EDITORIAL: Taiwan Is Preparing to Survive; the West Must Prepare to Act

Insufficient Media Coverage

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

This relative media silence contrasts with the gravity of the situation documented on the ground, where each new round of Taiwanese civil defense exercises confirms preparedness for a scenario that most Western analysts now consider a matter of time rather than probability.

The Cost of This Silence to Western Preparedness

This lack of media attention also translates into a lack of political preparedness in the West, where decision-makers struggle to anticipate the economic and security consequences of an actual blockade of Taiwan—a country that is, after all, at the heart of global semiconductor production.

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

Beyond Symbolic Statements of Support

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

This expectation reflects a shift in Taiwan’s strategy, which is increasingly focused on the autonomy of its deterrence capabilities rather than on exclusive reliance on a hypothetical military intervention by its allies in the event of an open conflict with Beijing.

Resilience Must Also Be Economic

Beyond military and civilian preparedness, 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 fully understand Taiwan’s quest for autonomy. No democracy should base its survival solely on the promise of foreign intervention, which might come too late.

Unrelenting Military Pressure

While Taiwan steps up its resilience exercises, China continues to apply its own military pressure around the island through repeated air and naval incursions that regularly test the Taiwanese armed forces’ response capabilities without crossing the threshold into open conflict.

This constant pressure, without triggering direct hostilities, is part of a Chinese “gray zone warfare” strategy aimed at gradually exhausting Taiwan’s resources and vigilance rather than provoking an immediate confrontation with unpredictable consequences for Beijing. This gradual approach significantly complicates the Western response, since no single incident appears serious enough to warrant an immediate collective reaction, while the accumulation of these incidents is gradually reshaping the regional strategic balance to Taiwan’s detriment.

Why This Chinese Strategy Makes Taiwanese Resilience Essential

In the face of this strategy of sustained pressure, the civilian resilience developed by Taiwan becomes a deterrent in its own right, demonstrating to Beijing that a blockade or invasion would face a prepared population rather than a country caught off guard.

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

The Ukrainian Precedent as a Model

Ukraine’s experience since 2022 offers an instructive precedent for Taiwan: countries that invest early in civilian resilience and defensive preparedness are better able to withstand aggression than those that rely solely on rapid external intervention.

While this comparison is not perfect—given the very different geographic and military contexts between Eastern Europe and the Taiwan Strait—it reinforces the legitimacy of Taiwan’s strategy of intensive civil preparedness rather than passive wait-and-see.

What Taiwan Has Learned from This Precedent

Taiwanese officials have explicitly cited lessons from the conflict in Ukraine in designing their own resilience exercises, particularly regarding the importance of keeping critical infrastructure operational under the pressure of a protracted conflict.

I see in this reference to Ukraine a universal lesson for all democracies under threat: resilience is built before a crisis, never during it.

Support Must Come Before a Crisis

This editorial takes a clear stance: the West cannot simply stand by and passively observe Taiwan’s preparations while reserving its concrete support for a time when a crisis has already erupted—a scenario in which aid would almost certainly arrive too late to be fully effective.

Western support must come before the crisis, through an immediate strengthening of cooperation in defense, intelligence sharing, and economic support for Taiwanese industry—particularly in the semiconductor and autonomous defense technology sectors.

The cost of inaction would be immense

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

Let me put it bluntly: if the West waits for a blockade to begin before taking action, it will have already lost the most important part of this confrontation—the preparatory phase.

A collective effort that disrupts daily life

These resilience exercises come at a cost to the Taiwanese population: temporary disruptions to economic activity, the mobilization of considerable public resources, and repeated disruptions to daily life in urban areas where the most intensive simulations of blockades and attacks 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 preparedness deemed necessary.

A Model Other Democracies Should Study

This Taiwanese model of integrated civil preparedness deserves careful study by other democracies exposed to similar threats, particularly the Baltic and Eastern European countries facing continued pressure from Russia, which could draw practical lessons from this systematic approach.

The applicability of this model extends beyond the military sphere: it also encompasses economic, energy, and communications dimensions that could inspire a more coherent Western approach to converging authoritarian threats.

I believe that this Taiwanese model deserves serious consideration by every Western democracy facing an authoritarian threat. Civil preparedness is not paranoia; it is basic political responsibility.

What Taiwan Is Showing 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 long before that aggression materializes, through systematic preparation of the population and critical infrastructure.

Taiwan’s preparedness deserves to be recognized not as a sign of excessive alarmism, but as a model of democratic responsibility in the face of a threat that has been clearly identified and documented for years.

The Test These Preparations Pose for the West

The real test does not concern Taiwan’s ability to prepare—which has already been demonstrated by these repeated exercises—but rather the West’s ability to transform its rhetorical admiration for this resilience into concrete commitments before a crisis makes this issue tragically urgent.

I conclude with a firm conviction: admiration is no longer enough. Taiwan has done its homework in terms of preparedness; it is now up to the West to do its part, before it is too late to take meaningful action.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist