Michael Mazza On Taiwan: Taiwan Will Fight

Taiwan might just give up. That’s the argument Simon Shuster made in The Atlantic’s October issue. The US is unreliable, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) leadership is aligned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Taiwan does not have the military capability to defend itself in a prolonged war without help. What hope does Taiwan have? Quite a bit more, in fact, than Shuster lets on.

Shuster points to genuine problems. The first Donald Trump administration had a mostly positive record on Taiwan policy. It regularized the arms sales process, enhanced the military-to-military relationship, and treated Taiwan more like a normal diplomatic partner. Despite the announcement of a record arms sale at the end of 2025 and continuing improvements in bilateral military ties, however, Trump’s second term has given Taiwan more cause for concern.

Trump has deferred additional arms sales in order to avoid angering Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), openly echoed Xi’s talking points about Taiwan, and publicly implied that Taiwan is too far away for the US to defend. Considering the larger context — for example, Trump’s refusal to prioritize Russia’s defeat in Europe and his threats to invade Greenland, a territory of NATO member Denmark — responsible Taiwanese national security planners must question American dependability.

Like Trump, current KMT leader Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) has spoken in language reminiscent of Xi’s own. During her trip to China in the spring, she described people from China and Taiwan as sharing a Chinese identity and encouraged Taiwan to embrace Xi’s goal of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Cheng is controversial even within the KMT, but certainly there are elements within the party that see war as simply unimaginable, which in turn has inhibited preparing for it.

That is one reason why Taiwan’s defense modernization efforts are not keeping pace with China’s own advances. In 2026, the opposition in the Legislative Yuan stripped all of the funding for domestic drone production from a special defense budget and later advanced a separate drone bill that arguably did not prioritize the Ministry of National Defense’s need for unmanned capabilities. Taipei has been making important investments in its military, but this year’s challenges are emblematic of a decades-long failure to fund a defense budget that is appropriate for the threats Taiwan faces.

Yet despite these challenges, reports of Taiwan’s impending submission to the CCP are greatly exaggerated. Rather, there are good reasons to think Taiwan will defend itself vigorously if Beijing opts for aggression.

First, most people in Taiwan have embraced a Taiwanese identity. Even those who recognize a shared cultural endowment with People’s Republic of China citizens see Taiwan as distinct from China. This is why three decades of public polling show consistent trend lines: growing identification as “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese” or “Both Taiwanese and Chinese” and plummeting support for unification. What is more, despite the crisis of confidence facing democracies around the world, an overwhelming majority of Taiwanese believe multiparty democracy is a good way of governing — and they act like it. In the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s Global State of Democracy Initiative, Taiwan ranks seventh globally on democratic participation. It is far from clear that, as Shuster argues, “voters in Taiwan can feel the balance of power shifting, and many will choose the side that looks more stable, even at the risk of their own liberties.”

Despite its political polarization, moreover, Taiwan is a country with remarkable social cohesion and an active civil society. When the Matai’an barrier lake overflowed in September last year, numerous nonprofit organizations and thousands upon thousands of individual volunteers leapt into action. Taiwan is a country in which people trust each other, care about each other, and are willing and eager to help each other. They have a proven track record of pulling together during natural disasters. There is not much evidence that they would respond differently during a manmade disaster — like, say, an invasion.

This is backed up by numerous public polls and survey experiments, which show that Taiwanese are willing to defend Taiwan. For example, earlier this year, Academia Sinica’s American Portrait survey found, according to a Taipei Times report, “that 58.7 percent of respondents would be willing to resist Chinese invasion ‘at all costs’ even if the US does not deploy any military forces to help Taiwan.”

To be sure, a war with China is not something to wish for. Taiwan will be outmanned and outgunned, even if it does succeed in kicking its military acquisition and reform efforts into high gear. Energy security is a major weakness, as is economic resilience. The US may come to its aid, but that’s no guarantee of victory.

Even so, Taiwan has three crucial advantages. First, its mountainous island geography favors the defenders. Second, Taiwan’s defenders know that geography well, and their potential attackers do not. Fighting on home territory provides both tangible and moral benefits. But Taiwan’s third and perhaps most important advantage is its people. Taiwanese love their country and do not want to see it swallowed up by a vicious predator. They believe it is worth defending. Their societal characteristics make them well suited to pulling together in service of such a defense.

If China opts for force, the road ahead will be trying. But Taiwan will fight.

Michael Mazza is senior director for research at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security (formerly the Project 2049 Institute) and a senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.