ESSAY: Taiwan under pressure — war games, maritime standoff, and democratic lethargy

ESSAY: Taiwan under pressure — war games, maritime standoff, and democratic lethargy

Introduction: five days of tanks in the streets, and the West "expresses concern"

The launch of the exercises on June 22, 2026

On June 22, 2026, in Taoyuan — home to the island's largest international airport — Taiwanese army tanks rolled through streets and onto highways. This was not a military parade: it was the launch of the "Immediate Combat Readiness" exercises, five days of intensive training designed to test the army's ability to mobilize rapidly in response to a sudden escalation of People's Liberation Army (PLA) gray-zone tactics.

According to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, the exercises — running until June 26 — aimed to evaluate "the speed at which military units could mobilize" in response to the PLA's persistent maneuvers. These gray-zone tactics — naval patrols, drone operations, coast guard vessel presence — stop just short of open war but create constant pressure.

23 aircraft, 7 ships, 5 additional Chinese official vessels

Between the Sunday and Monday preceding the exercises, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense had logged 23 PLA aircraft approaching the island, accompanied by 7 warships and 5 additional Chinese official vessels. This is not exceptional activity — it is the baseline level of military pressure that Beijing applies daily. The normalization of the threat is itself a threat.

The Washington Post reported on June 23, 2026 that these exercises represented a deliberate paradigm shift in Taiwanese military training: moving from scheduled, predictable exercises to realistic maneuvers simulating the opening phase of a Chinese offensive. Taiwan is no longer preparing for a hypothetical war — it is preparing for a possible one.

The maritime standoff: coast guard versus coast guard

The Pratas Islands and the gray-zone confrontation

Simultaneously with the land exercises, the waters surrounding Taiwan were the scene of increasingly frequent maritime confrontations. Taiwan's Coast Guard reported a new standoff with Chinese coast guard vessels near the Pratas Islands, in the northern South China Sea — the second in two weeks, according to US News reporting from June 5, 2026. These standoffs involve Chinese patrols in waters Taiwan considers under its jurisdiction, warnings issued to foreign commercial vessels, and direct confrontations between vessels from both coast guards.

More alarming still: in early June 2026, according to the Wall Street Journal, Chinese coast guard forces had begun issuing direct warnings to foreign commercial vessels in waters east of Taiwan's main island. This five-day operation, which ended on June 10, drew criticism from the United States, Taiwan, and other Western countries. This is a qualitative escalation: Beijing is no longer just patrolling — it is attempting to exercise jurisdictional authority.

Taiwan fires rockets toward China

In this context of escalation, the Taiwanese navy had done something unusual in early June 2026: it fired rockets in the direction of China for the first time during a military exercise. A deliberate, strong signal sent to Beijing: Taiwan was no longer content with passive defense. The June exercises included real-time simulations of a response to an enemy landing.

These exercises, according to The Straits Times from June 21, were part of modernization plans aimed at "shifting the training focus from scheduled events to more realistic exercises simulating warfare." Taiwan is preparing for the opening phase — the one in the first hours after China decides to act — as the most critical for its survival. The upcoming Han Kuang 42 exercises, planned for August 2026, will be even more extensive.

China's gray-zone strategy: wear down without declaring

The logic of progressive attrition

The strategy Beijing is deploying around Taiwan is not new — it is the same one used in the South China Sea for years. The goal is to normalize Chinese military presence until what was considered a violation becomes the norm. Every additional aircraft sent into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone, every additional patrol vessel, every warning issued to a commercial ship — all of this progressively pushes back the tolerance threshold.

This strategy is effective because it never clearly crosses the line into war — it stays in the blur of "short of war" that Americans call the gray zone. It wears down the adversary psychologically and financially (maintaining a posture of permanent vigilance is costly), without offering a clear casus belli that would trigger a Western military response.

The PLA tests and measures

The 23 aircraft and 7 ships logged by Taiwan Sunday-Monday are not a random bluff. They are data collection. Beijing is watching how Taipei responds, how the United States repositions its assets, how regional allies — Japan, the Philippines, Australia — alert their forces. Every Chinese exercise is also an intelligence exercise on adversary responses.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense was explicit: its exercises aimed to test responses to gray-zone tactics "in real time." This is the same logic, but on Taiwan's side: learn to react fast, mobilize in the first hours, avoid being caught off-guard by a sudden escalation. Both sides are watching, studying, and preparing for a scenario that no one officially wants to name.

Western democracies: from concern to action

The gap between rhetoric and capabilities

Western democracies regularly express their "concern" over the situation in the Taiwan Strait. The United States criticized the Chinese coast guard operation in June. The European Union issued statements calling for peace in the strait. Japan is increasing its defense budget. But the gap between expressed concern and actual capacity to intervene is striking.

