Taiwan is trying to learn from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine

EVERY WAR is a chance for other armies to learn. The fighting in Ukraine and Israel offers lessons aplenty. Among the most avid students is Taiwan, which fears it might be the next target of attack.

China claims the self-governing island as its own, and vows to retake it eventually, whether by peaceful means or by force. Taiwan’s latest annual military assessment finds that China’s forces are growing stronger, but are not yet “fully prepared to conduct a full-scale invasion on Taiwan”, according to Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. But for how much longer? America says Xi Jinping, China’s leader, wants his armed forces to be ready by 2027.

Days after Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on October 7th last year, Taiwan’s defence ministry appointed a task force to study the conflict. One instant takeaway, said Taiwan’s defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, was the need to improve intelligence to avoid surprise. Others noted the danger that air defences risk being overwhelmed by “saturation” missile attacks.

“The Boiling Moat”, a recent book of essays edited by Matt Pottinger, a former White House official, urges Taiwan to adopt other lessons from Israel—even to recruit Israeli experts to help reform Taiwan’s conscription system and instil a “warrior ethos”.

Taiwan has recently lengthened compulsory military service for men from four months to a year. But this is short of Israel’s three years and excludes women. Israeli reserve units are used for frontline fighting; in Taiwan they are charged mainly with home-front tasks. Taiwan’s military spending has almost doubled since 2016, and is set to reach 2.6% of GDP, but is still roughly half of Israel’s military expenditure before the war in Gaza.

The war in Ukraine, meanwhile, highlights the importance of “asymmetric” weapons that are cheap, hard to detect and plentiful. It also teaches the fact that high-intensity fighting consumes vast amounts of munitions. China hawks want America to pre-position weapons in Taiwan, as it does in Israel and elsewhere, but that would be politically fraught.

Critical infrastructure, such as the country’s power supply, must be resilient. Ditto communication links. Access to Starlink’s internet satellites has proven essential to the Ukrainian army. In November 2023 Chuanghwa Telecom, a Taiwanese firm, signed a deal with OneWeb, another provider of low-earth-orbit satellites.

Some think reforms must go much further. Enoch Wu, the director of Forward Alliance, a Taiwanese NGO, calls for a “clean house” to remove obstructionists in the armed forces. Meanwhile, Taiwanese civil-society organisations are mobilising. One of them, Doublethink Lab, which combats Chinese disinformation, is sharing information with its Ukrainian counterparts. Amateur-radio enthusiasts are also learning how to communicate in the case of an emergency.

Perhaps the most crucial lesson from Israel and Ukraine is the readiness to fight. Taiwan needs to hold out long enough for friends to come to its aid, but polls suggest the will to resist rests, in turn, on whether Taiwanese think America will defend them. Worryingly, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in November’s presidential election, has said that Taiwan should pay America for protection. Taiwan can do much to strengthen its defences but, alas, it can do little to influence American politics. ■