Just as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine provided China with a real time laboratory on the political and military lessons of modern war, so too the current U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is providing Beijing with real-time insights into how American power is exercised. This includes the military domain, how U.S. alliances function under stress, and how the information environment shapes perceptions of conflict. For President Xi Jinping, who has talked constantly about China’s unfinished business in Taiwan, the lessons are crucial.

However, while the war may prove encouraging lessons for Xi, particularly with regards to American strategy development and execution, other aspects will be more discouraging for the Chinese. It is important that we understand what Xi might learn from the Iran War because it will shape allied deterrence efforts in the Pacific to limit Chinese military aggression, including diplomatic, information, technological and military efforts.

This assessment examines key strategic insights that China’s leadership might extract from the Iran conflict, before evaluating whether these insights affect the probability of Xi ordering a military blockade or invasion of Taiwan in the short term.

Part I: Xi’s Strategic Insights from the Iran War

1. The Trump Method: One Fight at a Time

An important insight for Chinese strategic planners is the extent to which the Iran conflict has consumed American political bandwidth. Washington is concurrently managing a war with escalating costs, a volatile oil market, a fractured NATO alliance, and simultaneous trade tensions with China. The PLA has been watching closely how the U.S. political system struggles to maintain strategic focus across multiple theatres.

The lesson for Taiwan: a deeply distracted United States, fighting a war it did not fully anticipate, with a president who has publicly stated he doesn’t need allies, may have a diminished capacity to pivot rapidly to a Taiwan contingency. Even if the war in Iran ends, a Trump administration absorbed by a campaign against Cuba or mid-term or Presidential elections might equally struggle to reorient to a Chinese military campaign against Taiwan.

2. Global Trade Disruption

The Iran conflict has ignited oil prices and disrupted global shipping, raising the fundamental question: in a contest of economic endurance between China and the United States, who blinks first? China is also heavily dependent on the Strait of Hormuz, which complicates its strategic calculus. Trump asked China to send warships to help police the strait—China refused.

Beijing is observing that its refusal to cooperate carries no immediate cost. Xi’s lesson from the Iran war, however, is that Washington can absorb economic shock in the short term if a president is willing to accept political pain. But the Iranian precedent, with oil at over $100 a barrel, global supply chains disrupted, and allies alienated, is beginning to show the limits of American economic endurance when policy is made impulsively.

3. Trump’s Unpredictable and Impulsive Nature: A Double-Edged Sword

Iran was conducting negotiations through Oman when the U.S. and Israel struck. The PLA has probably concluded that Trump will act regardless of whether diplomatic channels are open. This has a specific implication for Taiwan: China cannot rely on a diplomatic off-ramp to prevent U.S. military intervention, but it also cannot rely on Trump to behave predictably as a deterrent.

Trump’s impulsiveness cuts both ways for Beijing. It is a risk—he might act on Taiwan more forcefully than any previous president. But it is also an opportunity: a president who acts without consulting allies, who publicly attacks NATO while demanding their help, and who measures success in terms of personal narrative, is one whose strategic red lines are opaque even to his own government. Xi may calculate that Trump can be managed through flattery, deals, and economic incentives in ways that a more institutionally constrained president could not.

Critically, Trump told reporters his trip to meet Xi would take place in approximately five or six weeks—signalling that personal diplomacy between the two leaders remains a live channel even as the Iran war rages. Xi understands that Trump’s personal relationships can serve as a strategic buffer.

4. A Faltering U.S. Strategic Decision-Making System

One of the most underappreciated insights from the Iran war is that America’s strategic decision-making apparatus does not need to be deliberately compromised to produce poor outcomes. It is doing that on its own. The Trump administration has transformed the National Security Council from a sophisticated interagency coordination mechanism into a thin shell around presidential instinct. The Iran war is the first major live test of this hollowed-out architecture. Three shortfalls stand out:

• Structural Dismantlement of Staff Capacity. In January 2025, approximately 160 NSC detailees were sidelined and told to work from home pending a loyalty review. Following the ouster of National Security Adviser Waltz in May 2025, scores more were dismissed—a ‘liquidation’ of NSC staffing driven by loyalty considerations rather than capability.

• Degraded Interagency Process. CNN reported that the Pentagon and NSC significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz. Agency analysis and economic forecasts—integral in past administrations—were treated as secondary considerations, producing a worst-case scenario that blindsided the administration.

• Decision-Making Centralised Around Presidential Instinct. Trump appears to have replaced institutional deliberation with a tight personal advisory circle. The Iran strike decision was substantially shaped by lobbying from foreign heads of state and a single senator rather than structured consequence planning. A senior U.S. official captured the result: ‘Without a real interagency process led by the NSC, the planning falls apart.’

For Xi, this is deeply reassuring. He does not need to hack U.S. decision-making systems or run elaborate influence operations. The system is already generating strategic noise and confusion at scale.

5. Winning the Story of the War: America’s Blind Spot

The Iran war has again exposed America’s extraordinary weakness in the information domain. The PLA’s own published analysis explicitly identifies “the illusion of victory” as one of its key lessons—acknowledging that propaganda cannot win modern warfare. Yet China’s relative disadvantage here is dwarfed by America’s self-inflicted wounds on information credibility.

Trump has consistently provided embellished descriptions of Iranian destruction, coalition support, and military progress. Claims about numerous countries joining a coalition were made without evidence; NATO allies rejected the characterisation outright. These embellishments have been compounded by AI-generated videos posted on official White House social media that have been described as “demolishing decades of presidential decorum around wartime messaging”. The result is a global audience that is increasingly discounting American official narratives by default. This creates an enormous opportunity for Chinese information operations in a Taiwan contingency: if Beijing can frame a Taiwan blockade as a defensive operation against U.S. provocations, a significant portion of the Global South—already accustomed to American narrative inflation—may be receptive.

China has spent years building alternative media infrastructure, cultivating relationships with Global South governments, and framing Western security concerns as imperialism. Beijing has already condemned the Iran war as a violation of international law. In a Taiwan scenario, it would amplify this framing globally, positioning any Chinese action as a domestic matter and any U.S. response as unprovoked aggression by a country that just bombed a third country while negotiations were ongoing.

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Countries such as Australia have no time to waste in rethinking their options and strategies for engaging with the world after this period between global systems. This period has dispossessed nations of their long-held, cherished assumptions about how the world works. Reframing their view of the world is now imperative.

U.S. action in Venezuela and the Trump administration’s threats against Greenland have pushed NATO and the broader international system to the brink of oblivion. The familiar old world order is disappearing. But no cohesive new global operating system has emerged to replace it.

Nations now exist in an interregnum as they attempt to navigate the roiling and dangerous seas of a post–Pax Americana world. No one can guarantee that this will be a peaceful period, nor can one predict how long this time of global uncertainty could last.

Some experts already predict that the other side of this period will feature a return to spheres of influence. The model most frequently touted is a “Big Three” framework, where the United States, China, and Russia divide the world into regions of domination.

However, the Big Three model has some problems. For example, Europe poses a significant challenge to the establishment of a Russian sphere of influence. At the same time, countries such as Brazil, India, Japan, Nigeria, and South Korea are middle powers that wield significant global influence. Their agency needs to be accounted for. One could imagine more than three global spheres of influence if those countries break away and form their own power centers.

Australia, with its large economy and geographic isolation, has options for surviving and thriving in such an uncertain world. Simply aligning with one of the Big Three powers could no longer be the right strategy. However, operating outside of that structure would necessitate Australia to increase its spending on defense, intelligence, and other elements of national security—it could even need to secure its own nuclear deterrent.

You can read the rest of this piece, as well as a collection of other terrific articles on the changes to the world order, published by the Council on Foreign Relations at this link.

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As the competition for the best drones, most concentrated employment of autonomous systems, and the race to develop the best warfighting concepts and military structures to exploit drones continues to accelerate, an event early in the new year allows outside observers some insights into how China and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might be thinking about the issue.

Between 5 December 2025 and 12 January, between one and two thousand Chinese fishing vessels were mobilised to form a linear barrier that was over 400 kilometres long on at least two occasions. As the images below from the original story in The New York Times shows, the barrier was established in waters between China and Japan, to the north of Taiwan.

The possibilities suggested by these activities are fascinating.

As Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy officer and military strategy analyst noted not long after this phenomenon was detected, the Chinese fishing vessel concentration might be employed by the Chinese during a war “as missile and torpedo decoys, overwhelming radars or drone sensors with too many targets.”

The December 2025 - January 2026 concentration of Chinese vessels acts as yet another rehearsal of China’s whole-of-nation capacity to wage a campaign of coercion against its neighbours, or to employ this kind of barrier during a future war. The rehearsals will have allowed senior Chinese military and political leaders (those who have not been purged, of course) to assess the large-scale mobilisation of smaller civilian vessels to support a whole of nation approach to warfighting and securing Chinese political objectives in its region.

This is hardly new. The Chinese have been rehearsing the use of larger civilian cargo vessels and ferries for some time. In a January 2026 report from the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI), Thomas Shugart and Michal Dahm described how the PLA has “employed a unique type of civilian deck cargo ship known as a Landing Craft Tank (LCT) to transport military vehicles directly to shore as part of an amphibious landing exercise.” In an earlier report from CMSI called Chinese Amphibious Warfare, the subject of civilian shipping in a maritime invasion of Taiwan is given an entire chapter.

Therefore, the most recent concentration of fishing vessels is also an extension of contemporary Chinese military practice in the maritime domain. And it constitutes a rudimentary yet potentially effective barrier system for naval operations. But, given the technological and operational creativity of the PLA, another potential trajectory of this maritime barrier is suggested.

Maritime Drone Barriers in the Pacific

The technology, and the command and control, employed to achieve the Chinese fishing vessel concentration might be employed as a test bed for an oceanic version of the drone barrier system we have watched Ukraine deploy along its eastern front line. Under the auspices of the Unmanned Systems Force, a 600-mile-long drone barrier is being established. Initially employing aerial systems operating at various depths behind enemy lines, this drone barrier – or drone wall – also increasingly features a wide range of uncrewed ground combat and support vehicles.

But it is not only on the eastern Ukraine frontline from which the Chinese may have drawn inspiration. For several years, the Ukrainians have been developing an increasingly capable drone barrier system in the Black Sea. With almost no major surface combatants, Ukraine’s drone and long-range missile capabilities have forced the Russian Black Seas Fleet out of the western reaches of the Black Sea.