Europe, whose economic dependence on China is considerable, is particularly vulnerable to this gap. A war in the Taiwan Strait would cause global supply chain disruptions on a scale unseen since World War II. It would cut off access to Taiwanese semiconductors — on which the entire global technology industry depends. It would destabilize the entire Asian economy. And Europe has no plan for that.

TSMC: the dependency that makes everything concrete

TSMC — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — makes more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips. iPhones, electric cars, AI servers, weapons systems — all of this depends on factories in Hsinchu. If these factories stopped — due to war, a blockade, or even a credible threat — the global economy would partially collapse. This is the geopolitical version of "too big to fail." Taiwan is too important to be abandoned — and yet democracies are slow to explicitly defend it.

This is precisely what Beijing exploits. Western dependence on TSMC — and by extension on Taiwan — is both what makes the island strategic and what makes Westerners hesitant to publicly commit to defending it. China is turning Western economic dependence into an instrument of deterrence against the West itself.

The Ukrainian precedent and the Taiwanese lesson

What the war in Ukraine has taught

The war in Ukraine provided a crucial lesson for the defense of Taiwan: democracies can support an attacked country with equipment, intelligence, and diplomacy, but the ultimate military decisions belong to the attacked state. Ukraine was able to hold — and reverse the situation — because it had prepared its defense, had a trained army, and had the will to fight.

Taiwan is drawing these lessons. Realistic training, rapid mobilization exercises, simulation of the first hours of an attack — all of this reflects an understanding that if war comes, Taipei will have to hold alone for the first days or weeks before any outside support arrives. This is the Ukrainian scenario applied to the island geography of the strait.

Europe and the strait: an ignored geopolitical urgency

What is striking in European media coverage of the June 2026 Taiwan exercises is the relative discretion with which the continental press treated the event. Tanks in the streets of Taoyuan, maritime standoffs, rockets fired toward China — all of this deserved front-page coverage. This was not the case in most European capitals, absorbed by their own internal crises — Trump's tariffs, asylum reform, Spanish and Italian political crises.

This inattention is a form of strategic negligence. The stability of the Taiwan Strait is directly linked to European economic security. Europe does not have the military means to intervene in a Pacific conflict — but it has the political duty to hold clear positions, articulated red lines, and economic contingency plans for a disruption of East Asian trade.

Taiwan and democratic deterrence

The central question: does deterrence hold?

Deterrence rests on a simple equation: the potential attacker must believe the cost of aggression exceeds the benefits. For deterrence to work over Taiwan, Beijing must believe that: Taiwanese armed forces can inflict sufficient losses in a first assault to make success uncertain; the United States will intervene militarily; regional allies (Japan, Australia, South Korea) will join; and Western economic sanctions will be severe enough to devastate the Chinese economy.

Each of these elements is contestable. Taiwan's defensive capability is improving but remains insufficient to hold alone for long. The American commitment is real but not formalized as a security guarantee. Regional allies are cautious. And sanctions, as the Russian case showed, are effective over the long term but not deterrent in the short term. Deterrence is fragile. This is what the June 2026 exercises are seeking to reinforce.

The narrow path between deterrence and escalation

The June 2026 Taiwan exercises are designed to strengthen deterrence by showing Beijing that Taipei can mobilize quickly and fight effectively. But this same demonstration could be interpreted by Beijing as a provocation or a signal of Taiwan's growing will to formally resist reunification. In Xi Jinping's logic, every strengthening of Taiwan's defense can justify reinforcing Chinese pressure. This is the spiral of mutual deterrence — each side strengthens its posture, and each reinforcement increases the risk of an unwanted incident.

The economic dimension: why Taiwan is irreplaceable

TSMC and semiconductors: a global dependence without equivalent

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — TSMC — is the world's largest semiconductor foundry. It manufactures approximately 90% of the most advanced chips used in global electronic devices: smartphones, servers, autonomous vehicles, high-tech weapons systems. Without TSMC, the global technology economy would stop — not gradually, but abruptly. This reality gives Taiwan a strategic importance that far exceeds its geographic or demographic size.

For the United States, a China that controlled TSMC — and therefore global advanced chip production — would represent an incalculable strategic advantage. That is why Washington has invested massively in bringing part of TSMC's production back to the United States through the CHIPS Act. It is also why technology sanctions against China are so closely linked to the Taiwan question: the American goal is to maintain a technological lead in advanced chips, and that advantage largely resides in Taiwan.

