, self-determination.

If China were to take Taiwan “by force,” Mr. Biden said in response to a reporter’s question in Tokyo on Monday, “it would dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so it’s a burden that is even stronger.”

View from Beijing

From Beijing’s perspective, the Ukraine war has not changed China’s long-term imperative to gain control over Taiwan – by force if necessary. Beijing has considered Taiwan a renegade province since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government moved to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war on the mainland to Mao Zedong’s communist revolutionaries.

“No force in the world, including the United States, can stop the Chinese people from achieving complete national reunification,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a press conference on Tuesday, when asked about Mr. Biden’s China policy.

But Beijing is nevertheless scrutinizing Russia’s military miscalculations, the stiff Ukrainian resistance, and the united response of the West, to see how it might avoid similar problems in retaking Taiwan, analysts say.

China’s PLA has traditionally looked up to the Russian military as a model and “big brother,” says Kharis Templeman, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Now, China’s “political leadership has some reason to second-guess what the PLA might tell them about their ability to invade Taiwan in a matter of hours or days and actually accomplish the task,” says Dr. Templeman, manager of Hoover’s project on Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region.

Beijing, for instance, will seek to ensure the smooth functioning of the PLA’s joint command-and-control and logistics systems – both problematic areas for Russia’s military, says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford and the American Enterprise Institute.

Another lesson for Beijing is the strength and endurance of Ukraine’s military and civilian resistance against a superior foe. “It should give them some concern that the Taiwanese might perform much better than they are expecting,” says Dr. Templeman. 

The war in Ukraine has also showcased the ability of the United States and Europe to act with a high degree of unity in providing significant economic and military support – backup that would be even greater for Taiwan, which is more central to U.S. interests, he says. “What the U.S. is doing in Ukraine will be probably the floor, the bare minimum the U.S. would do to support Taiwan in a conflict with the PRC [People’s Republic of China].” 

Given all these factors, Beijing may take more time to shore up its military, refine its strategy, and insulate itself from potential sanctions before deciding to attempt a military campaign to capture Taiwan, says Dr. Mastro. 

China also seeks to avoid the appearance that it is coordinating military actions with Russia as part of an autocratic block, she says. “Then it no longer becomes a war about Taiwan; it becomes a conflict about these big autocratic superpowers trying to impose their will on the rest of the world,” she says. “European countries and Asian countries are much more likely to fight with the United States if they view the war as an existential conflict for their survival.”

Washington digs in

Viewed from Washington, Russia’s war in Ukraine is clarifying and strengthening U.S. policy on Taiwan to match a tougher strategy toward China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade an independent country that he considers intrinsically connected to Russia has underscored the need for Washington to send stronger signals to Beijing over Taiwan, departing somewhat from its decades-old approach of “strategic ambiguity.”

“The U.S. is clear now that because Putin invaded Ukraine, when [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] talks about invading Taiwan, it’s not idle chatter,” says Daniel Blumenthal, director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “With that clarity has come a new strategy aimed at deterring a similar war by China against Taiwan.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a speech Thursday that while U.S. policy on Taiwan has remained consistent “across decades and administrations ... what has changed is Beijing’s growing coercion” of Taiwan. He explained that the U.S. would continue to help Taiwan “maintain a sufficient self-defense capability” while opposing “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.”

In Tokyo, Mr. Biden said the U.S. was not only committed to coming to Taiwan’s defense, but that it would move even faster and more forcefully than it has in helping Ukraine to defeat Russia’s invasion. Since the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. has committed to providing Taiwan with the defense weaponry to resist a Chinese military attack, but nothing in the act requires the U.S. to enter a war to defend Taiwan.

“He’s basically saying Taiwan is more strategically important to us [than Ukraine], and we’re going to act accordingly,” says David M. Lampton, senior scholar in China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. 

Lessons for Taiwan

On Taiwan, Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia have provided inspiration for those who argue Taiwan’s forces and population have a crucial role to play should China invade.

Political groups on the island have raised the idea of expanding Taiwan’s reserve forces and conscription, Dr. Templeman says.

Mr. Blumenthal of AEI expects there will be greater pressure on the U.S. Congress to increase U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation and defense spending for Taiwan. But that assistance will likely be conditional, he says. For example, lawmakers may require that Taiwan develop a force similar to Ukraine’s territorial defense guards, boosting civilian involvement in national defense.

A key point to bear in mind, some analysts stress, is that the Biden administration must not only deter China on Taiwan, but also reassure it – by reiterating that Washington neither supports Taiwan independence nor opposes a unification that is peaceful and mutually agreed upon by both sides. 

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a fait accompli, a military campaign by China against Taiwan is still not inevitable, they say.

“All along, strategic ambiguity has aimed not just to deter China but equally to deter Taiwan from making provocative statements,” says Dr. Lampton.