DECODING: Taiwan Han Kuang — the dress rehearsal before a real war with China

DECODING: Taiwan Han Kuang — the dress rehearsal before a real war with China

Introduction: When the exercise looks like the real thing

Five days to simulate the end of the world

On June 22, 2026, Taiwan launched a military exercise of unusual scope: five days of immediate combat readiness drills, involving thousands of soldiers, armored units, artillery, air defense systems, and special forces. The central scenario: China transforms a routine military exercise into a real attack without advance warning. Not a tabletop exercise. A full dress rehearsal under conditions as close as possible to reality — vehicles in motion, training munitions, encrypted communications activated.

Simultaneously, at exactly the same moment, 21 aircraft of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) — J-16 fighters, KJ-500 command aircraft, YU-20 tankers — were operating in the immediate vicinity of Taiwan. Coincidence? Deliberate provocation? Political message? In the grammar of tension in the Taiwan Strait, every movement carries meaning. And Taipei's response was as clear as it was calm: continue the exercise, monitor the Chinese aircraft, refuse to lose focus.

Han Kuang: behind the name, a survival doctrine

The name Han Kuang — "Han Radiance" — designates Taiwan's most significant war exercise series. The 42nd edition, scheduled for August 2026, will be the major annual test. But the June 2026 exercise — the Immediate Combat Readiness drill from June 22 to 26 — is its most intense preparatory phase: the objective is not to simulate a battle under ideal conditions, but to test the Taiwanese military's ability to shift from peacetime to wartime in minimum time. That is where the real question of Taiwan's defense is decided.

Defense Minister Wellington Koo said it plainly: the warning time before a potential Chinese attack is shrinking. What once took weeks of detectable precursor signs can now happen in hours, or even minutes — if China decides to mask its intentions behind an ordinary exercise. That is precisely the scenario Taiwan's military rehearsed in June 2026.

The geography of peril: Taoyuan and the critical airport

The 269th Brigade and the defense of the vital artery

Among the units engaged in the June 2026 exercise, the 269th Mechanized Infantry Brigade conducted combat readiness patrols near Taoyuan — the city that is home to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the island's largest airport. This choice is not accidental. In any invasion scenario, seizing or destroying an international airport is an absolute priority for assault forces: it represents a potential bridgehead for a massive airborne transfer of Chinese troops.

The defense of Taoyuan is therefore a first-order strategic exercise. The 269th Brigade practiced rapid transitions from alert to operational deployment, communications in degraded conditions, and coordination protocols with air and naval forces. These exercises target a precise objective: reducing the Taiwanese army's reaction time from hours to minutes in the face of a surprise attack.

The peace-to-war transition: the real tactical challenge

The core of the June 2026 exercise concerned the peace-to-war transition — that critical moment when soldiers living their garrison routines must, within hours, transform themselves into operational combatants, deployed to their fighting positions with their weapons, munitions, and supplies. In traditional armies, that process takes days. In a modern army facing a potential surprise attack, it must happen overnight.

It is on this transition speed that the PLA counts to seize a decisive initial advantage. By striking hard and fast, before Taiwan's army is fully deployed, China hopes to create a fait accompli that the international community — and particularly the United States — cannot reverse in time. Taiwan's exercise in June 2026 targets precisely that vulnerability.

21 Chinese aircraft: permanent pressure

Intimidation as a daily strategy

The presence of 21 PLA aircraft near Taiwan on June 22, 2026 — the first day of the Taiwanese exercise — is part of a systematic intimidation strategy that Beijing has maintained for years. Incursions into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) have been daily or near-daily since 2020. Their frequency and intensity increase during Taiwanese military exercises, official American visits to Taipei, or political statements judged provocative by Beijing.

The purpose of this permanent pressure is multiple: test Taiwanese reaction times, wear down crews and detection systems, progressively accustom the international community to Chinese military presence as a normality, and send a clear political message — China can strike whenever it decides. The presence of J-16 fighters, a KJ-500 command aircraft, and YU-20 tankers during Taiwan's June exercise represents a capability combination simulating the elements of a saturation strike.