For an excellent description of this war in the Black Sea, H.I. Sutton’s continuously updated narrative at Covert Shores, which you can read here, is highly recommended.

The obvious question is this: why wouldn’t the Chinese do the same as part of their anti-access strategy in the western Pacific?

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On 29 December, just as the summit between President’s Zelenskyy and Trump was finishing at Mar-a-lago, and hundreds of journalists were filing their initial analyses of the meeting, the Peoples Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command announced that it had commenced exercise "Justice Mission 2025" in the Taiwan Strait.

Similar to other joint exercises conducted in 2025 and 2024, this was an activity to rehearse future military campaigns to “shield” Taiwan from outside military forces that might come to its aid. At the same time, the bottom of the shields in the PLA posters for the exercise are shaped like blades. This is intended by the Chinese to “cut off the delusional dream of Taiwan independence.” Thus, Justice Mission 2025 is intended to project the image of an advanced, capable PLA that can both attack Taiwan while fending off assistance from the military forces of America, Japan and elsewhere.

The exercise is rehearsing a range of military activities and features live fire drills.

The exercise is one of President Xi’s ways of demonstrating his displeasure at the 17 December 2025 announcement by the U.S. government of a massive weapons sale to Taiwan. With a value of US$11.1 billion, this is the largest single U.S. sale to Taiwan in history, and includes highly symbolic weapon systems such as the HIMARS long-range precision strike system.

Finally, we should not discount that Justice Mission 2025 is also designed to message China’s continuing displeasure with Japan. Two of the exercise zones for this PLA activity would (theoretically) permit operations against Japanese military targets on Yonaginajima to the east.

The aim of this article is to provide insights into the new PLA exercise, including locations and objectives, and what the political and military leaders of democracies in Asia and beyond can learn from this joint military exercise.

Exercise Locations

Exercise Justice Mission 2025 has taken place at multiple locations around Taiwan. As the map below demonstrates, these locations correspond to areas where a future Chinese campaign to subjugate Taiwan would focus many of its aerial and naval operations. The northern, eastern and southern zones would correspond to areas where the PLA might conduct “shield” operations to prevent foreign military aide reaching Taiwan. The western and north western zones correspond to transit zones for any aerial and maritime invasion fleets, which would need to be protected by the PLA.

The latest exercise is covering a much larger area than previous exercises going back to 2022. What might we take from this?

First, the PLA is continuing to evolve its operational planning and it is using differing exercise areas over time to assess the optimum locations for any future campaign designed to either quarantine Taiwan or to invade it.

Second, the zones for Justice Mission 2025 are much more interconnected, even though they don’t form a complete, single ring of zones around Taiwan.

Third, the Chinese are messaging the Taiwanese that “the noose is tightening” over time and that the sooner they negotiate a return to the PRC, the better it is for them.

Finally, the PLA is expanding in size and capability. Since 2022, the PLA’s naval fleet allotted to the Eastern and Southern theatre commands has expanded from 2 to 4 cruisers, from 24 to 30 destroyers, from 32 to 39 frigates, and from 31 to 34 attack submarines. The bomber fleet allotted to the Eastern and Southern theatre commands has grown from 250 to 300. Finally, China’s ballistic missile force - operated by the PLA Rocket Force - has also grown significantly in the last three years.

While the maps demonstrate the physical environment of the exercise, the more important exercise “location” is the minds of Taiwanese and foreign observers. While the Taiwanese are quite familiar with decades of CCP coercion, it is unlikely that Xi and his party will ease back on their cognitive warfare against this prosperous, democratic nation that provides an alternative model of governance for the Chinese people.

Foreign audiences for the cognitive warfare associated with Justice Mission 2025 includes politicians, military leaders, business leaders with significant China investments and influential think tank personnel. The key messages that the Chinese are sending are resolve, willingness to sacrifice and unwillingness to negotiate over what the Chinese Communist Party sees as the integral place of Taiwan with the PRC.

Perhaps the most important exercise location is the mind of the U.S. president. The Chinese leader will have been observing just how much Russia’s president is able to manipulate the views of President Trump about the war in Ukraine. Xi may be attempting something similar with this exercise. Xi’s key objective is to project an “inevitable victory” narrative (similar to Putins) and that American intervention would be expensive, bloody and ultimately futile. Xi is also shaping the environment for his 2026 meeting with Trump.

Exercise Objectives

The key military goals of the activity, as released by PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, include live-fire anti-ship drills at sea and in the airspace north and southwest of Taiwan. This included PLA destroyers, frigates, fighter-bombers, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other forces taking part in the drills. Other operations conducted on the exercise include maritime and aerial targeting operations, simulated strikes against land targets, and live-fire anti-ship missile launches.

The Chinese have also admitted that simulated decapitation activities were a part of the exercise. These operations are designed to kill or capture key political and leadership targets in the early phase of a military campaign in order to degrade decision-making and execution at the political level in Taiwan, and in military operations of the Taiwanese military. National Defense University professor Zhang Chi stated in an interview that “decapitation” is one of the key terms of this exercise, and that the exercise had undertaken simulated strikes on symbolic targets associated with the leaders of the “Taiwan independence” separatist forces.

One of the key lessons the Chinese leadership have learned from the war in Ukraine is to not let enemy leaders live to rally their people and gain foreign support. The CCP cannot afford the emergence of a “Taiwanese Zelenskyy” in the event of a military invasion of the island, and is sure to have multiple contingency plans to prevent this.

The Chinese Coast Guard also announced that they had formed maritime task forces to conduct “comprehensive law-enforcement patrols” in waters surrounding Taiwan and in the areas near the Matsu and Wuqiu islands.

An important higher level objective of this exercise will be to continue developing the skills of the commanders, staff, units and overall command and control of the Eastern Theatre Command. This command is one of the five joint commands established as part of a transformation of the PLA into a more integrated warfighting organisation. These commands operate under the direction of the Central Military Commission, chaired by Xi.

The Chinese theatre commands are responsible for developing and wargaming theatre-specific plans for warfighting, responding to natural disasters and military contingencies, as well as the day-to-day operations focussed on Chinese sovereignty, which includes the kind of coercive military activities conducted daily around Taiwan. As the 2025 Annual Report to Congress on China’s Military and Security Developments issued by the Pentagon notes, these exercises emphasise “the PLA’s ability to coordinate military operations across multiple theatres and domains”.

The Eastern Theatre Command will be just one of the Chinese joint commands that have been training, planning and exercising in order to implement the most recent Chinese military operating concept called Multi-Domain Precision Warfare. As the Pentagon’s 2025 China report notes:

Multi-Domain Precision Warfare (MDPW) is the PLA’s core operational concept, representing an evolution of the PLA’s operational thinking for a potential future conflict with the United States.

The PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command has a variety of military resources to carry out its mission. Its key military formations include three PLA Ground Forces Group Armies (71st, 72nd, and 73^rd) which each have around six combat brigades as well as other supporting brigades (aviation, special operations, artillery, engineers). The Eastern Theatre Command also commands the Eastern Theatre Navy, its naval aviation division, coastal defence units and two marine brigades. It also has 13 Air Force fighter and UAV brigades and regiments as well as a Bomber Division (equipped with different H6 variants), and 11 PLA Rocket Force brigades.

These short-notice, large joint exercises also have a range of other objectives for Chinese leaders at the theatre command, PLA and political levels.

First, the announcement was made over a low tempo period for several nations as well as at a time when much of the attention of the U.S. government and others was focused on the talks between Presidents Zelenskyy and Trump. This timing will have been to test the reaction of Taiwanese, Japanese and U.S. reporting and decision-making systems. The Taiwanese, who observed Chinese preparations for the exercise, were able to quickly react and undertake their own response training as the Chinese ramped up Justice Mission 2025. Both sides are certain to be studying each other’s reactions as the exercises progressed.

Second, the tendency of the Chinese to conduct larger and more complex joint exercises over the past few years is aimed at normalising large-scale Chinese military activity around the coasts, and in the air, in the vicinity of Taiwan. This normalisation of military activity, at increasing scale and frequency, complicates the ability of the U.S., Japan and others to respond because they have to make choices, alone and collectively, about when the increasing scale becomes worthy of an intervention. This normalisation is also central to Chinese strategic and operational deception plans for any future military operations against Taiwan.

A third goal for Justice Mission 2025 to is to test and refine China’s strategic messaging about its resolve and its capability to secure its strategic objectives regarding Taiwan. At the CCP’s 2022 White Paper on Taiwan states:

Resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China's complete reunification is a shared aspiration of all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation. It is indispensable for the realization of China's rejuvenation…Taiwan Is Part of China - This Is an Indisputable Fact.

Exercises such as Justice Mission 2025 serve as just one element of the large Chinese effort to convince the world that they will never give up on seeking to absorb Taiwan. From a military perspective, the PLA is becoming more sophisticated in the timing and manner of announcement of these activities, as well as the kind of media it releases that is related to the exercises. For this exercises, videos and a myriad of posters were released by the PLA as well as other Chinese government agencies.

The Chinese are also analysing the responses of Taiwan and other nations in the information domain. Taiwan, well used to Chinese aggression, issues media releases and useful videos about the Chinese exercises on social media. It also conducted regular briefings about Justice Mission 2025, and Taiwanese responses.

Another objective of Justice Mission 2025 and joint exercises like it is to improve the familiarisation and trust between the force elements drawn from different PLA services. Chinese propaganda videos have shown Chinese Coast Guard and Naval operations, as well as the live firing of long-range missiles. Ultimately, the Eastern Theatre Command will be seeking to improve its joint integration for a real military campaign against Taiwan. As I wrote in a previous article on this topic:

Developing expertise in that single domain requires focus and time. Truly effective modern military institutions need to integrate the operations of forces from across the air, land, sea, space and cyber domains. This joint force is then employed to pose multiple dilemmas for an adversary and eventually, break down their cohesion and overwhelm them. Just putting images of different parts of the PLA joint force in a single video does not mean that the PLA is able to wield them all as an effective and unified joint force.

This integration is not just about inter-service integration. It will also include functional integration. Functions that this will include are air, missile and drone defence, offensive fires, surveillance and reconnaissance and logistics. Each of these are complex in each domain. Multidomain integration is very tough and needs constant rehearsal and learning.

