Ukraine’s example makes clear to Taiwan an invasion can be defeated given the courage to resist

  President Biden’s reluctance to make Ukraine a no fly zone because it would provoke a confrontation that inevitably marches to a nuclear exchange exposes the defense of Taiwan if it were to be invaded by mainland China.  But the courage of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people choosing to defend their democracy provides an alternative to the super powers mutually assuring our destruction by showing the Taiwanese public and its President Tsai Ing-wen the importance of self-reliance. President Xi Jinping showed his cards by strangling Hong Kong’s democracy. Ukraine’s courage gives the island democracy the template for its defense.

The poor performance of the Russian Army might give the mainland's military pause.  Formosa is over a hundred miles away by sea and the probability of failure and humiliation is high.  President Tsai must show in every way she can that  an invasion would be costly and success at gaining full police power is unlikely. The United States should provide all the material help it can to prepare for an invasion and a protracted guerilla war without a superpower crossing a blockade.

Ukraine’s example should affirm Taiwan’s military reservists' sense of purpose and makes clear that an invasion can be defeated given the courage to resist and the command structure to continue a guerilla war.  Xi Jinping may make the decision to invade but like any autocrat he will have bad information about his military’s capability and so the defending forces should prepare to  take maximum advantage of incompetence, like Russia’s forty mile stretch of stalled tanks North of Kiev, during the beach landing. It's difficult to envision the invasion landing with sufficient military personnel and supplies to take much less to govern the island but every effort must be made to harden military installations and supply depots and examine contingency plans to make the invader’s success impossible.

The self-reliant approach is the only option for Taiwan to protect its democracy because a show of force by the U.S. Navy like President Clinton used in 1996 in the defense of the Straits of Taiwan incident  would be ignored this time by China as a bluff. As the West enters the Second Cold War against the despots of the East, Ukraine clarifies the need to commit military aid to those democracies willing to fight to defend themselves so as to keep conflict local and not lead to superpower escalation. President Zelenskyy’s courage is a shining example of calling the autocrat’s bluff by piercing his aura of invincibility to reveal incompetence. He has single handedly reversed this century’s rise of autocracies and their denigration of democracies to affirm Winston Churchill’s observation that “democracy may be the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”