YU-20 tankers: signal of extended range

The presence of YU-20 aerial refueling tankers in this deployment is particularly significant. These aircraft allow Chinese fighters to operate far beyond their normal combat radius. Their presence means the PLA can sustain prolonged patrols in and beyond the strait — including escort operations for assault waves in an invasion scenario. That is a capability signal, not merely a political one.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency estimated — according to reports published before the exercise — that China is not currently planning an invasion of Taiwan by 2027, the deadline often cited as Xi Jinping's objective. But that assessment is not a guarantee. Military history is full of attacks that intelligence services had not anticipated as imminent. What Taiwan does with its exercises is precisely to not rely solely on assessments of intentions: it prepares for capabilities.

The disguised blitzkrieg scenario

Chinese exercise transformed into real invasion

The scenario Taiwan simulated in June 2026 is what military strategists call "island maskirovka": China announces a large-scale military exercise in the Taiwan Strait — something it does regularly, with Joint Sword exercises and other naval maneuvers. Then, at a specific moment, without additional warning, the exercise forces switch to real operational mode. Amphibious assault ships launch landing craft. DF-21D and DF-26 missiles target runways. Drones saturate air defense systems. And the world realizes it is a real war, not an exercise.

This scenario is not the product of creative imagination. It is documented in analyses published by the ISW, the RAND Corporation, and Taiwanese think tanks. Taiwan's Ministry of Defense has integrated it into its planning. The speed with which Russia transformed its "exercises" of winter 2021-2022 into invasion on February 24, 2022 gave this scenario a concrete credibility that experts had been theorizing about for years.

The June 25 simulation: the anti-blockade maritime exercise

On June 25, 2026, the day after the third day of the combat exercise, Taiwan conducted a tabletop exercise focused specifically on the counter-offensive against a Chinese maritime blockade. This type of exercise — less visible than a field maneuver, but strategically crucial — tests the coordination between civilian and military agencies facing a total naval embargo: how do you maintain the supply of fuel, medicine, and food if China cuts the maritime routes?

These logistical questions are not abstract. Taiwan is an island that imports the vast majority of its oil and a significant share of its food. A prolonged blockade — even without a direct invasion — could bring the population to its knees within weeks. The June 2026 exercise tested emergency logistics plans, strategic stockpiles, and coordination protocols with international partners, particularly the United States and Japan.

Han Kuang 42 in August: the full dress rehearsal

The greatest war exercise in Taiwan's history

Taiwan's major military appointment of summer 2026 is scheduled for August: the Han Kuang 42 exercises, which will be the most ambitious ever conducted in the island's recent history. These exercises will be preceded in July by the Joint Defense Exercise, which would test coordination between the army, air force, navy, and coastal defense forces in realistic combat scenarios. The June 2026 exercise is therefore the first phase of a sequence culminating in August with a complete island defense simulation.

These Han Kuang exercises have evolved over the years. In their earliest editions, they were primarily shows of force designed to reassure the population and allies. In recent editions, under pressure from growing PLA threats, they have become realistic combat exercises with multi-domain scenarios including electronic warfare, simulated cyberattacks, disinformation operations, and missile strikes. The change in the nature of these exercises reflects the change in the nature of the threat.

HIMARS in Taiwan: the capability buildup

Alongside these exercises, Taiwan recently tested the HIMARS system (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), supplied by the United States. This high-mobility rocket system, which demonstrated devastating effectiveness in the war in Ukraine, represents a significant addition to Taiwan's anti-access arsenal. Capable of striking targets at 80 kilometers with precision-guided munitions, the HIMARS allows Taiwan to threaten amphibious assault ships in the strait.

The integration of HIMARS into the June exercises illustrates the ongoing transformation of Taiwan's military. Since 2022, driven by the asymmetric defense doctrine promoted by American advisors, Taiwan has invested in mobile, dispersed, and hard-to-target weapons systems rather than costly and vulnerable platforms. Anti-ship drones, land-based cruise missiles, mobile HIMARS systems rather than tanks and frigates: that is the porcupine strategy applied to island defense.

Wellington Koo and the shrinking warning window

What the Defense Minister cannot say directly

Defense Minister Wellington Koo's statements about the shrinking warning time before a potential Chinese attack are remarkable for their unusual candor in diplomatic circles. In military language, saying the warning window is shrinking means that detectable indicators of an imminent attack — troop movements, naval concentrations, logistical activity — appear later and later in the adversary's preparation cycle, reducing the time available for a defensive response.