A fifth objective of the Chinese for Justice Mission 2025 will be to provide additional data about the effectiveness of PLA weapon systems. This data can then be used to analyse how individual weapons as well as force structure elements can add to the overall joint campaign that might be executed against Taiwan.

Finally, the most important objective for the Chinese in activities such as Justice Mission 2025 is to hone their understanding of thinking and decision-making of political and military leaders in Taiwan and America. Xi and other senior members of the Chinese Communist Party leadership will in particular be observing the American reaction.

The recent U.S. National Security Strategy released by the Trump administration contained the following passage:

Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority. We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait…We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.

Xi and the strategic thinkers who advise him will be watching for how the U.S. president responds to this exercise, what it portends for the future of the China-America relationship and what signals the American military and foreign affairs institutions send about defending Taiwan against Chinese military aggression.

Assessment: PLA Joint Exercises are Learning Opportunities for Taiwan and America

The Chinese are not the only ones who have an opportunity to learn from large-scale military exercises such as Justice Mission 2025 and its 2025 and 2024 predecessors.

Military and intelligence agencies across the Pacific, especially the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command based in Hawaii, but also in Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere, will be observing the exercise closely with a variety of human and technical resources. In some respects, this latest Chinese exercise is a Christmas gift for intelligence agencies across the Pacific region.

What might be some of the possible insights to be gleaned from this activity?

First, how proficient are the Chinese at planning and executing joint operations? Multi-domain integration, and the conduct of cross domain activities, is a demanding and complex undertaking for any military institution. China has only recently commenced its ‘joint journey’, but is a fast learner. With Multi Domain Precision Warfare as the guiding doctrine for the joint employment of forces, external intelligence agencies will seek to analyse how rapidly the PLA are improving their theatre level joint operations capacity and doctrine.

Crucially, the Chinese ability to achieve surprise will be assessed. Intelligence agencies will be looking for signs of Chinese deception, camouflage and other measures that might be rehearsed in Justice Mission and employed in a real military contingency. In developing this understanding of China joint military capacity, and its ability to generate surprise, it is likely to indicate critical vulnerabilities in the Chinese military system that can be exploited in any future conflict.

Second, how good are basic Chinese military weapons systems ? Many different agencies are likely to conduct collection activities to better understand PLA sensors, weapons, command and control networks and other advanced technologies deployed by the Chinese. Given one of the aims of the PLA large-scale joint exercises will be to test new weapon systems, these exercises can provide a good opportunity for Western intelligence agencies to update their threat libraries based on the latest Chinese equipment, sensors and technologies. For example, Justice Mission 2025 is the first deployment of the new Chinese Type 075/Yushen class LHD, the Hainan, in the waters around Taiwan. Many will be seeking insights into its capabilities at sea.

Third, how is the Chinese military progressing towards “new quality combat forces”? An important element of analysing Chinese equipment and weapons will be an assessment of the PLA’s progress in the development of what it describes as “new quality combat forces”. This concept is the the integration of emerging technologies with military capabilities, and is central to the modernisation of the PLA. As Arran Hope wrote in a recent article for the Jamestown Foundation, “the concept is important to the Party’s attempts to design a national system that fuses economic progress and military strength into an overarching “national strategic system and capabilities.”

As such, the exercise offers the chance for an assessment of how new technologies such as drones, AI supported decision-making, digitised command and control are being integrated into the PLA. It also provides an opportunity to see how these new technologies are forcing change in military structures, doctrine and warfighting concepts. This effort might also assist with assessments about the impact of corruption and removal of senior PLA leaders in the past couple of years.

Fourth, how effective is the command and control between Eastern Theatre Command and the Central Military Commission? Understanding Chinese strategic and operational C2 is crucial because it informs us about how much freedom of action the Commander of the Eastern Theatre Command has, and what kind of operational tempo he might generate with his military forces. This also provides insights into how centralised or otherwise the national to theatre command and control construct is. This can reveal targetable vulnerabilities.

Fifth, how well synchronised is the Eastern Theatre command with other commands such as Southern Theatre Command as well as supporting space, cyber and information commands? There is no way that the Eastern Theatre command could act alone in any military campaign against Taiwan. It would require support from other theatre commands, especially if there is a protracted conflict. Therefore, what are the links between these commands, how good are the working relationships and processes between them, and again, what are the targetable vulnerabilities?

Sixth, what is the current quality of PLA leadership and their personnel overall? PLA exercises provide insights into the quality of the humans in the Chinese military and whether their training and education supports the development and employment of an effective, modern joint force. Key issues that will be watched by external observers of Justice Mission 2025 include how much free play is permitted (that is, how much does Xi trust his generals) and whether there are senior command and leadership changes in the wake of the exercise. These exercises provide valuable insights into the leadership culture as well as the training and education frameworks of key institutions within the PLA.

Seventh, how effective are Chinese military sustainment operations? One of the problems with short military exercises like this is that they rarely rehearse the full array of logistic elements that underpin military campaigns. But any insights into the conduct of joint logistics operations during Justice Shield 2025 will be invaluable because logistics is almost always one of the weakest elements in expeditionary military campaigns. Therefore, intelligence agencies and other observers will be looking for indications of the PLA joint logistics capabilities, how they are deployed and how they are used during the exercise.

Eighth, how good are open source sensors and analysts at tracking Chinese military activity? An array of think tanks and analysts follow developments in the Chinese military system as well as the larger civil-military integration that supports the development of the PLA. They publish images and their findings on social media and on institutional websites. As shown by the war in Ukraine, the open source capabilities offered by think tanks, individuals, private imagery collection companies and corporate intelligence organisations have provided a useful supplement to traditional military intelligence agencies. Over the past decade there has been a growth in a similar open source capability focused on Pacific issues. Both the Chinese and western intelligence agencies are sure to want to build their understanding of this issue.

(At this point, I want to thank the following for their excellent reporting of Justice Mission 2025: @TaiwanMonitor, @songs349, @MoNDefense, @TaiwanMilitary, @ianellisjones, @SinoTalk, @JaimeOcon1, @KTristanTang, @AndrewSErickson, and @OfficialBen_L)

Finally, are the Chinese learning and improving at large-scale joint operations? Justice Mission 2025 will be analysed alongside previous large-scale joint exercises to assess whether the PLA is actually getting better at planning and executing such activities. As observed during the war in Ukraine, the Russian military has ‘learned how to learn better’ in the past four years, while at the same time nurturing a learning community between Russia, Iran, China and North Korea. As I wrote in a recent report on this topic:

A new adversary learning and adaptation bloc has emerged. While not a formal alliance, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have developed a mesh of different agreements and strategic partnerships that have allowed these authoritarian regimes to construct a connected knowledge market on 21st century strategic competition and conflict.

Therefore, has China learned how to learn better from its successive large-scale joint exercises and how has this learning improved their military effectiveness at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. This is vital because the learning and adaptation culture of a military institution plays a large role in determining its tactical and strategic success. Understanding the Chinese military adaptation system will be crucial to developing allied war plans.

Justice Mission 2025: Unwelcome, But a Useful Learning Activity

In many respects, these large-scale Chinese joint exercises are a gift to foreign intelligence agencies. Even with the best operational security and deception plans, it is unavoidable that the Chinese will unveil the capability of many different elements of their military institution.

While the aggression of these activities is unwelcome, they do provide Taiwan, America and those who support Taiwan with a wide range of activities to observe, assess and respond to China’s developing theatre-level campaigning and warfighting capacity.

The final, and most important, question that emerges when these PLA Exercises are conducted is this: when might the Chinese decide that the political and military conditions are just right for them to turn one of these joint exercises around Taiwan into the real thing?

Only Xi knows.

Until then, we must watch and learn from these exercises, and use what we have learned to deter Xi from making that fateful decision.

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Earlier this year I published an article that explored the potential for war in the Pacific.

That article coincided with the release of an excellent study from the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies that explored western political decision making in the lead up to the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The authors found many important biases that led to political leaders misjudging the chances of a war occurring in Europe in 2022.

This resulted in them being caught intellectually and physically unprepared for war when Russia commenced military operations in February 2022. Three particular issues were highlighted in the preface to the report:

• The bias of wishing away uncomfortable truths. In the lead up to the Russia full scale invasion in 2022, the vast majority of politicians, as well as citizens, were simply unable to imagine a large-scale war in Europe in the 21^st century.

• The Mirror-Imaging Bias. This is a key bias because it assumes that one’s adversary will think and act just like them. Quite often, they do not.

• The Repetition Fallacy. Because of the shortfalls of American and British intelligence in analysing Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq, the report found that many European decision-makers were sceptical of American and British intelligence about Russian intentions.

Because of what we know about shortfalls in human decision-making, the biases demonstrated before the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the political decision-making of many leaders across the Pacific, the conditions are set for some kind of surprise generated by the Chinese in the Pacific. While available technologies and historical knowledge should permit governments to mitigate against this, the wise application of either is not a strong feature of all western Pacific democracy at present.

Historical experience provides sufficient evidence that the three biases listed above are likely to repeat themselves in Pacific security affairs. But that does not mean we should throw our hands into the air and accept whatever fate throws in our general direction.

There is much that governments, think tanks, military institutions and individuals might do that anticipate threats, build resilience and prepare to respond to the shock of failure.

The aim of this article is to examine one particular method that contributes to anticipating threats and mitigating the full impacts of surprise: military fiction. I examine why military fiction is an important genre in preparing the minds of military leaders, and why it is crucial in challenging military institutions about the development and application of new ideas and technologies.

Finally, as a small bonus, I provide a preview of the sequel to my 2023 novel, White Sun War.

Fiction and Intellectual Preparation for Future War

After I published my first book, War Transformed, in February 2022, I turned my hand to fiction. One of the reasons I did this was because I wanted to make the ideas presented in War Transformed as accessible as possible to the widest possible audience. Despite my best efforts at writing, any non-fiction book that covers the phenomenon of war is going to contain jargon that some readers might find difficult to understand.

Fiction was a method I imagined might be useful because more accessible language could be used to explore the modern complexities of humans and technology in war, and to reinforce the many enduring elements of war.

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In the past 24 hours, the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy. This is a declaratory policy, and a document, that think tanks, national security practitioners as well ad America’s friends and allies have been waiting on for some time. Like most recent M. Night Shyamalan movies, the initial reviews are hardly glowing. As one reviewerwrote in War on the Rocks:

The new National Security Strategy is out, and it’s a shock to the system. It is not just the latest public articulation of principles, ambitions, and priorities around which the United States organizes its foreign policy. Instead, it reads like a manifesto for a radically different American project. It is narrower, more partisan, more inwardly focused, and more personalized than any of its predecessors.

