Taiwan trains to survive, the West must train to act

Introduction: the routine that is no longer a drill

Exercises that simulate the inevitable

Taiwan conducted, in early July 2026, a new round of national resilience exercises, simulating blockade and attack scenarios, as Chinese military incursions around the island multiply at a worrying pace. This is no longer an isolated theoretical drill, but an increasingly frequent rehearsal of a threat Taipei now considers plausible in the short term.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense confirmed these exercises, which mobilize not only the armed forces but also the civilian population, called on to prepare for power outages, supply disruptions, and prolonged territorial defense scenarios.

Why this editorial is necessary

Training to survive a blockade is no longer a theoretical exercise for Taiwan; it has become a routine of preparation for the inevitable. This editorial defends a simple thesis: what Taiwan practices at home, the West must practice in its decisions of support.

Training to survive a blockade is no longer a theoretical exercise for Taiwan, it has become a routine of preparation for the inevitable. And this normalization should alarm us as much as it impresses us.

What these exercises reveal about the perceived threat

Preparation intensifying alongside Chinese incursions

The frequency and intensity of these resilience exercises track directly with the curve of Chinese military incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone, a clear signal that Taipei no longer views Beijing's threat as mere rhetorical posturing, but as a concrete operational possibility.

These exercises cover varied scenarios: civilian evacuation, keeping critical infrastructure running under blockade, coordination between armed forces and civil defense, all elements suggesting serious planning rather than a mere show of political firmness.

The psychological dimension of this preparation

Beyond its practical dimension, this civilian preparation also plays an important psychological role: it sends a message of resolve to Beijing while accustoming the Taiwanese population to the idea that confrontation, though feared, is no longer unthinkable.

This psychological normalization impresses me as much as it saddens me. No people should have to get used to the idea of a blockade, but Taiwan does not have the luxury of illusion when it comes to China.

The West's relative silence in the face of this preparation

Insufficient media coverage

Despite the scale of these exercises, Western media coverage remains largely insufficient compared with the attention given to other geopolitical theaters, an imbalance that reflects a questionable strategic prioritization at the very moment China is intensifying its military pressure on the island.

This relative media silence contrasts with the gravity of the documented situation on the ground, where each new round of Taiwanese civilian exercises confirms preparation for a scenario most Western analysts now consider a matter of time rather than probability. However, the disparity becomes even more striking when compared with the extensive coverage devoted to other flashpoints of comparable or lesser strategic weight, a discrepancy that says as much about Western editorial priorities as it does about the actual severity of the Taiwan question.

What this silence costs Western preparedness

This deficit in media attention also translates into a deficit of political preparedness in the West, where decision-makers struggle to anticipate the economic and security consequences of an actual blockade of Taiwan, which nonetheless sits at the heart of global semiconductor production.

I find this Western silence irresponsible. While Taiwan keeps rehearsing blockade scenarios, our governments continue treating this threat as a distant problem rather than an immediate strategic emergency.

Indeed, this pattern of delayed attention is not unique to Taiwan; it mirrors a broader Western tendency to treat authoritarian pressure as background noise until it erupts into open crisis, at which point the cost of catching up is inevitably higher than the cost of early prevention would have been.

What Taiwan concretely expects from its partners

Beyond symbolic statements of support

Taiwan is not looking only for symbolic statements of support from its Western partners, but for a more tangible commitment in military cooperation, intelligence sharing, and support for its own defense industry, notably in the strategic drone sector.

This expectation reflects an evolution in Taiwanese strategy, which increasingly relies on the autonomy of its own deterrence capability rather than exclusive dependence on a hypothetical military intervention by its allies in the event of open conflict with Beijing. Notably, this shift also reduces the political risk for partner nations, since strengthening Taiwan's own capacity requires fewer public commitments than an explicit promise of direct military intervention would.

A resilience that must also be economic

Beyond military and civilian preparation, Taiwan is also seeking to strengthen its economic resilience, notably by diversifying its critical supply chains to reduce its vulnerability to a prolonged blockade that would isolate the island from the rest of the world.

I understand this Taiwanese quest for autonomy perfectly. No democracy should base its survival solely on the promise of a foreign intervention that might arrive too late.

China, an attentive observer of this preparation

Military pressure that shows no sign of easing

While Taiwan steps up its resilience exercises, China continues its own military pressure around the island, through repeated aerial and naval incursions that regularly test the reaction capabilities of Taiwanese armed forces without crossing the threshold of open conflict.

This constant pressure, without triggering direct hostilities, corresponds to a Chinese gray-zone warfare strategy aimed at gradually wearing down Taiwanese resources and vigilance rather than provoking an immediate confrontation with unpredictable consequences for Beijing. This gradual approach considerably complicates the Western response, since no single incident seems serious enough to justify an immediate collective reaction, even as the accumulation of these incidents progressively reshapes the regional strategic balance to Taiwan's detriment. Moreover, this incremental method allows Beijing to test Western resolve in small, reversible increments, gauging each response before calibrating the next provocation accordingly.