This reality has direct consequences for Taiwanese military planning. It means the army can no longer count on several days of progressive mobilization. It must maintain a posture of permanent readiness — which is exhausting and costly but indispensable. It also means that American aid plans in the event of an attack must rely on an already-forward presence, not a redeployment of forces from the United States or Japan that would take days.

The key role of Japan and American bases in the region

The defense of Taiwan is not a Taiwanese affair alone. It directly involves Japan — which hosts American bases in Okinawa and Kyushu, a few hundred kilometers from Taiwan — and American forces stationed in the region. The US Navy's 7th Fleet and US Air Force units based in Guam, South Korea, and Japan constitute the first line of the American response to a potential attack against Taiwan.

Han Kuang exercises are coordinated — unofficially — with these actors. American and Japanese observers are present. Interoperable communication protocols are tested. The question is not whether the United States would intervene militarily in the event of an attack against Taiwan — American strategic ambiguity remains officially maintained — but ensuring that if that decision were taken, forces would be ready to act within hours.

The American position: strategic ambiguity and its limits

Four decades of calculated ambiguity

Since the Shanghai Communiqués of 1972 and the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the United States has maintained a position of strategic ambiguity on the defense of Taiwan. Officially, Washington does not recognize Taiwan as an independent state and does not formally commit to defending it militarily. In practice, the United States sells weapons to Taiwan, maintains close informal relations, and has on several occasions sent clear signals — including naval deployments in the strait — that any attack against Taiwan would have severe consequences.

This ambiguity has a logic: it deters both a formal declaration of independence from Taiwan — which could trigger a crisis — and a Chinese invasion — by maintaining doubt about the American response. But critics argue that it erodes over time: the more China strengthens its military capabilities, the more doubt about America's ability or willingness to defend Taiwan can take root in Beijing, increasing the risk of miscalculation.

Trump and Taiwan: a tense triangular relationship

The Trump administration's position on Taiwan is more complex than that of its predecessors. On one hand, Trump has maintained arms sales and support signals. On the other, his transactional foreign policy creates uncertainties: is he prepared to "sell" Taiwan in a trade deal with China? His past statements about Taiwan needing to "pay for its defense" have created anxiety in Taipei. And his inclination to view alliances as commercial arrangements rather than value commitments is not reassuring.

In this uncertain context, Taiwanese military exercises like Han Kuang 42 are not only operational preparation. They are also a political message: Taiwan can and must defend itself by its own means, without relying entirely on American aid whose reliability is never guaranteed. This strategic self-reliance is both a necessity and a prudence that recent history — Ukraine, Afghanistan — amply justifies.

The asymmetric defense doctrine: porcupines and octopuses

Disperse, mobilize, resist

Taiwan's defense strategy has radically evolved since 2022. Inspired by the lessons of Ukraine — and by the recommendations of American military advisors — it has shifted toward an asymmetric defense based on two fundamental principles. First: disperse capabilities to prevent their preemptive destruction. Second: multiply anti-access systems (A2/AD) to make any amphibious landing prohibitively costly.

In practice, this translates into investments in mobile battalions equipped with anti-ship missiles, autonomous maritime drones, naval mines, HIMARS, and better-trained, better-equipped reserve forces. The idea is to transform Taiwan into an island where no invasion force can establish a beachhead without suffering catastrophic losses in the first hours — enough to deter the attack, or enough to buy time for allies to react.

The limits of the asymmetric doctrine

But this doctrine has its limits. Asymmetric defense can inflict terrible losses on an attacker, but it cannot, alone, repel a large-scale attack launched by Asia's largest army. It needs to be coupled with a rapid international response — economic sanctions, military aid, direct intervention — to produce a decisive result. And that international response depends on a political will of which, as the Ukrainian experience has shown, one can never be completely certain.

The June 2026 exercises show Taiwan taking this reality seriously. Reserve training has been intensified. Civil defense exercises have been strengthened. Air raid shelters have been updated. This is the total resistance doctrine — Taiwan's equivalent of the Finnish concept of "total societal defense." And it may be, in the end, the most credible response to the Chinese challenge: making Beijing understand that any invasion will be long, costly, and uncertain in its outcome.

China and its calculations: 2027, 2030, or never?