The strategy probably marks a epochal shift from the national security policy of American administrations after the end of the Cold War. Indeed, this new document probably marks a new phase of the post-Cold War era. Let me explain.

Initially, there was a decade long Era of Euphoria where America strode tall across the world stage. It had won the decades-long cold war, its tech industry was delivering new riches to the nation and America military power was at its zenith. This era came to an end with the 9/11 attacks. This saw the dawn of the 9/11 era of post-Cold War history, where counter terrorism operations, national building and the rise of social media, distrust in institutions and the growth of the power and influence of authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia.

The 2025 Trump National Security Strategy ends that 9/11 era. We are now in a more chaotic and transactional era. It is the America First era. And it is likely to be a transitional era as the major powers – China, Russia, India, America, Japan and Europe – undergo a rebalancing in global power, prosperity and influence. This new America First era will last years, if not decades. But the competition, cooperation, and conflicts we are likely to see in this era will likely give birth to the new world order promised at the end of the Cold War. It just won’t be the End of History we all hoped for!

American National Security in the America First Era

While the focus of this article is the Pacific elements of the new National Security Strategy, a quick look at the document is in order.

It begins with an introduction from Donald Trump and the dubious statement that “over the past nine months, we have brought our nation – and the world – back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster.” A few other interesting, evidence-free claims are then made before we then get into the main document.

The focus in the international aspects of the new National Security Strategy is economics and military power. Domestically, it jumps into culture wars and a range of other topics.

It is a much shorter document than its 2022 predecessor (and much shorter than the 2017 National Security Strategy from the first Trump administration). And while those two previous documents explain America’s role in the world up front, with America First featuring prominently in 2017, the 2025 National Security Strategy starts very differently.

It begins with a whining statement that “American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short” and then has a kick at foreign policy elites several times on the same page. But, as the new document explains, the Trump administration has “successfully marshalled America’s great strengths to correct course and begin ushering in a new golden age for our country.”

The aim of this article is not to provide a blow-by-blow critique of the document. There are more than enough quick-take articles on the National Security Strategy by news outlets. There are also some more considered, and serious, examinations of the new strategy that are actually worth reading. The Council on Foreign Relations has a good examination here. Another critique, by Eliot Cohen, describes the National Security Strategy as follows:

This is a populist document. It expresses an undifferentiated loathing of traditional foreign-policy elites, which the administration has shunned. Its intellectual incoherence is that of the angry autodidact, the anti-vaxxer activist, and the anti-Biden conspiracy theorist.

The document, like the administration, is split between internationalist and isolationist impulses—offering a commitment to American alliances and a forward presence in Asia on the one hand, and indulging proclivities for “America First” isolationism on the other. In some respects, the NSS reflects the peculiar nature of the Trump coalition, which is composed of different and occasionally mutually antagonistic factions, and above all of the muddled enthusiasms, resentments, insecurities, and vanities of the president himself.

Despite all of the other commentaries about the document - that is gives Europe unrealistic timelines to look after its defence, that it elevates American culture wars into a national security priority, that it focusses too much on the western hemisphere, that it is anti-immigration and that it places too much emphasis on commercial ties (all of which are reasonable)- there are some interesting and positive aspects of the National Security Strategy that concern the Pacific region.

The Pacific

In her review of the new National Security Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies expert Emily Hardinghas written that “Beijing will love the explicit declaration that the U.S. preference is noninterference in other nations’ affairs and the clear statement about respecting states’ sovereignty. That may assuage Chinese fears that the United States seeks to undermine regime stability. They will hate the calls for them to get out of Latin America and the robust approach to deterrence, both necessary and excellent policy positions.”

Harding’s summation that “overall, the Pacific section is strong” is close to the money. I think there are seven key issues in the National Security Strategy that highlight the opportunities and challenges for Pacific nations dealing with a new America First National Security Strategy.

First, the largest section of the document concerns America’s interests in, and interactions with, Asia. At six pages (of a 29-page document) the weight given to America’s relationships in Asia and its security interests there outweighs its attention paid to Europe, the Middle East and other regions such as Africa and the Western Hemisphere. That is a good thing. The amount of space dedicated to Asia is an important signal from the Trump administration about where its priorities lay. That will, in the main, please Pacific nations. It won’t please Europe nor the Ukrainians fighting for the future of their nation.

Second, China will also not be that happy with the document. The National Security Strategy calls out China’s lack of reform with respect to democratic forms of government and that “since the Chinese economy reopened to the world in 1979, commercial relations between our two countries have been and remain fundamentally unbalanced.” Further on, the document notes that America will rebalance its economic relationship with China and restore American ‘independence’ (whatever that means). More importantly, the document clearly has China in mind when it speaks of “a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific”. It calls out “propaganda, influence operations and other forms of cultural subversion” (which China is a leading proponent and employer of), advocates again for the Quad (which China hates) and describes how America will: “work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation.”

To conclude this section on how China will be unhappy with the new strategy, there is a passage on page 24 of the document that deals with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. It asserts that America will not allow the imposition of a “toll system” over vital sea lanes, which can be viewed as a very direct comment on Chinese behaviour in that body of water. The Chinese Communist Party will hate the concept expounded upon here as the South China Sea resides within their arbitrary ten-dash-line, which has no historical or legal basis.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is yet to issue a formal response to the document. I think their focus at present is the visit of President Macron to China.

Third, many nations in the Pacific will be comfortable with the strategy’s plan to remain in engaged with the region. In the wake of Trump’s comments about NATO and how it has managed its relationship with Ukraine and other European nations, many leaders and strategic thinkers across the region have rightly pondered the degree to which America might also disengage with nations across the Pacific. The new Trump National Security Strategy will assuage some of those doubts, the provide a reinforced level of confidence among America’s allies in the Pacific. Given the latest surge of PLA Navy activity across the region, this is a good thing.

Fourth, there are many economic elements contained in the document that discuss America’s relationship with Pacific nations. This will be viewed across the region positively because nations in the Pacific do not want to see the China-America strategic competition boil down to just a military correlation of forces. Military deterrence is important, but economic considerations outweigh military concerns for many in the Pacific. Economic competition, and the potential for new trading blocs that include America, must now be on the minds of national security policy makers across the Pacific region.

Fifth, America has recommitted to its existing policy towards Taiwan, which in the document as follows:

United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

This will delight the government and people of Taiwan. It will give confidence to other regional nations such as the Philippines and Japan. It will infuriate Xi and the Chinese Communist Party. But it is also a net good for the region, because it encourages (again) economic and diplomatic relations in addition to military deterrence. And, more importantly, this recognises the prosperous, modern democracy that the Taiwanese people have created and that it is worth preserving. As the document asserts on page 9, America stands “for the sovereign rights of nations.”

Sixth, the document does however have a sting in the tail for America’s allies and friends across the region. On page 12, in the section on priorities, the document states that: “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over…Continuing President Trump’s approach of asking allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter.”

Importantly, it then avers that “the United States will stand ready to help—potentially through more favourable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those counties that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighbourhoods and align their export controls with ours.”

Deeper into the document, specific reference is made to Japan and South Korea. The document states that: “we must urge these countries to increase defense spending, with a focus on the capabilities—including new capabilities—necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain.” But other nations also get a mention in this regard. The National Security Strategy calls the current levels of defence spending in Taiwan and Australia:

We will also harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific, while in our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defense spending.

Interestingly, the President of Taiwan published an opinion piece in the Washington Post just ten days ago which makes exactly the kind of commitment to increased defence spending that the Trump administration is calling for. In the piece, President Lai Ching-te writes that “our defense spending, which has already doubled in recent years, is expected to rise to 3.3 percent of gross domestic product by next year. I am committed to lifting this baseline to 5 percent by 2030.”

Unfortunately, the Australian government continues to ignore the signals like this from Washington. It has set defence spending at just over 2% of GDP, and while talking about potential future increases in the 2030s, is cutting budgets in the army, air force, space capability, infrastructure and other areas to fund the second-hand nuclear-powered submarines (two delivered in 2032 and 2035, with a third new one in 2038).

It will be interesting to see whether this is a topic that is discussed, and included in the American read out, of the AUSMIN meeting to be held in Washington DC in the coming week. Generally, the U.S. side provides a more comprehensive debrief of the discussions and outcomes of these meetings than the Australian government.

The seventh and final aspect of the National Security Strategy that will gain the attention of policy makers and think tankers across the region will be the following passage:

The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.

This is a complex and, in some respects, contradictory paragraph. But the key idea that some will take away from it is that America might be endorsing the idea of ‘spheres of influence’. I think the later section on Asia in the document makes American commitments to the security of Taiwan, the South China Sea and other nations clear enough that this is not an explicit endorsement of a Chinese sphere on influence.

But I could be wrong.

Conclusion

Overall, Pacific nations have much more to be satisfied about in the new Trump administration National Security Strategy than European countries. China will probably not be very happy at all, particularly with the economic, sovereignty and military aspects of the strategy.

But America’s democratic allies and partners, from Japan and Korea in north Asia down through the southeast Asian nations to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific island countries, will be generally comfortable that America has re-committed to the region and has placed its priority on prosperity and security in the Pacific.

That said, I don’t think the Trump administration will be permitting Pacific nations to get too complacent about American resourcing and military presence. The Trump administration is serious about burden sharing, and not every nation in this region has fully received the message yet (including Australia).

There will be some concern about exactly how this will be implemented. Writing about economic and military developments - and resourcing the necessary action to realise objectives in these domains - are two very different things. That will bear watching as the strategy is implemented.

This could have been a much worse document for the Pacific region than it is. For those in Pacific nations that are unconvinced, I suggest a trip to any European capital in the coming days. There you will see what true disappointment in this document looks like.

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Over the past week, the new attempt to reach a war termination agreement has played out in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington DC, Geneva and elsewhere. While the original 28-point plan basically calls for Ukraine to surrender its sovereignty and ability to defend itself, the manner in which Trump administration representatives came up with the plan and sought to impose in on Ukraine has many lessons. In my latest piece for the Lowy Interpreter, I explore the implications for the Pacific region of this past few days of the latest Ukraine peace process.