What Chinese annexation would mean for the global economy

In a scenario of China annexing Taiwan, economic experts agree on one point: the disruptions would be catastrophic, regardless of how long the fighting lasted. Even a rapid war would severely damage TSMC's infrastructure — production facilities, precision equipment, component supply chains. A Western economic response in the form of sanctions against China would create a brutal decoupling of two deeply integrated economies. The global cost of such a crisis is estimated by some studies at several tens of trillions of dollars.

This is precisely the economic calculation that constitutes the strongest argument for deterrence: Beijing itself would suffer massively from such a crisis. The Chinese economy depends on Western export markets, foreign technologies, and international capital. An invasion of Taiwan would trigger unprecedented sanctions that would destroy much of the economic gains of the last forty years. That is the calculation Xi Jinping must integrate.

The international diplomatic response: insufficient but not zero

Western statements and their real weight

Western democracies have progressively hardened their rhetoric on Taiwan since 2020. G7 statements, NATO communiqués, bilateral American, Japanese, and Australian positions — all of this sketches a growing diplomatic support for stability in the strait. But "diplomatic support" is far from equivalent to "security guarantee." The United States still has no formal alliance treaty with Taiwan — the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 is deliberately ambiguous about the American military obligation in case of aggression.

This strategic ambiguity is intentionally maintained to deter both Chinese action (by suggesting a possible American intervention) and a Taiwanese independence declaration (by not formally committing to defending a change of status). This is a delicate balance that successive American administrations have preserved — but whose limits are becoming more apparent as Chinese military pressure increases.

The narrow path between deterrence and escalation

The June 2026 Taiwan exercises are designed to strengthen deterrence by showing Beijing that Taipei can mobilize quickly and fight effectively. But this same demonstration could be interpreted by Beijing as a provocation or as a signal of Taiwan's growing will to formally resist reunification. In Xi Jinping's logic, every strengthening of Taiwan's defense can justify reinforcing Chinese pressure. This is the spiral of mutual deterrence — each side strengthens its posture, and each reinforcement increases the risk of an unwanted incident.

Maritime incidents involving Chinese coast guard and Taiwanese or American vessels represent this risk of involuntary escalation. A poorly managed incident, an overly rapid reaction, a miscommunication — and a diplomatic crisis can degenerate into a military confrontation that no one really wanted. This is when the absence of direct communication lines between Beijing and Taipei becomes dangerous.

Conclusion: the hour of choices is approaching

The time for passive concern is over

The five days of Taiwanese exercises, the maritime standoffs, the rockets fired toward China — all of this paints a clear picture: the situation in the Taiwan Strait is deteriorating. Not catastrophically, not immediately — but inexorably. Chinese pressure increases every year. Beijing's military capabilities are improving. And the hour at which Xi Jinping might judge the window of opportunity for action to be optimal is approaching.

Western democracies need to move from concern to action: strengthen arms deliveries to Taiwan, clarify their commitments, develop economic contingency plans, and above all, stop treating the Taiwan question as a distant problem that does not directly concern them. It does concern them. Deeply. Economically. Strategically. And morally.

What the West must decide

The question that will face the democracies is not "if" but "when" and "how." If a crisis in the strait breaks out, will they be ready? Will they have clear positions? Will they be capable of responding in a coordinated manner? The Ukrainian experience — where the Western response was delayed, fragmented, and insufficient in its early phases — is not encouraging. Taiwan deserves better than a repetition of the same improvisation.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am Maxime Marquette, columnist and analyst. My bias on China is acknowledged: I regard Beijing's expansionism in the Asia-Pacific region as a serious threat to international stability and to the region's democracies. I support the defense of Taiwan as a sovereign democratic state, while recognizing the legal and diplomatic complexity of its status.

What I do not know and my method

I am not a military strategist. Questions of deterrence doctrine, comparative military capabilities, and risk chronology in the Taiwan Strait exceed my competence. I rely on reliable sources: The Straits Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, US News for the facts, and clearly indicate my editorial judgments.

Sources

Primary sources

The Straits Times — Taiwan to stage five days of combat readiness drills — June 21, 2026

Washington Post — Taiwan begins 5-day military exercises with tanks in the streets — June 23, 2026

US News — Taiwan and China coast guards in renewed standoff at top of South China Sea — June 5, 2026

Secondary sources

Wall Street Journal — China's assertions of authority over foreign ships near Taiwan draw U.S. rebuke — June 24, 2026

Institute for the Study of War — Korea/China-Taiwan update — June 23, 2026

Stars and Stripes — Taiwan-China coast guard standoff in the South China Sea — May 26, 2026