Different estimates on the Chinese timeline

Among Asia-Pacific security specialists, a central debate concerns the potential timeline of a Chinese military action against Taiwan. General Mike Minihan of the USAF had, in 2023, identified 2025 as a risk date — which did not materialize. Other analyses, including the Defense Intelligence Agency's cited in June 2026, assess that China is not currently planning an invasion in 2027. But the PLA's military capabilities continue to grow at a sustained pace, and the window in which an attack would be militarily feasible is widening every year.

China has launched three aircraft carriers. It has developed hypersonic DF-41 missiles capable of threatening American bases in the Pacific. It has modernized its submarine fleet. It has developed advanced electronic warfare capabilities. And it has conducted increasingly realistic amphibious operation exercises. If it does not yet have the capabilities to guarantee the success of an invasion, it is methodically accumulating them.

Xi Jinping and the question of historical legitimacy

To understand China's military pressure on Taiwan, one must understand its internal ideological dimension. Xi Jinping has tied his personal legitimacy and that of the Chinese Communist Party to the "reunification of the motherland." Abandoning Taiwan, or accepting an indefinite status quo, would be politically suicidal for Xi. This Chinese internal equation creates structural pressure that will not disappear with a change of leader — the next CCP General Secretary will face the same expectations.

In this context, the June 2026 Taiwanese exercises and the Han Kuang 42 series in August are part of a long-term dynamic: Taiwan is preparing its population and armed forces not for a hypothetical threat, but for a structural threat that will not disappear in the coming decades. It is an investment of civilization. And its success or failure will determine the future of democracy in the Pacific.

The West and Taiwan: the Ukrainian lessons that must not be forgotten

Four mistakes that must not be repeated

The war in Ukraine has provided a catalog of mistakes the West cannot afford to repeat in the Taiwanese context. First mistake: believing that economic sanctions alone would deter an attack — they did not prevent the 2022 invasion. Second mistake: waiting until the attack is launched before starting to deliver weapons — every week of delay translates into lost territory. Third mistake: estimating the adversary as irrational and therefore predictable in its irrationality — autocrats act according to their own logic, not ours. Fourth mistake: believing diplomacy can replace military deterrence.

Applied to Taiwan, these lessons have concrete implications. Arms sales must be accelerated, not slowed by diplomatic considerations. Planning for military aid in the event of an attack must happen now, not after. Economic sanctions against China in the event of aggression must be prepared and made public — transparency about consequences is a deterrence element. And regional democracies — Japan, South Korea, Australia — must be involved in these plans.

The stakes for global democracy

Taiwan is not only a regional geopolitical issue. It is a symbol of the viability of democracy in the face of authoritarianism in the 21st-century global competition. If China succeeds in absorbing Taiwan by force or coercion, the message sent to regional democracies — and to the entire world — is devastating: the rules of international law do not apply to great powers. Democracies can be swallowed whole if their neighbor is large enough and determined enough. And the West is too busy managing its own divisions to do anything about it.

That is why the Han Kuang exercises of June and August 2026 are not merely Taiwanese military exercises. They are acts of civic resistance, demonstrations of national will, signals to Beijing and the world: this country is not prepared to surrender without a fight. And in a world where too many democracies have learned to accept their own diminishment, that Taiwanese determination is precious beyond its territory.

Implications for global supply chains

TSMC and semiconductors: Taiwan's economic weapon

Beyond the political and military stakes, Taiwan holds an extraordinary economic weapon: TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), which manufactures approximately 90% of the world's most advanced chips. These semiconductors are at the heart of the entire global digital economy — smartphones, computers, autonomous vehicles, weapons systems, artificial intelligence. A disruption of Taiwanese production, whether through invasion, blockade, or a missile strike campaign, would trigger a global economic crisis of barely imaginable scale.

This reality is well understood in Beijing. Some analysts argue it constitutes an additional deterrent factor: attacking Taiwan also means destroying technological infrastructure that China itself uses massively. But other analysts note that if China succeeded in seizing TSMC intact, it would acquire a global technological and economic advantage of inestimable strategic value. That is the semiconductor paradox: Taiwan is simultaneously too valuable to destroy and too valuable to leave independent, from Beijing's perspective.

