REPORT: RIMPAC and Valiant Shield: the Pacific bristles against Beijing

Two exercises, one message

In this month of June 2026, the Pacific vibrates with a tension that is no longer abstract. RIMPAC 2026 — the world's largest naval exercise — officially launched on June 24 and runs through July 31, mobilizing 40 warships, 25,000 military personnel, and 31 nations. Simultaneously, Valiant Shield 2026 opened on June 22, explicitly targeting American power projection capabilities in the region. Two exercises, one shared logic: showing Beijing that the West is here, that it is staying here, and that it knows how to fight.

This deployment coincides with a particularly turbulent week on the diplomatic and strategic front. Taiwan had just completed a five-day «immediate combat readiness» exercise, with tanks in the streets, live-fire simulations, and a direct response to PLA maneuvers described as «real-war exercises». The military choreography of this late June 2026 sends a signal that no one in Zhongnanhai can ignore.

A geography militarizing at full speed

The western Pacific is no longer simply a zone of commercial transit. It is now a space of open strategic competition, where every exercise is read as a declaration of intent. RIMPAC, born in 1971, this year gathers nations ranging from Japan to the United Kingdom, from Australia to Canada — a network of alliances that China cannot dissolve by diplomatic decree. Valiant Shield, for its part, stages American firepower at the heart of the first and second island chains.

Analysts know it: these exercises are not innocent. They test specific scenarios, including that of a maritime quarantine imposed around Taiwan — a scenario that Bloomberg revealed on June 25 to be at the heart of a recent tabletop exercise. The stakes are no longer theoretical. They are operational.

I want to be honest: what strikes me most about this accumulation of simultaneous exercises is less their scale than their synchronization. Someone, somewhere, decided the message needed to be sent now, not in six months. And that «someone» speaks on behalf of a West that is finally — finally — beginning to understand that deterrence is built over time, not in urgency.

Thirty-one nations, one objective

The RIMPAC 2026 exercise surpasses its previous editions in scale. According to ThinkChina, which covered its opening on June 25, the 31 participating nations include traditional Washington allies as well as several South Pacific countries seeking to diversify their security partnerships in the face of growing pressure from Beijing. The U.S. Navy leads the maneuvers from Pearl Harbor, an island that resonates historically like no other in the American military vocabulary.

The 25,000 deployed personnel represent real combat capability: submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, maritime patrol aircraft, amphibious special forces. This is not theater. These are crews training for complex combined operations — at-sea resupply, submarine warfare, missile defense — precisely those that would be required in the event of a conflict around Taiwan.

The scenarios that worry Beijing

Among the scenarios rehearsed during RIMPAC, the protection of maritime lines of communication occupies a central place. If China attempted to impose a quarantine or blockade around Taiwan, it is precisely this capability — keeping supply routes open — that would make the difference between Western success and failure. Anti-submarine warfare exercises are particularly intense, given that the PLA's submarine fleet has grown considerably in recent years.

Valiant Shield, for its part, simulates offensive operations in an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) environment — the type of defense that China has patiently constructed around the first island chain. These two exercises are thus complementary: one tests the coalition, the other tests penetration. Together, they form a coherent response to Chinese military strategy.

We must name what we see: the United States is preparing its allies for a war that officially no one wants. This is deterrence, certainly, but it is also an implicit acknowledgment that the question is no longer «if» but «under what conditions». And that is a major strategic shift that our media covers far too little.

An exercise designed for the contested environment

Valiant Shield, a biennial exercise for American forces in the western Pacific, lives up to its name. It is precisely about testing the capacity to project power into a space where an adversary possesses sophisticated A2/AD capabilities. Guam, the central logistics hub, and the Mariana Islands constitute the main theater for these maneuvers, which deploy B-52 bombers, F-35 fighters, and missile defense systems.

This type of exercise sends a clear strategic message to Beijing: the United States does not consider its forward bases inviolable, but it trains to defend them and to strike from these positions even under attack. Logistical resilience — maintaining flows of fuel, ammunition, and personnel even in degraded conditions — is at the heart of the lessons drawn from recent exercises.

China retaliates with export controls

Beijing's response to American exercises arrived via the economic channel. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in its China-Taiwan update of June 26, 2026, the People's Republic of China retaliated against the American expansion of the «1260H list» by imposing new export controls and prohibiting its government entities from dealing with American companies designated on that list. It is an economic war running parallel to the military competition.

This economic response illustrates Chinese strategy: do not respond to military exercises with military exercises — which would fuel escalation — but instead apply pressure on American companies, on supply chains, on hesitant allies. Beijing plays on multiple tables simultaneously, and the West must be able to read this complex score.

What China is doing with its export controls is more dangerous than any naval maneuver. It is targeting the economic nerves of its adversaries while their ships go round in circles. I am not saying RIMPAC is useless — far from it. But if the West responds only in military mode to a strategy that is first and foremost economic and diplomatic, it is playing the wrong game.

