There are many ways to wage war but the best way, or so the Chinese doctrine famously goes, is to conquer the enemy's strategy, not their army. Or, put another way, to win without fighting. Imagine for the sake of argument that you're president and your intelligence chief walks into your office to inform you that, for the better part of the past decade, your government’s top national security advisors, even your top aide, have been feeding your adversary every classified briefing, every military plan, every diplomatic strategy. Every “secret” weapon, every tactical advantage, every backup plan, your every thoughts - they knew it all in real time. How would you feel in that moment? You'd surely feel betrayed, but more than that - completely outmaneuvered before the game even began, utterly exposed and defenseless. You’d understand that every strategic advantage you thought you held had been turned against you, that your opponent actually knows you better than you know yourself. Well, that's exactly what just happened in Taiwan. This isn't a hypothetical scenario - it's literally yesterday's news from Taipei. What happened? Four former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members were indicted on June 10, 2025 for espionage on behalf of the PRC: Huang Chu-jung (黄取荣), Chiu Shih-yuan (邱世元), Ho Jen-chi (何仁杰), and Wu Shang-yu (吴尚雨). As a reminder the DPP is the “anti-China“ party in Taiwan, the pro-independence party that’s been in power continuously since 2016. These people weren't just ordinary party members:
In other words, it's safe to assume that every major Taiwanese defense plan, every diplomatic initiative, every presidential movement, and every strategic assessment has been an open book to Beijing for the better part of a decade. Sure, it’s possible that this is itself a psyop, that these people are in fact all innocent and that the DPP is waging a paranoid witch hunt. But even if that were the case, the outcome is virtually the same: China has effectively already won the psychological warfare. How can Taiwan's military and political leadership ever again have confidence in their own security apparatus? The mere suspicion of such comprehensive penetration at the highest levels of government is enough to paralyze decision-making and destroy the trust essential for effective defense. It also results in destroying the trust of Taiwan’s partners: seeing this as an American, you can only conclude that you must operate under the assumption that any exchange of classified materials, operational details, or strategic assessments with the government in Taiwan will be on Xi Jinping's desk before the meeting ends. It effectively neutralizes any meaningful defense cooperation. In other words, the conclusion is devastating for Taiwan: China might have just achieved the ultimate _expression_ of its own strategic doctrine - they have conquered Taiwan's strategy so completely that conquering by fighting becomes unnecessary. And this isn’t the only immensely consequential recent news for Taiwan. In fact, yesterday - decidedly quite the eventful day - there was an even more important revelation: China has effectively “broken” the so-called “First Island Chain“. How so? Yesterday, June 10th 2025, for the first time in history, two Chinese aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and Shandong, operated simultaneously beyond the First Island Chain in the western Pacific. They weren’t there alone - they were accompanied by full carrier strike groups, complete with destroyers, frigates, and support vessels. As a reminder the so-called "First Island Chain" is this invisible “Maginot line“ of strategic control that extends from the southern tip of Japan, runs through Taiwan, and continues down to the South China Sea through the Philippines. It's been the backbone of American Pacific strategy for decades, designed specifically as a containment barrier to trap China's navy in its own backyard and to prevent Chinese naval power from projecting into the broader Pacific. And that’s precisely what the two Chinese carrier strike groups demonstrated was effectively obsolete yesterday: China's navy can now operate with complete impunity in waters beyond the First Island Chain, deep into the western Pacific. The First Island Chain just isn't a barrier anymore. This basically represents the collapse of the U.S.’s entire strategic paradigm for the Pacific. And this is just the beginning. With China's third carrier, the Fujian, now conducting trials, it's only a matter of time before three Chinese carrier groups are prowling these waters simultaneously. What this also means, effectively, is that Taiwan's strategic utility to the United States has just shifted from being a defensive barrier to being a strategic liability located within China's expanding sphere of naval control. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this changes the strategic equation quite significantly for Taiwan. You’d rather want to be an asset to your supposed “defender“ than a liability… All in all we’re rapidly arriving at a situation that former Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo predicted: the strategic balance is shifting so decisively in China's favor with regards to Taiwan that the current status quo has become “a ticking time bomb.” Yeo was arguing already back in 2023 that Taiwan's best option was to negotiate a political accommodation with Beijing while it still had some bargaining leverage, rather than wait until China's superiority becomes so overwhelming that Taiwan has no choice but unconditional surrender. He isn’t the only one making this argument. Yingtai Lung, former culture minister of the ROC, recently wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan“ with much the same argument, arguing that "Taiwan must begin an immediate, serious national conversation about how to secure peace with China on terms that are acceptable to us." Yeo’s proposal on what Taiwan ought to seek remains the most thoughtful I’ve heard: he proposes establishing some form of confederation modeled after the old Swiss confederacy or the Icelandic commonwealth, where there's no common executive authority but both sides coordinate on mutual interests. Taiwan keeps its autonomy, China gets symbolic reunification, and everyone avoids the catastrophic alternative. You can listen to the proposal which Yeo described in front of an audience made of senior ROC officials, including former president Ma Ying-jeou. The last but not least important aspect to consider here is of course the opinion of the people in Taiwan themselves. And what we’ve recently witnessed with Trump is what can only be described as a complete collapse of confidence in American support. According to a recent survey by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, less than a third of people in Taiwan view Washington as dependable. This is confirmed by another survey by Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top research institution, which found that nearly two-third - 59.6 percent - of people in Taiwan do not agree that the U.S. is trustworthy. When your defense strategy depends entirely on foreign intervention by a “partner“ that your own people overwhelmingly don’t trust, you have a problem. This is another critical dimension of “war without fighting” - Taiwan is increasingly convinced (and probably rightly so) that it would stand alone in an impossible fight. Meanwhile, what the overwhelming majority of the people in Taiwan want - and this has been the case for many years already - is the status quo. Not independence, not reunification, the status quo. And not in a small way: more than 80% of Taiwanese consistently poll for maintaining the current arrangement, while support for independence has actually been dropping since 2020. All in all, one can only conclude that Yeo is not only right but that Taiwan’s current trajectory makes his proposal a strategic imperative. There is indeed “a ticking time bomb” at play here, and while the Taiwanese people's preference for maintaining their way of life could still theoretically be accommodated in a US-free “Icelandic commonwealth“ type arrangement, Taiwan's bargaining position is melting away like snow under sun. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Arnaud Bertrand, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. © 2025 Arnaud Bertrand |