Adam Zivo: Taiwan finds hope in Ukraine’s remarkable resistance – National Post Feedzy

TAIPEI — As China is expected to attempt to conquer Taiwan within the next decade, the Taiwanese have been strengthening their defences and seeking strategic lessons where they can. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provided a goldmine of wisdom — but although Taipei has evidently learned from Kyiv’s successes, some critical weaknesses remain.

I have been visiting Taipei as part of a state-sponsored press trip consisting of almost 20 foreign journalists. The Taiwanese government arranged for us to meet with senior officials and civil society actors specializing in foreign affairs, economics and national defence. The topic of Ukraine came up frequently — everyone wanted to know how Russia’s invasion had altered Taiwan’s defence strategies.

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Commentators often draw parallels between Taiwan and Ukraine, as both countries are western-aligned democracies facing asymmetrical threats from hostile (and nuclear-armed) superpowers. Just as Russia believes that it is entitled to Ukrainian land, so, too, does China believe that it has the right to annex Taiwan.

Russia expected to easily subjugate Ukraine, but failed to do so. Although Moscow and Kyiv are now locked in a stalemate, with roughly a fifth of Ukrainian land still under Russian occupation, this outcome is far better than most had expected at the beginning of the invasion — which has inspired the Taiwanese.

“We learned that it’s not impossible to defend our country when facing one of the largest military forces in the world,” said Connie Chang, a senior official from Taiwan’s National Development Council.

As it is unlikely that Taiwan could withstand a full-scale assault from China (barring direct intervention from the United States or Japan), Taipei has adopted a  “porcupine” strategy designed to deter Beijing by making it clear that any invasion would incur grievous and destabilizing costs.

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With this in mind, it’s somewhat irrelevant that Ukraine has been unable to expel Russia — simply drawing out the war should be enough to make Beijing think twice about getting into a similar quagmire. “China wants to make sure that this stays a short war, as the longer it lasts, the less likely there will be a victory,” said Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Roy Chun Lee.

The Taiwanese have also noted how the Ukrainian military has destroyed Russian hardware by relying on smaller, highly mobile weapons that can’t be easily tracked and blown up. A classic example of this has been the American-made HIMARS rocket systems that Ukraine has used, with devastating success, to blast Russian tanks and ammunition depots.

Chang said that, based on Ukrainian successes, “the (Taiwanese) government modified our national defence system a bit. In terms of buying weapons, now we buy smaller, mobile, decentralized weapons.” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu later confirmed that Taiwan is focusing on an “asymmetric strategy” that will rely on small, decentralized and mobile units that, as seen in Ukraine, are “very capable of keeping a large military at bay.”

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But Taiwan isn’t the only one studying this conflict — so I asked Chun Lee what lessons he believes Beijing is learning, too. He said the West’s sanctions against Russia have likely made China realize that “its interdependency with democratic western countries undermines its ability to win the war” and that, as a result, China is “accelerating its economic de-risking approach” and seeking more self-sufficiency.

For example, Beijing has instructed local governments to restore more land to agricultural use, which could potentially shore up China’s food security in case of conflict with the West.

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Taiwanese officials and non-governmental players often stressed that Ukraine’s perseverance underlined the importance of international support and western solidarity. “It’s very easy for Taiwan to feel that it’s hopeless if we’re by ourselves. And it’s the same in Ukraine,” said Wu, who also noted that Taiwanese officials are aware that their country has more bipartisan American support than Ukraine, leaving them in a more secure position.

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However, neither he nor his colleagues seemed to appreciate how vulnerable this support might be in the face of state-backed disinformation campaigns. Ukraine’s future is at risk partially because Russia’s disinformation networks have been able to penetrate into the American right wing and erode Republican support for Kyiv. It is very possible that, if China invades, similar tactics could be used to sow doubt and discord within the United States and its allies regarding Taipei.

Taiwan is already considered a ground-zero for disinformation and cognitive warfare, as Beijing constantly floods the country’s infospace with fake news designed to demoralize the Taiwanese and nudge them towards the pro-China Kuomintang party.

To counteract this, Taiwan has been enhancing its domestic capacities to debunk disinformation. For example, ministries are required to respond to disinformation within two hours, and, according to Wu, the government has been working with “very prominent NGOs that are doing the debunking and clarification of this information for regular people,” which includes “using AI to be able to respond to people instantaneously.”

But the efforts Taiwanese officials described were tailored for domestic audiences. I asked a few of them about what their global strategy was — how does Taiwan plan to engage with American voters who, while being targeted by foreign trolls or bots, are very unlikely to read Taiwanese fact-checking websites and ministerial bulletins? It’s not enough to debunk misinformation, you need to find ways to get your message out there and enter the discursive fray.

No one had an answer.

National Post

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