Five days of national mobilization

While RIMPAC was getting underway at sea, Taiwan was conducting an unusually intense exercise on its own soil. According to the Washington Post of June 22, 2026, the «immediate combat readiness» exercise lasted five days and involved tanks patrolling in cities, live missile firings, and civilian evacuation simulations. The image of armored vehicles rolling through Taiwanese urban streets is not trivial: it psychologically prepares the population for a reality that the island has refused for decades to confront head-on.

Taiwanese authorities explicitly presented this exercise as a response to PLA maneuvers that describe themselves as «real-war exercises». This military vocabulary — «real-war exercises» — is an intentional signal from Beijing: we are rehearsing, but we are rehearsing the real thing. Taipei responds by showing it is equally serious. It is a dialectic of deterrence by deeds.

Civil resilience as strategy

The Taiwanese exercise does not limit itself to the purely military dimension. It includes tests of government continuity, emergency communications, and popular defense — the concept that resistance cannot rest solely on professional armed forces. This lesson Taiwan has partly drawn from the Ukrainian experience: a society that knows what it is defending and how to react resists infinitely better than an army alone facing an invader with numerical superiority.

The 1,500 kilometers of strait separating Taiwan from mainland China are a real tactical advantage, but no strait replaces preparation. Naval blockade scenarios — tested in the tabletop exercise revealed by Bloomberg — show that even without a landing, a prolonged maritime quarantine could bring the island to its knees if its strategic reserves are insufficient and if no outside force breaks the blockade.

I look at the images of tanks in the streets of Taiwan and I think of Ukraine in February 2022. The fundamental difference is that Taiwan is preparing before, not during. That is exactly what Ukraine should have done if it had believed in time that Putin would act. We learn. Sometimes by paying in other people's blood.

A scenario that is no longer hypothetical

Bloomberg revealed on June 25, 2026 that Taiwan conducted a strategic simulation — a «tabletop drill» — specifically simulating a maritime quarantine imposed by Chinese forces. This scenario, long considered an intermediate option between peace and open war, is now at the heart of Taiwanese defensive planning. A quarantine would allow China to economically suffocate the island without formally triggering allies' intervention clauses.

The result of this tabletop was not made public in its details, but the simple fact that it took place — and was revealed — is itself part of the message sent to Beijing. Taipei is saying: we have modeled your preferred scenario, we know your intentions, and we are preparing for them. This is strategic communication as much as real military planning.

Implications for Western allies

A blockade or quarantine around Taiwan would place the United States and its allies before a brutal choice: allow the island to slowly suffocate, which would be a strategic capitulation of the first magnitude, or intervene militarily to break the cordon, which risks direct escalation with a nuclear power. There is no graceful exit in this scenario. That is why RIMPAC specifically trains allied forces to keep maritime lines of communication open under enemy pressure.

The Japanese Navy, whose Ryukyu Islands almost encircle Taiwan from the north, plays a central role in these scenarios. As does Australia, whose coastlines are not so far from potential theaters of operation. This is no longer a hypothetical American war. It is a Pacific war in which all allies bear a real share of the risk.

The maritime quarantine is the scenario Beijing prefers because it is the most difficult to counter politically. How do you justify a military response to a blockade that officially does not fire a single shot? That is perverted strategic genius. And I fear the West does not yet have a satisfactory answer to that question.

When Europe breaks its silence

Among the most significant developments of the week of June 21-28, 2026, there is the issuance of a rare European warning on the Chinese threat to Taiwan. According to Yahoo News of June 24, several major European powers jointly expressed their concern about Beijing's intentions toward the island. This type of collective European declaration on Taiwan remains unusual, given that the economic interests of member states temper their strategic ardor.

This warning is part of a broader movement of European strategic awakening — already visible in post-Ukraine defense spending — that is now beginning to integrate the Indo-Pacific theater. Europe is gradually understanding that stability in the Indo-Pacific is not an Asian matter: its supply lines, its export markets, its energy security all depend on freedom of navigation in those waters.

The limits of European solidarity

But we must be honest about what these warnings are worth. The European Union does not have a common military doctrine for the Pacific. It has no permanent naval presence in those waters — except for limited and occasional missions. And its member states remain deeply divided over how far to go in confronting Beijing, given the 700 billion euros of annual Sino-European trade.

The European warning therefore has real political value — it breaks the taboo of silence — but still limited operational value. What would truly matter would be if Europe were to announce regular transit frequencies through the Taiwan Strait, increase its naval presence in the South China Sea, and coordinate its economic policy with its allies to reduce vulnerability to Chinese reprisals. We are not there yet.

I do not want to be unfair to Europeans. Issuing such a warning on Taiwan, even collectively, requires political courage in a context where Beijing has no hesitation in punishing its critics economically. But words without muscle do not make a security policy. Europe must decide whether it wants to be a player or a spectator in the next major global crisis.