The race to diversify supply chains

That is why the United States, the European Union, and Japan are investing heavily to build advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity outside Taiwan. The American CHIPS Act mobilized tens of billions of dollars to bring this industry back onshore. The EU launched its own EU Chips Act. Japan recruited TSMC to build a plant in Kumamoto. These efforts will take years to bear fruit, but they reflect a growing awareness: dependence on Taiwan for the most critical chips is an unacceptable geopolitical risk.

In the meantime, the TSMC vulnerability remains intact. And it may be the most forceful economic argument for the West to take Taiwan's defense seriously: beyond democratic values, this is about the technological infrastructure of the global economy. Allowing that infrastructure to fall under authoritarian control is not just an ideological defeat. It is an economic catastrophe of generational scale.

Chinese cyber operations: the war before the war

Digital intrusions as combat preparation

Alongside military provocations in the strait, China conducts a sustained campaign of cyberattacks and digital espionage against Taiwanese infrastructure. Chinese government-linked hacking groups — labeled APT40, APT41, and others — have targeted Taiwan's power grids, telecommunications systems, government platforms, and port infrastructure for years. These attacks are not ordinary information theft — they are acts of offensive pre-positioning: China is mapping and compromising the systems it will want to neutralize in the opening minutes of a potential conflict.

The Han Kuang June 2026 exercises specifically included simulations of massive cyberattacks conducted in parallel with physical strikes — in line with the scenario of a multi-domain war where the digital and kinetic are inseparable. Protecting command systems, the resilience of encrypted communications, and the ability to operate in degraded mode — without internet access or centralized networks — are integral competencies tested in these exercises.

Disinformation as a preparation weapon

In addition to cyberattacks, China conducts disinformation campaigns aimed at eroding Taiwanese social cohesion, sowing doubt about the reliability of American allies, and exacerbating internal political divisions. These operations use the same social media platforms present everywhere in the world — Facebook, X, YouTube — and apparently legitimate news sources created from scratch. Their objective: convince the Taiwanese population that resistance is futile, that the United States will not come, that reunification is the only reasonable option.

Taiwan has developed sophisticated countermeasures: government fact-checking agencies, media literacy programs in schools, partnerships with digital platforms to identify and remove disinformation networks. The success of these efforts is partial — large-scale disinformation remains difficult to counter — but their existence reflects an awareness that the information war is as real and as dangerous as kinetic warfare.

Civic resilience: Taiwan and the Finnish model

Total societal defense

Beyond its armed forces alone, Taiwan has been investing since 2022 in a model of total civic resilience inspired by Nordic countries — particularly Finland, which has developed over the decades a concept of comprehensive societal defense integrating civilians, armed forces, and critical infrastructure into a single national resilience framework. This model assumes that defense is not only the military's business — it is the business of every citizen, every grocer, every doctor, every bus driver.

Taiwan has renovated its air raid shelters, launched first aid training programs for civilians, improved its short-term food and medical reserve stockpiles, and developed detailed evacuation plans for the most exposed urban areas. Reserve training has also been strengthened: the duration of military service has been extended and reserve exercises have been made more realistic and more frequent. These reforms do not make headlines, but they may be more important than any other military investment.

Taiwanese society facing the threat

One of Taiwan's specific challenges is the population's perception of risk. After decades of relatively stable coexistence with the Chinese threat, a segment of the Taiwanese population had developed a form of normalization of danger. The war in Ukraine constituted a psychological shock to that normalization: watching a neighboring democracy attacked without sufficient warning reactivated a risk awareness that had grown blunt.

Polls published since 2022 show a significant rise in the proportion of Taiwanese willing to defend their country by force if necessary. That is a fundamental psychological indicator for Xi Jinping's decision equation: a population prepared to fight increases the human and temporal cost of any occupation attempt. And in the calculations of an invasion decision, that factor carries heavy weight.

The credibility of Taiwan's defense: what analysts think

Between pessimism and determination

Assessments of Taiwan's defensive capability vary considerably among analysts. The most pessimistic estimated that Taiwanese forces would be unable to hold against a decisive Chinese attack for more than 72 to 96 hours without outside help. These analyses have been largely contradicted by more recent assessments, which take into account investments over recent years in asymmetric defense, new anti-ship missile capabilities, and improvements in reserve training.

