Taiwan, explained.

Can he see Ukraine from there? A Taiwanese soldier watches the Taiwan Strait, August 2022. (Alberto Buzzola/Getty)

Taiwan and Ukraine: Learning the right lessons

The Ukraine experience has turbocharged Taiwan's learning about modern war.

Mick Ryan

16 December 20244 min read

In the nearly three years since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine of February 2022, many nations have re-examined their national security postures, defence budgets and alliances. The government of Taiwan has not been immune to the strategic reassessments driven by Russia’s conduct. The Ukraine war has served as a catalyst to address some complacency in sections of Taiwanese society about Chinese aggression.

Taiwan is developing a more capable military to deter Chinese aggression and provide a potent warfighting organisation if the Chinese blockade Taiwan or attempt invasion.

Learning the right lessons from other people’s wars requires deep analysis, political commitment to change, and national security organisations able to rapidly absorb knowledge. There is more to it than watching from afar and copying innovation. Taiwan needs to observe the political, strategic and tactical lessons of Ukraine and filter them through its own context, including local geography and weather, regional politics, Taiwan's political culture, and the military capabilities of China. Taiwan also needs to anticipate the kinds of lessons the Chinese leadership and the People’s Liberation Army might be learning from Ukraine and Russia.

A key lesson for Taiwan in the past three years has been the maintenance of national will. This has political, military and societal elements. Significant effort has been invested to improve military and civil defence capacity, while expanding the interaction between the two. As Taiwan’s representative in Australia, Douglas Hsu, told me in a recent interview, the Taiwanese government has “strengthened civil defence capabilities, including mobilisation, human resource deployment, training, and emergency preparedness. This aims to ensure prompt response to emergencies or dynamic changes in disasters, enhancing civilians’ self-defence and self-rescue capabilities to maintain social safety and order.”

Military conscription has also evolved. With mandatory military service extended from four months to one year and the modernisation of training, Taiwan is developing a more capable military to deter Chinese aggression and provide a potent warfighting organisation if the Chinese blockade Taiwan or attempt invasion.

There are other Taiwanese initiatives to build national resilience based on insights from the Ukraine War. Hsu describes these as contributing to a “whole of society resilience”. Some of these initiatives include establishing a command and control system for emergencies to integrate different agencies; more frequent disaster response drills which incorporate reserve force training; enhancing storage of strategic materials and energy to deter or defeat a Chinese blockade; improving medical resilience; establishing air-raid shelters; and building a more robust and secure government communications network, including cyber security and undersea cable protection, to deter Chinese leadership “decapitation” operations. PLA expert Joel Wuthnow has written that a key PLA observation from Ukraine was Russia’s failure to decapitate Ukraine's leadership: “the PLA has already planned to target Taiwan’s leaders, including doctrine for the use of special operations forces in an island landing that includes strikes on adversary leadership.”

Perhaps one of the most important initiatives has been to strengthen protections around the flow of information. Russia, supported by China, has run a large global disinformation campaign since starting the war in Ukraine to shape opinion in the West, especially among politicians. In April, the chair of the US Congress House Intelligence Committee said Russian disinformation has “absolutely seeped its way to Congress” and that Republican members of Congress had repeated Russian claims.

A key lesson for Taiwan in the past three years has been the maintenance of national will.

Taiwan has sought to strengthen its ability to withstand such disinformation from China, although this has been a long-standing effort given China’s propensity for such operations since the 1950s. In his inaugural speech, new Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te pledged to reinvigorate efforts to counter China’s disinformation at home and abroad and to work with other democracies to combat disinformation.

Strategic decision-making is a final area where the Taiwanese government has made careful observations of the Ukraine war. Western decision-making, which has often been focused on risk-averse solutions to Ukraine’s military challenges, offers insights into how the US and NATO planning and decision-making apparatus functions – or doesn’t function. A combination of these observations, as well as insights gained from China’s reaction to then US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 Taiwan visit, have informed changes to national decision-making and command-and-control.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has revised its rules of engagement. It is also re-training pilots in the wake of aggressive behaviour by Chinese aircraft and drones in the Taiwanese Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ). In October, the Taiwan Defence Minister described a change in Taiwanese defence policy: “in the past, we said we won’t be the first to strike … But now the definition has obviously changed, as China [has] used means like drones. So we have adjusted, and will view any crossing of aircraft or vessels as a first strike”.

Coordination with US decision-makers has also been strengthened, including with the establishment of a US Department of Defence special task force to coordinate across the US government to accelerate Taiwan's defence acquisitions.

Taiwan has for decades been subjected to Chinese coercion and strategic influence operations. Based on this experience, it had developed an array of political, military, information and societal structures to respond to Chinese coercion and provocation. But the experiences of Ukraine and Russia since February 2022 have turbocharged the learning of many nations about modern war and strategic confrontation across diplomatic, information, financial and societal domains.

Taiwan is looking to capitalise on this learning opportunity while at the same time anticipating how China might learn and adapt from observing the same conflict.