Taiwan’s unfinished lesson from Ukraine Civil resilience or civil spectacle?

In a sobering piece published by The Diplomat, the urgent message is clear: Taiwan may be rehearsing for war, but it is not yet ready to fight one. As military tensions mount across the Taiwan Strait and the threat of a Chinese invasion looms, the comparisons to Ukraine have grown louder — and, in many ways, more troubling. While the slogan “Defending Ukraine is defending Taiwan” has captured imaginations in Washington and Taipei alike, the real takeaway from Ukraine’s experience has yet to be implemented: civil society must be mobilised before the first shot is fired.

The article opens with a striking juxtaposition: Ukraine, bruised by Russia since 2014, built a culture of national resilience from the grassroots up. Taiwan, by contrast, is only now beginning to take hesitant steps toward civic preparedness. Despite the expansion of Taiwan’s Han Kuang military drills — now incorporating urban civilian environments and cyber-defence simulations — the exercises are still largely performative. They are visible, dramatic, and impressive for media optics, but lack the embedded structure of whole-of-society mobilisation.

The difference runs deeper than drills. It’s psychological. In 2021, many Ukrainians accepted that full-scale invasion was not just possible, but probable. In contrast, many Taiwanese still view war with China as an abstraction, kept at bay by economic interdependence, geographical separation, and the presumed deterrence of U.S. military support. This has bred a passive public mindset. A 2025 poll cited in the article notes that while most Taiwanese identify with the island rather than with China, they overwhelmingly prefer maintaining the “status quo” — a position of comfortable ambiguity rather than one of existential urgency.

Meanwhile, China is taking the opposite approach. Patriotic indoctrination, information control, and population-wide conditioning have prepared the mainland not just militarily, but societally, for confrontation. Beijing’s population has been groomed to see “reunification” as inevitable and righteous. Taiwan’s population, on the other hand, is only now confronting what that might mean in practical, civic terms.

The authors of The Diplomat rightly warn that Taiwan cannot afford to rely solely on external guarantees. As Ukraine’s experience with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum showed, paper promises do not equal battlefield support. Even if the United States does intervene, it may be too late unless Taiwan has a fully mobilised society capable of delaying and resisting an initial Chinese onslaught. And there’s little illusion that China’s strategy would allow much time: a rapid, overwhelming operation — framed as a “peacekeeping” mission or “quarantine” — could paralyse the island before global powers react.

Programs like Kuma Academy, and reforms such as the expansion of conscription from four months to a year, are steps in the right direction. But they are still reactive and fragmented. What Taiwan lacks is a coordinated national strategy for civilian readiness — a cultural and institutional transformation akin to what Ukraine underwent after 2014. That transformation made Ukraine’s eventual defence not only possible, but credible.

In the end, The Diplomat delivers a stark message: Taiwan is not Ukraine. And unless it urgently learns the right lesson — that resistance starts long before the first missile strikes — the island risks being overrun before help can arrive. Performative preparedness may win headlines, but only deep-rooted civic resilience will buy the time and space needed to survive.

By Vugar Khalilov