Taiwan Is Not Ukraine

Is Taiwan really the next Ukraine? Amid rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, Lenaïg Deslandes challenges the increasingly common comparison between China’s ambitions toward Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She argues that despite superficial similarities, the two powers’ expansionist strategies diverge sharply—Russia favouring military revisionism, China pursuing gradual, grey-zone statecraft. By unpacking these differences, Deslandes cautions against simplistic parallels that obscure the distinct geopolitical realities shaping Taiwan’s future.