Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal (Dec 2022)
Lessons from, and Implications of, the Russia-Ukraine War for a Future Taiwan Strait Scenario
Abstract
The geopolitical pressure that had built up between Russia and Ukraine in the Donbas region since 2014 finally erupted with Putin’s “special military operation” on 24th February 2022. Russia’s war against Ukraine not only triggered a tectonic impact on European security but also delivered profound implications for the Indo-Pacific region. Given that both Ukraine and Taiwan are threatened by larger, better-equipped neighbors with as much of an emotional as a geopolitical reason to attempt forceful annexation, security observers believe that the Russia-Ukraine war served as a touchstone for the incoming Chinese Communist Party’s ambition upon Taiwan. Those with a pessimistic view of the region’s security warned that Xi Jinping was studying the conflict to sharpen his future strategy to wage war upon democratic Taiwan. Still, optimists would suggest that Taiwan could learn from Ukraine’s combat of resistance and be better prepared and armed for an approaching conflict. As such, this article aims first to analyze the strategies used by both Russia and Ukraine and then to investigate how these tactics could be used to illuminate the conflict in East Asia. In the end, this paper hopes to create dialogues by offering some timely academic stimuli of the possible regional responses in the Cross-Strait scenario.