The past week’s events surrounding the new Russian-American plan to end the war in Ukraine provide an opportunity for America’s friends, allies and adversaries to reflect and learn about how much the US view of its role in the world has changed. The dedication of previous American administrations to preserving a world where the strong did not prey on the weak, and where changing borders by force was deterred by democracies with the Leader of the Free World at the forefront, is in its twilight.

During the first Trump administration, the United States conducted secret talks with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war. The deal was negotiated without input from the Afghan government at the time. The final deal, known as the Doha Accord, had its ultimate manifestation in the humiliating, chaotic and tragic evacuation of troops and civilians in late August 2021. While blame was laid at the feet of the Biden administration, the foundations were cast by Trump.

Now, with the Russian-American 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, there is a similar demonstration of perfidious behaviour by Trump’s representatives to secretly negotiate a war termination deal with an enemy behind the backs of friends and allies. The demonstrated behaviour of Trump in two different administrations towards two different wars provides insights into how the Trump administration thinks about its relationships with foreign nations.

How might the Australian national security community apply this knowledge as Ukraine navigates its extraordinarily difficult position?

First, American allies will be disheartened by the Trump administration’s posture towards Ukraine and its willingness to absolve Russia of all its heinous behaviour. America appears to have eschewed any notion of a values-based approach to dealing with democracies and authoritarian nations, and has embraced a strategy where the best proposed deal wins regardless of its source.

All of America’s allies – including Australia – will henceforth need to retune their methods of interacting with the Trump administration and to recast their expectations of American fulfilment of alliance commitments.

Second, those nations which rely on America for their security but are not treaty allies will have much greater cause for concern than America’s allies. The obvious case study at present is Ukraine, but another nation that finds itself with a difficult predicament is Taiwan. Government officials in Taipei are surely wargaming various potential outcomes of the next few weeks in Europe, and what each outcome might mean for the future of their nation. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has also sought to get ahead of the problem with a timely commitment to speed up increases in Taiwanese defence spending. Taiwanese government officials understand that America is unlikely to assist a nation in its defence if it does not help itself first. But all of America’s allies must adopt a similar approach.

For Australia, this demands a significant commitment to more defence and national security spending in the forthcoming 2026 National Defence Strategy. To not do so will provoke both more Chinese aggression against the nation and more American scepticism about a national willingness to defend Australia.

In the wake of any agreed Trump-Putin pact, Europe will continue to re-cast its security calculus and its view of the US relationship. No country in Europe seriously believes a break in the US-Europe relationship is necessary. Europe still needs America, but the relationship will evolve. The same will probably be the case in the Pacific in regards to America’s relationships with countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia.

You can read the rest of the article (for free) here at the Lowy Interpreter.

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Humans keep getting surprised. Whether it is in the personal or professional spheres, surprise is part of human existence. Surprise is also a principle of war and an enduring element of it. Clausewitz wrote that “surprise lies at the foundation of all undertakings without exception.” And as Roberta Wohlstetter describes in her book on the December 1941 Pearl Harbour attack, Pearl Harbour: Warning and Decision:

The possibility of surprise at any time lies in the conditions of human perception and stems from uncertainties so basic that they are not likely to be eliminated, though they might be reduced.

Surprise is going to remain part of war and military affairs, regardless of how technologically sophisticated humans become and how clever we think we may be. The profusion of articles in recent times about contemporary battlefield transparency, created by the merger of commercial and military sensor systems, indicates that some believe that we now exist in a post-surprise epoch. The events of this past several years in Ukraine, and in Israel, provide a counter point, however.

In this article, I wish to examine the roots of surprise in the modern era, and to propose that strategic and tactical surprises are just as likely in the Pacific theatre in the coming years as they have been in Europe and the Middle East over the past four years.

Surprise and Conceptzia

In a recently released book, called While Israel Slept, authors Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot explore the roots of the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. It is not a detailed moment-by-moment account of the day. Rather, it is an examination of the days, weeks and years of decisions that led to the moment when the conditions were just right for Hamas to execute its murderous, multi-day rampage through the kibbutzim and towns of southern Israel.

Their research indicates that, like most surprises, there were many causes for the strategic and tactical surprises that occurred on that awful day. There was a failure of intelligence collection and assessments. There was a failure in the resilience of defensive measures – human and technological – along the border with Gaza. There was failure of military readiness and force posture in southern Israel. There was a failure to understand the true nature of Hamas and an inability to appreciate the full extent of its vicious plans for Israel.

Perhaps most disastrous of all was the failure to challenge long-held political and strategic ideas. This was the case even when compelling evidence was being collected about Hamas preparations by Israeli soldiers tasked to watch Gaza known as “observers”, or in Hebrew, tatzpitaniyot. As Katz and Bohbot describe in their book:

What happened in reality was that Hamas had put Israel to sleep, and the reports by the tatzpitaniyot simply did not match the conceptzia—a Hebrew word that every Israeli has learned since October 7 and which refers to the overarching conception and prevalent assessment within the IDF, the intelligence community, and the government of what Hamas was planning. Israel’s political and military leadership assumed that Hamas had been deterred and wanted quiet, and as a result, the leadership viewed everything through that prism. Anything that fell outside that line of thinking was either ignored or reinterpreted so it could match the conceptzia.

This predisposition of many politicians and other members of ‘the elite’ to not challenge existing dogma is hardly a new idea. It has occurred throughout history. A similar reluctance in Britain, Europe and America to recognise the danger posed by Hitler and Imperial Japan in the lead up to the Second World War had tragic and world-changing results.

The word conceptzia is a terrific one. It is an excellent intellectual concept that can be applied when analysing how adversaries might seek to surprise Western nations in Europe and the Pacific in the years ahead.

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Below is an excerpt from my commentary on this week’s military parade in Beijing as well as its implications for Australia and the wider Indo-Pacific, just published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thank you to the awesome team at CSIS for the quick editing and publication of this piece.

In his speech to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that “we should contribute to safeguarding world peace and stability. . . . We should set an example in championing the common values of humanity.” Two days later, Xi had played host to a crowd of foreign leaders at a military parade in Beijing, which, according to the Chinese Communist Party(CCP), was to commemorate “the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.”

The reality is that the parade had three more vital objectives for Xi. The first was to reshape narratives about the role of Russia and China in winning World War II, and to downplay to very significant role played by allied fighting forces and industry. The second was to act as a mega–arms bazaar, demonstrating China’s latest advanced weaponry to potential buyers, particularly those who no longer wish to rely on Russian equipment or want cut-price versions of the latest generation U.S. weapons. Finally, and most importantly, the parade sought to project China’s strength and its inevitable and unstoppable rise through a demonstration of large-scale and high-technology military power.

The parade, along with the recent three-way handshake between the leaders of China, India, and Russia, was a rebuke with Chinese characteristics to current U.S. economic and security policy objectives in the Indo-Pacific, and potentially heralds a very different political, economic, and security environment for all of us who live and work in this dynamic region of the world.

This commentary aims to assess the implications for Australian politics and national security affairs in the wake of the events of the past 48 hours in China. But first, what was unveiled during the parade, and what might it mean for military affairs in the Pacific theatre?

The Parade: Five Key Themes

The spotlessly curated Tiananmen Square was the background for the Beijing Victory Day Parade. With a thousand-person band, augmented by a massive choir, the parade was well set to be a significant spectacle for the easily impressed. But analysts don’t watch these events for the music. It was the military equipment that rolled past the reviewing stand that was of most interest.

Overall, there were no major surprises, such as a new Chinese stealth bomber, but there were some new weapons and platforms unveiled. The structure and content of the parade were pretty standard. Five key themes stood out, however.

1. Most of the weapons and platforms were not brand new, but generally, every land, air, and sea platform was more of a recent design and more modern than many in the inventories of Western military organisations. Newer does not always mean better, however. While most Western military equipment has been tested in Iraq, Ukraine, and elsewhere, none of China’s new equipment has.

2. The new weapons and platforms were interesting and demonstrate the advanced military research and development ecosystem that China now has. Large underwater uncrewed vessels, the uncrewed rotary wing aircraft, and the HQ-16C missile, DF-61 and DF-31BJ missiles, as well as the laser defence systems, were newly revealed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The unmanned aerial vehicle mounted on the rear deck of the Type-100 Infantry Fighting Vehicle was also interesting as it demonstrated learning and adaptation based on the drone operations of Ukraine and Russia over the past three years.
   
   The key message from all of these systems is that long gone are the days when China was reliant on Russia or other foreign suppliers of its most sophisticated weapons and platforms. The current level of indigenous capacity in China for military production implies high levels of sustainability in any future conflict.

3. Parades are not indicators of warfighting effectiveness. Notwithstanding the impressive orchestration of the parade and highly synchronised music and marching, these have almost zero impact on the measurement of military effectiveness. While there have been large PLA reforms over the past decade, particularly in the creation of joint theatre commands and strategic support institutions, analysts watch exercises and activities such as the PLA’s Joint Sword-2024 exercise and Strait Thunder-2025A around Taiwan to gain insights into real PLA warfighting capability. But even then, Western observers won’t really know until there is a real fight.

4. This parade was designed to influence the calculus of regional governments. However, while the demonstration of military power was impressive, it is unlikely to shift the perspectives of regional leaders drastically. For those who have already decided to accommodate China, the parade might reinforce why they have decided to do so. For others who have decided to resist Chinese aggression, it may provide additional purpose. But perhaps the most interesting question related to the perceptions of foreign leaders is this: What was Putin thinking watching the parade, and what are his generals thinking? Surely, they must be concerned.

5. Xi’s narrative remains steady and consistent. In his speech, President Xi reinforced his long-standing narrative about the inevitable rise of China. He described how “the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable” and that “humanity is again faced with a choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, and win-win outcomes or zero-sum games.” It also gave Xi another chance to reinforce loyalty to the CCP among the PLA.

The parade highlighted that China is continuing towards its aspiration of becoming a “world class military” by 2049. This direction, provided by President Xi at the 19th Communist Party Congress in 2017, appears to be well on track. Indeed, the Chinese may well undershoot this target and achieve military supremacy in the Pacific and beyond much earlier. That could be a problem.

This is certainly what CCP propagandists want nations around the world to believe. Demonstrations of military power are not about extending the hand of peace, despite Xi’s words earlier this week. The military power on display at the parade, or at least the power that China wants the world to perceive, reinforces a narrative of a massive, advanced, and unbeatable PLA. For the many, smaller nations of the Pacific, the message is this: Don’t stand in the way of China’s rise, but work with us. As previously noted, Xi emphasized, “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable.”