Why this Chinese strategy makes Taiwanese resilience essential

Facing this strategy of continuous pressure, the civilian resilience developed by Taiwan becomes a deterrence tool in its own right, demonstrating to Beijing that a blockade or invasion would meet a prepared population rather than a country caught off guard.

I believe this Taiwanese civilian resilience constitutes, in itself, a form of deterrence. A prepared population costs more to conquer than a surprised one, and Beijing knows this perfectly well.

What recent history teaches about these preparations

The Ukrainian precedent as a reference

The Ukrainian experience since 2022 offers an instructive precedent for Taiwan: countries that invest early in civilian resilience and defensive preparedness withstand aggression better than those relying solely on a rapid external intervention.

This comparison is not perfect, given how much the geographic and military contexts differ between Eastern Europe and the Taiwan Strait, but it strengthens the legitimacy of Taiwan's strategy of intensive civilian preparation over passive wait-and-see.

What Taiwan has learned from this precedent

Taiwanese officials have explicitly cited lessons from the Ukrainian conflict in designing their own resilience exercises, notably on the importance of keeping critical infrastructure operational under the strain of a prolonged conflict.

I see in this Ukrainian reference a universal lesson for every threatened democracy: resilience is built before the crisis, never during it.

What the West must do, not just say

Support that must precede the crisis

This editorial defends a clear position: the West cannot afford to passively observe Taiwanese preparation while reserving its concrete support for the moment a crisis has already erupted, a scenario in which aid would almost certainly arrive too late to be fully effective.

Western support must precede the crisis, through an immediate strengthening of defense cooperation, intelligence sharing, and economic support for the Taiwanese industry, particularly in the semiconductor sector and autonomous defense technologies.

The price of inaction would be immense

Western inaction in the face of this Taiwanese preparation would carry a potentially immense cost, not only for regional Indo-Pacific security, but also for the global economy, heavily dependent on semiconductor production concentrated on the island.

I'll say it plainly: if the West waits for a blockade to begin before acting, it will have already lost the most important part of this confrontation, the preparation phase.

What these exercises cost the economy and daily life

A collective effort that disrupts daily routines

These resilience exercises are not without cost to the Taiwanese population: temporary interruptions of economic activity, mobilization of considerable public resources, and repeated disruption of daily life in urban areas where the most intensive blockade and attack simulations take place.

This cost, however, is accepted by a majority of the Taiwanese population according to available polls, a sign that awareness of the Chinese threat has reached a level sufficient to justify these temporary sacrifices in the name of preparation deemed necessary.

A model other democracies should study

This Taiwanese model of integrated civilian preparation deserves careful study by other democracies exposed to similar threats, notably the Baltic and Eastern European countries facing continuous pressure from Russia, who could draw practical lessons from this systematic approach.

Exporting this model is not limited to the military sphere: it also encompasses economic, energy, and communication dimensions that could inspire a more coherent Western approach to converging authoritarian threats.

I believe this Taiwanese model deserves serious study by every Western democracy exposed to an authoritarian threat. Civilian preparedness is not paranoia, it is basic political responsibility.

Conclusion: a lesson in preparedness for every democracy

What Taiwan demonstrates to the world

The series of resilience exercises conducted by Taiwan in early July 2026 illustrates a simple but often overlooked truth: the best defense against authoritarian aggression begins well before that aggression materializes, through systematic preparation of the population and critical infrastructure.

This Taiwanese preparation deserves to be recognized not as a sign of excessive alarmism, but as a model of democratic responsibility in the face of a threat clearly identified and documented for years.

The test this preparation represents for the West

The real test does not concern Taiwan's capacity to prepare, already demonstrated by these repeated exercises, but the West's capacity to turn its rhetorical admiration for this resilience into concrete commitments before a crisis makes the question tragically urgent.

I close with a firm conviction: admiration is no longer enough. Taiwan has done its preparation homework; it is now up to the West to do its own, before it is too late to act usefully.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my declared biases

I sign this editorial as an engaged columnist, not as a neutral journalist. I believe Taiwan is a democracy that deserves the full and unconditional support of the West against China's expansionist ambitions, which I consider one of the greatest systemic threats to the current international order, alongside Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

My method and my limits

This editorial relies on verifiable journalistic and official sources, cited and dated. I do not claim to know the precise content of every scenario simulated during these Taiwanese exercises, nor the exact timeline of any potential Chinese escalation. Where uncertainty remains, I say so explicitly.

Sources

Primary sources

Ukraine's Ministry of Defence — official statements

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense — official statements

Army Inform — defense news

Secondary sources

Foreign Policy — coverage of China-Taiwan tensions

Al Jazeera — Asia-Pacific geopolitical coverage

WION — international coverage