Tokyo as the indispensable pivot

Beyond the grand American maneuvers, it is Japan that plays the most decisive pivot role in the defense of the Indo-Pacific. Its Maritime Self-Defense Force is the second most powerful in the region, and its Ryukyu Islands — stretching in a chain from the southwest of the Japanese archipelago to within less than 110 kilometers of Taiwan — constitute a natural lock on any Chinese naval movement toward the Pacific. Tokyo has massively increased its defense budget in recent years, approaching the threshold of 2% of GDP — a historic doctrinal shift for a country constitutionally limited in its military posture.

Japanese participation in RIMPAC 2026 is not symbolic. JMSDF destroyers train for anti-submarine warfare, missile defense, and convoy escort operations — precisely the capabilities that a response to a Chinese naval blockade around Taiwan would require. Tokyo now has a foreign policy that explicitly names China as a threat, something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Australia and the Philippines in the equation

Australia, whose northern coastlines are in the direct strategic neighborhood of potential Indo-Pacific theaters of operation, is the other key actor. Its participation in RIMPAC 2026 and intelligence-sharing agreements such as AUKUS position it as a first-rate security partner. The nuclear-powered submarines planned under AUKUS represent a capability that will fundamentally change the balance of submarine power in the region in the years ahead.

The Philippines, geographically on the immediate edge of the South China Sea, have strengthened their military cooperation with the United States after years of ambiguity under former President Duterte. Manila has authorized expanded American access to four additional bases, some of which are strategically positioned facing Taiwan. This evolution changes the geographic picture to the advantage of allied forces in any crisis scenario.

What I call the «Indo-Pacific coalition» — United States, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea — is today more solid than it has been at any point since the Cold War. Not because these countries particularly like each other, but because they share a common threat and geography places them in the same risk corridor. That is the most durable alliance logic there is: not ideology, but geography and shared interest.

The weapon of commercial sanctions

The 1260H list is an American mechanism designating Chinese companies linked to the People's Liberation Army, imposing restrictions on their access to American markets and technologies. The recent expansion of this list was one of the first concrete measures of the week of June 21-28, 2026, according to the ISW in its update of June 26. Beijing's response came swiftly: new export controls and a prohibition on Chinese government entities from dealing with designated American companies.

This reciprocal economic escalation traces a technological cold war whose stakes exceed mere commercial interests. Advanced semiconductors, rare earths, components for weapons systems — everything touching the defense supply chain is now in the crosshairs of both sides. Every American designation is an attack on Chinese military industrial capacity. Every Chinese retaliation is an attack on American technological capacity.

Companies caught in a vice

For multinationals operating in both the United States and China, this parallel economic war creates insurmountable practical dilemmas. Selling certain components to China can now trigger American sanctions. Refusing to sell can lead to Chinese reprisals against local subsidiaries. European and Asian companies caught between these two sanction systems must choose a side — exactly what they sought to avoid.

This movement of technological decoupling — the West on one side, the sino-Russian authoritarian bloc on the other — is accelerating under the pressure of military exercises and geopolitical crises. This is no longer an analyst prediction: it is an operational reality that CFOs of major companies manage in their spreadsheets. Is the global economy fragmenting into two blocs? The signals from this week argue for that hypothesis.

The technological disconnection between the West and China is perhaps the most lasting geopolitical fact of our decade. More durable than any military exercise, more structuring than any summit speech. When supply chains break, when technological standards diverge, you do not easily go back. You build two parallel worlds. And two parallel worlds often end up colliding.

A deterrence that must show itself

The week of June 21-28, 2026 illustrated a fundamental strategic truth: deterrence in the Pacific can no longer be silent. It must be visible, credible, multilateral. RIMPAC, Valiant Shield, Taiwanese exercises, the European warning, the expansion of the 1260H list — all these elements form a coherent corpus of signals sent to Beijing: the status quo will be defended, and the coalition defending it is broad and trained.

But deterrence is not peace. It is risk management. And the risk, in the Indo-Pacific, has never been higher since the Korean War. Military exercises are multiplying, economic controls are intensifying, and rhetoric is hardening. The Pacific is bristling, and every steel point bears the name of a political decision that should have been made earlier.

The price of vigilance

The question is no longer whether the West must engage in the Indo-Pacific — it is already there, and withdrawing now would be catastrophic. The question is whether this engagement will be sufficiently coherent, sufficiently funded, and sufficiently coordinated to convince Xi Jinping that the cost of a military adventure against Taiwan exceeds the benefits. Deterrence is not strategic laziness: it is the most difficult and thankless work in international politics. And right now, it is being conducted to the sound of ship engines in the waters of the Pacific.

The Pacific is bristling — and deliberately so. This bristling is not a provocation: it is the rational response to a threat that has continued to grow. The alternative — appeasement, silence, complacency — has never worked against regimes that interpret weakness as an invitation. The West is learning, slowly, painfully. And it is learning with warships in the water rather than with bodies in the streets. That is preferable.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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