But despite the impressive drill and weapons on display, every military has weaknesses and seams that can be exploited. China is no different. Its military personnel and weapons are largely untested in combat. Its middle and senior ranking leaders are promoted mainly for loyalty rather than warfighting effectiveness. Corruption remains a significant challenge. And the will of the Chinese to fight a war—long or short—remains unknown. All these challenges should moderate any anguish or vexation felt by watching the display of military might in China.

You can read the full article at this link.

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You can read my other articles and publications at my CSIS homepage here.

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My new report is now available at the Australian Army Research Centre. I have included the executive summary of the report in this post.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine, originating with the Russian invasion in 2014 and escalating significantly following the full-scale invasion in February 2022, has exerted a profound influence on global security dynamics as well as on the future direction of war. While the likelihood of achieving a peaceful resolution by 2025 remains remote, the war has offered invaluable insights into contemporary warfare, specifically in the areas of advanced technological applications, strategies for deterrence, and the mobilisation of national resources.

Countries such as Japan, Taiwan and the United States have demonstrated a proactive approach by integrating lessons derived from Ukraine into their security policies and procurement strategies. In contrast, Australia’s National Defence Strategy (NDS) of 2024 and its implementation has demonstrated insufficient adaptation to these lessons, particularly in the areas of uncrewed systems, counter-UAV technologies and long-range strike.

This paper posits that most conceivable military scenarios in the Pacific involving Australia and its allies could benefit from the insights obtained from Ukraine. However, at the same time, these lessons must be contextualised given the distinct political, geographic and strategic characteristics of the Pacific theatre.

The document explores key trends in the Ukraine conflict, highlighting the unprecedented visibility provided by open-source sensors, social media platforms, and media access to battlefield operations. While this visibility has contributed to a broader understanding of the conflict’s trajectory and the employment of innovative technologies, the inherent ‘fog of war’ continues to obscure numerous aspects. It is anticipated that certain elements of this conflict may remain unknown or shrouded in ambiguity for years to come.

The paper concludes by presenting recommendations aimed at translating the lessons learned from Ukraine into strategies tailored to the Pacific context. By identifying the specific factors that differentiate the Pacific theatre from eastern Europe, it is argued that military institutions, including the Australian Defence Force (ADF), can more effectively adapt these lessons to enhance deterrence capabilities and the operational effectiveness of military forces amid escalating Chinese military activities—along with those of its Russian and North Korean partners—within the Pacific region.

This examination of Ukraine lessons within the context of future Pacific military operations should be viewed as an initial step in the process. There are many more lessons from Ukraine to be examined than this paper could cover, although those lessons presented are assessed to be the most relevant at this time. Further research is required to continue eliciting lessons from the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and more analysis is required to ascertain their relevance to individual nations and sub-regions within the Pacific theatre.

You can read the full report at this link.

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At 8pm local time on the 2^nd of April, the Peoples Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command announced the commencement of Exercise Strait Thunder 2025A. China admitted in this announcement that the exercise was a rehearsal for a blockade, and described it as "stern warning and forceful deterrence." This is the latest in an increasingly sophistocated series of large-scale joint exercises undertaken by the Eastern Theatre Command. While large-scale activities such as Strait Thunder 2025A get a lot of attention, the Chinese operations around Taiwan are constant and also include PLA Joint Combat Readiness Patrols (read more about these here).

The key activities of Strait Thunder, as described by Eastern Theatre Command, included the following:

• Sea-air combat readiness patrols.

• Joint seizure of comprehensive superiority.

• Assault on maritime & ground targets.

• Blockade on key areas & sea areas.

Exercise Strait Thunder 2025A also had a live-fire component. On 2 April, the Eastern Theatre Command made the following announcement:

According to the 'Strait Thunder-2025A' exercise plan, live- fire, long-range firepower drills were implemented in relevant areas of the East China Sea, carrying out precision strikes against simulated targets of important ports, energy facilities, and other key infrastructure, achieving the expected results.

The aim of this special assessment is to explore Chinese objectives for Exercise Strait Thunder 2025A as well as what the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Taiwan, Japan and Australia might have learned from this two-day Chinese military exercise.

Exercise Strait Thunder 2025A Objectives

An important objective of Strait Thunder 2025A was to test the capacity of the commanders, staff, units and overall command and control of the Eastern Theatre Command. This command is one of the five joint commands established as part of a transformation of the PLA into a more integrated warfighting organisation. These commands operate under the direction of the Central Military Commission, chaired by Xi.

The Chinese theatre commands are responsible for developing and wargaming theatre-specific plans for warfighting, responding to natural disasters and military contingencies, as well as the day-to-day operations focussed on Chinese sovereignty, which includes the kind of coercive military activities conducted daily around Taiwan.

The Eastern Theatre Command has a wide variety of joint military resources to carry out its mission. Its key military formations include three PLA Ground Forces Group Armies (71st, 72nd, and 73^rd) which each have around six combat brigades as well as other supporting brigades (aviation, special operations, artillery, engineers). The Eastern Theatre Command also commands the Eastern Theatre Navy, its naval aviation division, coastal defence units and two marine brigades. It also has 13 Air Force fighter and UAV brigades and regiments as well as a Bomber Division (equipped with different H6 variants), and 11 PLA Rocket Force brigades.

During exercises and warfighting operations, the Eastern Theatre Command is allocated elements of the PLA’s Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force and Joint Logistic Support Force as well as additional elements of the PLA Rocket Force. The primary mission of the Eastern Theatre Command is Taiwan, although it also has responsibility for Japan and contingencies in and around the Senkaku Islands. The announcement of Strait Thunder 2025A represents a continuation of this command’s increasingly larger and more complex joint exercises around Taiwan.

In conducting large joint exercises such as Strait Thunder 2025A, the PLA will have had a range of other objectives besides the development of its Eastern Theatre Command.

First, the announcement was made at 8pm local time. The timing will have been a test to ascertain the reaction of Taiwanese, Japanese and U.S. reporting and decision-making systems outside normal working hours. This might sound unusual to civilians, but in peacetime, there is a difference in the amount of people at work and immediately available between work hours during the day and overnight. By announcing this at night, the Chinese will be assessing overnight decision capabilities among the nations that might seek to oppose any Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

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My latest article for the Lowy Interpreter is an examination of what Taiwan is learning from the war in Ukraine. My article is based on a research visit to Taiwan, other research since the visit and a recent interview with the Taiwanese representative in Australia, Mr Douglas Hsu.

In the nearly three years since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine of February 2022, many nations have re-examined their national security postures, defence budgets and alliances. The government of Taiwan has not been immune to the strategic reassessments driven by Russia’s conduct. The Ukraine war has served as a catalyst to address some complacency in sections of Taiwanese society about Chinese aggression.

Learning the right lessons from other people’s wars requires deep analysis, political commitment to change, and national security organisations able to rapidly absorb knowledge. There is more to it than watching from afar and copying innovation. Taiwan needs to observe the political, strategic and tactical lessons of Ukraine and filter them through its own context, including local geography and weather, regional politics, Taiwan’s political culture, and the military capabilities of China. Taiwan also needs to anticipate the kinds of lessons the Chinese leadership and the People’s Liberation Army might be learning from Ukraine and Russia.

A key lesson for Taiwan in the past three years has been the maintenance of national will. This has political, military and societal elements. Significant effort has been invested to improve military and civil defence capacity, while expanding the interaction between the two. As Taiwan’s representative in Australia, Douglas Hsu, told me in a recent interview, the Taiwanese government has “strengthened civil defence capabilities, including mobilisation, human resource deployment, training, and emergency preparedness. This aims to ensure prompt response to emergencies or dynamic changes in disasters, enhancing civilians’ self-defence and self-rescue capabilities to maintain social safety and order.”

Military conscription has also evolved. With mandatory military service extended from four months to one year and the modernisation of training, Taiwan is developing a more capable military to deter Chinese aggression and provide a potent warfighting organisation if the Chinese blockade Taiwan or attempt invasion.

There are other Taiwanese initiatives to build national resilience based on insights from the Ukraine War. Hsu describes these as contributing to a “whole of society resilience”. Some of these initiatives include establishing a command and control system for emergencies to integrate different agencies; more frequent disaster response drills which incorporate reserve force training; enhancing storage of strategic materials and energy to deter or defeat a Chinese blockade; improving medical resilience; establishing air-raid shelters; and building a more robust and secure government communications network, including cyber security and undersea cable protection, to deter Chinese leadership “decapitation” operations. PLA expert Joel Wuthnow has written that a key PLA observation from Ukraine was Russia’s failure to decapitate Ukraine's leadership: “the PLA has already planned to target Taiwan’s leaders, including doctrine for the use of special operations forces in an island landing that includes strikes on adversary leadership.”

Perhaps one of the most important initiatives has been to strengthen protections around the flow of information. Russia, supported by China, has run a large global disinformation campaign since starting the war in Ukraine to shape opinion in the West, especially among politicians. In April, the chair of the US Congress House Intelligence Committee said Russian disinformation has “absolutely seeped its way to Congress” and that Republican members of Congress had repeated Russian claims.

You can read the full article for free here at the Lowy Interpreter.

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This week I have returned to Indonesia for the second time in 2024. I don’t know how many times I have been to this amazing country since my first visit in 1992, but it has been a lot. I have had the opportunity to visit many of Indonesia’s different islands, from Sumatra to Makassar to Ambon, and to work with Indonesia military and academic institutions. In 1995, I spent a year at the Australian Defence Force School of Languages learning Bahasa Indonesia, which I used as a translator in the late 1990s during visits to Indonesia with senior military officers.

Therefore, it was a great pleasure to be invited back to Indonesia this week by the Indonesian Ministry of Defence. My mission was to present to a seminar attended by senior Indonesian military officers, as well as some of the local staff from foreign embassies (including the awesome team from the Australian embassy in Jakarta).

The topic of my talk was the relevance of lessons from Ukraine for the Pacific theatre, and for Indonesia in particular. This provided me with an opportunity to update and expand my previous assessments about the relevance of the lessons from Ukraine for application in the western Pacific. The majority of this article therefore covers the Ukraine lessons, differences in context between Eastern Europe and the Pacific, and the major challenges that emerge for countries that might seek to challenge Chinese military coercion and aggression in the western Pacific.

