Is the West ready for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan?

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Russia’s war against Ukraine has observers wondering whether Taiwan, a renegade province in Beijing’s eye, will be next. The only person who may know, Chinese President Xi Jinping, is quiet. But a more useful question is whether the West is ready for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

This question is about more than whether the United States and its allies would defend Taiwan. It’s about whether they have a long-term plan to deter China and help the island defend itself. NATO and Ukraine have been laying the groundwork for years to resist a Russian invasion, and now that’s on full display. In contrast, Western cooperation with Taiwan still has a long to-do list, from strategy and sanctions to intelligence and cybersecurity. The time to act is now.

Above all, Washington and its allies need to clarify their Taiwan strategy: whether and under what conditions they will defend the island. The U.S. policy on this has long been ambiguous, keeping our adversaries and allies guessing. But as I’ve explained, such ambiguity has fallen behind the times, and the West needs to take a clear and unequivocal stance to deter Beijing and reduce the uncertainties Taipei faces. NATO indicated it wouldn’t defend Ukraine, but that didn’t prevent it from helping the country put up a heroic fight against Russia.

If defending Taiwan in some capacity is a clear “no,” an unwise but nonetheless unambiguous stance, the next question is how willing allied democracies are to sanction China effectively. Many observers have been impressed with the economic pressures Washington, its allies, and even the private sector have put on the Kremlin. But that’s not as difficult a decision as would be faced with Taiwan. Russia’s economy is a fraction of that of China, a top trading partner of over 120 countries and regions. Even with Ukraine, Europe’s reliance on Russian energy has made the sanctions deeply divisive.

Moreover, as my Mercatus Center colleague Christine McDaniel stressed, sanctions need to be targeted to be effective, which requires good information about the receiving end of the economic weapon. It’s not clear whether allied democracies have the intelligence needed to hit Beijing where it hurts.

Speaking of intelligence, the U.S. and NATO have been cooperating with Ukraine since the annexation of Crimea. If Washington and Taipei have any significant intelligence cooperation, it’s been kept airtight from the world — and that would be the best-case scenario. In a worse scenario, the two countries have not built the groundwork or the trust to share sensitive information about Chinese aggression. That will eventually backfire.

Cybersecurity has also seen more Western cooperation with Ukraine than with Taiwan. Although the massive cyberattacks many expected from Russia haven’t happened in Ukraine yet, NATO has been vigilant in its preparation. This includes conducting cyber drills with Ukraine and admitting Kyiv into NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, a forum for the exchange of cyber expertise. Similar cooperation with Taiwan is starting, but Western allies need to do more if Beijing’s cyber force turns out to be more sophisticated than the Kremlin’s or if it learns from the latter’s “mistake” this time.

China is known for playing long games. Its ambition on Taiwan is no exception. The West needs to get the island, and itself, ready before it’s too late.

Weifeng Zhong is a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a core developer of the open-sourced Policy Change Index project, which uses machine-learning algorithms to predict authoritarian regimes’ major policy moves by “reading” their propaganda.

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