The most optimistic — including American military advisors working directly with Taiwan's military — assess that Taiwan can now hold long enough to allow for an international response, provided its defense plans are executed rapidly. The June 2026 exercise aims precisely to validate those assumptions under conditions as close as possible to operational reality.

Persistent gaps that need to be filled

Even the most optimistic analysts identify persistent gaps in Taiwan's defense. The navy remains relatively small against the growing naval power of the PLA. Long-range munitions stockpiles remain insufficient for a prolonged conflict. Civilian-military coordination in the opening hours of a surprise attack remains a real logistical challenge.

These gaps are not fatal — no defense is perfect, and the equation of Taiwan's defense improves year by year. But they must be acknowledged honestly. Han Kuang exercises serve precisely to identify and quantify these gaps, not only to demonstrate what works well. That institutional honesty may be the best credibility indicator of a military force.

Conclusion: The strait of all dangers

A fragile peace maintained by deterrence

The Immediate Combat Readiness exercise from June 22 to 26, 2026 and the preparation of Han Kuang 42 in August testify to a country that has chosen to take its defense seriously. Taiwan no longer counts solely on the implicit protection of its allies. It prepares to hold long enough by its own means for those allies to act. This is a realistic doctrine, grounded in a clear-eyed analysis of the threat and the limits of international solidarity.

Peace in the Taiwan Strait rests on a delicate deterrence equation: the costs of an invasion must remain higher than the expected benefits for Beijing. Every additional weapons system delivered to Taiwan, every reinforced exercise, every strengthened civilian resistance infrastructure shifts that equation in the right direction. This is long-term work, without spectacle, without signing ceremonies. But it is the only work that truly matters to prevent the hypothesis from becoming reality.

What the world must decide

The final question is not military. It is political. Is the West genuinely prepared to defend Taiwan if China decides to act? Not in statements of principle, but in concrete commitments, forward military presences, prepared economic sanctions, and arms deliveries that will not be blocked by short-term commercial considerations? If the answer is yes, deterrence holds. If the answer is ambiguous, Xi Jinping knows it. And he draws his own conclusions.

The Han Kuang exercises of June 2026 do not answer that question. They ask it with an urgency that deserves an honest answer. And while politicians in Washington, Brussels, and Tokyo deliberate, Taiwanese soldiers are training in the June heat, on the beaches and in the mountains of their island, to defend something that deserves to exist: a free, capable, and determined democracy at the edge of the South China Sea.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This analysis is grounded in open-source materials published between June 21 and 26, 2026, including reports from the ISW, the Taipei Times, Taiwan News, and specialized defense media. The columnist adopts a position supporting liberal democracies against authoritarian regimes and considers Taiwan's defense a geopolitical priority for the West. Italicized passages reflect exclusively the columnist's personal opinion.

No classified information was used. All data on military exercises, aircraft movements, and cited military capabilities come from verifiable open sources. Estimates on Chinese intentions remain analyses, not certainties: the world's most competent intelligence services have repeatedly demonstrated their limits in predicting the decisions of authoritarian regimes.

Limitations and uncertainties

The situation in the Taiwan Strait evolves rapidly. Data on Taiwanese military exercises is partial — militaries do not disclose all operational details of their exercises. Estimates on Chinese intentions are inherently uncertain and subject to revision. Developments after June 27, 2026 are not covered by this analysis. The columnist invites readers to consult primary sources for complete and updated information.

This text was written in a context of elevated but stable tensions in the Taiwan Strait. The situation could evolve significantly between writing and publication. No information suggested an imminent attack at the time of writing.

Sources

Primary sources

Institute for the Study of War — China-Taiwan Update: June 26, 2026, Taiwanese exercises and PLA movements — June 26, 2026

Taipei Times — Taiwan conducts maritime blockade simulation exercise — June 25, 2026

Modern Diplomacy — Taiwan military to conduct five-day combat readiness drills — June 21, 2026

US News — Taiwan simulates countering a Chinese maritime blockade in tabletop drill — June 25, 2026

Secondary sources

Taiwan News — Taiwanese close-combat exercises and PLA presence — June 24, 2026

Kyiv Independent — Doctrinal parallels between Ukraine and the Taiwanese scenario — June 23, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Lessons from current conflicts for asymmetric defense doctrine — June 22, 2026