However, before I do, it is worth highlighting some context about Indonesia for those of you who may not know a lot about the country

Indonesia

Indonesia is a nation made up of many different ethic groups that live on more than 6000 of the 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesia is a mainly Muslim nation, and with a population of nearly 280 million, it is the largest Islamic nation in the world. It is also vibrant democracy, having shed the dictatorships that guided the nation in its first half century after independence in 1945.

Sitting astride the Pacific and Indian oceans, the archipelagic sea lanes through Indonesia are some of the most important in the world, including the Malacca Strait.

Indonesia is a non-aligned state, having hosted the first conference of the non-aligned movement in Bandung in 1955. It is however an important member of ASEAN and was one of its founding members in 1967.

Indonesia has a large military. Its largest service, the Army, comprises about three quarters of the overall strength of the 400 thousand strong Indonesian military. The armed forces of Indonesia and Australia collaborate at multiple levels and maintain many training and education exchanges and conduct a range of bilateral exercises in the air, sea, land, cyber, special forces areas on an annual basis.

The leadership of the Indonesian military have a keen interest in learning about developments in contemporary warfare, including the lessons from the war in Ukraine. This is why I found myself speaking in Jakarta this week.

Translating Ukraine Lessons for the Pacific – and Indonesia

The primary focus of the assessment I provided in Jakarta was how we might translate the lessons of the war in Ukraine, be they tactical, strategic, or political, for application in the nations of the western Pacific region. There were three key elements of my presentation.

First, I provided some of the key insights and lessons that could be gleaned from the first three years of the war in Ukraine. This was by no means a comprehensive list and many of my readers here will be familiar with my views on how we can learn, and the key lessons, from the way. However, for clarity, I covered the following key lessons on modern war in my Jakarta presentation:

Lesson 1. A new era of mass and mobilisation. Deterrence and conflict in the Pacific may require planning for (and possibly conduct of) national mobilization I highlighted here how 21st century mobilization is a trinity of national (not military) endeavours: industry; people; and ideas (which you can read about in more detail here).

Lesson 2. The signature battle and meshed civil-military sensor networks. While I have written about this trend in detail both here and in reports for the Special Competitive Studies Project, I highlighted that the implication of meshing civil and military collection and analysis means that more investment will be needed in open-source information and assessment, including AI capabilities, for integration in military intelligence and operations. It would also require a greater focus on military deception operations.

Lesson 3. Cheaper and more precise deep strike capabilities. This has been an interesting development during the war in Ukraine, with Ukraine having developed a strategic strike complex from almost a standing start on 2022. This means that nations will need to invest in sovereign, lower cost strike weapons while also obtaining some of the more exquisite foreign systems. At the same time, we can't take our eye off close combat capabilities; each nation will need to achieve their own balance of close- and long-range combat systems depending on their particular circumstances.

Lesson 4. The evolving fight for influence. Both Russian and Ukraine have made significant investments in this area during the war. Nations need to deter war, and if they cannot, be capable of winning their wars and winning the narrative of their wars. At the same time, modern nations must counter misinformation and disinformation and educate their populace about trusted and compromised information sources.

Lesson 5. Ubiquitous air, land, and sea uncrewed systems. Even though remotely operated systems were developed and employed during the Second World War, and there has been development of newer systems since, the past three years has been the most intense, large-scale development and use of uncrewed systems in human history. Some of the implications of this include the ability of many nations to develop their own low-cost drones, as well as the need for military organisations to evolve their organisational, doctrinal and leadership models to better exploit the teaming of human and uncrewed systems.

Lesson 6. More integrated adaptation battle. Both Ukraine and Russia have learned and adapted during the war. Their forces have engaged in tactical learning (the Russians have been slower but have improved) as well as strategic learning and adaptation (which is learning that supports improving a nations war effort and ability to win wars). The crucial point is that both systems are necessary, and they must be linked to reinforce each other.

Lesson 7. The enduring importance of good leadership and strategy. The war in Ukraine has provided a plethora of lessons about national and tactical leadership (the good and the bad) as well as nations investing in the ability to develop good strategy, based on tested assumptions, and the ability to continuously assess and evolve that strategy. But, part of this is also democratic nations being able to have tough, honest decisions with their citizens about investing in defence and strategic resilience capabilities.

Optimizing Ukraine Lessons for the Pacific

But, given the profound differences in culture, geography, politics, infrastructure and weather between Eastern Europe and the western Pacific, a degree of translation is needed to ensure that the observations gathered from the war in Ukraine are optimised for application in this region of the world. There are five key ‘Pacific filters’ that can be applied in this optimization process, and these are examined below.

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Just last week, Taiwan celebrated its national day. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te gave an address on 10 October that included a statement that China "has no right to represent Taiwan" and that his mission as president would be to "resist annexation or encroachment upon our sovereignty."

After the speech by the President of Taiwan, the predictable Chinese Communist Party response arrived. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning stated that Lai had tried to “sell the fallacy of Taiwan independence,” and accused him of a “pernicious intention to escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait for political gain.”

As I wrote in my last weekly update, there was some speculation in the wake of the Chinese statement that the PLA would use Lai's National Day speech as a pretext to launch military exercises around Taiwan, similar to the Joint Swords 2024A exercise conducted in May this year. While PLA activity around Taiwan immediately after the Taiwanese president’s speech held steady for a couple of days at an average of 10-20 aircraft and 4-7 ships, the situation changed in the past 24 hours.

China’s military announced that it would be commencing military exercises around Taiwan. This new exercise was described by the Chinese regime as a “stern warning to the separatist acts of Taiwan Independence forces.” Following in a similar vein to the May 2024 ‘punishment exercises’ conducted around Taiwan, these new military drills would be called Exercise Joint Sword-2024B.

According to spokesmen from China’s defence ministry and its Eastern Theatre Command, the new exercise is designed “to test the joint operations capabilities of the theatre command's troops.” Further, the exercise would include “vessels and aircraft approaching Taiwan island in close proximity from different directions, troops of multiple services engage in joint drills, focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas, assault on maritime and ground targets, as well as joint seizure of comprehensive superiority.”

The aim of this article is to explore this new activity and the military organisation that will command Joint Swords 2024B, the Eastern Theatre Command. Additionally, I will explore the likely Chinese objectives for Joint Swords 2024B as well as what the intelligence agencies in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Japan and Australia might be seeking to learn from this new Chinese military exercise.

Rehearsing the Chinese Theatre Commands

An important objective of Joint Swords 2024B is to test the capacity of the commanders, staff, units and overall command and control of the Eastern Theatre Command. This command is one of the new joint commands established as part of a transformation of the PLA into a more integrated warfighting organisation.

As I covered in my May 2024 article on Joint Swords 2024A, there are five theatre commands in the PLA, and these were established in 2016. Each command receives its orders directly from the Central Military Committee in Beijing and is assigned the operational authority over PLA organisations within its theatre. The Chinese theatre commands are responsible for developing and wargaming theatre-specific plans for warfighting, responding to natural disasters and military contingencies, as well as the day-to-day operations focussed on Chinese sovereignty, which includes the kind of coercive military activities conducted daily around Taiwan.

The Eastern Theatre Command has a wide variety of joint military resources to carry out its mission. This includes three PLA Ground Forces Group Armies (71st, 72nd, and 73^rd) which each have around six combat brigades as well as other supporting brigades (aviation, special operations, artillery, engineers). The Eastern Theatre Command also commands the Eastern Theatre Navy, its naval aviation division, coastal defence units and two marine brigades. It also has 13 Air Force fighter and UAV brigades and regiments as well as a Bomber Division (equipped with different H6 variants). 

During exercises and warfighting operations, the Eastern Theatre Command will likely be allocated elements of the PLA’s Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force and Joint Logistic Support Force as well as elements of the PLA Rocket Force.  Indeed, part of today’s announcement includes the PLA Rocket Force units, and I will return to that later in the piece.

The primary mission of the Eastern Theatre Command is Taiwan, although it also has responsibility for Japan and contingencies in and around the Senkaku Islands. The announcement of Joint Swords 2024B represents a continuation of this command’s increasingly larger and more complex joint exercises around Taiwan.

Joint Swords 2024B Objectives

In conducting large joint exercises such as Joint Swords 2024B, the PLA will have multiple objectives.

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Wars are full of uncertainty.

Whether it is the uncertainty of what the enemy is doing on the other side of a hill, through to uncertainty about the motivations of political leaders in their decision-making, the ‘fog and friction of war’ is every bit of relevant in considering war in the 21^st century as when Carl von Clausewitz wrote about this concept in the early 1800s.

However, sometimes there are things in war that we can be certain about. I would propose that one certainty of the Russo-Ukraine war is that China is watching it closely. In particular, it is learning to improve its strategic decision models (within the bounds of the CCP system) by watching U.S. and NATO decision-making and responses to the Ukraine war. Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and around Taiwan is also prompting Western debates which inform China’s strategic calculus.

I have explored the topic of Chinese learning from the Ukraine War in several previous articles. My first examination of China’s potential observations from the war in Ukraine was published back in April 2022. This was designed as short, initial exploration of what China might learn from the conflict. A year later, in February 2023, I undertook another exploration of how China might be using the war in Ukraine to wargame its own future operations. Finally, in September last year I published a piece here that proposed multiple areas where the Chinese leadership might be learning from the war in Ukraine.

Nearly a year later, I wanted to provide an assessment on one particular aspect of China’s (potential) learning from the war in Ukraine that has political and strategic impact. As such, in this article I will examine how China might be learning from how the West (the U.S. and NATO in particular) have made strategic decisions during the war, up to the latest debate on long range strike, and how this will inform and influence Chinese strategic decision-making.

China Learns from Foreign Wars

The PLA are careful and meticulous students of modern warfare, particularly the U.S. way of war. But despite recent organizational reform efforts, the PLA remains essentially a political entity with a war-fighting mission. It is a party army, not a national army. And its approach to learning and leadership is heavily influenced by its own organization, as well as traditional Chinese culture and education.

