The Flames of War

Taiwan Strait risks conflagration following pattern set by Russia in Ukraine

Dmytro Burtsev

Taiwan has been a silent hotspot in relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for several decades. At times, tensions flare up, and the fire burns very brightly; at others, only light smoke remains. As long as the embers continue to glow, however, the potential for an inferno is kept alive and smoldering, just under the surface, threatening to engulf the region and the world in the flames of war. This is the lesson of Ukraine.

In Ukraine—one of the less predictable conflictgenerating countries in the heart of Europe—a sudden conflagration erupted in 2014, beginning with an uprising that consumed almost the entire nation, directed against the regime’s efforts to halt the country’s trajectory towards European integration. It flared into a revolution that spurred the Russian invasion of Crimea, Russian support of separatist movements in the Donbas region, and eight years of sustained conflict—sometimes engulfing; sometimes simmering—in the East of Ukraine, sullying this once pastoral farmland with the unpleasant smell of smoke and Russian national propaganda.

Taiwan has its own story and history, and while it is one of the regions with the most significant potential for catalyzing another scorching war, peace—albeit a tenuous peace—yet remains. However, the crucial question is: for how long?

Strategic ambiguity—a concept so far practiced successfully by the Americans—cannot last forever, but nobody has yet suggested a way to manifest strategic clarity in way that will satisfy all stakeholders.

Thus, a hot cross-strait war threatens to break out if all parties do not make a comprehensive political decision in time. The potential for conflict becomes increasingly tangible, day by day. And each party tries to learn from Ukrainian or Russian failures and successes, looking at the hot war in Ukraine for lessons.

As Sun Tzu taught us in The Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

If Russian intelligence was as expert as the West perceived it to have been, the war could have been over within a month. This is not the case. Russian troops expected a warm welcome from a civilian population seeing them as liberators. Instead, hot shells from Ukrainian artillery rounds greeted them in Hostomel. The Russian war machinery was broken, lost, or sometimes just sunk in Ukrainian mud, later to be reclaimed as trophies to equip the Ukrainian army with all manner of armored vehicles. This would not happen if the Russian intelligence services had really done their job. It is obvious now that Russian intelligence failed earlier, before the war even began, in estimating the Ukrainian military potential and willingness to resist.

The intelligence battle

Western analysts likewise have a high estimation of the PRC’s intelligence capacity, particularly in Taiwan. According to an official in the Republic of China (ROC) national security establishment, an estimated 5,000 individuals in Taiwan are collecting state secrets for the PRC, 80 percent of which is targeted at the ROC military, it was reported in the Taipei Times. The PRC has several institutions dedicated to such intelligence gathering, including the Ministry of State Security, the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department, the United Front Work Department, and the Liaison Office of the PLA General Political Department.

Even financed by deep pockets, Russian agents of influence provided Russian intelligence with the information that the leadership wanted to hear, though this was far from the actual situation on the ground in Ukraine. Moreover, the Ukrainian intelligence service was just better, of course, not without the help of its Western allies. It appears the Ukrainian military and government clearly understood what to expect, and what to prepare for, at least in the initial stages of the war. At present, this does not appear to be the case in Taiwan, where the citizenry, as well as officialdom, appear to be oblivious to the bloody realities of a real war, hoping to forestall conflict by swearing fealty to the status quo, just for one more generation.

The Russian army—which literally surrounded Ukraine from all possible directions—created panic within several social groups, but at the same time, the society was ready to resist. Perhaps, Russia thought, the Ukrainian population would remove their weak “comic president” and by themselves when faced with the prospect of invasion, and that the Ukrainian military would not resist significantly because of low morale.

The Crimean Peninsula was occupied by Russian forces, ostensibly due to political instability in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution in 2014, which the Russian Federation used as justification for the occupation of Crimea. From this perspective, political and economic disruptions—which are almost the norm in a democracy as energetic as Taiwan’s—might be used as a pretext for the PLA to arrive on the shores of Taiwan, ostensibly as peacemakers. Though highly polarized, Ukrainian society remained particularly active in its mobilization before the Russian invasion, thanks to previous revolutions. That is the lesson that Ukrainians gave to Taiwan: how to be united while staying an anarchic nation.

The handling of information is another important component of how the war in Ukraine is playing out. One of the most substantial feelings during the first weeks of the war was panic. This was felt all over the country, but the Ukrainian media managed to calm that wave of panic.

Zelensky was aware of the importance of communication and the need to control messaging about the war, not just domestically but internationally as well. Thus the Office of the President took a strong hand in dealing with media representations of the war in Ukrainian and foreign media, as well as new media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. This differed markedly from wartime informational campaigns of the past, but such deviation was necessary, as the media landscape of the 2020s is radically different from that of any other time in history.

Morale issues

It was necessary to show Ukrainians and the rest of the world that Ukraine was fighting back and keeping high morale, and this show quite possibly saved the country, bringing in sympathetic governments, NGOs, and ordinary people from around the world to support the Ukrainian cause. It also served to counter the narrative provided by the Russian propaganda machine. Of course, the help of Elon Musk and his Starlink satellite system cannot be underestimated. This was key to the informational survival of Ukraine, keeping open the channels of communication despite Russia’s attempt at an informational blockade.

It is difficult to say or predict how Taiwan’s media will react to an attack and whether they have any protocols and advance-prepared procedures in case of war. They certainly should: this war has been on the horizon for generations. Ukraine’s information stream mostly targeted civil societies that pushed their governments to action. Taipei must endeavor to do the same in the event of a cross-strait conflict, lest Taiwan become a “blank spot” on the informational map in terms of obtaining any information about the situation on the ground in the Taiwan Strait. This would be contrary to how it was in Ukraine, and largely due to the strength of China’s influence over Western communications and news and entertainment corporations.

Preparedness is a key factor for survival during natural or social disasters. Media play an important role while keeping society informed and concentrated on a particular role, and disruption of information supply for the population during the war can create total chaos. Thus, that should not happen during any kind of disaster, typhoon, or war. The other question is how the media themselves are able to provide that kind of supply for the population and how they can maintain a state of preparedness, and how government can keep that process centralized and coordinated to make that process more efficient even while being informationally isolated from the rest of the world.

The resupply dilemma

Ukraine suffered the attack from almost all possible directions, but the Ukrainian western flank became a gateway for refugees heading out, and a robust supply chain from the West heading in. Moreover, Ukrainian communication in the Western direction also saved Ukraine from the informational blockade.

To be an island is a strategic advantage and a curse at the same time. In the case of a blockade of Taiwan, the island might literally be cut off from anything getting in or out, including information. Internet cables might be cut, and COMJAM systems may disable the means of satellite connection, which would render most current channels of communication useless and demonstrate the might of electromagnetic warfare as a new and crucial field of war.

Moreover, while Western sources of aid are able to move materiel and personnel into the war zone across the long land border with Poland, supplying a besieged Taiwan will take intimately more logistical finesse. This month, the US Army Special Operations Command conducted training drills that simulated the insertion of military personnel into Taiwan. More effort is required, however, for the ROC and its security allies to work together to conduct guerilla warfare if the PLA manages to take control of the island. This does not mean, hewever, that China is not learning from Russian mistakes in Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine defined new horizons and trends of modern warfare. Taiwan and Ukraine have different backgrounds in terms of history, political narrative, mentality, lifestyles, and many other aspects. At the same time, it does not change the fact that the war in Ukraine has been adopted as a textbook for upcoming wars, replete with lessons on how to fight in the current technological climate. The most important of these may be those lessons that teach us how the difference between military and non-military has become almost nonexistent. n