Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
- Taiwan can't fight off China alone, even if it gets NATO weapons, said an APAC security expert.
- There's "no situation" where Taiwan can pull off its own defense like Ukraine has, she said.
- Taipei's game plan will rely on holding out so the US can arrive, she told The Washington Post.
Taiwan's ability to defend against a hypothetical Chinese invasion wouldn't hinge on whether the island can fight off Beijing, but whether it can hold out until US forces arrive, said a political scientist who studies China's military and Asia-Pacific security.
There's "no situation under which Taiwan can defend itself without direct military intervention from the United States," Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, told The Washington Post.
It's a scenario often compared to Russia's war in Ukraine, where Kyiv has successfully rebuffed the Kremlin's advances for a year with a NATO-supplied arsenal, but no official reinforcements.
Taiwan's game plan will have to be different, according to Mastro, who's also a strategic planner for the US Air Force Reserve's Indo-Pacific Command, per The Post.
"Taiwan has to be able to hold out long enough for the United States to get enough forces in theater," Mastro told the outlet.
And US forces would be significantly delayed if war does break out over the Taiwan Strait, she added.
"We cannot get there quickly. It's basically submarines and US aircraft that are going to be operating from the southwest islands of Japan and eventually from bases in the northern Philippines," said the political scientist, per The Post.
The White House has long cleaved to a "strategic ambiguity" playbook when it comes to China and Taiwan, refusing to say if the US would defend the self-governed island should Beijing mount an offensive.
President Joe Biden twice appeared to break from that strategy, explicitly saying in 2021 and 2022 that Washington would send American troops to Taiwan — though The White House walked back his comments each time and declared no change to its Taiwan policy.
Mastro and Taiwan's Defense Ministry press department did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.