What the Chinese Army Is Learning From Russia’s Ukraine War, Evan A. Feigenbaum and Charles Hooper

China, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have previously demonstrated both the willingness and ability for learning and change.  In 2023, Toshi Yoshihara examined China’s study of the lessons of the Pacific War.  As he writes in his report, published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies,:

Chinese analysts, including those affiliated with the PLA, have subjected the maritime conflict and its campaigns to scrutiny. The historical accounts render clear and sound judgments about the sources of operational success that in turn reveal much about the PLA’s views of strategy and war… Chinese findings from these retrospectives offer tantalizing hints of the PLA’s deeply held beliefs, assumptions, and proclivities about future warfare, such as the penchant for striking first and attacking the enemy’s vulnerabilities.

Yoshihara finds in his study of Chinese learning from the Pacific War that Chinese scholars see jointness and amphibious operations as key features of the Second World War. Another topic of interest is the role of shore-based airpower and its influence on the conduct of operations. Other themes in the Chinese writings are the crucial role of intelligence and reconnaissance, and the attrition of forces on both sides, including Japan’s lack of industrial depth and personnel to sustain and recover from its combat losses. The report contains a good bibliography of Chinese sources which I highly recommend.

The Falklands War, the first modern conventional war in the post-Vietnam era, was a case study in the strategies, successes, and failures of the Argentine military as it attempted to deny British forces access to the waters surrounding the islands. The lessons have probably contributed to China’s anti-access/ area-denial (A2/AD) strategies, with its lessons in sea denial and maritime attack. Few wars more analogous to a Taiwan Strait operation than the Falklands War. The war showed the lethality of new era missile systems as well as the challenges of long-distance force projection, which would be a challenge for those coming to Taiwan’s assistance.

As Lyle Goldstein has written on this topic: “this author conducted an academic survey of Chinese writings regarding the Falklands War that was published in 2008. That study revealed that Chinese strategists admired London’s objective use of intelligence and its “flexible, joint, and efficient command arrangements.” The airpower discussion notes that the Argentines lacked effective anti-ship doctrine and the related weaponry…one Chinese assessment of the Falklands War concluded that the sinking of the Belgrano cruiser by a Royal Navy nuclear submarine proved to be “the most decisive military operation of the Falklands War.”

James Holmes has also written an interesting piece on Chinese learning from the Falklands War. You can read his article here.

The 1991 Gulf War shocked the Chinese military into a multi-decade recapitalization of its military, and indigenous research and development programs, which has included advanced ships, aircraft, missiles, cyber and space warfare and ground combat vehicles. It has also resulted in reforms to strategic and operational command and control, including better joint integration. Chinese lessons from the 1991 Gulf War – as well as the wars spawned by 9/11 – have included a reformation in their operational doctrine and has resulted in concepts such as ‘intelligentization’ and ‘systems destruction warfare.’

Recently, several experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conducted a study of Chinese writings on the war in Ukraine. Their findings, not surprisingly, indicate that China is studying the war very closely. Every aspect of warfighting, from the national level to tactical operations, is being reviewed by different Chinese scholars and military theorists. You can read the commentaries on Chinese learning from the CSIS experts, as well as translated Chinese articles, here.

China has an evolved capability to study and learn from other people’s wars. Partially this is due to necessity; China has not been involved in large-scale war since its disastrous invasion of Vietnam in 1979. The poor performance of the PLA in that war saw Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping use it to overcome resistance from PLA leadership for the modernisation of China’s military. But China has since then used its studies of other peoples’ war to inform change in the PLA. The most recent conventional war in Ukraine, like the other wars discussed above, provides an array of lessons. And perhaps the most important lesson is how Western nations make decisions about war.

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This is the second article in what will be a comprehensive series that explores the lessons from the war in Ukraine since 2022, and translates them for their applicability in the Pacific region. In the introduction to this series, I examined the rationale for this translation exercise, and noted that:

Context matters in the further examination of lessons from the Ukraine War. The relevance of a given lesson from the Ukraine war for other theatres will depend on a range of different geographic, technological or political factors. My observation of the many, many articles on the lessons from Ukraine in the past 26 months is that the vast majority suffer from a lack of contextual translation. 

In the introduction to this series, I also listed the strategic and battlefield lessons that I intend translating for the Pacific region. These might be viewed as the primary lessons but not the only ones.

The western and southwestern pacific regions are very different politically, economically, ethnically and socially from Europe. There is no EU nor is there an Asian version of NATO. The scale of China dwarfs all other nations in the Pacific region.

The military and economic relationships between different Asian nations, and with countries outside the region, are very different from the context that eastern European nations such as Ukraine operate within. These differences in context need to be considered in the translation of strategic lessons from Ukraine.

This examination of strategic lessons from the Russo-Ukraine War, and their application in the Pacific region, will span multiple articles. Subsequently I will explore the battlefield lessons from Ukraine for their applicability to nations in the Pacific region. This article covers the first strategic lesson from the war in Ukraine and its applicability in the Pacific region: the importanance of strategy and strategic assumptions.

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The NATO 75th anniversary summit will be held in Washington DC in the coming 48 hours. Key issues on the agenda will include the war in Ukraine, enhanced deterrence and improving military interoperability. But it is likely that China’s support to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine will also be a topic of discussion. As outgoing NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, recently noted, China is "sharing a lot of technologies, [like] micro-electronics, which are key for Russia to build missiles, weapons they use against Ukraine…at some stage, we should consider some kind of economic cost if China doesn't change their behaviour".

Last week, reports emerged of Chinese and Russian companies allegedly beginning co-development this year of an attack drone similar to the Iranian Shahed uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) that has been deployed in the thousands by Russia against Ukrainian targets. Last year, a Chinese defence company unveiled an attack drone which it called the Sunflower 200. This aerial vehicle looked very similar to the Iranian- Shahed-136 drone that has been procured and employed by Russia against Ukraine. 

Also last week, Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to the capital of Kazakhstan for a meeting of leaders from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The joint communique from this meeting stated that “the circle of states that stand for a just world order and are ready to resolutely defend their legitimate rights and protect traditional values is expanding.”

Putin and Xi’s relationship has bloomed over the past few years. The two leaders have met several times since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. As Alexander Gabuev recently wrote in Foreign Affairs:

The tightening of this alignment between Russia and China is one of the most important geopolitical outcomes of Putin’s war against Ukraine. The conscious efforts of Xi and Putin drive much of this reorientation, but it is also the byproduct of the deepening schism between the West and both countries. 

Given how this relationship between the two authoritarians has blossomed since the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese leader must see a benefit to China not only in a closer relationship with Russia, but in the ongoing war itself. It begs the question, what does China gain from the war, and how might China benefit from a continuation of Russia’s long-war strategy in Ukraine?

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There are many lessons that can be taken from the war in Ukraine. Indeed, it is somewhat of a major industry now, with many government, academic and defence industry organisations engaging in the collection, analysis, distribution and exploitation of lessons from the conflict in Ukraine.

But all observations and lessons must be subject to contextual examination. Sir Michael Howard wrote that history should be studied in depth, width and context. He noted in his famous 1961 speech that:

Campaigns and battles are not like games of chess or football matches, conducted in total detachment from their environment according to strictly defined rules. Wars are not tactical exercises writ large. They are…conflicts of societies, and they can only be understood if one understands the society fighting them…Without some such knowledge of the broader background to military operations one is likely to reach totally erroneous conclusions about their nature, and the reasons for their failure and success.

Context matters in the further examination of lessons from the Ukraine War. The relevance of a given lesson from the Ukraine war for other theatres will depend on a range of different geographic, technological or political factors. My observation of the many, many articles on the lessons from Ukraine in the past 26 months is that the vast majority suffer from a lack of contextual translation. The lessons are in the main taken directly from the war in Ukraine and assumed to have direct application in other contexts.

While the lessons from the war in Ukraine are vital for European nations that have now realised the profound threat posed by a resurgent and aggressive Russia, they also have application in other parts of the world. Perhaps no region of the world needs to examine the lessons from the Ukraine War as much as the nations in the Pacific region.

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This week, the new President of Taiwan was inaugurated in Taipei. I wanted to provide a quick update to subscribers on the Chinese reaction, particularly that of the PLA’s ‘punishment drills’, and what it means for stability in the western Pacific.

Taiwan’s new President Lai Ching-te on 23 May vowed to defend Taiwan’s freedom while preserving peace in the region. In his inauguration speech delivered a couple of days earlier, he stated that “I also want to call on China to cease their political and military intimidation against Taiwan, share with Taiwan the global responsibility of maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as well as the greater region, and ensure the world is free from the fear of war.”

But wishing for dialog with China is unlikely to curb the aspirations of President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party to absorb the vibrant young democracy that is Taiwan. Frequent speeches and a recent Taiwan White Paper make their intentions clear. As the White Paper pronounces in bold, “Taiwan Is Part of China - This Is an Indisputable Fact.”

Because of this, the new Taiwanese president also accepted in his speech that enduring peace can only be possible if Taiwan is strong enough to defend itself against military, economic, informational and other threats. He noted that “as we pursue the ideal of peace, we must not harbor any delusions…In face of the many threats and attempts of infiltration from China, we must demonstrate our resolution to defend our nation, and we must also raise our defense awareness and strengthen our legal framework for national security. This means actively promoting the Four Pillars of Peace action plan: strengthened national defense; improved economic security; stable and principled cross-strait leadership; and values-based diplomacy.”

China Responds: Punishment Drills

Predictably, the CCP did not respond well to this inauguration speech.

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While much of the attention of western security analysts (rightly) was focussed on the dire state of the Ukrainian ground forces firepower, and the final moves to secure a bill for Ukraine aid in the US Congress, in the past couple of weeks, some interesting developments were taking place on the other side of the world.

On one side the of Taiwan Strait, a new Littoral Combatant Command was established by the Taiwanese military. On the other side of the strait, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) dis-established the Strategic Support Force and at the same time formed three new strategic commands: the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force, and the Information Support Force.

A New Taiwanese Combatant Command

This week, the Taiwanese state news agency carried a story about the formation of a new Littoral Combatant Command for the Taiwanese military. Due to be established in 2026, the new command would be subordinate to Taiwan’s Naval Command Headquarters. This is a new command, not forecast in even the most recent Taiwanese defence report issued in 2023.

Clearly, the new chief of the navy appointed in May 2023, Admiral Tang Hua is keen to reform the structure and warfighting capacity of the navy during his command tenure.

In some respects, the new command will streamline the existing Naval Fleets Command. Conceptually it will provide a command that is a defensive shield while strike elements of the navy such as its frigates, aviation and submarines reach out further to sea to attrit the Chinese naval forces.

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