Taiwan is an island democracy of twenty-three million people, separated from the mainland by 150 kilometres of water. It holds competitive elections. Governments change peacefully. Courts function. Civil society is plural and noisy. Power is constrained by law. It has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Its path was Japanese rule, post-war separation, authoritarian transition, then democratisation. Modern, developed, aligned with the West. Secure in its geography.
Just like Australia.
A recent National Review analysis argues that Beijing may no longer need to invade Taiwan to achieve its objective. If strategic ambiguity can be weaponised to produce paralysis, then submission can be secured without open conflict.
Beijing has learned to exploit the gap between provocation and response. Pressure applied below the threshold of war—economic coercion, airspace violations, diplomatic isolation—forces democracies into a choice between overreaction and inaction. When response costs more than inaction, inaction wins. Each deferral is justified as prudent. Each restraint is framed as avoiding escalation. Until independent action is no longer possible.
If Taiwan falls this way, it will not be because the international system failed to respond to invasion. It will be because there was no single moment that demanded response. Twenty-three million people will have passed from self-government to one-party rule, and the lesson will be that democracies can be neutralised without fighting them.
For Australia, this is not someone else’s tragedy. It is proof that geography doesn’t protect us.
We have told ourselves we are different: wealthier, more connected, further away, allied with the United States. Taiwan had all of that too. And the method used against Taiwan doesn’t require proximity or poverty or abandonment. It requires economic exposure and an institutional preference for patience over response—attributes Australia possesses in abundance.
Distance is not insulation. Development is not immunity. Alliance is not guarantee.
The method being used against Taiwan is the proof of concept for what happens to comfortable, distant island democracies that mistake geography for security.
For Australia, coercion would not arrive as military threat. It would arrive as:
- Port access delayed pending regulatory review
- Export approvals contingent on political positioning
- Infrastructure contracts offered, then quietly made conditional
- Diplomatic isolation framed as consequence of alignment choices
- Each pressure point calibrated to remain below the threshold that triggers alliance response
Objection looks provocative. Compliance looks prudent. Until the cumulative effect is strategic capture achieved without anyone identifying the moment when independence was lost.
If Taiwan falls without war, the model works. Advanced democracies can be broken through ambiguity rather than force. Legalistic institutions habituated to incremental decision-making will rationalise submission as prudence.
We are not safe because we are far away. We are just next. The question is whether we recognise the pattern before we become it.