International Affairs gave us the allowance to post the following original article.
15 April 2025
By Professor Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann
With Trump focusing on China both economically and strategically the possibility of war over Taiwan is more acute then ever. Defending Taiwan is not only a question of military power but also the island’s resilience in the face of Beijing’s multimodal aggression.
Beijing considers Taiwan as a breakaway province and President Xi Jinping has made it the expressed national aim of reunification—peaceful or by military means. Stopping short of military force, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and its services have engaged in acts of sea cable cuttings; continuing PLA incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) by PLA aircraft; PLA Navy (PLAN) exercises using a combination of conventional and unconventional naval assets (such as maritime militia) as a show of force; to harass Taiwanese civilian shipping; and to highlight Beijing’s ability to control the water ways around Taiwan. Showcasing this ability is crucial for Beijing to signal that it can impose a full air and maritime quarantine of Taiwan and also can switch to full blockade if necessary.
Beijing’s recent two day military exercises around Taiwan, called Strait Thunder – 2025A, was intended as a show of force of Land, Air, and Sea capabilities and manoeuvres to demonstrate the PLA’s overall military strength and capabilities. The idea is to illustrate an overwhelming force that can annihilate the Taiwanese peoples’ will to resist an invasion by the PLA.
Trump 2.0’s focus on China and the region
The US under Donald Trump 2.0 is clearly strategically pivoting towards the region while reducing its focus on Eastern Europe, even withdrawing substantial numbers of troops. Trump’s National Defence Strategy may end the strategic ambiguity over Taiwan by including an explicit commitment towards maintaining the status quo of an independent and sovereign Taiwan. The denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan has become the Department of Defense’s “sole pacing scenario,” and is tied to the precondition of a strengthening of Taiwan’s resolve to defend itself as well as increase defence spending.
Beijing is stepping up its grey zone aggression against Taiwan and its people
“Grey zone” operations take place in a multi-modal, “hybrid” way, and have been described by NATO as “increasingly blurring lines between peace and war in the 21st century.” Senator Linda Reynolds’ in 2019 referred to both grey zone tactics and hybrid warfare as adversaries’ key “options for pursuing strategic ends just below the threshold of traditional armed conflict.”
“Winning without fighting” is at the heart of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and is reflected in Beijing’s own original Hybrid Warfare concept. This is referred to by the PLA as “unrestricted warfare”
and its strategic utility of the three warfares (san zhong zhanfa) focuses on the perceptual domain through public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.
The Chinese Communist Party’s use of such grey zone tactics include a whole range of non military, coercive activities increasingly aimed at shifting the balance of power in Taiwan in favour of Beijing. These activities are taking place across multiple domains, including cyber space.
Taiwan’s Whole of Society response to Beijing’s grey zone aggression
Taiwan’s concept of Whole-of-Society Resilience is a multi-stakeholder-based approach to strengthening national overall resilience in times of crisis and war. It actively involves Taipei’s Central government, local governments across the island, as well as actors from both civil society and industry. In January 2022, Taiwan established the All-Out Defence Mobilization Agency (ADMA) under the auspices of the Ministry of National Defence to focus on the maximising civil-military defence mobilisation and cooperation. In May 2024, Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, established the Whole-Of-Society Defence Resilience Committee which is overseen by the National Security Council. The Whole-of-Society Defence Resilience initiative is a response to the clear and present danger of Chinese military aggression and aims to increase resilience among the civilian population. The aim of strengthening national resilience in national defence, disaster management, and overall democratic robustness is being implemented along five Lines of Efforts (LOEs), namely: civilian force training and utilization; strategic material preparation and critical supply distribution; energy and critical infrastructure operations and maintenance; social welfare, medical care, and evacuation facility readiness; and information, transportation, and financial network protection. Raising awareness across these LOE’s as well as setting and coordinating strategic objectives involving all Whole of Society actors and stakeholders is a first step towards creating resilience.
NATO and Nordic security precursors for mitigating grey zone and hybrid threats
