Learning from the First Phase of the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis
In April, I asserted that the lessons learned from Russia’s war in Ukraine might influence China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “accelerate the timetable for a smaller scale conflict” in the Taiwan Strait, short of a full-scale amphibious invasion (China Brief, April 8). On August 4, the PLA began a series of joint live-fire exercises in six exclusion zones surrounding Taiwan, including some that imposed on Taiwan’s territorial seas (81.cn, August 6). These exercises signal Beijing’s extreme pique that U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi led a Congressi...